It's that time of year where we are supposed to be wrapping presents, decorating the tree, and wearing our warm sweaters and fuzzy boots. This year we are just a tad out of sync with that timeline as we have so much going on.
We bought a home and are set to move in over the next few weeks. We had been looking for the past year, but had agreed to take our time waiting for the right home as our needs aren't the average family of needs. We absolutely needed an additional bathroom, and six bedrooms if at all possible. We found a home that isn't even ten years old and just under 4,000 square feet. This sounds massive, but it's the perfect fit for our large and growing family. It's easy to be in a smaller home when you only have young children and toddlers. But once the teen years hit, privacy and space are a much sought after commodity. I look forward to being able to give that to the kids, as well as ourselves. We've spent the last few weeks picking out carpets, colors, decorations, bedding, furniture and so on. BK gets the joy of moving everything in with his buddies as I have been excused from this fun activity by my doctor.
Which is something else that has been keeping me busy. I'm five days out from surgery. It's been an interesting journey. We knew G was our last baby and my last pregnancy shortly after his delivery, so when I had some things come up that led me down the path of a surgery that would forever cement that decision I couldn't put it off. Genetic risks, six full-term complication free pregnancies, and having two babies looking down on us made the decisions come naturally if not quickly. The hardest part was the realization that I was forever done with surrogacy, but at the same time I'd known I was done during my last pregnancy as I was beginning to look forward to the years of not being pregnant and pregnancy not taking the attention away from the family and kids.
I was a bit anxious, I had not been in the hospital since my oldest's birth over thirteen years ago and it had been a less than stellar one at that. But, my husband was my rock and reminded me of the risks I was facing, the relief this surgery would bring, and both doctor's professional opinions (as I had sought out two to be safe!). This was much needed and not something that could be put off any longer. Now five days out I'm at the cusp of - 'I was right/They were right'. I've had a few days of wondering how I let anyone talk me into this but with moments of relief and gratitude that this was not something i had to fight insurance or doctor's to go through as it was a medical necessity.
The hospital stay was again, less than stellar. Ends up my five home births were probably the biggest gifts I have ever given those babies. I am allergic to almost every intravenous pain medication, including morphine, and within hours of undergoing a total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy I was paying the price and the nurses were frantically trying to reverse the rashes, vomiting and other 'fun' side effects from the allergy. By the ten-hour mark after surgery they were no better equipped to treat my pain or the allergy and let me know I could either keep throwing up and use the pain pump of the fifth medication we were trying or I could stop using it and deal with the pain. After throwing up and feeling my body set on fire again, I chose pain. The irony of all of this was that my biggest fear and concern pre-surgery was how I would react coming out of anesthesia. My OB told me that I had actually done amazingly well and was so calm I kept nodding my head and asking if I could just go back to sleep! I never in a million years thought my biggest issues would arise hours and hours later.
Finally around the twelve hour mark I was able to keep my body still and the nausea passed, while I focused on getting through the pain. Something I knew well how to do thanks to those five births, but was very surprised that my biggest complaint was that I had back labor pain just the same as during my transition and towards the end of all my labors. This was a bit harder to get through mentally, but I didn't have much choice. I was rather surprised at the lack of reaction from the nurses in the middle of the night when my blood pressure hit the 60s over the 40s. I assumed if i was too bad off, then they would have done something instead of just left the room and ignored me for another four hours.
The next morning I texted my husband to hurry and get back once he'd dropped off all the kids and explained my night. The nurses took their sweet time removing my catheter even though I'd had full range of motion since about 30 minutes after coming out of surgery and I pushed to get up and walk. My husband arrived and the nurses walked in and made a comment about how my pain pump was completely full and I just looked at them debating on what part of the filter in my head I wanted to bypass. Thankfully BK stepped in and told them this was due to the choices the previous night's shift had given me. He told them to remove it as it was no longer an option as I was clearly allergic to everything they'd tried.
Long story short I went fourteen hours without any pain meds and finally won the lottery of Tylenol 3 (with a measly 30 mg of codeine), rushed our discharge after the doctor found out I'd received very little monitoring and left with explicit directions to rest, rest and rest about 30 hours after surgery. I was so relieved to get home. I was not pleased to not have anything to help the pain through recovery. Thankfully today I'm on the other side of the worst of it (we hope). I am starting to fear all the vomiting caused a hernia, but will find out this week at my post-op appointment. The doctor reiterated that this decision was not one that was ever an option to decline in his opinion. On top of the genetic risks I faced, I also have had a decent amount of good sized babies. Most of the time your uterus gets its blood flow from vessels and veins that enlarge to keep up with the massive increase of blood volume. Post partum, those all shrink and diminish. Or at least they are supposed to. Mine did not, at all, despite being 22 months past delivering baby G. My doctor reiterated how much trouble I had avoided by removing additional risks those carried and pointed out how lucky I was to not have a clotting or bleeding factor gene because this could have caused a lot of issues with pregnancies, post partum and delivery. Especially since I'd never been testing for anything related to that.
So I'm five days out into a whole new world. I had a mini cry the other day simply because almost all my adult life has revolved around pregnancy, delivery and babies. And in the same mini cry I was relieved to never have to do any of it again. It was short-lived as crying is the stupidest thing you can do with an abdominal incision I learned (aside from laughing). I think mostly, I'm processing. I couldn't think about it before surgery. I had two nurses who had undergone hysterectomies and one asked me how I was so calm. The other asked how I wasn't bitter and pissed. Well, my uterus has had a good go of it. I've worked professionally as well as non professionally with people who are infertile and never ever got to the other side of a living, breathing, healthy baby let alone pregnancy. And that is what I focused on the past few weeks. So I put off thinking anything but that until I could get through surgery and my own anxiety and fears of hospitals and surgery.
This is a new normal. This is my new normal. At first I was adamant I wasn't going to tell anyone what was going on. And then I realized how big of a deal removing an organ is and how invasive of a procedure this was. I had to ask my children's dad to keep them an extra night and help with bussing them around to activities this week. I had to ask my husband to be my caretaker. Something I've never ever had to do, ever. Home birth has enabled me to be up and running within hours of giving birth, so this is nothing I've ever been through before. We joke that I am from here on out to be known as WonderWoman after my run in with pain meds and maybe they are kryponite to me. But mostly, it's just another side of our relationship and me needing to be vulnerable and real with him. He has been everything I ever could have asked for in a partner. He juggles the kids, holds me while I towel off, grabs whatever I need, reassures me the pain is tapering off and repeatedly tells me that I'm one tough cookie. I'm ever so thankful he was put into my life because I never could have done this without him.
So that is how our year is wrapping up. A new big home, one less organ, one healthier body and the rest of my life to be grateful for this guy God put next to me. Nothing like a serious health issue to put you back on the right path to what's really important. Needless to say, I've gone a bit overboard for Christmas and look forward to having ALL eight children under our roof to celebrate the holiday his year. I'm already planning the menu and taking the requests for both a ham and a turkey. We've wrapped everything we have received and are just awaiting the final shipments of items. I told BK how much we are spoiling them this year and he shrugged and looked at me as if to say, "I don't care as long as you're here spoiling them with me, whatever is fine by me". And I feel the same. As long as I am next to him and surrounded by these amazing children, I truly don't care what is going on outside of our home. Life is still good, it's just evolving. I'm excited to wrap up this year and see what the next one brings us!
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