1pm Friday, May 3rd – we are now home, alone, with Molly.  Holy crap.

We take her out of her car seat and sit on the couch staring at her – now what? Well, soon begins crying of hunger which I try to subdue with breastfeeding attempts, with no success.  I continue to express about 1ml of colostrum each time and syringe it into Molly as if was the most expensive liquid gold you could find.

At some point in the evening, I take a look around my surroundings.  What I had worked so hard for during my nesting phase, (colour coordinated Molly’s drawers, neatly folded all linens in the linen closet, pristeen living room), had gone completely out the window. I mean, our house looked like someone had taken a leaf blower to it.  Items were pretty much hanging from the light fixtures. To my friends who said it wouldn’t matter, that all of my obsessive, Type-A organizational behaviour would be a waste, you were so very right.

The shakes that I had experienced in the hospital were now getting much worse and were accompanied by an extreme fever and sweats.  Awesome!  My Mom calls late Friday night and, after hearing the quiver in my voice, she kindly offers to come over first thing in the morning. THANK GOD!

Molly wakes every hour-and-a-half throughout the night, and I continue to syringe feed whatever colostrum I can get (at this point I have expressed so much that my boobs are now bruised – not even joking).

Saturday my Mom arrives and literally helps us get control of the situation.  We get some formula to tie Molly over until my milk comes in – poor little monkey was starving.  She ate 30ml of formula and proceeded to sleep for 2.5 hours – SUCCESS!  We had a number of visitors come by – a blessing and a curse.  We loved seeing everyone but realize now that 3 days post C-section is not the most appropriate time to be hosting  a gathering, especially with little sleep.  Once everyone leaves we settle in and fall asleep on the couch while Molly snoozes and wakes in her bassinet and I continue to have a fever so bad I need to change my shirt every hour or so.

By Sunday I literally couldn’t hold Molly; I was shaking so badly that I decided to call tele-health.  After about a 5 minute conversation the nurse on the line tells me it would be a good idea to head over to the Emergency Room. Awesome!  So, somehow I need to leave my 4 day old baby, who still hasn’t eaten, with my husband – who like me still looks like a deer in headlights.  We call our dear friend Amanda who is going to meet me at the hospital and Ashley calls in family support. Fast forward 8 hours and I’m loaded with IV antibiotics, given a perscription for horse-size antiobiotic pills and await blood culture results.

Tuesday, I get a call from the hospital.  Blood culture results are in. Not only do I have an E-coli infection, I also have a Staph infection. Amazing! That explains the insane shakes, fever and the feeling that I was dying.  I do another round of blood cultureson Wednesday and the results come back negative – it’s a miracle; the antibiotics worked.  Starting to feel like a human again, Ash and I end our week, week 2 of parenthood, feeling fairly stable.  We ventured out to run short errands – nothing farther than 15 minutes from home… should some type of nuclear meltdown take place, we needed to be close to home base of course.  Our most important errand was to Molly’s first doctor’s visit – she slept during the entire visit and I probably asked the poor doctor about 100 questions.

Monday morning rolls around and Ashley gets ready for work.  WAIT! – ASHLEY IS GOING TO WORK TODAY?!?!  I’m going to be left alone with Molly and will be soley responsible for her survival for a full 9 hours! Ashley assures me he is only 10 minutes away should anything horrific happen and kindly offers to stay if I really need him to.  As much as I want to say “YES! PLEASE DON’T GO!,” I suck it up and give him a hug goodbye. As the door closes behind him, Molly and I take a seat on the couch and I have a decent hour cry.  “Just you and me, kid; just you and me.”