I am always curious to see what other women's ceserian scars look like. So here is mine.
It was an emergency c-section. It was a matter of life and death. They had to get her out of me so I could breathe. Poor little thing. Yanked out of there, 5 weeks before her scheduled arrival. Made to have a birthday close to Valentine's Day instead of Saint Patrick's Day. Lots of red hearts in her future, not green clovers.
The scar is about a centimeter above the hairline. Reaches almost from hipbone to hipbone. Is almost straight but not quite, kind of curves up on one end. Draw two eyes above my navel and you've got a face with a smirk on it.
That is where my daughter came out. Where they cut through seven layers of me to get to her. While I struggled for breath. While my body fought to keep going. How I wish I would have been able to give her that extra month inside of me. Time to plump up and get ready for the colder temperatures in the outside world. She was taken so early that I never felt her hiccup inside me. I experienced that with my son, and I miss that with my daughter.
I say 'taken' because that is what it feels like. I don't feel like I gave birth to her. It wasn't my doing. I didn't have contractions, I didn't feel any pain. Someone else was making decisions, granted, they were medical professionals, but still, someone else.
Even after I'd gotten home from hospital I'd still put my hand on my belly to feel the baby. The baby that was sleeping in the crib or feeding from a bottle, nestled in her grandmother's arms.
I don't mind the scar. It saved her. It saved me. And it's not too bad looking.
When they extubated me, I saw my father sitting in a chair in the corner of my room. For the first couple of days after they brought me back from the drug-induced coma, I could hear my dad playing with my son out in the hallway. They were always just out of sight, but I heard them and I saw other people see them and smile at them. I didn't mind that I couldn't see them, I could hear that they were having much fun together and everyone was admiring my boy. It felt good to have them near and hear them laughing, I didn't want my son to see me like this though, so I was relieved that they stayed out of sight.
This didn't happen. My dad was back in Iceland and my son was back home with my mom. I was shocked when my husband told me that my dad wasn't here. I was so sure he was. There had been a commercial cycling through the TV channels about a monster truck rally in Indy and I had been wondering if my dad could take my son to see that, something fun for them to do together. My father was definitely with me, even though he was physically on another continent, and it brought me great comfort.
When my mom came to see me for the first time after I woke up, I was woefully unemotional. I don't think I had grasped yet the enormity of everything that had happened. I was still putting all the pieces together and still hadn't gained back the memory from about a week before my daughter was born. In the ICU, the wall with the door is just a big window, they need to be able to see you when you're in there, even before they get into the room. So I saw my mom coming down the hallway towards me, with her hands high up in the air, waving them around, smiling and crying at the same time. I was like ''really mom, control yourself'', I can only imagine how I would act if it had been my daughter caught between life and death for three weeks. I was still very clueless about the severity of everything that had gone on and so proceeded by calling my mother a big drama queen. Sorry mom. I then berated my nurse for not feeding me and asked if she couldn't just stick a hamburger in a blender for me. I was so hungry!
While I was in the hospital I missed my son so badly, it ached in the core of my being. It was a heartache. I knew he was being well taken care of but I missed him all the same. I wondered how this would affect him, affect our relationship, I had never been away from him for longer than 5 hours before this happened. I wanted to hug him and tell him that mommy would be home as soon as she could, that everything would be fine. My mom told me that he would take every single one of his books, out of the shelves and throw them on the floor, spreading them around him. I imagine it was sort of an outward display of inward emotions. Everything scattered and nothing like it was supposed to be. My poor little guy. I'm told that he would say that mommy was in the hospital, in the same tone of voice he said that daddy was at work. Like, that's just how things are now. I missed him desperately, but I didn't want him to come to the hospital. At least back home, he was familiar with his surroundings and the people around him.
I didn't miss my daughter. At all. This feels awful to write down, but it's true. I had never met her, I didn't know her, I didn't miss her. I had no memory of giving birth to her, so my hands would unconsciously seek my tummy, only to find that she wasn't there any more. She was only a two hour drive away, but really, it could have been a lifetime drive away. I wondered if/how/when we'd ever bond together. Then I just sort of pushed those thoughts away, I couldn't think about that then, I needed to get better and then I'd deal with it.
To be continued...
She was born 5 weeks prematurely.
She was 5 lbs 15 oz (2693 gr).
She was 19,5 in (49,5 cm).
She had trouble breathing when she first entered this world.
She stayed in the NICU for eight or nine days.
She had a feeding tube up her nose while she was learning how to drink from a bottle.
She was taken care of by people I have never met.
So many strange hands held her before her own family held her.
So many strange hands and family and friends held her before her own mother got to hold her.
She was released from the hospital when she was able to hold her own temperature steady.
She came home to her distraught grandmother and her confused big brother.
Her parents were at another hospital, the mother fighting for her life and her father fighting along with her.
She was well cared for and loved and wanted for nothing.
Her grandmother became her mother.
Her other grandmother came as well.
Even her aunt flew out to help.
She is a lucky little girl.
But she was still a little girl who needed her mommy and daddy, and her big brother also needed his mommy and daddy.
Her first month of life was robbed from me, her birth was robbed from me, I was robbed from my son.
My husband had to decide her name all on his own. We had not firmly talked about names, we didn't even know the gender. I know he didn't want to name her after me because that would mean that I wouldn't make it. And I needed to make it.
All this happened, and I had no idea. I was in another world fighting for my life. I didn't consciously know it, but every single cell in my body was screaming and fighting and clawing its way towards life and health and my family.
I was put on full life support. Machines were keeping me alive. My vital signs were not stable enough to move me to another hospital. A hospital that had a machine that just might be able to save me. They wanted to airlift me to that hospital but the crew on the chopper would not accept me with those unstable vital signs, said that I would perish on the way.
Miraculously on Saturday (I was admitted on Monday) I was stable and they whisked me into the chopper and flew me to the hospital. I do not remember the flight. My husband had to drive to the hospital and when he arrived there was a team of medical experts ready to explain to him what they needed to do and what he needed to sign in order for them to do it.
To be continued...
