Part Three — Michael’s Birth

Day Three:  This day was a lot quieter because it was Saturday. Many of the regular staff aren’t on over the weekends; staff like dieticians, or other not-so-important people. I welcomed the break in activity. I did speak to few extra doctors though, which was reassuring. I liked the way they didn’t panic and were happy to wait until the baby was ready to come in his own time. I had another CTG, and yet again, the machine didn’t behave. Ordinarily, this would have meant another one in the afternoon, but this time I got out of it because the doctors were there and said the reading was fine.

Often pre-term babies require nursery care and a drip to stabilise their sugar levels. The drip usually contains either formula or glucose water. I was hoping we didn’t have to go down that route, so part of my daily routine included expressing colostrum to give to baby instead. Twice a day I would collect a few drops of pure gold and store it in the freezer for future use. Fortunately, newborns don’t need massive quantities each feed, because I never did manage to get a great deal expressed in the time I had before baby was born. For some women, re-lactating is easy, for the unfortunate few, it isn’t so.

John worked a few hours in the morning and then brought the children in to visit. The visit went as you would expect with a lot of children in a confined space; they came, they saw, they conquered, and subsequently were taken home. No, really, they were well behaved, considering. The ice machine was a big hit, as was the buzzer to call for the nurse. You’d think we’d have learnt from last time, but when that nurse popped her head in the door and asked if we needed anything, I just thought she was being nice. I mean, I didn’t think one of the kids had pressed the buzzer. I am so naive; you would think I’d know better.

The privacy curtain has more uses than an adult can imagine.

I loved having the children come and visit. We decided that after the weekend we would have one of the older girls drive in each day with two of the younger children, so they could spend the morning with me. I was looking forward to it. Running a house from a hospital bed ain’t so easy, especially if the children aren’t even with me.

Later on when everyone had left, I walked up to the laundry room (it was close by, so I wasn’t breaking the rules leaving the ward, really). A father was leaving the post-natal ward with his two little girls after a visit with their mother and the new baby. The two-year-old cried and cried for her mummy. It broke my heart to see the quivering lips and falling tears. It was enough to release the floodgates. I cried just as much as she did. I knew just how she felt.

I wondered if the kids missed me as much as I missed them. I know Lily did. She sucks her thumb. She only started when she was two, after seeing a little friend do it. Well, she liked it and has continued since. The funny thing is, she likes to play with hair while sucking, it doesn’t have to be her own necessarily, it can be someone else’s, if they don’t mind having it pulled out at the roots. Since most people don’t like that kind of pain, she has been limited to pulling her own. I gather she spent a lot of time with her thumb in her mouth while I was gone, because when I came home, she was bald on one side of her head.

The girls left me a mini DVD player with a couple of movies to watch. Though I still didn’t feel like watching anything, I thought it might help me get to sleep, so I put on Joseph King of Dreams after dinner. My favourite part of this retelling of Joseph’s story is the song David Campbell sings when Joseph is in prison. I won’t bore you with all the lyrics, just the chorus.

You know better than I
You know the way

I’ve let go the need to know why
For you know better than I

I think I was still emotionally unstable at this point. I mean, who cries through a kid’s movie? Maybe it had something to do with the lack of control I felt at being in the hospital; not knowing what would happen, when baby would come, or how long I would be separated from my family. Whatever the reason, I was definitely on edge.

The midwife was due to do my observations and I wanted to look semi-normal, so I went and washed my face in the bathroom. After using the facilities, I noticed some bright blood on the toilet paper. I already had a pinkish loss, but this was different. I thought it was important enough to mention to the nurse, so I hit the panic button. I mean, I literally hit the panic button. I didn’t realise I had until three, very out of breath midwives came running into my bathroom. The look on their faces made me aware the button I pressed wasn’t the same colour as the other nurse buttons in the room. This one was bright red with URGENT written above it. I don’t know how I missed that. They did look relieved that it wasn’t an emergency, and after I apologised profusely, they departed from me on friendly terms.

The doctor came in to have a chat about my concerns and I had another CTG. I was very close to asking for a caesarean (most of my babies were born at home - I'm just mentioning that in case you think I ask for one everytime). After Grace’s birth, to me, blood means placental abruption. The doctor reassured me though that it was just my cervix continuing to change. I couldn’t go back to the movie after they left. I tried to sleep, but that couldn’t be done either.

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