My Stay at Baptist Hospital

I stayed at the hospital for three nights. I was cleared to leave after two nights if I wanted to as my catheter had been removed and I was able to get out of bed and walk around. However, the staff at Baptist was so incredible that Andres and I felt more comfortable staying one more day to learn as much as possible from the experts. It was a bit overwhelming to not only have a new born but also be recovering from major abdominal surgery! We were fortunate to have two hospital beds in our room so Andres was able to have his own bed. We kept the baby between us and constantly kept checking on him to make sure he was still breathing. It was so sweet how Andres kept saying to me "Thank you, he's perfect!" My parents stayed in town until Thursday morning and it was really nice having them with us. Andres's mom stayed for another two weeks which was even better! On Lucas' second day in this world he decided that he needed to breast feed for four hours straight and I was told in the birthing class that I had taken that babies need to "feed on demand." As it turns out, he was probably really hungry because all of my milk had not come in, which is especially common for C-section moms. Well, when Lucas woke up for his next feeding several hours later, the pain was excrutiating when he went to nurse. So much so that he brought me to tears and Andres called a nurse to help us. I was so tempted to just feed him formula and bring an end to the misery, but the nurse suggested pumping some milk, which was less painful then having Lucas feed directly from the breast. That was the beginning of the bloody nipples that I suffered through for the next two weeks. It was that night that we introduced Lucas to a pacifier as well. We were told that if he lost more than a pound in the week after his birth that it would be recommended to give him formula.

By the night of the second day, I was able to walk around a bit wheeling my IV around with me. I felt a lot of pressure from my incision but the pain was not too bad in the beginning. When it intensified, I took a motrin, but worked my way to percocet on the third day when the anesthesia wore off and I could really feel some discomfort. My doctor came to see me every morning to see how I was doing.