C-sections and bodily functions :)

Aah yes, I know you're intrigued now...there's just nothing like a blog about bodily functions! And you had to know what with everything else we've been through, I'd totally talk about them for ALL the world to read! :) There is officially no modesty left in this new mommy!

So today officially marks the ONE WEEK BIRTHDAY of our three babies! Amazing...1 week old, and already I've taken somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pictures...$55.00 to develop ALL of them....(even though half of them are the same exact pictures just a different day!) So let's see, if we average that, then we'll be looking at 1200 pictures and and $220 a month! Fantastic! That's almost as bad as formula or diapers!

COLTON

HUNTER
ETHAN
So anyway, the babies were born on Monday....on which day I had my stomach neatly cut open, beat up a little, then stuffed full of my stretchy uterus once again, and finally sewn back up! That part was not so bad...(anesthesia is a wonderful thing)....it's the days AFTER the first day that I thought something HAD to be wrong!! As anyone who has had one knows, they cause a lot of bleeding afterward and the searing pain in my stomach was enough to make me want to beat the nurses who insisted that "getting up and walking is the best thing you can do!" Are you kidding me?? I just had three babies ripped out of me and you want me to get up and WALK?? (ok, in all seriousness, I loved every one of my nurses and I know they really do know their stuff.) But allow me to be dramatic for just a minute....the only thing I had going for me was knowing that I had three tiny babies waiting for me upstairs in the NICU. There is no incentive like that to make you get out of bed and walk....and I'm not talking a hop, skip and a jump. Nope. Out of my room, down one hallway, through the double doors, down a longer hallway, onto the elevators, up to the 8th floor, back down another long hallway, turn the corner, and finally, we're at the NICU! (Oh yeah, and then back the other way to go back to my room! ) Anyway, I'm still glad I had a C-section and I'm simply enjoying the fact that my belly is once again small enough that I can actually almost SEE my incision which, now that the staples are removed and pieces of surgical tape are in their places, it looks like the Cheshire Cat smiling up at me!

So that's the C-section....with surgery, and with being hospitalized comes a new found sense of publicity about things people typically don't converse about...namely, those numerous bodily functions we all do secretly and blame on other people. And that's what so unique about a hospital. It is the only place that the nurses and doctors cheer for you when your successfully resume one or all of these functions! But it doesn't come easy you know....

Let's start with peeing and bleeding:

Two topics that in my opinion, don't necessarily belong together. Fortunately, I spent the first 2 days and nights with a catheter which allowed me to sleep peacefully through the night without having to get up and waddle in severe pain to the bathroom. LOVE THE CATHETER. I never thought I'd see the day when those words left my mouth...But soon enough, the bliss has to come to an end. They actually want to see if I can pee on my own again! And they want to know how MUCH pee I can produce! Which means that for 48 hours, I have to actually tell someone every time I go pee! "That's a conversation that gets old fast..." God bless the nurses and patient care techs who had to come in and measure my pee bowl that, let's be honest, was no lovely shade of yellow...Oh no! With it comes all the insides of my uterus which turns that pretty yellow pee into a red bowl of nasty. Sorry to be so graphic, but inquiring minds need to know this stuff!! Anyway, let's top off this conversation by saying that for 48 hours, I successfully produced good pee! The nurses were pleased with my progress! Go me!

But let's move on to the Bowel Movements, the BM, if you will.

First of all, you know me too well by now to know that I refuse to refer to that specific function as a BM OR a Bowel Movement until I at least qualify for a senior citizens discount at the movies. So let's just call it what it is. Poop. Fortunately, no one was QUITE as interested in my poop as they were my pee. They would ask about whether or not I had pooped each day, and I unfortunately had to say no. The fact that they were giving me Colase (stool softener) each day should have been a clue that accomplishing this task was likely going to be no easy feat. And in fact, that blessed event did not happen until I was released from the hospital and had been in the comforts of my own home for a day and a half! But don't you worry, when it finally happened, I danced my way into the bedroom where Brian was trying to take a nap, and announced (as I danced) that I was doing the poopy dance! Woo hoo! And just like the nurses in the hospital, he actually cheered for me! He should really win a prize or something.

Moving on...let's talk about Gas.

Not the gas we see at every corner. No no. GAS. The kind we all do, secretly, and either blame it on others or simply act as though it never happened. See the following passage below, from Wikipedia.... :)

According to the The Alphabet of Manliness, the assigning of blame for farting is part of a ritual of behaviour. This involves deception and a back and forth rhyming game including phrases such as:
* He who observed it served it.
* He who first detected it ejected it.
* He who said the rhyme did the crime.
* Whoever spoke last set off the blast.
* The next person who speaks is the person who reeks.[17]

Yes. This is the bodily function that EVERYONE seemed most interested in. How fascinating! Predominately because it was the one that was contributing MOST to my internal pain. Aside from having a giant stretchy uterus flopping around in my gut, there was also a GREAT deal of gas. And that bothered me, because trust me, it's unlike me to NOT be able to "release" it. But for whatever reason, I think my body was under so much stress from everyone asking if I'd "passed any gas" that it simply couldn't. Call it stage fright. Call it what you want. I could not fart. It wasn't for lack of trying either...three separate doctors actually tried to encourage me to get rid of the gas by assuming what they referred to as the Islamic Praying Position. You know, on your knees, butt in the air, arms stretched out in front of you so that the highest part of your body is in fact, your butt. (Gas rises, you know) :) So anyway, I figured I ought to give it a try...

There, trying to encourage me every step of the way of course, is my loving, gassy husband who has ZERO problems releasing his. He'd walk around the room, releasing audible toots and then turn to me and say, "And that's how it's done." Seriously. It didn't matter if we were in bed trying to sleep, walking to the cafeteria, watching TV, you name it. It became the mantra of the week...."And that's how it's done." Well, try as I might, I was unsuccessful for the first 4 days. Until finally, one night (actually in the wee hours of the morning, something like 3 a.m., there we slept soundly until the moment I felt a gurgle....I can't even describe my excitement at this point. And sure enough, in the dark comforts of my hospital room bed, I Ami Bunch, mother of triplets, farted. Out loud. Not even knowing whether Brian was awake or not, I excitedly, (but quietly ..it is 3 a.m. after all) utter the words I'd waited so long to say, "And that's how it's done..." To which I hear, "That's my girl!" And so that's how that story goes....I think I lost about 5 pounds that morning and I was feeling good!

Finally, I'll leave you with a "look ahead" to another post...Breast Pumping. :) A topic I believe deserves its own entry. So for now, I hope you enjoyed my real life account of bodily functions in a hospital! And just remember, if you should ever go down that road and YOU need to pass some gas, just remember the praying position. It's a god-send. :)