Olivia Kate Vines Birth Story - Part 2 - Recovery

It all seemed like a blur so I am going to try to remember our stay at the hospital to the best of my ability.

Once I arrived in the postpartum room, staff would come in regularly to take my vitals, push on my uterus, check on the incision, make sure I wasn’t having any bad bleeding, give me pain meds and also check on Olivia. I believe the first day was the day they did the hearing test for Olivia. I may have also started to pump that day and begin to get colostrum (the stuff that comes out before your milk comes in).

I can’t remember when they took the catheter out - if it was towards the end of the first day or the second day but I remember being glad to get up and out of the bed even though it was difficult. Once they took the catheter out, I had to pee a certain volume of liquid before they could take the IV’s out. I was counting down the time until I could have them out because they felt in the way and also were a reminder of being poked and prodded prior to surgery. I started drinking a ton of water so that I could get the IVs out and it was such a relief once they were!

We fed Olivia formula and colostrum when I was able to pump it but feeding was a difficult task. All she wanted to do during the day was sleep. The nurses said we had to wake her up and annoy her to get her to eat. It was hard for Dave and I to purposely get her upset. We hated to see her upset. We would try tickling her feet, back, putting a wet wash cloth on her, change her diaper - anything to get her to eat. I also tried to breastfeed but she was not latching so I just kept pumping after each time we fed to simulate the timing of feed time.

The first night was very difficult. She didn’t want to sleep and just wanted to be held. Dave and I barely got any sleep because we also were just nervous about making sure this little human didn’t die (which of course she wouldn’t, but as first time parents, we were so anxious!).

The second day, we both tried to nap a bit whenever Olivia was gone for a test or sleeping. And that night, the nurse offered to keep Olivia in the nursery for 2 hours until the next feed so we could get some sleep. Dave and I looked at each other and said, “Yes please!”. We loved Olivia but we needed to sleep a little. We felt much more energized after night 2 because of the nursery stay.

The nurses checked on Olivia’s weight and said she lost a bit more than they would like to see so we had to switch from feeding every 3 hours to every 2 hours. If we had any trouble getting her to wake to eat, they said to call them in so they could help. The 2 hour window made it exhausting so I abandoned the attempt to breastfeed. Our main goal was to get Olivia’s weight back up and the best way to do that was to measure all that she was fed by means of formula. However, I attempted breastfeeding whenever the lactation consultant came in because I wanted to take advantage of the resource. Each different consultant gave some words of wisdom and was so helpful. I found receiving a nipple shield and the reminder to give both myself and Olivia grace the most helpful. They explained that because Olivia was early she wasn’t prepared to be eating on her own at this point and it may be a bit more difficult for her to latch until she put on more weight. They also reminded us that it was new for us and it will take time.

It was sometimes difficult for me to get comfortable because of the incision being sore and the bandage adhesive had tore some of my skin off when they removed it. I remember the first time I got into the shower my body went into a bit of shock. The incision and where skin was removed stung and I got extreme chills. I was shaking and my teeth were chattering. It was actually a little difficult for me to walk and I needed Dave’s help to get me into bed and get under a bunch of blankets to get warm. Thankfully that only happened once and my showers from then on were normal.

Our days were quite repetitive with the check ins, feedings, diaper changes and even meals. I see a lot of people get take out for food but we were really lazy and just got food from the hospital. My go-to was a turkey burger and I always got some chocolate pudding or raspberry sorbet for dessert.

On Thursday, my pain level seemed manageable and we were feeling more comfortable with waking Olivia to get her to eat (even though it was still a battle to get her to eat). We asked the nurses if they thought we were okay to go home and they said it was completely up to us but they would have the OBGYN and pediatrician come in to check on me and Olivia to give us a thumbs up too. We could have stayed one more night under insurance but we were very ready to leave so we could start to get settled into as much of a routine as we could at home.

Overall, the surgery and recovery experience was good. The staff were all incredibly nice and helpful and that’s really all I could ask for.