I felt like someone had rudely awoken me from a nice nap and looked around, irritated. I looked at the anesthesiologist staring back at me and realized, with a jolt, where I was and what had happened. The OB cheerfully said I was all done and they wheeled me back to recovery. I was really looking forward to getting to hold my baby and nurse her for the first time.
The nurse started fussing with me when I arrived in the recovery room. And I recall feeling sleepy and annoyed. “Where is my baby?,” I asked her. She looked at me like a deer in head lights. “You’re bleeding,” she said blankly. “From my incision?” I asked her. “No,” she answered distractedly as she started bustling about. “Internally?,” I guessed. “No!,” she said emphatically, as if I was intentionally bothering her with dumb questions. She yelled for the OB. He came in and inspected me. He murmured something to the nurse about clots and put on some very long gloves. He then did something that felt like he was plunging his hand through my incision and then yanking around all my internal organs. I found myself screaming in pain again and scaring another batch of poor women being prepped for their C sections. The nurse ameliorated the situation by plunging a gigantic needle into my thigh to stop the blood bath. The OB then smiled at me, and declared that all was well. I sobbed at him and found it difficult to agree. The nurse looked uncertainly at him, and he told her to pull out all the stops on my pain medication. That, at least, gave me some relief.
