Blood Sugar
The first days of a new life
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“How soon can she feed him?” Robert repeats my question, louder, to the midwife.
My son was placed on my chest for only a minute or two upon delivery. Then, as a high-risk birth, he had to be taken across the room for cannula placement, blood draw, and various other tests.
Robert was invited to come close to the baby and watch, but instead he stayed with me, holding my hand as I received episiotomy stitches and rediscovered the ability to move my feet.
I lost about a liter of blood during delivery — a bit more than a fifth of the total blood in an average human woman.
Groggy and in various types of shock, I’m having trouble knowing what volume to speak at. There’s gravel in my voice. But Robert helps. As soon as baby is done with checks, the medical team helps arrange me more upright in bed. The midwife helps me find baby’s very first latch, and he suckles in my arms all the way down the hospital corridors as they wheel my bed to the recovery ward.
I’m pretty messed up. The bed is set up with puppy pads over sheets, but in short order, blood and other delivery fluids have soaked through these and my hospital gown, too. My cannula is hooked up to an IV drip of saline and paracetamol, and…
