Our Hospital Stay

Our hospital stay was awesome! If I could rate the hospital I would give it an "A+++". All of the nurses and volunteers were so nice and accommodating. They really did cater to our every need. They were so sweet. Given my c-section there is not much I can do about anything. They didn't want me out of bed the first day and a half. Someone had to hand me Sophia to feed her and take her away. Someone had to diaper her. Someone had to change my sheets, bring fresh linens, bring me my food and take my tray away, bring me my medicine and help me shift in bed so as not to have anything fall asleep. I was helpless and for this Type A personality chick this was hell on earth. Thank God for the staff at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance and my husband, they were such angels.



I started out on a clear liquid diet. It kind of sucks. They were afraid I might get sick from all of the anesthesia if I didn't. But eventually I was able to get back on solid foods. The hospital food was great actually. They even had a special celebration dinner for Dan and I. I ordered the Fillet Mignon and Dan ordered the salmon. It came with asparagus and yellow and orange carrots, twice baked potatoes and sparkling apple cider. And then to finish it all off, dessert was 2 tiny little pink cakes topped with white chocolate surrounded in white chocolate that read It's a girl. (This was my favorite part hee, hee!!!)

Poor Dan though, the fold out chair that they had for him pulled out into a twin bed. Our Postpartum room was 1/3 the size of our labor and delivery room and it was a bit cramped. Dan didn't even have the strength the first night to open it up. By the time it came to the second night and opening it up, we decided to send him home in the middle of the night to get some sleep. He would have been no good to me in the morning had we not. Plus, nurses were coming and going every hour on the hour to check my vitals, check Sophia's vitals, take blood, deal with lab results, deal with my I.V., give me my pain medicine (percoset, vicodin, Motrin- I.V. grade, and Demerol). Yeah, serious stuff. Could kill a body like mine- you know me I cut my Tylenol in half. Dan says I was so doped up during labor and delivery and then in the O.R. that I started telling jokes- really bad ones at that. I guess he told me to keep my day job and all the Dr.'s laughed.

When it was finally time for me to get up and down I was miserable. My belly and abdomen hurt so much. i don't wish this type of pain on my worst enemy. Thank goodness for hospital beds. I would have to incline the bed, use the side railing to roll myself over, lift myself off the bed with my arms, roll my legs off the bed and then sit there for about 5 minutes, until I could actually stand up. And then I would get dizzy and need another 5 before I could go any where. This got better day by day. Eventually I got the knack of it.

For a regular natural birth you get to stay in the hospital for 52 hours. For a c-section you stay for 96 hours. Our original check out was for Saturday but because I was making so much progress so quickly recovering the Dr. signed me off to go home early on Friday.