Unfortunately I couldn't exactly concentrate on this new art I was being introduced to in the recovery room, because my face was so itchy (apparently a side effect of the epidural) and I had to keep asking the nurse to scratch my nose. Not that I was going to be prudish - I was still asleep from the waist down, naked for the most part and hooked up to a catheter... In fact that was the hardest part for me about the whole experience - nothing makes you feel sexier and stronger than a middle aged Chinese woman changing your nappy because you can't get up to change your baby's nappy, let alone your own...
The other challenge was the ward I was on - not in terms of staff (the nurses were lovely), but in terms of my fellow "in-mates". I could have been luckier - one woman wept uncontrollably all day, gazing like a zombie at her daughter, who meanwhile screamed for hours right next to my bed, and another spent all day complaining that she was being discriminated against because I was given the call button. Not that I couldn't walk or anything...
Meanwhile, I was simply content, getting told off by the nurses for not sleeping, because all I wanted to do was stare at the pink bundle next to me (Queen Mary babies start life in a uniform of white dresses and pink blankets - stylish!).
Sleep was difficult anyway, interrupted as it was by nurses taking my temperature, Oscar asking for food and, most impressively, bath time - that's when all of the babies get lined up as if at the car wash. Each time the door opens to gather another batch for bathing, a shrill orchestra of screams comes out, as if someone had opened the hatch to a chicken coop...
Soon, my own, self-administered bath time made me feel human again. The nurses couldn't understand why I wanted to wash so badly - apparently Chinese ladies like to wait a whole month before washing, but I just couldn't stand laying there in the same skin that had been drenched in broken waters not just hours, but DAYS beforehand. I think that's what made me recover the use of my legs so fast. I was ready to go home.
A shower also gave me the chance to see myself in the mirror for the first time since giving birth. The next day, I would feel even more whale-like than before, but for a few minutes I couldn't believe how small my belly was. How empty. I had been surgically removed from my son. Then again, I felt somehow more whole when I looked down at his cheeky eyes...
Oscar is calm, gentle, soft and so full of character. It's a cliché, but it's true: he has changed me forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment