Greetings Little Humans, Part 3 of 5

(continued)

Then I recall insisting on seeing the boys. So the nurses wheeled my entire hospital bed into the NICU and I asked if I could touch them (for the first couple of days they laid on little electric blanket-type warmers out in the open). So I reached over and touched Benjamin then they pushed the bed across the room and I touch Jonah. Seeing the size and configuration of the NICU later, I’m not sure how they managed this, actually.

The next glimpse of reality is when they told me to scootch myself from the OR bed to the bed in my hospital room. In a moment of perfect clarity I thought, “You have got to be joking.” Starting then and for the next several weeks I was terrified that with the slightest wrong move, all my innards would spill out.

Fast-forward through a few hours of drug-induced nothingness and I find our pastor sitting bedside. He stayed for 10-15 minutes and I remember all of three things that he said:

•  “She’s not going to remember any of this,” he said to Jonathan.

•    He read something from the Bible about sons being a quiver of arrows or somesuch.

•    He concluded with another “She’s not going to remember any of this,” to Jonathan.

Sheesh. I must’ve looked pretty bad.

It goes dark for half an hour then I threw up on and off for several hours, which had the decidedly unfortunate effect of lengthening my dependency on narcotics by a couple of weeks. Dry heaving is not what you want to do a few hours after abdominal surgery.

Thanks to the lingering morphine, the vomiting didn’t bother me much when it was actually happening. What did make an impression is that Jonathan seemed to miraculously anticipate each episode and have a little puke cup in front of my mouth instantaneously. I remember being really impressed with that.

Then I passed The Puking Torch onto my sons, who carried it proudly for the next year. (and Jonathan would continue to prove himself useful with puke cups....)

to be continued...