Instead, Rothenberger felt like she was just at the mercy of strangers and that the relationship she had built with her doctor was “all in vain.” By the time her baby boy finally arrived, she was too physically and emotionally exhausted from what she went through at the hospital to even care that she had a baby. “I was so foggy from all the drugs, I didn’t know what to think. My baby was laying there in a plastic bin and I felt like a helpless onlooker,” she says. But this time, she was able to savor the moment with her little family and do things at her own speed. “We moved from the pool to my bed and initiated our nursing relationship naturally and all of her assessments were done right on my chest or on the bed beside me,” she says. “The team left us to rest, we had time to bond and soak in those first moments.”
