Blog posts unwritten

So I really missed blogging while I was staying at the hospital for the past two weeks (2 days of labor, 1 harrowing day of NICU parenting, 11 days of special care nursery boarder status being a food source). I did however jot down the topics of blog posts that I WOULD have written, if I could.

• Better Living Through Chemistry: how I cheerily opted in for Every Pain Medication Imaginable after arriving at the hospital at 1.5 cm Dilated And At the End of my Coping Skills, and how I had a totally awesome birth experience, until it all went pear-shaped with a detached baby with plummeting blood oxygen levels.
• How the combination of Dealing With Pre-Labor By Taking to Bed to Rest and then Just Saying Yes to Drugs throughout labor allowed me to sleep between and then through contractions, which in turn led to me being extremely well rested after delivery, and thus able to face down a very sick child getting an ambulance ride to another hospital with a NICU, with color coded notebooks and breast pump ablaze, four hours after a 10.6 lb being emerged from my loins.
• Seriously, I am so glad that I read all of those preemie and sick baby blogs, because it gave me perspective and also a good sense of what to expect. During early labor while abed, I read this article in the NY Times about a mother of a child with Tay-Sachs and I cried a bit.
• I am NOT glad I read all of those lists on what to pack to the hospital encouraging you not to bring everything you think you might possibly need, because as it turns out sometimes you leave the hospital 4 hours after delivery and you DO want all of those things with you.
• Next time, the hospital bag that goes with us will look the same, but there will be a trunk stash of more serious supplies. There's no such thing as an overpacked bag so long as you leave the frivolous stuff in the car until you need it. 

• How it turns out that the very best labor soundtrack is the sound of your baby's heart galloping away. At one point the nurse tried to turn it down to let us get some rest and we totally yelled at her to turn it back up because we found it so soothing. Also, we listened to the Savage LoveCast while listening to the heartbeat of Iceman on his way to becoming RJ. Both of them were very conducive to relaxed dozing off.
• My room in the hospital during the special care nursery stay was next to the fetal testing and monitoring room and I could periodically hear heartbeats on my way in and out of my room, and it sort of instinctively soothed me. I would have a hard time not abusing a Doppler, and that's why I didn't rent one.

• Why it's possible to be the biggest weenie on the planet about contractions ("You're 1 cm dilated." "I can't do this anymore. Give me drugs [of a type my birthplan says I don't want]!") but be totally impervious to post labor discomfort on some ibuprofen, in spite of peeing on a wound that goes through muscle and skin many times a day.
• I have no idea, really. 
• Or maybe my post-epidural numbness was in an AWESOME spot.
• How having just birthed a baby that's about 2-10 times bigger than the other babies in the NICU and Special Care Nursery makes people forget that you have a newborn and also that you just gave birth earlier that morning. Especially if you are ambulatory and sitting in chairs and asking incisive questions about your baby's care and lungs.
• Why it sucks being going to a children's hospital 5 hours after you gave birth because no one understands why you are wearing only a blanket in a wheelchair tearing to the bathroom to bleed/pee-leak, and also they are generally ill-equipped to deal with recovering adults.
• How if this were a Lifetime movie the title would be something like: Not-So-Wee Baby RJ: No, That is Not A Typo in My Chart, He And His Head Were Truly That Big: No Really, I Swear I Did Not Have Gestational Diabetes: And Also, I Did Not Have A C-Section: Truly, Spontaneous Pushing.
• NICU stints and how they give you perspective on your sick kid, and how awesome it was to be kicked out for being too healthy a day later.
• How I stepped on a scale during labor and my true pregnancy weight of 224 lbs was revealed, but I feel okay about the 7 lbs outside of the recommended weight gain range because Dr Fabulous said my weight gain was fine, but also because I had 5 lbs more baby than most people do, so there.
• And how I was happy that I had a week before going home to step on the same scale again because it will take at least that long for my IV-related swelling to go down again. After a swelling-free pregnancy.
• And how I'm really hoping breastfeeding will help me loose the remaining non-baby parts of pregnancy weight gain, and the 10 lbs of extra baggage above my svelte fighting weight that was left over from my previous pregnancies (that ended in miscarriage).
• Update: My arrival at home weight is just up 13 lbs from pre-pregnancy weight, so that is a very doable goal, especially compared to past weight loss goals!
• Further update: my other weight goal is to get RJ back up to his birth weight by his 2 week "well-child" visit.

• How I manned up and requested a new nurse when I didn't like the one I was assigned, having learned from last time with Jolly how much a personality conflict interferes with your experience.
• Why the time you really start sobbing is when you sing your toddler his goodnight lullaby over the phone, and not when you watch your newborn's enormous head get used as a pincushion for a scalp IV placement for over an hour. (Unsuccessfully, as it turns out.)
• Being away from Jolly was totally the hardest part.
• Why being a gestational parent is different, and how it's not why you think: same stupid crazy love, very different sleep responses to childbirth, in which Guinevere "I sleep through dorm fire alarms" wakes up after 3 hours of fitful sleep feeling like it's definitely time for a baby to EAT and in which Ephiny "the cat scratching on the other side of the house wakes me up" sleeps through phone calls. 
• Explaining why I, Guinevere, remember Jolly's first weeks as being the most well rested of all time.

• Why being a gestational parent is awesome, and how it's 99% the joy of watching the non-gestational spouse parent a child in difficult situations through love alone and not a biologically evoved imperative hormonal puppetry... and the remaining 1% is being able to feel responsibility and ownership of your child's enormous size and how they emerged through your lady parts unassisted after a superlong labor.
• Though Ephiny deserves major credit for that, and so do the epidural, the super awesome Dr who ignored time, fever, enormous baby indicators and just kept encouraging, and the doula-like but free nurses, and the tub.

• Why living on an island is awesome because ferries sound scary to outsiders and they'll let you in the hospital way sooner on a basis of pity when you're not very far in labor at all, and otherwise would get sent home. 
• Why other parents are a total mystery, or, what the heck is wrong with other people that they aren't glued to their sick child's bedside and just make token appearances (sometimes not even that), or, what the heck is wrong with me that I don't stay away from the upset of sick baby watching while pumping and why I feel like my child should sleep on my lap and thus wake sooner due to delicious milk smells on my shirt and getting in the way of the super competent nurses whose care we are paying for.
• And why the lactation consultant was surprised not to find me in my room all morning. Seriously, there's a comfy recliner by the bassinet in the nursery. Where else would I be, except when I have to eat and sleep and pee?
• Noise pollution in the nursery, and easy listening music on endless repetition: swings and other automated gizmos are infinitely more annoying than parents singing.
• How I was wrong for judging a mom for having breathy high pitched baby talk, only to realize that's just how she talks to everyone, including her baby. Ooops.
• How the fifty bazillion newborn diapers we have totally are too small for our baby of unusual size, as is the newborn wardrobe. Maybe next time. :)