What The Colonel Calls "Quality Time"

Tomorrow my son will be 4 weeks old.  And my incision is almost closed.

See, that is something we didn't know would be an issue when this whole c section thing was brought up.  Healing afterwards, especially for someone overweight and diabetic, could be a problem.

We came home from the hospital the Saturday after the baby was born, and had an appointment to see the Colonel that following Tuesday.  Monday, I noticed I was spotting/bleeding from my incision site.

You should know that I never looked at it.  Not even once.  My husband said that with the staples it reminded him of Frankenstein's neck, and that was enough to let me know that if I saw it I'd cry.

While in the hospital, the Colonel called to check on us and gave A his home number in case anything happened.  So when I said I was bleeding, A called the Colonel.  On Memorial Day.  At his home.  After dinner.

Turns out this was normal, I needed to take it easy, and rather than wait for our afternoon appointment he said to come to see him first thing.

And so began our daily visits to his office.  Again.

Apparently I had a defect of some kind in the center of the incision.  It basically resulted in a pocket that needed to be allowed to heal from the inside out in order to avoid that it would get infected as the skin closed on top of it.  To accomplish this, the staples were removed, and I was packed with saline soaked sterile gauze pads to keep the wound open.

That isn't the best part!

On top of this, the gauze needed to be changed daily.  Which was fine on weekdays, but on weekends?

And so A was given a lesson on basic wound treatment by the Colonel.  Which meant that each day I needed to lay still while holding open the incision area so he could remove gauze pads, dry the site, and then soak fresh gauze and repack the incision.

Last week we moved up to twice a day in order to get things moving a little.

Which, let's face it, isn't too bad once you get used to the routine.  I mean, at this point I should be healed in the next week, giving me a week before returning to work to be able to feel normal when wearing underwear.  And A has been a real trooper, with the Colonel thanking him for taking care of everything.

But when you throw in a newborn who doesn't understand why mommy and daddy may need to leave him to fuss if he happens to wake up in the middle of an incision session......

All I can say is it has been an interesting four weeks.