How to Have a Baby in Hong Kong: Part 10

Tonight I took a bath and scraped off all the remaining tape residue from my belly, so I thought I should finish this series before I scrape the residue of memories from my mind. Just kidding, it wasn't that bad!

Ok, so picking up where I left off...

Nathan left the hospital at 8pm after visiting hours were over. And there I was, in my little curtain area, by myself, with a baby that I could barely take care of! Now, I could feed the baby quite well. It's the one thing surrounding birth that I am good at. Because while my cervix seems to be an underachiever, I am quite the overachiever at producing milk.

The view from my curtain.

But since I had a c-section, I was hooked up to tubes. I still had a catheter and an IV. And the IV happened to be in my right hand, but the space for the baby's bed was on my left side. So I couldn't actually pick up Daniel from his bed because the IV restricted my movement. Thankfully, I could reach the call button, and so anytime I needed to pick Daniel up or put him down, I just called a nurse. And if I thought his diaper needed to be changed, I called a nurse. They told me too. And really, I didn't have any other choice.

That first night in the hospital was horrible! And not even because I couldn't move. It was horrible because I was SO VERY TIRED and so very thirsty. I was not allowed to drink or eat, they didn't turn the lights out until around 11pm, and babies cried all night long. Thankfully, it usually wasn't mine. I don't know what those other moms were or weren't doing to their kids, but they all cried. A lot.

After persistently begging, a nurse finally got a doctor to say that I could have water to drink. That was around 10pm and such a relief! And then the lights finally went out, but the crying! Oh, the crying. One baby sounded like a kitten. Another one sounded like a small girl screaming. Another just cried constantly. Seriously, the longest night of my life!

The next morning, a doctor came around to check on me and wrote in my chart that I could have a normal diet. The nurse, however, thought that was silly and said I needed a slower start. She brought me rice water and said if I could tolerate that I could have oatmeal. (Everyone else got congee but I had read an online forum that said there was oatmeal if you asked. Thankfully that is true!) I was not excited about my rice water and thought it was kinda silly since I had been drinking water all night, but being desirous of real food, I drank up. And let me tell you... warm rice water tastes exactly like you would think... like warm water that rice had been cooked in. Not bad, just not good.

In my Purple Pajamas shortly after surgery.

Sometime during that morning, I got the catheter out. And they helped me change my Purple Pajamas back to Pink Pajamas. And did you note that Daniel was wrapped in a pink blanket? Pink for everyone!

By the way, you realize how much I love you to post this horrendous picture, right?

This was taken so that you could see our curtain space.

And under his pink blanket, this is what my little boy was wearing.

Nathan came during the first Tuesday visiting hours, 12pm - 1pm, and brought me food and juice. I did eat some of the hospital food, but there's only so much chicken in goop and boiled vegetable on rice that I can handle. :) And then my poor husband left again, took the mini bus back to the ferry pier, the ferry back to Mui Wo, and biked home to be with our slightly stressed 3-year-old before reversing the trip to be back at the hospital at 6pm.

That afternoon I finally got rid of the IV. And I got out of bed. They put a little chair in my curtain so that I could sit up to breast feed. I didn't see how sitting in that chair was better than sitting on the bed, but Nathan appreciated having a place to sit when he came back. A note on breastfeeding... the hospital definitely encourages it, though I don't know how many women actually do it. The nurse that initially got me situated in the post natal ward told me that my previous 22 months of nursing was more experience than she had, so she didn't have anything more to say to me about it. And nothing else was said. They knew I was doing it and they knew Daniel was needing regular diaper changes, and that was that.

Initially, I felt recovery was much easier this time around than the first time. Maybe that was because labor with Josiah was induced and much longer before the c-section. Since coming home, I think there have been aspects of recovery that have been harder, but I'm sure that has something to do with having a 3-year-old this time. Also with how many stitches I got... but more on that in a bit.

