the wendle family: joshua's birth story: part three

Click here to read Part One and Part Two.

Again, if reading a birth story isn't your jam, here's a video to watch instead.

“9 pounds, 14 ounces! You’re a legend!” I remember hearing Brett exclaim after the nurses weighed Joshua, except I wasn’t paying much attention. I was SO tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. But I can’t fall asleep now! The hard part is just beginning! There’s a BABY I have to take care of now!

One of the nurses asked me how I felt, and I think I remember saying “I’m really tired… and I kind of feel like I’m going to throw up again.” Now, I REALLY couldn’t keep my eyes open, and everything started to feel very far away.

At this point, Brett started to get concerned. I was apparently VERY pale, almost green. He tried to keep my attention by asking me questions, but I hardly had the energy to respond.

I guess my blood pressure started to crash (again, I can’t remember the numbers but it was LOW) so the nurses sprung into action. I was pretty “out of it” here, so forgive me for the lack of details. I know I was given a shot of Ephedrin to keep my blood pressure up. (How ironic, considering all day we were trying to keep it from getting too high.) After awhile, I started to feel a little better, so I asked to hold Joshua. I wanted to nurse as soon as possible, and it had already been about an hour since he was born. They raised the head of my bed, propped me up on some pillows, and handed me that sweet baby boy I had worked so hard for. He was beautiful.

Unfortunately, I started to feel very woozy once again; I was pretty sure I was about to faint. Or throw up. Or both. Joshua was whisked away so they could focus on me for awhile. I remember hearing one of the nurses say they were taking him to the nursery for the night… I so badly wanted him to stay with me, but I wasn’t able to get the words out. And, of course in hind sight, I realize I was in absolutely no position to care for him.

I ended up getting one or two more shots of Ephedrin and I was put on oxygen for the night. They told me to get some sleep, but with the high level of anxiety in my body, the blood pressure cuff going off every few minutes, and multiple visits from the nurses, it was not easy.

The next morning around 6am, I asked Brett to go see Joshua in the nursery. I was still flat on my back and on oxygen so I wasn’t sure if we could have him in the room, but I at least wanted one of us near him. Brett came back a few minutes later wheeling the bassinet into our room!

Since I still wasn’t able to sit up, Brett just held Joshua on the bed next to my head so I could see him. So precious.

The doctor came in and said that an early-morning blood draw (I guess one of the visits from the nurse was to draw blood!) revealed I had lost quite a bit of blood the day before and it seemed like the best course of action was to give me a blood transfusion.

(Actually, the first thing she said to me was that I was a “trooper” the night before since Joshua was such a big baby… which I took as an apology for thinking I wasn’t pushing hard enough and turning off the epidural.)

So they hooked up the first unit of blood (at this point, I had at least three IVs in each arm). Over the course of the morning, I tried to eat breakfast while lying flat on my back (unsuccessful) and a lactation consultant came to try and help me breastfeed while lying flat on my back (somewhat successful).

After each unit of blood (in total I was given three), I was able to sit up slightly more. By the early afternoon, I had finally eaten a meal (for the first time in over 24 hours) and was able to hold my baby.

Finally able to hold him!

We were discharged from the hospital the next day. It wasn’t exactly how I had pictured my labor and delivery (is it ever how anyone pictures it??) and I’m still not sure why my body reacted so strangely, but I’d say it was worth it.

Here are photos of some of our visitors in the hospital: