No Place Like Home

Those of you who are following me on Facebook might already know about the chaos the Creepy family went through this last week. For those of you who don’t, I’ll try and make it short. 

I was rushed to the hospital early Friday, January 11th with unexpected haemorrhaging. Turns out, I probably had a minor placental abruption (when the placenta pulls away from the uterus and causes bleeding) but the doctors also suspected a tear in the amniotic sac. Thankfully, by last Friday the bleeding had disappeared completely and the results for the tear came back negative. So they finally released this Creepy chick back into the wild, after an 8-day stay.

‘Scary’ and ‘Lonely’ don’t even begin to describe the week of hospitalization, even though I was reassured that this baby would make it to term one way or another. After the morning spent in the Maternity Emergency ward (where they prepped me for a possible emergency c-section, stuck me with steroids for the baby, and kept me for observation after I had an allergic reaction to one of the antibiotics they’d stuck into my iv), I was finally moved to a hall for at-risk pregnancies / laboring patients. And that’s where I basically lived from Friday-Friday. 

Even though the staff was very kind and reassuring, and I knew that I was in the best possible place if there were any further problems for me and the baby- the truth is, I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. There was no wifi or direct internet access, and thank God I at least had my phone with 3G so I could keep in touch with family and surf the net. 

The food was, well, let’s just say I didn’t know food like that existed. There’s always the stereotype about how poor hospital food is, but that had never been my experience when I gave birth in the U.S. or at the private clinic here. 

No. 

Not until I’d been admitted into a public city hospital, did I discover the true source of the ‘hospital food stereotype’. I’m pretty sure a lot of what they served had to have been in powder form at one point or another. No salt, butter, herbs, or sauce. And when they did happen to add sauce, you kind of wish they hadn’t. After the first couple days, a slow deception and anxiety would build in my gut as they delivered our trays. Gone was the usual fervor and excitement I once felt around mealtimes. That said, I ate everything I could out of sheer hunger, but still ended up losing weight for the first time during my pregnancy.

And it was a struggle getting used to the hospital bed, which- no matter how much I played with the up and down switches, was either sunken or stiff in all the wrong places. -The kind of bed that makes you wish you could remove your arm for a couple hours just so you can get some sleep.

In any case, when they gave me the green light to discharge- I practically grew wings and flew out of there. Because not only did that mean the baby and I had a good chance of making it all the way to March without further incident (if we follow doctors orders and take it easy, of course), but it also meant I could see my kids first thing in the morning and kiss their sleepy heads, (something I missed most while in the hospital. That, and tucking them into bed at night. Always got a little teary around bedtime.) eat food that tastes like food, and enjoy a bed that doesn’t make me want to remove random limbs.

In the end, there’s no place like home!

Have you ever had to endure the joys (or lack thereof) of hospital life? What sticks out most in your mind about  your stay?It’s good to be back! I’ll be picking up my regular Mon/Wed posting schedule this week and I’m looking forward to catching up with you all!

*CQG*