Recovery and First Night

When I woke up in recovery, it was unlike any other "coming out of anesthesia" experience I've ever had. Possibly because I'd never had Versed before. Normally I've had the slow wake up, the first I can hear - then I can see, then I can think, then I can consider speech, then I can say HI to the nurse watching me so she knows I'm in there......sort of thing.
This time, it was like waking up from sleep. I opened my eyes and saw my nurse adjusting my IV bag or doing something to it and I said Hi. She smiled and asked me how I felt, and I told her "Like crap."
Which sort of wasn't true. I didn't actually feel like ANYTHING. Just sort of - detached. She told me I'd been in recovery about 10 minutes and that I was doing great and everything had gone really well.
She gave me some ice chips off of a spoon and then DOCTOR SHOUTING came in and shook my feet and asked me if I could move them. I said no, and he smiled and shouted something about that being normal and moved on.
My OB came through and again muttered reassurances of how WELL it had gone and that the baby was very healthy and everything looked wonderful. He said he'd see me tomorrow and went on his way smiling.
Then my Mom called.
In all fairness, she thought she'd just get to talk to a nurse to see how I was doing. But at a high tech hospital with lots of mobile phones, they just brought the phone back to me.
I remember thinking that it was very odd to hold a phone when I couldn't feel over half my body. I had a very mumbly conversation with my mom and then my nurse said that after the machine read one more blood pressure I was gonna go to my room.

They drove me up on the bed, me just sort of watching it all bizarrely.....even as they hoisted me into the other bed using this roller thing like I was some giant fish carcass. I was tucked in and then a nurse came in to check on me.....and she said a bunch of stuff about getting out of bed and while she was talking I fell asleep.

When I woke it was after 3pm - and I realized.....the baby had been born between 12:30 and 1pm- and I had not seen her. I hit the nurse call button and asked if I could please see my baby.

And of course, started to cry. I mean - what if it'd been to long? What if she didn't KNOW me because we missed those first few bonding minutes after birth? What if they brought me the wrong baby? How would I know it was even my baby?

They brought her to me, and I instantly knew this baby. I gave birth to her seven years ago and she was a boy that time. She SMELLED like my baby,despite the baby wash. I held her for hours until the night nurse came on duty and wanted me to rest and took her to the nursery.

My night nurse was like, your mom and Mary Poppins and Miss Congeniality and I don't know what else. I almost wonder if they don't specially give her to the c-section patients that first night.......she was that comforting. She came in to tell me that at 1am my epidural had to come out, and explained all the things we would do to manage my pain. She covered all the things that she was going to do at 1am - one thing of which was make me walk to the bathroom. And then she let me go to sleep.

Then 1am came. She detached all my hoses and wires and hook ups including my catheter but thank god she took that out WHILE the epidural was still in. Then she sat me up and gave me some fruit juice and rubbed my legs to make sure I had feeling.

Then - to the bathroom.

She put her arms around me and walked me to the restroom - and very carefully had me sit on the toilet where I could NOT pee at all, hell I couldn't think much less pee.

Now, this is the part where you know that you've simply lost all your modesty and dignity - as a stranger gets between your legs with a hot water bottle and starts hosing you down and cleaning up your crotch - and you don't even care. Seriously, the only thought I was having was "Wow, thank you for doing such a gross thing for me."

Then she put me into the lovely mesh panties that all veteran moms are familiar with and put me into bed, and told me she'd be back in 4 hours with more pain meds.

The first night, well it was a haze. Surreal. There was a baby. Then they took her the to the nursery and there was just a parade of medical stuff being done to me.

The next morning when I woke up, I truly did feel like crap.

I suppose that's to be expected.