Friday morning arrived and Cian awoke without an alarm to greet us at the predetermined 5am wake-up. The C-section was booked for 0730 and we needed to be there almost 2 hrs ahead of time. Cian has some sort of sixth sense when it comes to waking up for important events so it wasn't entirely shocking he was awake.
We arrived at the hospital and were greeted by my colleagues and friends. It's so nice to see how good the people you work with are at their jobs from the patient perspective. I really do work with incredible people. We went upstairs and were greeted by more colleagues and the amazing women that were doing my surgery - women I completely look up to. I had decided on a repeat C-section for a few reasons - 1) I had a midline incision with my big surgery with Emily and the giant cyst and 2) my grandmother died of high grade serous ovarian cancer and the current recommendations include taking out both tubes so I needed surgery and 3) I still had residual cyst on the right side that needed to come out. My anesthetist had called me the day before to make sure it was ok with me that she was doing my spinal. It's a bit nerve-wracking when you are doing procedures on your colleagues and you could tell she was nervous. I knew she would do a great job and my anesthetic was excellent. I tried not to listen to what was happening inside my belly but it was impossible to not hear when they called for Arista powder to help with bleeding or when they realized that the baby was swimming in an ocean of amniotic fluid. The surgery took a little longer than expected due to the bleeding and the anesthetist who was nervous to start with was pacing that her spinal would start to wear off (which it was as I knew what step of the surgery they were on by the end cause I could feel where they were but I still wasn't in pain). Certainly I was distracted by the beautiful baby they brought to visit halfway through the surgery.
We had chosen the name Samuel Peter Morris very early on in the pregnancy. All of our kids have first names that we liked for various reasons but weren't a namesake. Samuel means "God has heard" and we had done a lot of soul-searching before having a third baby. I felt that we had enough room in our hearts for a third kid. and Keith had arrived at a similar conclusion now that our other kids were a bit older and less constant work. But still we were excited and nervous about what it might mean to bring a fifth heart into our mix. Life had plans for us though as Sam had decided he was joining our family and that was that - no bleeding, no miscarriages, no pregnancy complications - he was on his way. Our kids all have middle names that are an homage to someone special. I have missed my grandmother so much since she passed away and this baby was due close to her birthday and I wanted to honour her especially in the setting of the kids calling this baby "Manta Ray". Her maiden name was Peters so Peter seemed like a good plan. It also played double duty a bit as one of my friends from college who was such a wonderful person was one of the RCMP killed in Mayerthorpe - he certainly embodied the strength of "stone" as the name would suggest. I hope each of my kids have characteristics of their namesake middle names.
Sam was brought into the world in a room full of exceptional women. In fact, Sam and Keith were the only men there. Cathleen was my nurse and she is a total delight - what wonderful warm hands to greet our son. Cathleen isn't from Malawi but she has family there I believe because we often greet each other in Chichewa in the hallways or in the OR. She is a treasure and the first arms to cuddle our son.
I have never managed to get a picture of Dr. Logan who has safely delivered all three of our children into the world. She has a quiet calm about her that puts everyone at ease. Dr. Diamond assisted her on the C-section for Emily and when she found out I was pregnant again wanted to come for this birthday despite lots of her own health concerns. She is what I picture when I think of grateful resilience. She has every right to be frustrated with all the difficulties she has been handed but instead she walks up the four flights of stairs to the OR at 0730 on a cold January Friday morning to help bring new life into the world. That's the kind of inspiring people I work with - it makes coming to work a joy.
We went to recovery and other people popped by to say hello and welcome Samuel into the world. Cathleen took care of my like a mama and transferred us to a waiting room on LDRP. Over the course of the day other friends came to visit and bring well wishes. Keith had convinced me to let the kids go to their full day of school and come after and that was a good choice. They arrived with the little cameras they had gotten from Santa and were totally enamoured with their new baby brother. They took pictures of all permutations of people. The couldn't get over how small he was even though he was the biggest of our children at 8 lbs. They were enthralled by his umbilicus and cord clamp which of course would be super interesting if you had never seen it before.
That evening I was by myself as we had planned that Keith would be home with our other two kids and I would stay at the hospital at night by myself. In the late afternoon I thought Sam's colour was a bit off but it seemed to be because he was cold and he pinked up with the blanket. At shift change (730pm) he turned blue-grey again just lying on my lap and I called the nurses who ran and scooped him out of my room. That was the longest 20 minutes ever as I waited to hear how he was doing. At about the 10 minute mark I called Keith because I still couldn't get out of bed post-surgery and was there immobile and alone in the room. Keith is always very calm but when I called to tell him about Sam he was in the middle of the bathtime/bedtime routine and you could tell he was nervous. He passed the phone to my mom who said she would come so I wouldn't be alone. The nurses returned and told me that Sam needed to be suctioned for what they thought was a mucus plug. He had been seen by the paediatrician who had been at the desk and by neonatology and his sugar was low at 1.8 or 1.9 so they had given him glucogel (oral sugar) to bring that up. He had perked up quite quickly and wanted me to know he was totally fine. That was a huge relief. Keith called after the kids were in bed and despite his typical practicality and knowing Sam was ok I asked how he was and he told me he was nervous and worried about Sam and wanted to come back to the hospital to cuddle Sam himself. I fall in love with him a little bit more each time he shows that sweet side that he usually wraps up in steady calm.
Keith then stayed that first night and Sam was watched for a couple hours at the desk as they monitored his sugar overnight. He needed a second dose of glucogel but then his sugars normalized. He had a couple top ups with formula too to maintain his sugars but he wasn't really into that as he is a very good breastfeeder (Cathleen called it in the OR - she knew he would feed well). He wasn't very interested in formula top-ups. He dropped 9% of his weight after Day 1 probably in relation to his sugars and the night nurse thought we might have to stay to get his weight up but the daytime nurse was very seasoned and she wasn't worried. She knew we would top him up if he wasn't feeding and the public health nurse would come the next day so at the 48 hour mark we got to go home. The second night had been uneventful except for the weight loss so I felt much better about taking him home. The paediatrician on call saw him the morning the day after his blue-grey incident and wasn't worried about him so that was also reassuring. My recovery was a lot less eventful. I didn't really have any incisional pain but the shoulder and collar-bone pain was intense (gas pain). It's always good for doctors to be patients - it keeps us humble and hopefully makes us better physicians through personal experience.
Keith and the kids came to pick me up when we were discharged and we packed ourselves up as a family of 5. The kids were so focused on being good helpers and wanted to carry his car seat so badly despite being told multiple times they couldn't. They were just as excited as we were to come home - probably even more so. Despite our concerns about what it would be like to be outnumbered by our kids we have seemed to have fallen into being a family of 5 without too much difficulty. I feel so settled with our kids and how much we love each of them and how much they love each other. Each family is different I guess and ours was waiting for Sam. We are so thankful that all of us are healthy, that we have the means to spend some time together as we get to know Sam and he gets to know us and for each of the beautiful hearts that inhabit this home. Blessings abound.
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| Our family of 5 (soon to be 6 as we await Groot) |
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