Recovery

Immediately out of the OR, Sara's only complaint for a while was that she was incredibly nauseous. The anesthesiologist gave her some medicine to help with that. About thirty minutes later her nausea was pretty much gone.

Her nurse parked by her bed for the next 3 hours to tend to Sara and monitor her and Ruth's recovery.  The main thing that the nurse was watching for were uterine contractions - the Achilles heel of any fetal surgery. There were a few light contractions, but that was expected since her uterus was trying to recover from an extreme amount of distress. After about two hours, we did not see any more contractions.

They kept it under control through the use of tocolytics which are drugs meant to prevent her uterus from contracting.  The tocolytic used in the first 24-36 hours is a drug called Magnesium Sulfate, which was also administered alongside anesthesia during the surgery. We had been warned that since the drug would make her feel very crummy because its relaxing effects do not target her uterus exclusively. Naturally, we were a little surprised when Sara didn't seem to be feeling as bad as everyone had told her she would feel.

Things were looking pretty good, so they started clearing the room and getting things ready to allow Sara and I to get some sleep.  Sara's pain at this point was relatively under control. As the night progressed, Sara began to feel more and more pain. The nurse and the Anesthesiologist were in and out all night trying to determine the best way to manage her pain. By the time morning came, they pretty much had that mission accomplished. She dozed in and out throughout the rest of the day.

On the day after surgery, they did a couple tests. The first was a fetal echo cardiogram to make sure that Ruth's heart weathered the stress of surgery well. Everything looked good on that front. The second was an ultrasound to check Ruth's environmental conditions. She had plenty of fluid and we were told that everything else looked pretty good.

After the tests, I made my way over to the family house to check in and drop off our bags - we needed a little extra space in this tiny hospital room. The rooms at the family house are quite modest, but its not a bad place at all and its in a neighborhood with lots to do.

The room that we were assigned is on the south side on the top floor. This particular day was uncharacteristically sunny, so the room was nice and toasty. Wouldn't be a problem if there was an A/C, but I've discovered that most places here don't invest in central air as its usually not necessary.  Needless to say, I'm going to try and get us relocated to a different room before Sara gets moved in.


I ran into lots of good people in the common areas. The common areas include a living area, a library, a kitchen, a dining area, and a utility room. I had only brought enough clothes to last me a week, so I did our laundry before heading back to the hospital.

That night we both got some decent rest.