KayBuckaroo's Journal, 29 April 2021

I’m 2 weeks postpartum today. Have you ever watched a Twilight movie? I feel just like Bella the vampire after her vampire baby pregnancy. Only I prefer salad and I received plasma treatments. Turns out I’m only slowly recovering from my extreme uterine rupture. There’s no “bouncing back” this time around. I’m not flexing my newly shed body in the mirror days after giving birth, like last time. I’m not marveling at my reclaimed jawline and cheek definition (I have a lot of swelling during pregnancy). No, I’m just glad to be here and able to do a bare minimum of essential tasks for my family. My body hurts, but I’m hurting less. I’m tired all of the time, but I’m getting good rest. My emotional status is varied from day to day, but I’m surrounded by understanding people. Some of the things I’ve experienced here these past 2 weeks were medical crises related to my baby boy’s birth (high blood pressure preeclampsia struck me down and I delivered via emergency Cesarean, only to suffer additional complications of a total uterine rupture - surgeon never made an incision to retrieve the baby, but rather I split open like a can of biscuits - which was being repaired by surgeons when I went hypothermic of all things).. others were even more painful to endure: my newborn was admitted to the NICU and I had a difficult time getting him discharged even after the medical director had all negative septic work up, making the separation from my new baby boy much longer than needed; after challenging the neonatal opinion that he had to endure more time in the hospital for additional exploration of tests (because the spinal tap was not enough?!) and vague goals of “improved feeds”, after the baby and I had been experiencing exclusive breastfeeding success despite the challenges of the NICU, and clearly injuring a very fragile male ego, I answered the door to CPS a day after coming home. The social worker was very nice and very apologetic for the intrusion and all I could do for a good 15 minutes was sob. Talk about adding insult to injury. Everyone should be aware that this social worker deemed me a fit mother, and immediately closed the case. That doesn’t make it less awful. I guess the lesson here is, although the medical world prefers you to be compliant and not question the opinions of God-kings, always self advocate. Always, always demand patient centered care and always, always ask up the food chain to get clarity on how your medical providers arrived at their plan of care for you or your family. So, I’m just now getting closer to walking with less pain and standing/sitting safely on my own. I invariably cry when I hug my children and I’m frequently sobbing in my hands over the sheer luck of my situation. My uterus burst when I was already in surgery so I had my life saved and my baby was healthy.