This is the 3rd & final installment of Noah’s birth story — my recovery. Fair warning — this post gets a little physically personal.

At first, Noah took to eating like a complete champ. But 24 hours later, he forgot how, got incredibly frustrated, and became a shrieking maniac baby.

Around the 3rd day, I figured out that although the nursery said they brought him to eat "on demand," they really meant every 3 or so hours.  And I figured out that Noah was hungrier than that. So I asked them to bring him back in 2.5 hours instead. They said yes, but they never actually did it. Noah remained a shrieking maniac baby who was too frustrated to latch on, for most of the rest of his hospital stay.

The last time we had to supplement his feeding with formula was the night we first got home. Since then, he most often breastfeeds every 2 hours, and only becomes a shrieking maniac on days like today when we’re out and he has to wait past his inclination. Which has only happened twice since he’s been home.

The worst thing about having a c-section is the horrible pain that the percocet can’t help: the worst gas pain you’ve ever experienced. I had no idea, no warning…. 

Late in the evening after The King was born, I found myself in nearly crippling gastrointestinal distress. Jill had already gone home to get some sleep, and I was only about 2 hours past the last percocet. I couldn’t figure out what was hurting, or why.

So I pressed the nurse call button.

And Nurse Highly Competent Hottie bustled in and explained to me that the only way to address this pain was to get up and walk. Around. The floor. Not just the room. Not just to the bathroom.

Was she insane???

Nope. It’s gas, and the only thing that will help is if you walk.

Fine.

I got up. I thought I would walk to the nursery and bring The King back for his next scheduled feeding myself. Going to see him would make the horrible hell of walking worth the effort. I was iffy on whether the agony of walking was better or worse than the agony of the pain allegedly being caused by gas.

My room was almost as far as it was possible to be from the nursery, without being on a separate floor. At my tiny, shuffling pace, it took me about 15 minutes to get there. An elderly woman recovering from an hysterectomy was also being tortured this way, but she could move faster than I could. Really!

The good news is that it did seem to help. The pain was less when I got back to the room, with the baby, 40 minutes or so later. And so I started doing a circuit around the floor after every time he ate, except for his late-night dining efforts.

The best thing about the recovery was also the second-worst thing, after the gas: the nursing staff, especially the nursery nurses.

On both Saturday and Sunday, we had our absolute favorite nursery nurse. In fact, I’m not going to give her an anonymizing nickname. Nurse Suzanne was helpful, friendly, reassuring, and charming. At the end of her shift on Sunday, she told us she wanted to see us back having another baby soon — either one of us. We love her. We want her to move in next door.

On Monday, the nursery nurse for the day shift was Nurse Negative. She made me cry. Twice!

When Nurse Negative first walked into the room on Monday morning, she introduced herself, and then barked "How many of those chairs do you have at home?" gesturing to an ordinary chair.

"Ummmm, a few?" I answered, with trepidation.

"And how many of those?" she asked, gesturing to a glider rocker.

"One. We have one of those." At least I knew the answer to the question. Where is she going with this?

"Ok, fine," she commented, sounding disappointed. "And how many hospital beds?"

"Uh, none."

"Well then what are you doing nursing him in the hospital bed? You should be learning to nurse him here like you’re going to be nursing him at home!"

Uh. Well, I do have a bed at home, and about a million pillows that I can get to the approximate angle I’m sitting at in the hospital bed. And I had a fucking c-section, so sitting up straight, in a narrow chair with arms, is pretty damn uncomfortable. Plus, I’m a sweaty, hormonal mess, and my baby is struggling to learn how to eat at all, so please quit fucking yelling at me.

The worst is that we think Nurse Negative was actually trying to be nice. When she came back later, she made a point of telling us about another lesbian parent couple she’s friends with, and we thought she might be family too.

Then she asked, "Do you want your nipples to crack and bleed? Then keep letting him latch like that!"

At this point, the baby is so hungry and hysterical and frustrated that he can’t calm down enough to eat, and I don’t care if he does make me bleed as long as he can get some nourishment. He can be a vampire baby if he wants.

I went into barely listening mode, in the hope that if all I did was say "uh-huh, uh-huh, thanks" to everything she said, eventually she’d stop talking and go away. It didn’t work, and finally, I just started to weep. Awhile after that, she finally left.

I felt like a completely incompetent mother, and at the same time, I felt like if only these people would leave me alone and quit trying to make me do it their way, Jill and I would do just fine by Noah. And that was day 3 of the recovery hospital stay. There was almost another full day to face well-intentioned advice-givers.

I can’t remember the other mean "you’re doing this wrong" things
that Nurse Negative said, and neither can Jill, although I remember
calling Reno Rheto in the middle of the night and crying to her with all of them. And I remember that there was a laundry list.

No one else yelled at me or told me I was doing it wrong. (Except the nurse who was horrified that we’d supplemented using both brands of formula. All I did was call the nursery and ask for help getting the shrieking baby to eat. They arrived with different brands of formula the two times I asked. What do I know about formula? Or the rules about brand-swapping? Until the nurse told me you should never, ever, ever change brands without a reason like "the baby developed an allergy." I think that was a different nurse, though, not Nurse Negative.)

Both the nursery and maternity nurses often had ideas for ways that might make it easier, and roughly half the time, they offered their assistance, rather than jumping in with the specific recommendations. (IE, "Would you like a pointer on how to make that easier/more comfortable?" or "Can I help you with anything?")

But still, their advice was often contradictory, and it often conflicted with the lactation consultants too.

Bottom lines:

• If I had it to do over again, I’d ask to be discharged from the hospital on Day 3 instead of staying my legally entitled 4th day after the c-section.
• Only listen to the nurses who seem like what they’re saying makes sense for you and your family.
• Invent a code before you go to the hospital, which is how your partner will know that you’re about to snap and they have to jump in and get whoever it is to go away now.
• No one will ever look at your birth plan. (Besides you and your partner, and any friends you happen to send it to.)

Since I’ve been home, things with Noah have gotten a lot better. Jill and I do have good instincts, and he’s back to eating like an absolute champ. We’re going to have such cut triceps.

But my gut looks like a map covered with red rivers, and still feels like someone punched it really hard, maybe yesterday. Laughing and coughing only hurt a little now. I can do the stairs in our house 3 or 4 times/day without feeling like I’m completely overdoing it, but I do them slowly. I can get out of bed with out wanting to cry, and even sleep spooned with my lovely wife.

However, even a quiet activity day like dinner AND a movie while the grandparental units were here visiting took a visible toll. The next day, I limited myself to the officially sanctioned stairs only twice and no other activity regimen.

Hopefully I’ll be signed off to drive and to have a bath (instead of a shower) on Friday. And hopefully the weather will stay nice, so Noah and I can take walks to get me back on my feet. But I am seriously hating the slow road to recovery from the c-section. I know, I know, the whole point is to have a healthy baby, and we got that. There’s something ungrateful about failing to appreciate it. 

I’d really rather have the baby without the major surgery.