If you are just joining me now for the first time…welcome! Before you continue on, refer to my first blog post The Beginning Pt.1 and start my story from “The Beginning”. I stayed in recovery for about 50 minutes before they wheeled me to my room for the night. Even though it was tough, it was the BEST experience of my life. Looking back it feels magical. I was the happiest girl in the world. As soon as I met my son, all the fears I had were gone. Fears of caring for my son, being a single mom, the financial responsibilities, all gone. Being a mom was my new purpose, he was all that mattered to me. That night I laid in the hospital bed as my little angel slept next to me, and I prayed. Thanked my Heavenly Father for this life I had. A life that once seemed so dreary and without purpose had a whole new meaning. It was hard to look back knowing that originally I didn’t want this pregnancy, because now I couldn’t imagine my life without this precious baby. The moment he was born, it was almost like I had been healed. My depression was gone, something I never thought was possible.

Nurses came in and out of my room all night. I would fall asleep and then whoop it was time to wake up for a blood pressure check and wound care. I was so exhausted. As soon as I fell asleep it seemed like I was woken up again. But it was amazing how much care they give you. The funny one for me was being woken up because it was time for my son to eat. “Huh? I swear he just ate like an hour ago!”. Another thing people don’t tell you when you have a baby- breastfeeding HURTS. The first couple of days is painful. I’m not going to get into the gory details, but since I am transparent about everything I’ll just tell you this… nipples do bleed. There is a lot of other weird things that happens after birth that a lot of women don’t talk about openly… I quickly found out all of those things. Maybe if you guys request it I’ll do a whole blog post on it! The next morning I texted Arik’s parents and told them that they could come by in the afternoon to visit me because I had to do some post-surgery tests. They did Hudson’s hearing and vision tests and other stuff they needed to do to check and see if Hudson was okay. Everything came back great! Which was a relief because I had been taking a prescribed steroid and drank a few times before I knew I was pregnant. So in the back of my mind, I did have some worries but luckily everything was okay. I, however, started to feel some of the pains of my previously sliced open abdomen. Only about 13 hours after my surgery I stood up for the first time and walked about eight feet to the bathroom. I felt like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. When you first stand up after a C-section, it feels like you don’t have enough skin on your stomach to fully straighten out. Almost as if you would rip your stomach in half if you were to stand normally. What was even harder for me was sitting down on to the toilet. I felt like a 90-year-old woman holding onto the side railing shaking as I tried not to move my stomach muscles as I squatted down. Luckily I had a nurse there to do all of this with me, but it was still no easy task. This honestly could turn into an AD for life alert at the rate I’m going haha. Later that afternoon Ariks parents came to visit. It was my mom, dad, me, Hudson and then Arik’s dad, mom, and brother, AND Yes, I decided the day after he was born that his name was for sure Hudson. Before they came to visit I posted a photo on Instagram announcing Hudson’s birth. I completely forgot about life outside of my son. I had so many texts, calls and messages flooding in but I didn’t even want to look at my phone. I was so in love and focused on this beautiful child from heaven.

Arik’s younger brother held Hudson for the first time, said a few words about how much it meant to him and then started crying. It broke my heart. I can’t imagine how hard this must have been for Arik’s younger brother, he looked up to Arik so much. Everyone in the room started crying as well, including me. As they were leaving, Arik’s parents told me how much it meant to them to be here to meet Hudson. I am grateful that I had their support throughout my pregnancy and that they were able to come see Hudson in the hospital. That extra support during and after my pregnancy made me feel happy. The next day Arik’s mom came by again to see little Hudson one last time before they went back to Utah. She brought gifts for Hud and held him for a while before she had to leave. After about four days in the hospital, it was time for me to go home. Most people hate staying in the hospital, but for me, it was a great experience so I didn’t mind being there for those four days. I also had amazing nurses which made it all the better. I knew when I got home I wasn’t going to have someone there at the push of a button when I needed help. Over those four days in the hospital, I had all of my immediate family visit me and spend time with Hudson, as well as a few friends. A couple close friends sent me gifts for Hudson as well which was super sweet.

