This is the post that I have been putting off writing. Not because I don’t want to share it, but because there are so many thoughts surrounding it that it’s going to be hard for me to put into words.
Let’s start with Rue herself. She is beautiful. She is perfect. She is healthy and thriving. That is all a mom can really ask for. She was born on November 9th 2022. She was 7 lbs 10 ozs and 21 inches. All three previous kids were 20 inches so she got a little height on them. She also tied Hatsy for the heaviest so all in all, she’s our biggest babe, barely, but biggest. This fact always blows my mind because I feel like she has the smallest head and tiniest facial features compared to the other three. She eats well, sleeps as much as we can expect a 3 week old too. She is simply wonderful and such an easy baby. Matthew and I were chatting about how thankful we genuinely are that all of our babies have been easy babes, and we understand just how lucky we are in that fact.
The other kids are OBSESSED with her. Before she was born we had an idea about how each kid would react. Eloise was saying she was happy about the baby, but she was scared and nervous that our family was changing. I wasn’t sure how fast she would warm up to Rue, but it was like a total of 10 min. She is the BEST “little mom” and now that she is a slightly older kid she understands and helps WAY more than I’ve gotten before ( obviously) and it’s so nice. She asks to watch and hold her all the time and she is constantly hugging and kissing her, even when we tell her not to. Hatsy was excited from the start. She asked so many questions and was just happy to have the baby come. She was so excited to meet her and is CONSTANTLY touching Rue. Every day she finds something on Rue that is “so little”. “Hey Mama, her cheeks are SO little.” ” Hey Mama, her ears are SO little.” It’s adorable. She is adjusting to the changes in her own way. Being a middle child she is asking for a lot of reassurance in herself, and we are happy to remind her how loved she still is. Nolan. This was the one we were worried about. Our tornado bulldozer. Our BIG emotions guy with a big ole body he doesn’t quite know the size of yet. Previous to Rue being born he had ZERO interest in other babies. He would get VERY mad if I cuddled one of his sisters and he wanted held. Typical 1 year old things. I just KNEW that he would have a lot more issues adjusting to a baby than I thought. I thought he would be mad at her, hurt her, ignore her. I thought he would get angry when I held her. When we brought her home, Nolan was here and the two girls where out with their aunt. So he got to meet her first. It was like love at first site. He just KNEW. He knew he was his sister. It was like he knew he was now a big brother and she was special to him. It was amazing to see. He instantly wanted to hold her and touch her. He knew to touch softly (thanks for pets, he knows what “gentle hands” means.) He gets upset when she cries and is constantly trying to touch her head and put her bink in ( and out) of her mouth. Now, he is still 1, so we have had a few hits, kicks and toy throws, but they have been MINIMAL, and for that I am again thankful. Seeing all four of our kids grow, play, laugh and love together has been the BEST things for my heart these last few weeks.
Now, because I consider this a “mom blog” and I always try to be a real and share our experience how it happened. This time, our experience with the C-section/recovery has not been great or easy. If you follow me on social you will have seen a few small things here and there. We had a rocky start, but we are finally out of that and healing and ready to move forward!
I want to preface this by saying NOTHING was emergency, life threatening or even really serious. This was just my experience with it all, and to be honest, it was my worst one out of all the kids.
To sum up the actual C-section and surgery I have been using the word traumatic. Thats how I took it. That is how it felt to me. The actual procedure went great and everything went exactly how it should. Except for one fact, something wasn’t 100% right with my spinal and I could “feel” , well more than I should have. No I did not feel them actually cutting me, etc. But I could feel deep “burning” sensations where they were working, mostly on my right side. I could tell almost instantly that it didn’t feel like before, but I kept being assured that it was “pressure, not pain” and that if I could actually feel pain I would be trying to jump off the table. I reassured them right back this was my 4th C-section and it had NEVER felt remotely like this before. I will spare the details, but it got MUCH more “painful” for me as the procedure went on, until I was basically sobbing and crying out with every move they made. They attempted to give me more meds but nothing really helped. I was in hysterics when I got to meet Rue because thats when they were “putting me back together” and I was still in so much “pain”. I still think the worst was that I wasn’t necessarily being believed when I was saying how I felt. And that I was, more or less, told it was in my head. (Not by my Dr. FYI, she was amazing and even validated my concerns the next day.) As soon as I was totally stitched and stapled up I went back to feeling like I had my previous C-Sections. But that experience set me in a mental state that wasn’t great. I was sad and kept reliving it in my head. I was so in love with Rue, she was beautiful, but I had just gone through an ordeal that was going to take me a few days to get over. Once we were in our room we had a few more SMALL obstacles to over come. I wasn’t urinating for a while so we did a test and pumped me with water until that got taken care of. I was swelling again and having headaches so I was SURE I was getting Postpartum Preeclampsia again. My iron was dropping ( this happened with each kid. I come to the hospital already dehydrated and anemic.) but those were all manageable. Then one day I got up to go to the bathroom and I realized I was bleeding out of my incision. It was more than I had ever previously experienced, and I realized one of my staples had partially come out, flipped around and got caught on those wonderful gauze underwear. We called a nurse who, when asked if it was a lot of blood or normal amount replied ” It’s some blood.” So I think I was in the middle area. Enough to keep an eye on, but not enough to do anything yet. The next day or so we kept an eye on it and eventually the dr. felt comfortable enough to have my staples removed. It kept bleeding slightly and the nurses didn’t think it was great, but not too bad. We opted to stay an extra day, just so we could keep an eye on me, and because our kids at home had caught the stomach bug and we did NOT want Rue, Matthew or I to catch it. So the day came to leave and Rue had her discharge papers and they had mine. I went to the bathroom again and started bleeding from my incision again. More than what should be. The nurse called a Dr in and the Dr decided I needed to be “put back together”. I was already tired, ready to go home and still traumatized from the c-section. This upset me, even though I knew it was for the better. Eventually they came in and said they were going to staple me again. Cue a little PTSD for the surgery and I was FULL of anxiety. Thankfully the Drs who did the staples were amazing. As soon as they were done they sent us home.
Being home was great, I eventually got my second round of staples out, but also another round of anxiety as I am trying to heal a wound that doesn’t exactly want to heal properly, having a newborn and 3 other small kids, and sicknesses in and out of this house. This past weekend I got a stomach bug for 24 hours and it was absolutely miserable and so painful. If you have had a C-section or baby before you know your bowels don’t exactly go right back to normal right away. There is already underlying gas and bowel issues you are dealing with, add a stomach bug to that and its a mess. Thankfully it was quick lived. Rue did seem to catch it too but that was about 24 hrs as well. She now has developed a small cough. ( don’t worry nurse mamas, we are keeping and eye on everything) All in all, we are thankful that , again, nothing has been serious. It was just a few hard hits right after another. I am feeling MUCH better and we are finding our new rhythm. Despite how this post seems, we are actually very happy and positive. We are loving our new babe and our new family dynamic. The family feels complete. I am also thankful she was born around the holidays, its my normal slow season, but the kids are also home a lot more so we can also just hang out together more. This past holiday week was so fun for us all doing things as a family of 6. I cant help but describe it as a feeling of “contentment”. It all just feels right, and I love it so so much.
Here are the photos from my delivery. I added a few of my face in agony, for documenting sake. lol.
And then we headed home. Because everything was so up in the air, we weren’t able to have a photographer photograph the kids meeting, but I snapped a few myself just to document it all!
