Every so often you can be going about your life when boom!
You are hit with memories so powerful they take your breath away. That happened
to me this past week. My mother in law needed surgery which was scheduled last
week at the Mater in Brisbane. The Mater in Brisbane where Elijah entered the
world in an extremely scary fashion just over 6.5 years ago. I hadn’t really
given it much thought, I guess the surgery had occupied my mind.
Our first stop was to check my father in law into the hotel
where he would stay for two nights. It just happened to be the same motel we
went to when I was discharged from hospital 3 days after giving birth. While it
wasn’t the same room, it was identical to the one we stayed in. The bed where I
lay down and sobbed my heart out because I was no longer in the same building
as my child, because It felt one thousand types of wrong to be separated from
him. The shower where I cried again each night having to leave him again and
where I discovered that crying in the shower does amazing things for milk
supply! Even though I could be by his
side in minutes if something went wrong if I ran my fastest (trust me, turtles
have nothing to fear even with me at my fastest) And I knew I would find superhuman speed if my
child were in trouble. But it still wasn’t the same as being only a one minute
lift ride away.
We then walked over to the hospital, up and down the hills
we walked each day all those years ago, me with an esky bag of expressed milk slung over my shoulder .No wonder I lost
so much weight on my stay!! Past the Coffee Club where we would meet with
friends who came to visit. My mind always half on the conversation and half on
wondering how my baby would be when I got to see him, Praying there would be no
deterioration. I was always so grateful for the human interaction and time out
from the constant alarming of monitors, but a big part of me was anxious and
couldn’t wait to get back to the NICU. My greatest fear was that something
would happen while I was off having a coffee of all things.
Later in the day we walked to the little IGA that we visited
each afternoon to buy something yummy. In my memory it always seemed much
further away. We drove past the Coles that we went to, to find an Easter
present for our child who was still meant to be safely in utero over Easter. He
caught us by surprise. I remembered thinking we had driven for ages and were so
very far away from the hospital. I almost had a panic attack and had to leave,
grabbing the nearest stuffed bunny on the way. To make it worse the Doctor rang
on our way back. I feared the worst, but he was just ringing to check in with
us as he had missed us on his rounds. Seeing it this time- Coles was only about
2 blocks away. It’s funny what stress can do to your perspective.
I saw the street I walked to our new accommodation. By
myself, unsure of exactly where I was going, loaded down with everything I
would need until Allan arrived that night. I walked that street and I quite
possibly felt like the saddest girl in the world. I am a person who has never
embraced change and here I was everything so up in the air and I was moving
again, when all I wanted was for something to stay the same.
This time though, I saw all these places and walked these
streets with that little scrap of a baby
holding my hand as a healthy, beautiful, vital 6.5 year old. I showed him where
he was born and where his life was saved. I joked with him in the car on the
way down about why he felt the need to be born so darn early. His reply : “I
was bored. There was no I Pad in your tummy”. Such a funny little man grew from
that tiny, tiny human .
I wished I could go
back in time to that woman, to those parents who had such a rough and unfair
start to parenthood and show them what the future would be. Tell them that it
would be so very hard, and they would see things they could never unsee, that
would bring tears to their eyes for many years to come. Tell them that, yes, they
would be left with nightmares and fears, but these would pass eventually. There
would also be some scars- some of which would
never fade. I would hug that woman who sat day by day beside a humidicrib not
feeling like a real mother, waiting every day hoping today would be the day she
got to have a cuddle, wondering what she had done wrong to cause this, feeling
so numb and the guilt that numbness caused . I would show her a little way down
the track, not very far at all, the moment when she would look at her baby, the
first time without all the monitors attached, and her heart would explode with such complete
and overwhelming love for this child she had created and she finally felt she was a mother.
But I would also tell them that it would all be ok. Their
baby would be one of the lucky little miracles. He would avoid all the horrible
things that so often go hand in hand with such prematurity- brain bleeds,
blindness, infection, learning difficulties, death. He would be slow to start
but he would catch up and surpass every milestone. He would be amazing and very
much alive and very much loved.
