Wednesday 19 February 2014

Size Matters: Part 2

The next 7 hours went by in a blur of tears, sickness and pain.  There was another newborn baby on the ward but he was full term and not poorly.  No one had taken him away from his mum and visitors came and went and cooed over him whilst I sat and mourned for the normal experience I so desperately wanted.  I haven't ever been able to put into words the feeling of having your baby taken away from you.  All of a sudden your body is awash with hormones that are telling you to do everything you can to protect this tiny being yet you become obsolete as the staff in special care take over.  Eventually a midwife brought me a photograph that the neonatal nurses had taken of him.  He looked tiny, wrinkled and exhausted and I asked John to go back to special care and take a better photograph of him - which he did!

Seven hours after Samuel was born I started to regain feeling in my legs and was allowed to go down to special care to see him.  John had to wheel me in a wheelchair that would only move backwards and that, combined with the morphine and anesthetic effects, caused me to be violently sick.  I was told that I wouldn't be able to see Samuel until I was a bit stronger so I stood my ground, held my breath and defiantly kept my head down and eyes focused forwards, whilst forcing John to push the impossible wheelchair FORWARDS until we made it to special care without any more vomiting!
My first memory of seeing Samuel is very hazy.  He was tiny and there were wires coming out of him everywhere.  He wasn't ventilated though and didn't need oxygen which was amazing and was one of the first miracles we saw after his birth.  He wore a nappy that as good as covered his whole torso and he looked tired and fed up.  I remember his half hearted effort to open one eye and squint at us when he heard our voices but there was no crying, no grappling for a feed and no attempts to focus on objects as normal newborn babies do; he simply lay, in silence, every breath and tiny movement he made using up precious calories that he needed to preserve to grow. To live.  

The nurse came over and asked if I'd like a cuddle.  I hadn't prepared myself for that at all - I was certain we wouldn't be able to hold him for a while.  She took him out of his incubator very gently and wrapped him in a blanket explaining to us the importance of keeping him warm to conserve calories.  Everything came down to calories.  Even the way in which his nappy was changed; as quickly as possible through the windows in his incubator without taking him out or moving him unnecessarily.  It was all so clinical.  I hated, and still hate, the incubator.  A clear box that put up a boundary between my baby and I.  The monitors around it that were connected to Sam by various wires beeped, as it seemed, every couple of minutes and a drip machine at the side of his incubator contained various liquids which sustained his life.  Milk wasn't an option.

The nurse handed the blanket wrapped bundle to me to hold and explained that it would only be for a couple of minutes.  He felt tiny. Even through the blanket.  His skin was paper thin and his limbs felt like tiny little twigs.  His ribs were visible through his chest and his tiny finger and toe nails felt like claws.  But I loved him.  I sat and cried, uncontrollably, as he lay in my arms.  My beautiful little boy.  Already I couldn't imagine life without him.  My 'couple of minutes' went far too fast and before I knew it he was back in the incubator and I was being wheeled back to the ward.



My sleep that night was fitful and uncomfortable.  I still hadn't been allowed anything to eat or drink due to the fact that I was still vomiting a lot and was still on a drip feeling very weak.  I woke up feeling sick and hungry and asked for a bowl of cereal but when I was checked over by the midwife she said that I had no bowel sounds and would not be able to eat for a while.  Wondering what to do instead, I decided to get dressed as best as I could, make myself as presentable as possible - I even put on make up although goodness only knows who for - and hobbled down to special care to see Samuel.  
Whilst my lack of bowel sounds was a cause of annoyance, Sam's lack of bowel sounds was cause for concern.  They would want to be giving him tiny amounts of milk soon but his digestive system didn't seem to be working.  They decided to wait another 24 hours and see what happened.  Although he couldn't have any milk, one of the special care nurses explained to me the importance of expressing colostrum (first milk) to refrigerate for him to have when he was ready.  She supplied me with an expressing kit and showed me how to use it very quickly before I hobbled back to the ward.  The midwives felt differently about expressing and advised me to try by hand at first, rather than using a machine.  I couldn't get any milk and I certainly didn't want any help from a midwife to try.  All I could think about was Sam and his unresponsive digestive system, the fact that he was severely under weight and needed all the calories he could get.  Back to those calories again.  I asked John to bring in my manual breast pump from home and, when he arrived, sat in bed, cross legged, wondering - no, obsessing, about how to use it.  I was tired, emotional, sore and hormonal and in my (somewhat irrational) mind, if I couldn't get the pump to work, I wouldn't be able to express milk and my baby wouldn't get any of the nutrients he needed.  Of course, I now know that there is a milk bank available for premature babies and if all else failed, formula would be an option.  But at that moment in time there were no other options.  I sat on the bed and sobbed.  I was crying for the fact that I didn't know how to use the pump; I was crying for the exhaustion and pain; I was crying for the culmination of all of the worry of the previous month; and I was grieving for that 'normal' experience that other women on the ward were getting.  

I remember seeing a lady on the bed opposite me getting prepped for her c-section.  I remember taking in her appearance and that of her husband.  She had red hair and they both wore glasses.  They both seemed so nervous.  I could tell, from their conversation, that they were waiting to go down for her to have a c-section.  Feeling a stab of pain at the thought of how different her experience would be to mine, I returned to my instructions trying to make head or tale of them. I remember the way the red haired lady looked at me as I frantically tried to decipher the instructions of the breast pump.  I wondered what she must think.  What I must have looked like? - a frantic, obsessive woman with no baby in sight.  I longed to tell her that I did have a baby - that he did exist.  But she was whisked away to theatre for her c-section.  Little did I know at that moment that over the next few months she would become one of my closest friends and someone who helped me through the following 4 years.

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