9:00am They took him away mid-feed and I was whisked away to get a Spinal, and umpteen – zillion stitches over 45 mins, with lots of bleeding and morphine. They put my feet in stirrups which were SOOOOOOOOOO comfy, with giant leather padding, and even a lovely padded leather armrest!

I think because of the shock, the numbness, and the oxytocin I was a bit giddy, and out of it, and I was very bubbly through the majority of the procedure, until I began to shiver violently and I felt very cold. They said it was due to the air-conditioning and sterilization mechanism used in the room, and they got me several blankets. I was a nervous fidgeter, and I kept knocking off the pulse monitor from my finger.

The surgeons were pretty chuffed to see a patient all giggly and happy like me. I think it’s a rarity for them. I was wishing them all a merry Christmas, and asking the Indian guy next to me about his Christmas plans, and about Indian songs he liked before I said I liked “Sun Sun Sandri”, and sang it for him, I’d been teaching this to Indian brothers last term.

The surgeons were generally pretty nice back to me, and in good spirits, except when I found out I was their second patient for their shift that day, and I asked the Indian guy about the lady before me. He frowned and said she had an abortion – OOPS. They played some 80s and 90s songs from the youtubes to lighten the mood, and I recall telling the lady who gave make the spinal that I liked her Christmassy earrings and her eyes lit up.

After the main part of the surgery even though I was still severely numb, I could feel them pressing very hard on the stomach. They said it was very important, and that it’s better to do it now, while I couldn’t feel anything, so I shrugged and agreed. They sucked me up off the bed with some super amazing inflatable parachute thingy, which was pretty fun, and put me on another bed.

I really wanted to know how many stitches there were, but they refused to tell me. Many people have said it was just one massive long stitch. When I asked the main surgical guy after he just said “Well, you smiled on the way in and out, so it can’t be THAT bad.”

I was wheeled to the recovery room, where my very gay attendant, Louis was pointing out all the flaws that the surgical team had made, such as failing to use the correct size cuff for talking my blood pressure, (My arm had many bruises from this, which Louis moisturised for me.) Also they failed to give the spinal report, failed to mention that morphine had been administered, and failed to do some kind of ice test on my skin during the procedure. They had also neglected to take the catheter to my leg, so if I had moved, I could’ve damaged my bladder. CHARMING!

Louis was very concerned that he was going to miss out his place in “the que” to leave and do…. something else. There was a very bossy foreign woman who was trying to cut the que and was SHUT DOWN by the woman on duty. The staff were quite negligent, and overlooked several times to find out what room I was meant to be taken to, so I had to wait about another hour before anyone bothered to find me a recovery room and take me there.

I ended up being taken to the room I’m in now, which isn’t regularly used, but there’s so many women here today apparently. There’s a spare bed, which I was told would be for another lady. (I was told this at 5pm. It’s now 2.40am and there’s no lady, so that woman was a bloody liar when she said I couldn’t use the pillow on the other bed!)

I was left there for hours without anyone telling me where hubby or baby were, and they had neglected to give me lunch. I had to ask several staff members several times before any food was brought to me. Considering I hadn’t eaten anything since 1am, I didn’t appreciate having to wait until about 4pm to eat! All I got was some stale old sandwich… in fact only 1 hour later some lady came to bring me her gruel dinner. I didn’t even get a choice in the food, and I only got to eat some of it because I fell asleep, and by the time she came back I was about to start on the cup of tea, but she was a bit rude and took it. During this time hubby had gone home to get a few things, such as my phone, laptop, pillows, and some food!