Mildly Feral

I had a 48 hour induction. Since the baby was measuring small, with the known(ish) heart issue, and my GD— it was the safest option. Honestly, I loved my induction. 43ish hours in things started kicking in, an hour-ish later I waved the white flag and got an epidural. By the time it was placed my nurse sent C to get lunch— he needed to eat and get a change of scenery. Well joke was on him— while he was having his tuna melt in the cafeteria, baby gremlin’s heart rate dropped and in seconds there was a gang of nurses flipping me onto all fours — he came back up to 12 people in the room with me, wondering what on earth had happened. Sir welcome to my world, I haven’t know what was happening for 20 weeks. 

I’ll save the long winded details of delivery, pushed for an hour and 20 mins. We had a beautiful baby boy! We got the golden hour of snuggles, then he went to Special Care — I obviously sent C with him. I was chillin alone (eating my post delivery grilled cheese, with an insane case of the post labor shakes) waiting to be moved to my new room, and C’s worst fear was unlocked… someone else had to pack up all our stuff. Nothing was lost, everything was fine.

Later that night our son was brought back to our room, did the normal newborn things. That night we all somehow slept, and the next day we were just checking off the bucketlist items to be able to go home the following day. There were family visitors, a deli sub, and a crisssssp Diet Coke for mama — normal postpartum day. Around 9:30pm someone came to get him for his scan, and the wheeled him off. This is where my angelic, squishy, little newborn, picked absolute violence and anarchy. 

He came back from his scan an hour later, and shortly after that, a nurse and doctor came down from the Special Care Nursery and said there were some concerns with his scan, and he was being transferred to BCH. They wheeled him off, and we had a five minute moment to sit in silence and wonder “What the actual f….” In that short chunk of time I decided that he was going to be a formula baby — because the idea of needing to try to breastfeed, pump, and figure out how to store my supply while navigating a different hospital, actually sounded like my nightmare. 

Keep in mind I had just pushed a baby out less than 36 hours ago, so I am very much still a patient myself. My nurse (bless her) talked to the OB on call and explained the situation, and asked if I could be emergency discharged to be able to go with my son — thankfully I had no complications or concerns worthy of keeping me. I got discharged 30 minutes later, C packed the car up, and we went to Special Care to wait for the transport to arrive. We weren’t sure if either of us would be able to ride with him, so C and I agreed we would drive in together and meet our son — lets call him Chaos — there. 

The emergency transport showed up, and honestly the only description fitting is storm troopers… and they came in an ICU on wheels 🤣 They come in a group of three, one drives, one does paperwork, and one does the medical stuff while driving — but they are all trained ICU nurses. Seriously, incredible! Chaos was getting packed up in the little incubator, and one of these sweet angels, tried to lighten the mood asking if “We wanted a picture of him before the most expensive Uber ride he would ever take” — and honestly, I am still bullshit that I laughed said “No we’d prefer to not remember this”.  I still wish we took that picture.

Now its like 4am and we are finally making our way to the car, realizing we haven’t slept all day and have no clue what this day has in store for us. So we treck off to BCH, where we were thankfully familiar with some of the logistics like where to park and where the front door was. He was in the Cardiac ICU, and we needed an escort to get up there until we could get our Parent/Guardian badges that would give us access to the floor. We got to his room, and the morning was a bit of a blur. C and I both tried to rest a little, but didn’t want to miss anything — and there was a lot going on. 

We saw his cardiologist later that morning, and what a relief it was to see a familiar face. She said something to the effect of “Well this was definitely not the plan… sir we have to have a chat, your poor parents” and gave us a condensed plan of what the next few days would look like. On her way out I heard her basically tell our nurse to stand guard over the door, and not let anyone in who didn’t need to be in the room — that we had been traumatized enough for the day. Our nurse, Mr. N, was absolute angel. He came in and chatted periodically, taught us about the machienes, he even forced us to leave the floor to get a coffee, our parent badges and some fresh air. 

Most of that first day was a blur, there was so much happening it was hard to keep track. The hospital had a rule that only one parent can stay at night in the room, so we were in an impossible position… C didnt feel comfortable leaving me alone at the hospital, I probably shouldnt drive the hour home alone, and neither of us wanted to leave Chaos. Ultimately we both left that night, and as awful as it was in the moment, it was the best thing we could have done. So we waited until the shift change for nurses, met his night nurse, and headed home. I am pretty sure I sobbed the whole way home, I felt like an awful mother for leaving our tiny baby alone. We got home, I sat on the kitchen floor hugging our dog in tears, ate dinner, showered, and went to bed. 

Going home allowed us to both get a good night sleep, decompress in our safe space, and show up being the parents our son needed us to be. We did this for a week, each night I cried the whole way home— knowing that what we were doing was the best thing for us and our son. A week later we made a jailbreak, with a plan to see his cardiologist in a few weeks, but we were free to go home (with some meds) and do normal baby things.