The birthing suite FILLED with people, all of whom took the time to introduce themselves to me and check if I had any questions about their specific role in the procedure. I was wheeled off to the operating room, with Doc C closely behind once he'd been robed in scrubs. A screen was put up in front of my face, so I couldn't see what was going on (which I was grateful for), I felt very cold and shivery, so one of the nurses wrapped my arms and head up in warmed blankets.
At this point I'd had an epidural, and so my memory of events goes a little hazy. I do remember my legs feeling like they had pins-and-needles and having to fight really hard against the urge to try and move them to get rid of that feeling, Once I was uniformly numb from the chest down the surgery began, and whilst it certainly didn't hurt I was aware of something going on. After a while my doctor told me to expect a tugging feeling, and the next thing I saw was my baby daughter being held in my line of sight above the screen.
Doc went with Eva when she was measured and weighed, and I could see what was going on with her via a TV monitor to my left. I remember someone making her wave to the camera, which made me chuckle even whilst I could smell my incisions being cauterised (I HATE that smell, who doesn't?) Once I was all sutured back together, we were wheeled off to the Recovery Room and at first I was reluctant to hold Evalyn because my arms were violently shivering and I was scared I would drop her. She started really crying though, so I asked if she could be un-swaddled and put on my chest to get some direct skin contact and she stopped crying almost as soon as we did that.
I don't remember at what point I was told that actually some of my placenta had started to detach whilst Eva was still in the womb, and that there had been some internal bleeding. Evalyn had actually swallowed quite a bit of blood, and at first when she vomited she was producing this nasty black puke, which was pretty scary looking. It's very odd when your baby pukes, and it is cause for a small celebration, but when Eva threw up this morning and it was yellow I knew that the nasty stuff was finally out of her system and that she had managed to ingest some of my colostrum whilst I was (pretty ineptly) breast feeding her.
It was 7:30 in the morning when Evalyn was born, and I spent the next 12 hours drifting in and out of drug induced sleep and nausea. The worst part was that I could not stop being sick (which is no fun after you've just had what amounts to major abdominal surgery), and it wasn't until about 4:30 we found an anti-nausea medication that worked for me - and promptly knocked me out for another couple of hours.
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