Or...
I can't stop crying.
Maybe this is the baby blues.
Or maybe it's just that four days ago, I stayed up all weekend and gave birth.
Or that three days ago, I stayed up all night and fed a baby with eight consecutive hours' worth of unquenchable thirst.
Or that four days ago I gave birth, and now I have a painful gum infection. And a tender abdomen. And a sore, stitched perineum.
Or that my baby likes to feed for hours on end, and my nipples are hurt and bleeding.
Or that yesterday the doctors identified a potential maybe infection in my baby, and I have spent the last 19 hours alone with him in a tiny hispital room, unable to leave without him crying for me, struggling to go to the toilet or make a brew or change the constantly-filling sanitary towles (I gave birth four days ago...)
I have a suspected gum infection. The paediatrician said I should get it checked out and treated in case I infect my son. My son is in hospital with a suspected infection. I may be putting him at risk. So I asked for an examination, and maybe some medicine. They said no. This is a paediatric ward. This is not a maternity ward. The staff here are not qualified to treat adults.
Maybe I'm crying because they wouldn't let me breastfeed or hold my three-day-old son in the TV room, because it's for adults only. "Not appropriate," they said.
But they did bring me a portable TV. But I can't reach it to change channel, not without disturbing my son and making him cry again.
It might be because they put him on IV antibiotics for half an hour this morning, and when the drugs were finished the machine beeped a loud alarm for two hours, and nobody would come and make it stop. So I did it myself, and then they told me off.
Apparently we have to stay here for another 24 hours. I was tired when they told me that. I'd been up all night, feeding again. I wanted to sleep.
That's when I started to cry.
___
Maybe this is the baby blues.
Or maybe it's just that four days ago, I stayed up all weekend and gave birth.
Or that three days ago, I stayed up all night and fed a baby with eight consecutive hours' worth of unquenchable thirst.
Or that four days ago I gave birth, and now I have a painful gum infection. And a tender abdomen. And a sore, stitched perineum.
Or that my baby likes to feed for hours on end, and my nipples are hurt and bleeding.
Or that yesterday the doctors identified a potential maybe infection in my baby, and I have spent the last 19 hours alone with him in a tiny hispital room, unable to leave without him crying for me, struggling to go to the toilet or make a brew or change the constantly-filling sanitary towles (I gave birth four days ago...)
I have a suspected gum infection. The paediatrician said I should get it checked out and treated in case I infect my son. My son is in hospital with a suspected infection. I may be putting him at risk. So I asked for an examination, and maybe some medicine. They said no. This is a paediatric ward. This is not a maternity ward. The staff here are not qualified to treat adults.
Maybe I'm crying because they wouldn't let me breastfeed or hold my three-day-old son in the TV room, because it's for adults only. "Not appropriate," they said.
But they did bring me a portable TV. But I can't reach it to change channel, not without disturbing my son and making him cry again.
It might be because they put him on IV antibiotics for half an hour this morning, and when the drugs were finished the machine beeped a loud alarm for two hours, and nobody would come and make it stop. So I did it myself, and then they told me off.
Apparently we have to stay here for another 24 hours. I was tired when they told me that. I'd been up all night, feeding again. I wanted to sleep.
That's when I started to cry.
___
Labels: Babies
2 Comments:
Oh no. Just what you don't need. So sorry to read this after all the triumph of your brilliant birth.
Take care, am thinking of you. Hang in there, you'll turn a corner soon.
Not for the first time, I am relieved my sex doesn't have to go through it all. Hope this phase ends soon and that you can be at home for good with someone who really can put his arm round you and to some non-medical extent make it better and your lovely children.
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