After being released from the hospital our life at home took on a temporary new normal. The boys were so excited to have me home. I remember Jonah asking me if I was home to stay. When I said, "Yes," he gave me a hug and said, "Mommy I am so glad you are home!" If that doesn't make you cry then I don't know what does!
At this point I was only one week from the hysterectomy I had had and one week from the trauma of David's birth. I was still on percocet and Motrin 800 around the clock. Driving was out of the question. Greg had taken another week off from work (sort of...he worked from the NICU break room) to drive me back and forth to the hospital and to spend time with David. I would get up in the morning, pump and mark the bottles with the special labels provided by the NICU, get Jonah off to Kindergarten and then Greg and I would take Caleb to daycare. After that we would head to the hospital; arriving around 10 a.m. By then the nurses had David on a pretty good feeding schedule every 3 hours so I knew when to arrive for the next feeding. If I was going to be a little late I would call and they would hold him off somehow. I wanted to be there to breastfeed him for as many feedings as possible. Since I could not be there 24/7 he got my breast milk from a bottle the other times. This was new territory to me. My other two boys never got a bottle until they went to daycare around 6 months. I had to give up that control. David had to be in the hospital and I could not be there around the clock. It was not possible with two other boys at home and recovering from a major surgery. David taking the bottle was the first of many times that I had to learn to let go of some control. And really I had nothing to worry about. David was a natural at breastfeeding and switched between the two without fail.
By the end of the second week I was able to walk onto the unit without the aid of a wheelchair. One of those days my parents were visiting. As I walked onto the unit there was this nurse standing in between David's incubator and me. She took one look at me, got as white as a sheet, started to shake, tears welled up in her eyes and sweat started to run down the side of her face. My first reaction was, "What in the world is this nurses problem and why is she working? She looks like she has seen a ghost." This nurse walked up to me, took my hands and the tears just started to spill over. She cried and held my hands and cried some more. I was still at a loss over why she was crying so. I wondered if something had gone wrong with David. I soon found out that David was doing beautifully. This moment could have only happened if there was some other divine intervention. The NICU was short staffed so they were pulling nurses from labor and delivery to cover the NICU. Where David was, the hospital had capacity for 50 babies. There was a one in 50 chance of this particular nurse caring for David that day and yet she was.
Through the tears the nurse said, "I was there they day you delivered. I was in the operating room. There was so much blood. Everyone worked so hard. The operating room was so quiet. No one thought you were going to make it. We thought we were going to have to tell your husband that his wife and son didn't make it." She looked at me like I was ghost, and then held my face in between her two hands just to make sure I was alive and well. And then she hugged me. It wasn't this short little hug but a hug like she was never going to let go. She needed that hug just as much as I did. At that point we were both crying and so were my parents. I had yet to understand the enormity of what had happened over the last two weeks. I knew I was alive and that my son was alive and that we were doing fine. The details, the blood, the near death experience, and coming to terms with all of that would come much, much, much later.
This nurse was so happy to be caring for David that day. For her it was healing to see him alive and thriving. He had gained weight, grew in inches and was taking almost all his feeds by then from bottle or breast. She was shocked and amazed at how far he had come in such a short period of time. "He is a miracle," she said. And then everyone cried some more.
My sister-in-law used to work at the hospital where David was born. She knew staff from all over the hospital. When some friends found out that the girl that almost died in OB was her sister-in-law they were shocked. Turns out the nurse that took care of David that day was eventually diagnosed with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and had to leave work for a while. Even when she came back to work she did not work in the OB operating room for quite some time.
At the time the only thing I knew about PTSD was that soldiers from Iraq came back and had it. I didn't know what it meant, what its symptoms were or how debilitating it could be. Little did I know that PTSD symptoms were quietly creeping up on me. Hints of not feeling right were all over the place; my heart racing, getting sweaty when someone mentioned David's birth, not being able to breathe when I first stepped into the hospital to visit David. I thought it was all the hormones slowly leaving my system or righting themselves around. When Greg was with me at the hospital I didn't feel the symptoms as much. I know it is because I felt safe and secure in his presence. But, the end of the second week was drawing to a close. Greg would be going back to work. He was going to help me get the two older boys off to daycare and school for one more week but I would be on my own getting to and from the hospital each day to visit David. I was scared of Greg going back to work. My safety net was being taken away. I had to fly on my own and I wasn't sure if I was ready. In my stubborn head none of that mattered. I was going to fly with or without the safety net because I wanted to be with David. Nothing was going to keep me from that little peanut. The PTSD symptoms or whatever they were, were going to be ignored for as long as I could ignore them.
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