Two Weeks Later

It's two weeks today that I was released from the hospital. Sometimes it feels like a year, other times it feels like yesterday. This week I'm finally starting to feel like my old self. I've got energy. I can see my feet. I have ankles again. I can even wear my wedding ring. Better yet my bruises are healing so I don't look like a heroin addict anymore.

I went to my doctor again today and she is pleased with how my blood pressure is decreasing so she has lowered the dosage of the blood pressure medicine again. This is good because the medicine makes me very sleepy and if there is one thing I don't need is to feel sleepier than I already am. If things continue to go well she might take me off the BP medicine completely at my appointment next week. They also took blood and urine so they could run more labs. I've never had a problem with needles but I found myself flinching today when they took blood. While I was in the hospital, the preeclampsia made all my blood vessels constrict so they had a very hard time finding veins when they needed to do IVs or blood tests. A single test usually took at least two sticks. The worst was the IVs. My initial IV took three tries and those big needles really hurt! Hospital policy says they have to change the IV every three days to prevent infection. The Sunday before I delivered they tried to put in a new IV but gave up after two tries. So my initial IV ended up staying in five days instead of three.

After my appointment I stopped by my office to visit with everyone and talk to my boss about my maternity leave. It was great to see everyone and be in a world that does not revolve around bottles and diapers. I have less vacation than I thought but my company is being very understanding about the whole situation and is working with me to come up with a plan that works for both of us.

It took the hospital less than a week to send us our first bill. My first trip to Labor and Delivery, that lasted about three hours, cost $1,199. My stay on the High Risk floor plus Cooper's delivery was a whopping $13,237! Cooper's one day in the well baby nursery was $2,938.15. We still haven't received the bill for the NICU. So our grand total so far is $17,374.15. Of course that's what the hospital bills the insurance company. We still don't know what our share of that is yet.

Cooper is still doing great. There is no other way to describe him than as an eating machine. I had the night shift last night and he was up every two hours, instead of the usual three, wanting to be fed. Chris is able to get him to take two ounces almost every time. I can usually get him to take at least 1.5 ounces. I really need to get a video of Cooper eating because it is quite a process. He gets very impatient when you take away the bottle to wipe his face or burp him and flails his arms and raises his head. Tomorrow I plan on giving Cooper his first big boy bath. Hopefully we'll have some video of that too.