So the day continued. Nathan came back and visited from 6pm to 8pm and had a chair to sit in this time. My favorite nurse came back on duty for the evening shift. After lovingly telling me that Daniel's chin was really weird, that I would have to draw in his eyebrows, and that I held him too much, she insisted that I let her take him to the nursery some during the night. I was hesitant, though the nursery was only a few feet away, but she was persistent. So ultimately I let her, and ultimately I was thankful. I trusted her with Daniel and knew she would bring him to me to nurse. I think she must have done the same with all the babies, because there was significantly less crying on the ward the second night and I got significantly more sleep. The next morning I felt so much better!

There are other random things I could say about my 48 hours on the ward... Whenever a nurse or doctor would ask about my elimination habits, they would use the terms "wee wee" and "poo poo." They gave Daniel a bath every morning and instructed me on all kinds of cleaning I needed to do for him. Once I asked a nurse to change his diaper and she assumed it was because I didn't know how to change it, when actually it was because I didn't want to leave him unattended while I went to the bathroom. (And I couldn't wait until visiting hours to go wee wee!) When I assured her I did know how to change his diaper, she wouldn't do it. Tuesday afternoon, another new c-section mom was moved to the curtain next to me. Apparently there were not enough nurse call buttons for everyone, because they took mine and gave it to her. Also, I'm not sure I ever saw another mom holding her baby.

The doctor came around Wednesday morning and confirmed that I would be discharged later that day. I knew I needed to wait for the pediatrician to check out Daniel and I had been told that he often didn't come around until the afternoon and so I should expect a late afternoon discharge. Because of this, Nathan and I had decided that he would not come for the noon visiting hour and would just wait to bring me home in the afternoon. Except that the pediatrician came in the morning. Nathan was at least 2 hours away, waiting for my parents to get in from the airport, with nothing to do with Josiah. And I wanted to go home!

Thankfully, Papa was at the office in Central, so I gave him a call and he jumped in a taxi to come get me. The nurses handed me my bill and a prescription and said Papa had to go pay the bill and get the prescription before I could go. I wasn't sure where he was supposed to go, so he addressed the nurses in Mandarin. While he was talking with one nurse, another nurse looked at me and exclaimed, "Is that your husband?!?" I'm not sure what she would have done if I said yes, but she found it much more acceptable that he was my father-in-law. And since the nurses were all very impressed with his Mandarin, they stopped looking at me funny.

Papa paid my bill, all $250 HK dollars... $32.47 US dollars! There was a $50 HK admission fee, and then $100 HK per night. (Of course, I wish I could have paid them to use more stitches.) After a long wait, he picked up my prescription for things I never actually took. We got in a taxi with 13 minutes to catch the next ferry. Though it usually takes about 20 minutes to get from the ferry pier to the hospital, that taxi driver got us there with 2 minutes to spare! With an incision in my belly and a newborn in my arms, it was a fairly scary taxi ride, but I was glad to be on that ferry home!

And this is how Daniel and I got from the ferry pier to the house.

With a stop at the playground so that Josiah could see his new brother.

And then we got Daniel home and put him to work!

So about those stitches... After giving birth on Monday and leaving the hospital on Wednesday, I went back on Saturday to get my stitches out. The nurse took out 5 bright blue fishing line stitches. She was even sure to count them all and show them to me. And then she informed me that my incision had not completely closed! Ahhhh! Well, it seems to me (and everyone I have talked to since) that only 5 stitches for an incision over 6 inches long is just not quite enough. And compared to the gazillion stitches that Josiah's surgeon used to sew me up so very nicely, I was not impressed. And very frustrated. I expected better.

I was given some antiseptic stuff to clean the incision daily and told to go buy some gauze and tape to dress it. It only took a few more days for the incision to close, but it seems that a few more stitches would have also taken care of that problem!

So there you go... my Hong Kong public hospital experience! I'm still a bit bummed that I didn't have the VBAC, but overall I am doing well. I keep feeling better every day and I'm adjusting pretty well to life with two kids. I'm looking forward to life continuing to feel more normal!