A Tale of Two Boobs

Week number two of being a new mom and we faced a tramatic event. The Tale of Two Boobs goes something like this...Monday I started to run a low grade fever and by Tuesday at 11:30am I was running a 104 temp and completely delirious and hallucinating. Joe rushed home and had to carry me to the car and my mom hurried me to the emergency room. I got to the ER and bi-passed everyone in the waiting room as they ran me back to a room while 2 doctors and 3 nurses worked on me. It turns out because of a horrible infection called Mastitis I had gone into toxic shock and had a system wide shut down. My blood pressure had dropped to 90 over 40 and my heart rate was racing at a 135 beats per minute. The doctor said he had never seen a post pardom mom as dehydrated as I was and my kidneys were shutting down... I was basically out of it the whole time but according to the doctors I was pretty lucky I came in when I did and didn't wait too much longer because I was very close to not coming back from it. After 11 hours in the emergency room the doctors felt I was stable enough to move back up to the maternity ward. I stayed in the hospital for three more days and I tried throughout the week in the hospital to keep pumping but I had to throw all my milk away because of the narcotics I was on via IV. I came home Friday and I faced a very, very sad decision contemplating whether I should stop nursing. I was basically supplimenting more than half of Genevieves food with formula because the infection was so severe. After an amazing blessing from my cousin and many many tears later I decided to stop nursing. It was a very sad decision for me because I felt that this was my special gift that only I could give to her. However, since I have stopped I have started to heal so much quicker and Evie has really gotten on a better schedule. However, now anytime she has a tummy ache or everytime I give her a bottle she scowls at me and I am completely guilt ridden. Anyways, after all that after I came home I developed an infection and an allergic reaction to one of my IV sites. My doctor wanted me back in the emergency room on Saturday but I really didn't want to go back in because of all the flue that is going around so instead my doctor just put it in a sling. Just another thing to make everything harder. It has been so difficult not to be able to hold my own baby or make it to the bathroom on my own. But I have an amazing husband and mom who have made things so much easier for me. I am praying things are a little easier from here on out but I don't think thats possible with a baby. She has taught me a lot in the last 3 weeks and one of them is I never knew what difficult was until I became a mother, but I also didn't know what real love was either.