Hospital

Up until the day Elodie was born, I had never spent the night in a hospital. I now have four nights under my belt. My first night I was still, to be honest, quite out of it. I'm not sure what painkillers I was on actually during the surgery, but I do know that I had two top-ups of diamorphine through my epidural during the first 24 hours. My parents arrived - with a bag full of cheese and champagne - for the first visiting session and my father, bless him, put on a suit specially. The last time he wore a suit was at a wedding.

During the first night, as the drugs wore off, things got a bit painful. Also, there were several other women in the ward, some of whom were clearly not very well. The first 'breastfeeding' attempt largely consisted of one of the midwives manipulating my breast, Elodie failing to latch on, and then her hand-expressing a syringe of milk and giving it to her. Unexpected things were quite impossible and really rather painful, and I was unable to do the first nappy change - but when they came round at 3am, after checking I knew how to change a nappy, that responsibility passed back to me.

The morning brought ward rounds from the surgeons who had operated on me, and the anaesthetist who decided to give me more heroin. Soon after (or before, my mind is a bit foggy) I was encouraged to walk, with assistance, to take a shower. This was the most painful thing I had to do to date, and posed all sorts of unanticipated difficulties - like how to remove my bra when it was stuck down under the tape holding my epidural in place, or how to take off the anti thrombosis stockings when it was agony to bend in half. Then half way into the washing, I realised I was about to faint and had to pull the cord, and was found by one of the maternity care assistants, stark naked clutching my nightie sitting on a chair and, err, bleeding. She wheeled me back to my bed.

I was moved upstairs to the general wards later that day, where things were a bit quieter, and we started getting the hang of breastfeeding. More visitors came... Pain subsided a bit, and I came to the conclusion the only palatable hospital food was the multi-cultural asian halal meal, which was some kind of curry each time. My second night in the hospital was fine and dandy until I found myself in quite excruciating pain at 5am and had to get some morphine. Lovely.

Because of that, even though I was technically discharged from the hospital, I decided to stay another night to make sure if the pain returned I would be able to deal with it, and also to really nail the breastfeeding. Unfortunately, at this point my milk came in, and I went for nearly 8 hours without Elodie getting a decent feed, which was rather upsetting for both of us. Just as they were about to discharge us properly, I asked for help getting her latched on and the relief of her emptying my poor engorged boob was palpable.

Of course, nothing is as simple as that. An unstable hip joint had been spotted by the paediatrician when she was checking Elodie over, and she was supposed to have been booked in for an ultrasound scan and we were just waiting to hear when that would happen. Literally as we were about to leave - Elodie was in the car seat and everything, the midwives decided we couldn't leave until the appointment had taken place - and that meant another night in hospital. I was so ready to leave, I was absolutely gutted. I also had to wait for about an hour in the waiting area for a new bed, as they had given mine away. On the plus side, they felt so bad about the whole thing, I got a private room for the night, and help latching Elodie on to my other engorged breast. There were lots of apologies the following day when they discharged me, as it turned out that I could in fact have been discharged as the ultrasound appointment was at an entirely different hospital. Anyway, after all this, we were finally able to take our baby home.

Which felt pretty good.