After a full long day at the labour ward, finally I was transferred to Lavender Ward to rest for the day. It was around 10pm. Although I was in a 3-bedded room, no one was there that night. I have the whole room all by myself. Andrew stayed for awhile, making sure both mommy and baby were well taken care of before returning home. He may not have physically gone through the labour pain himself, but I’m sure he was just as tired.
Andrew has instructed the nurse to take care of the baby that night since I was so exhausted from the long labour. Within minutes I felt asleep after Andrew left the hospital. I woke up around 12 midnight when the nurse brought the baby to me. He was fast asleep. Peacefully. My sweet little angel. Soon the nurse brought him back to the nursery room.
The next thing I realised was I have difficulty passing urine. I was advised by the nurse to use a bed pan as it was discouraged to stand up and walk at this moment, as this may make me feel dizzy as a result of the loss of blood during the delivery. However, after trying several times on the bed pan but was not successful, I’ve decided to go to the toilet with the help of the nurse. Even with that, I failed to urinate. Finally the nurse inserted a catheter to ease my discomfort.
I was in pain for the second half of the night due to the episiotomy. Unable to sleep, I started to sms a few close friends of mine on the arrival of our new baby boy. At around 5am, I told the nurse when she was making her routine check on our temperature and blood pressure. She gave me a pain killer.
The next morning, I woke up feeling extremely hungry. After all, I have not had anything since yesterday afternoon. Baby Erwyn was brought to me again and I tried to breast feed him. However, looks like our dear little prince here was not hungry at all. He refused to suck at all. He was brought back to the nursery again when his paediatrician was making her round in the ward.
About 9am, Andrew brought Elyse along to visit me. Apparently the night before when Elyse was about to go to bed, she went around the house looking for her mommy. She said ‘Daddy is back, Mommy is also back at home’ although Gong Gong, Ah Ma and Daddy told her otherwise. She cried failing to hunt Mommy down. Thanks to Daddy, after much persuasion she dozed off to sleep.
Elyse was overjoyed when she saw Mommy. Well, Mommy too was very happy to have her little girl around. Soon after baby Erwyn was brought to Lavender Ward and for the very first time, we introduced this new family member to Elyse. Elyse was not very interested though. She did not want to touch him, nor did she want Mommy to carry him.
Gong Gong and Ah Ma dropped by around 1pm. I was encouraged to walk around the room by then. After staying for awhile, they brought Elyse back home while Andrew stayed with me a little longer. My gynae visited me later in the afternoon. The nurse then took away the catheter. Worried, but I tried to pass urine again. Thank God that gradually I was able to urinate again. Never did I realise how wonderful it is to have a healthy body. Indeed we should be thankful for every little thing.
Although we tried to breast feed baby Erwyn several times that day, he was just too sleepy and refused to latch on and suck. We were a little worried – could it be the low supply of milk? So we requested the nurse to bottle feed our little boy. But the nurse was not concerned at all. They told us that it is quite normal for newborn not to feed on anything for the first day. This is new to us as Elyse was hunger for milk soon after birth. And she was very skilful to latch on her Mommy’s breast.
After Andrew has gone home, a middle age lady was admitted in the same room as me. It was quite noisy that night as she was on the phone most of the time.
The next day, my gynae gave me the green light to go home. However, the check out procedure took quite some time and when we finally reached home it was around 2pm. The total bill for Mommy and baby was about 3k. The next doctor appointment for baby was in one week’s time. Baby Erwyn has very mild jaundice.
Second round parenthood. Are we ready for it? While everything was fine in the hospital, the real challenge begins when we are on our own. Bathing, cleaning baby’s poo poo, washing nappies, expressing breast milk, waking up at night for feeding… etc. Above all else, we still need to shower our little princess lots and lots of love and attention. Are we capable of doing that? Thank God we have parents around. Their support and help rendered have enable us to walk through this phase of our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment