We left Hoag Hospital and all it’s comfort late in the afternoon. The sun beating down as we drove down PCH. The volleyball players pranced on the beach, hitting balls, like Coronavirus was nonexistent. Just another day in Paradise. I glanced over at Kaylee. I was a mom! This was for reals! I could barely believe this. Kaylee didn’t like the car seat, but thankfully calmed down once we started driving. I was a swollen mess from the IV fluids, (that’s an understatement of how god awful I looked and felt). I felt like a dead person embalmed with formaldehyde. Being a new mom is hard, but even harder because you’re recovering from either a major surgery, as I was, or from having a human rip through your privates after many long strenuous hours of pushing and contracting. Either way, your body has just gone through it and now you were somehow expected to show up like Mr.Rogers. How was I going to do this? I wasn’t sure.
We arrived home around 4pm. I gave the baby a tour of the house and before you know it, I was in bed with a fever calling a lactation consultant on the Pacify app because my boobs were engorged and I was in horrible pain. Yes, it was zero to 100 in a matter of hours. That first night home, I was mostly in tears with frozen packs of food on my breasts, sleeping in an upright position while holding my newborn because she would not have us put her down. I’m pretty sure Kaylee thought Hoag Hospital was our palace, the nurses our servants, and I, her mom was queen and she princess. I believe she was thoroughly disappointed to find out that none of these assumptions were true as she tried to bare her new reality in our house the first night home.
As night broke into day, I was relieved. My milk was finally coming in. We had survived our first night home. Miracle.
