Friday morning and going home

9.20.13

      Friday morning was only for family. Everyone from work had stopped by the day before, and now it was somewhat quiet around our room at the hospital.

      I have two cousins who are nurses in Houston: one that was a Labor and Delivery nurse before she started her own family, Ash, and one who is a Neonatal ICU nurse, Sam. Sam is currently pregnant with her first kiddo who is a little boy and he is due to arrive in mid-November. My third cousin, Holly, who lives in Oklahoma, had driven down on Wednesday to be here for the "big day", and she had been staying at our house the past few nights so that she was in the area. My two cousins from Houston arrived late Thursday night, but they didn't come up to the hospital until Friday morning.

     My mom had told me that Sam was really nervous about seeing me because she didn't want to upset me. This just broke my heart because there is no way that I would have been upset at Sam for being pregnant- its not like she wished this on us or had anything to do with our loss. I was really happy to see her and her cute baby bump, and I told her little boy he'd better behave and get here safely.

     Ash has a little girl named Presley who is 3 and a half, and she just had her second daughter, Brenna, in February. As soon as Ash saw me, she immediately burst into tears and hugged me so tight it hurt a little bit. She said how sorry she was that this had happened, and that they hadn't gotten there sooner. She came in and sat on the couch with me for a few minutes before I asked where Pres and Brenna were, and she said, "I didn't know if you would feel up to seeing them, so Rooster (her dad's grandpa name) has them in the hallway." I told her of course I wanted to see them, but I probably didn't really realize what I was signing us up for, and I wasn't really thinking and didn't ask Alex if it was ok for them to come in, but he didn't really seem to mind.

    Sweet Presley came over and hugged us, and she is just a monster ball of energy. She was coloring and being little miss personality while we all sat around and talked. I was really ok until that little voice in my head started up with the, "I want this. I had this for a moment and then she was gone, I want to have a family. I want to have kids." I had a couple of little break downs, but over all I was ok, I think... Might be a different story if you asked everyone else who was in the room. The hardest thing for me was being around Brenna. Brenna is the spitting image of her dad, and she is only 7 months old at this point. She has the sweetest little feet, and that's what hurt me the most is that those little feet reminded me of Kaitlyn a lot. I held Kaitlyn's feet and counted her 10 perfect toes, and her 10 perfect fingers, and Brenna's socked feet didn't hide her sweet little toes enough. I couldn't be around her, and I couldn't hold her. Luckily, I have a family that was neither judgmental or questioning about me periodically leaving the room when I felt like I was going to start crying.

     Dr. L had come in to see me in the early morning and talked to me about getting discharged Friday afternoon. She let me know that she'd like to keep the staples that were keeping my incision together in as long as possible, so my nurse Amy would be taking them out for me after lunch. When it was about 1, I decided it was time to get the heck out of there and I called Amy in to see if we could get the staples out to go home. My silly nurse cousins asked if they could come watch her take my staples out, and honestly I didn't really care that much. Both Ash and Sam said how good my incision looked (a nice small c-section scar), and Sam leaned over and started counting out how many staples there were (16). Then here came Amy with the tweezers to pull them out. She told me I could ask for a break if the pain got too much, but I didn't really feel anything and I was too entertained watching Ash and Sam's face as the staples came out. The staples were replaced with steri-strips, and we were cleared to get on the road.

     My best friend, Jenny, had come up to the hospital that day. She had told us earlier in the week that she had picked out something special for Kaitlyn and she would still like to give it to us. Sweet Jenny brought up the most precious thing that I still have to hold on to: a white bunny rabbit that has very long floppy ears and the softest fur ever. At first, I thought that I liked the idea of the rabbit being cremated with Kaitlyn, but then I thought that I really didn't like the idea of anything else being with her but her outfit. Instead, we decided that this sweet bunny should be the focal point of the flowers that were going to be the centerpiece at the memorial service. Kenney had already come and gone, so Jenny took it over to Kenney Friday afternoon to be put in the floral arrangement.

     The family helped take down all the flowers and presents that people had brought by the past two days. We had a lot of cards, and of course our luggage that we had happily packed three days before. This is about the time I started getting sick to my stomach thinking about rolling down the hallway and either seeing or hearing the newborns on the floor. I really didn't want to do it... Can't I just shimmie down the construction lattice outside?? Amy came in with my wheelchair, and my brilliant husband got out his noise-cancelling headphones and put them on me as I sat down. I almost cried at his thoughtfulness. Yes, I rolled down the hallway with my head down and noise-cancelling headphones on. I didn't see or hear anything, and managed to get on the elevator without having a complete melt-down. It did feel like it took three hours for the elevator to get on our floor, but once I was on it I felt my chest relax and my stomach unclench. It was raining that morning, so had gone to get the car and pull it under the car port before I started making my way down in the wheelchair. I was so relieved to see our familiar car, and as soon as we were outside I got up and hugged on my sweet nurse (who had tears in her eyes as we left) and I told her thank you about 5 times. I climbed up in the Tahoe and shut the door, and immediately started crying as we pulled away from the hospital.