We got home and starting eating some sandwiches my parents picked up for me which was nice because I was kind of tired of eating hospital food. I started eating my food and my incision was stinging like crazy. I remember thinking it was weird. After the stinging persisted I went to the bathroom and pulled my pants down and found that my incision had opened up. I was freaking out. It left a hole that was an inch wide and at least an inch deep into my stomach and it was oozing blood and gross yellow discharge. Immediately, I felt sick to my stomach. It was clear that something wasn’t right since it had now opened up, and not to mention, it was stinging and burning like crazy. On top of that, I was already on antibiotics for an infection I got on my inner thigh due to shaving and accidentally nicking myself. And if it couldn’t get any worse, my big toe also became infected while I was staying in the hospital, most likely due to the pedicure I got the day I gave birth. So basically I was a walking infection. We called the hospital and they referred me back to see my OBGYN to take a look at it…the only issue was that it was Friday so I had to wait until Monday to see him. So I went to bed and had my first night at home with my precious son.

So I would roll slowly out of bed which took a little extra time. When I stood up after rolling out of bed it literally felt like my stomach was falling through my butt. I would have to physically hold on my stomach because it hurt so bad. With an open C-section incision and no medication, the pain is no joke! But it was definitely manageable. My son was now a week old and we headed to the pediatrician for his first checkup. We took his diaper off to put him on the scale to weigh him and he started peeing straight in the air (perks of having a boy) and then proceeded to start pooping everywhere. There were so many things I learned everyday since becoming a mom and taking a diaper off with caution was definitely one of them. After the appointment with my son, we headed to the OBGYN to look at my stomach. My OBGYN stuck one of those long medical Q-tips directly into my wound and started moving it around. The incision then opened up even more! This was so painful and absolutely disgusting. Every time he started moving the Q-tip around I could hear liquid and other stuff sloshing around. I was so nauseous. He told my mom that we needed to do this every day, twice a day until it heals. I also needed to tape my whole stomach up with plastic when I showered so that I didn’t get it wet. Then I had to wear gauze on it all day so that the blood and discharge didn’t leak all over my clothes. So every day I would lay down and my mom would put hydrogen peroxide on a q-tip and slosh it around in my stomach. It was the worst feeling ever. A week of this torture and nothing was happening. It had not healed whatsoever. I felt so frustrated and nervous about all of this. Even more so I knew this was going to delay my healing, which in turn delayed me getting back on the tennis court. My mom could tell that this wasn’t going to work so we had to look for other options. We went to a plastic surgeon who specializes in wound care. This new doctor told us that what my OBGYN told me to do was completely wrong, and my incision would not have healed doing that. So he packed my incision with a medical gauze… A lot of it! This was also a disgusting experience. So every day I had to pull a little bit of the gauze out and cut it and wait until the gauze was all out of my stomach. My C-section split open because an internal stitch got infected. So something that my OBGYN stitched inside my body got infected which in turn caused my incision to open. During this whole process, I was taking 3 antibiotics a day for two weeks to get rid of all of these infections. It was insane! It took about another week or so before my incision healed. It was such a pain to deal with, but I was so glad it was finally over! During this time I soaked in all the mommy and me time with Hud. We did everything together. Naps, baths, shopping, etc. I was in heaven. Part of me didn’t even want to go back to school or play tennis… I just wanted to stay with him all day long. But for a single mom, that was never an option. Once you hit that 2 week mark after a C-section you start feeling a lot better. But since I had to go through the process of healing my incision, two weeks was still was a little iffy. In the first two weeks after the surgery you need to limit how much you laugh, sneeze, cough,pr move, because that is when you feel the most pain. I really didn’t realize how much we use our stomach muscles on a daily basis until I had a C-section. Even the smallest movement like getting off the couch was painful! The best way to describe the pain is a constant stinging/ burning sensation in your stomach. I wish I had one of those plastic fans that you bring to Disneyland to just fan my incision all day. If you take your pain medication you probably won’t experience these sensations as much though! Hudson was such a good baby. I was seriously so blessed! Hudson slept all the time. He would take a 5 hour sometimes longer nap and still wouldn’t wake up. I would have to put his little legs under cold ice water to wake him up to eat… and even then he would still try to go back to sleep (wish this was still the case today haha).