The Mommy Chronicle, Part 3

So, I told you back a couple of weeks ago that I would give you the third and final part of the Mommy Chronicle tale. This one's not as down-and-dirty of the last two; no talk of conception or baby birthin', but I think you might find it...interesting...at the very least.

When the Conman was born, he had a few medical problems the little country hospital were not prepared to deal with. First, he had a heart murmur, he couldn't process sugar correctly (since I had gestational diabetes) and couldn't keep his sugar level over 35 or so for more than an hour after a feeding, and because he was a C-Section baby, he had copious amounts of fluid in his lungs. So, that's the baby's status at the time of birth and for about 36 hours thereafter.

Now, remember he was born at nearly 2AM on a Tuesday morning. I slept after he was born, and on Wednesday I woke up back in the room with teenage mommy of three. She was cuddling and suckling her newest arrival while her mother ranted and raved about how she wanted her 18-year-old daughter "fixed right this very minute" in front of my room full of visitors, not giving a flip about her daughter's privacy. Ahhhh well...so is life in rural WV.

Nevertheless, I asked the nurse repeatedly to go to the nursery and bring me my baby. I hadn't seen him since his birth the night before, and I was itchin' to get my hands on the little booger. The nurse kept giving me excuses, never really gave me the real reason why he couldn't be brought to me (his various maladies) so for most of the day on Wednesday, I was without baby. Finally, a pediatrician arrived at the hospital (that's right, there's no staff pediatrician at this hospital) and called me and my sewn-up belly to the nursery. Why he couldn't come to me I'll never know, but there you go. He explained the situation to me, and explained that a helicopter would be arriving in a mater of hours to whisk my child away to a hospital about 4 hours away.

Now, remember, this is the first time that I've heard about (1) my baby's illness, (2) that arrangements for his care were being made, and (3) that he was being transferred from "our hospital" to another hospital...without me.

Okay. I dealt with that. When the helicopter arrived, they wheeled the baby in to the room with me on a gurney in a plastic tent so I could "say goodbye", and then off he went. The next thing I knew, they were coming into my room with a washcloth and soap, said, "we want to see that you can give yourself a shower, and then you'll be discharged," hustled me into the shower and once I was finished showering, they shoved papers in front of my face for my signature and out the door I went.

When DH and I arrived at home, I packed what I could (all maternity clothes) hopped in the car and off we went to be with my boy at the new hospital. It was a four hour drive, I was still a little loopy from the drugs from the night before, and I had a prescription for some pretty powerful pain relievers in my possession. My thoughts? Oh, I'm fiiiiiiiine. I don't need to fill this...

Soooooo we arrive. We get checked into our hotel room, and off to the hospital we go. The boy's fine, in a NICU with about six other little babies (all of them girls) who were severely premature. I don't think any of them weighed more than 2 pounds. The nurses had already decided that his name was "Bubba", because they said, "Well, honey, he's the only boy, and he's big and healthy, and they all need a boy to protect 'em. That's what he's here for!"

The hospital staff at the new hospital was wonderful. They took fantastic care of not only the boy, but of me, too - he was connected to tubes and wires and looked like they were expecting him to just fall over dead at any second, and through my paranoid tears they somehow managed to convince me that he was okay, that it was all just monitoring equipment, and that he'd be juuuuust find as soon as they cleared up these one or two little problems.

That, however, is not where the story is here. The story involves mommy and mommy alone. Read on.

I mentioned I was still loopy from the drugs, right? Well, by the time they ran us out of the hospital and we finally retired to the hotel, we both pretty much just collapsed into bed. Sometime during the night, though, the pain meds wore off. Thank goodness our room had two beds, because I would have been arrested for murder the next morning. I remember distinctly waking up and asking DH to move my leg. I think it went something like this:

"Honey...honey...hoooooooooooney."
DH yawns.
"What?"
"Come over here, you need to move me."
"What?!?"
"Get up, you need to move me. Come move my leg."
"Oh...Okay..."
DH dutifully moves his wife's leg.
"No no no no no no no too far go back...ooooh yeah."
DH returns to bed. Repeats this scenario several times. Swears to fill painkiller prescription as soon as the drugstore doors open in the morning.

That was the first night. The prescription did get filled, and I was able to move through the rest of our time away from home relatively easily. That's not the end of the story, though. Remember that I also said I grabbed clothes, all maternity clothes? Yeah. When I gave birth, I instantly lost 35 pounds. That means that every inch of fabric I had to cover my body was only one wrong move away from falling completely off my body. Therefore, I had to buy a couple of outfits to wear that would keep me safely covered.

So we went to Wal-Mart. Now, at this point, the new pain med prescription had taken firm hold of my body, and I was walking upright and at least semi-normal. However...my mother insisted that I not walk around Wal-Mart under my own power. Therefore, she had DH retrieve one of those little motorized scooters. So, picture, if you will, a perfectly healthy-looking young woman in clothes that appear to be four or five sizes too large tooling around Wal-Mart on a scooter. Yeah. That's me.

Thankfully, we didn't have to go back to Wal-Mart and I didn't have to look at those people again. I'm sure they were glad to see the back-side of me, too.

So, to wrap the story up, the admitted Conman at the new hospital on Wednesday, and by Saturday he was able to be released. His sugar levels had regulated, the problem with his lungs had resolved, and the doctor assured us that his heart problems would correct themselves, as well, by at least five months old (they managed to correct at three months - my little boy - already an overachiever!).

So that's the end of the Mommy Chronicles. Hope they made you smile!