Recovery

So I was a little hesitant to write over the last few days, but now that I've had some time to not be in pain & reflect, I thought I'd post an update. We got home from the hospital on Thursday. I had been off of vicodin for 36 hours and was not in a lot of pain. By Friday afternoon I was feeling uncomfortable sitting, and by Saturday night I was sobbing in pain and Sunday was not much better. Saturday evening, I called the doctor and he basically told me a bunch of stuff that I should have been doing to speed the healing process & make it more comfortable. None of which I really got from my nurses or doctors when leaving the hospital. All I remember them telling me to do when I went home was take 800mg of ibuprofen every 4 hours. Sunday morning, I was ready to have Wei Yan drop me off at the hospital again just so they could give me some pain meds.

Got a prescription for vicodin on Sunday from the on-call doctor but didn't seem to work well (was told to take it every 6 hours, but I was in enough pain that I was hurting by 4 hours). The on-call doctor suggested that I come in on Monday. Monday we went to see the doctor - last minute appointments were only available with the oldest partner in the group who no longer delivers babies, but has the most experience. He checked out the stitches & said everything looked ok - hard to say if the swelling was part of the normal healing process or because of an infection. He thought that I probably had an infection based on the amount of pain I was in. My blood pressure was really high, which I knew was because I was in a lot of pain.

Started on some antibiotics and vicodin (every 4 hours) and continued with the other care measures for the stitches. I've been feeling better - at least not in continuous pain or crying because of the pain. Not sure if I could have avoided an infection or not, but I'm sure if the nurses/doctors had given more more information on what I should have been doing to take care of myself I would have at least been in a little less pain. Or maybe all of the pain really was because of an infection, I'm really not sure. I think had I not been feeling so good upon discharge, I wouldn't have been taken by such surprise and perhaps the nurses/doctors would have given me more instructions or at least know when things weren't going well right from the start of the pain.

I definitely have learned a lot from the last week or so.
1. Always ask the doctors what to expect and what to do if something happens that you don't expect and when to call them.
2. Make sure that you have people taking care of you, so you can take care of the baby. They will end up taking care of the baby too, but make sure they are people who will tell you when your maternal insticts are making you do more than you should. It's best to have a woman you can call who has been through what you've been through, to help tell you all the stuff other people don't tell you.
3. Pain is good in that it tells you when something is wrong and makes you slow down when you need to. Pain meds are bad in that they do lie to you and tell you you can do more than you should be to recover. Pain meds are good if they help lower your blood pressure below 150/120 and stop the sobbing.
4. Have your baby at the end of the week so that you don't have to be in pain over a whole weekend if something goes wrong once you go home ;-)

It's weird how there was so much information given to me on the pregnancy and even how to take care of the baby once he arrived, but I had virtually no education on what I should be doing to take care of myself after the pregnancy ended. I have had a lot of folks tell me some of the normal changes, but not a lot on what I should or should have been doing to take care of myself. And yes, this post is at 4am. Christina told me that she was more tired during pregnancy than once the baby arrived, and I would tend to agree. I have not been able to sleep all the time, so I sleep when I am really tired. Luckily my mom is here now, so she's taking care of the baby when wei yan is at work & I'm tired & can actually sleep.