A Difficult Beginning (part three)

Here's part 3, hopefully the final installment of the story. Sorry, it's turned out longer than I first anticipated! 

My baby girl was fighting for her life on the intensive care unit of a strange hospital, and I was struggling with being so far away from my loved ones at a time when I needed them most. This neonatal unit had a fairly different approach to the one at our own hospital. They encouraged the parents to be as actively involved as possible, showing us how to correctly tube feed her, change her nappy, wash her eyes and lips. I liked the responsibility of caring for my own daughter. 

However, the maternity ward was also very different to the one back home. They had strict rules and practices. I missed medication time once as I'd been upstairs with my daughter at the time, and when I got back down to the ward I realised just how much pain I was in (something I'd been neglecting over the last few days). One particularly harsh midwife told me that she was not unlocking her drugs trolley for one patient who can't abide by the rules. Well, 5 days post natal, I was already an emotional mess, so this was just the icing on the cake. I went back into my room and sobbed, until a more sympathetic midwife came in with some paracetamol for me. 

It turned out that the medicine my daughter was specifically transferred for wasn't needed in the end. They gradually weaned her off the ventilator. The most heartbreaking moment was when we were celebrating the fact that our daughter was breathing by herself, the parents and doctors of the very poorly little boy in the incubator next to us made the decision to withdraw care from him. I felt guilty for congratulating our baby on doing so well when just feet away, another family were grieving for their son. 

The time had come for me to be discharged. They'd already kept me in a day longer than I should have been so I could stay close to my daughter. But now they were sending me home. There were no parent rooms available on the neonatal ward, so I had to go home. The doctors assured me that my girl would be well enough to transfer back over the following day, so it would only be overnight that I was apart from her. I could handle that. Then the morning came and I got the call I'd been dreading, she'd taken a turn for the worse in the night but had begun to stabilise again. So instead of her coming back to our hospital, we made the drive back over to her. Leaving her again that evening was even harder, not knowing when she'd be fit to transfer back. 

The next day (only day six of her life, and she'd already been through so much) was the first day I couldn't be with her. Our double pushchair was due for delivery, and I needed some quality time with my son, who was only 15 months old himself. It had been a nearly a week since I'd seen him and I'd missed him so much. So I sent Mr P off by himself. I got a phone call from him just after lunch time, an update I assumed, and he told me they were back in our own hospital, just over the road from the house! I was elated, and mad that he'd not rang before now, but he didn't want to build my hopes up if the transfer wasn't going to happen again. Then I was with her in minutes! I was so relieved to have her nearby again. 

Things moved pretty quickly then. She was out of her incubator and in an open cot within a day of being back. She was very quick to establish feeding, considering she was 7 days old and had never latched on before. She just had to finish her course of antibiotics and I'd be allowed to take her home. We spent 2 nights finding our feet in one of the neonatal flats, where I was able to care for her totally by myself, with the exception of a nurse popping in 3 times a day to administer her medicine. It was bliss, just me and my girl. 

She was 11 days old when I finally got her home. All the pain and sadness that had tarnished the second half of my pregnancy just vanished. She was perfect. And she still is, just over 4 years later.