The intended day for bringing Samuel home arrived and we made our way into hospital as normal. I was desperately scared of being let down again so we left the car seat and his coat in the car so that, were we not able to bring him home that day, we wouldn't have to walk out of the hospital with an empty car seat. I was fed up of going home empty handed, but the thought of actually taking away an empty car seat was a different matter altogether. I needn't have worried though as he was weighed and discharged within an hour. We were given meds and syringes for him to have on a daily basis and our checklist was checked before we were able to put his coat on and put him into the car seat. At 3lb 15oz we realised that he was too small to sit comfortably in the car seat so a nurse showed us how to pad out the seat with nappies to ensure that his head was raised up and supported to reduce the risk of asphyxiation. We then said goodbye to the special care staff and were chaperoned to the car park by a nurse. We strapped him into the car and realised that, for the first time in five weeks, we were solely responsible for our baby.
The return home with Samuel was very surreal. We went from being under constant supervision, measuring and recording every little bit of milk, recording the contents of every nappy change and having an apnea mattress for Sam in hospital to being told that we needed to treat him as a 'normal' baby. Inspite of this, we were also told that if he missed a single feed we needed to call the hospital so we were on edge.
At the time, we lived in typical terraced house with central heating but no double glazing and very questionably sealed sash windows and it was the middle of February. We put Sam into his Moses basket and rolled up blankets, in the way we had been shown, to make 'boundaries' so that he didn't feel as swamped as he would without them. We then placed him, feet to foot, in the Moses basket and tucked blankets around him. It was freezing cold outside and our house was cold and drafty and I was torn between worrying about Sam conserving vital calories and keeping warm and dying from cot death as a result of over heating. I don't think I slept at all the first night he was home. The following day the midwife came out to see him and check me over. She was happy with Samuel and seemed happy with me but I remember her writing 'tired and emotional' on my notes. I wondered what else she had expected!
As I imagine there are with any baby, there were a lot of worries around bringing Samuel home, which were amplified by his size and weakness. He was 5 weeks old and I didn't feel that it was right for us to stay in the house as you might with a newborn and wanted to get out and about. In getting out and about I then became terrified of the germs that he might encounter and actually remember considering keeping the rain cover over his pram so that he would be protected from germs. We tried to keep up as normal as an existence as possible but Sam's tiny size drew a lot of attention and we would be constantly stopped by well meaning people who commented on how tiny he was. I hated people that we didn't know coming to look at him. I didn't know what ailments they might have and what germs they could be passing on to my precious son. I started to become withdrawn. When you have spent the first 5 weeks of your son's life in a blur of antibacterial hand gel, plastic aprons and sterile environments it is very hard to adjust to real life.
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