I had a baby and down down down I fell, into the rabbit hole of new motherhood and adjustment.
When Alice falls down the rabbit hole in the children’s animated movie, she floats down safely, spinning a little, landing carefully at the end.
Becoming a mother is nothing like that. Not for the first time, not for the third time.
I fell down the rabbit hole and landed ungraciously at the end, with my legs akimbo and my underwear on display. Figuratively, not literally – by the time my baby was born, there was no underwear for me. Or any clothes, really.
I was due to give birth this week sometime. Instead, my daughter is four weeks old and I have spent the last month trying to recover from the advent of her early arrival and the trauma of her first week of life. Not that it was traumatic for her – she was lucky enough to escape her premature birth with nothing worse than a plethora of heel pricks and a raging case of jaundice.
When you give birth to a well baby, at term, they send you back to the ward with your child and it’s sink or swim, baby. You change nappies and learn to feed, while eating your breakfast one handed and hoping that you can manage a shower before they stop napping. I’ve done this, twice. You’re an instant mother, making the decisions. On day two, or three (all going well) you take your child home and your new life begins.
A premature baby is a whole different kettle of fish.
I held my daughter for two hours after birth, feeding her and loving her, before I had to walk her around to NICU and leave her there with strangers. A stranger dressed her for the first time, while I sat in the chair next to her and tried not to cry. A stranger explained the visiting rules to us, and a run down of what would likely occur. A stranger stole drops of her blood. And then, a stranger smiled at me as my husband and I left our baby there, alone, without us, and went back to the ward.
I cried until my head hurt and that feeling of having accidentally misplaced something important lodged itself inside my chest. An hour later and I was alone on the ward, trying not to hate my body for expelling my child early.
(I was meant to keep her safe, my body was meant to keep her safe. Oh God, what have I done?)
Over the next few days, I became intimately acquainted with the special care unit and the nurses that worked there. No longer strangers, but still, they were the people making the decisions for my child. MY child, not theirs.
That feeling of unreality as you sit next to a plastic box, knowing that they aren’t truly yours, not now, not yet.
My daughter got better, fast. We were lucky that she wasn’t a sick child and in the end, probably not as premature as they suspected.
As a new mother, you’re meant to be overwhelmed and covered in spit-up. Not holding your baby’s head in place while they insert a nasal gastric tube, or dripping sucrose into the corner of their mouth while a nurse pricks their heels yet again. You’re meant to get covered in milk as your breasts leak, not blood, as the bandaid doesn’t quite cover their wound.
In the scheme of things, we were lucky. I fell down the rabbit hole and we all emerged relatively unscathed.
But I can’t say that it wasn’t (isn’t) traumatic.
know those horrible feelings too well. xx
I know. I was thinking about you after I wrote this too. I remember what a rollercoaster you had. xxx
My son Jake was 5 weeks premmie. He had a brain haemmorhage during the birth, due to the cord being wrapped around his neck 3 times. His eyes jittered all over the place for the first week. It was a great relief when he finally managed to focus on something, or at least keep his eyeballs still. They told us Jacob would have some sort of brain damage, just a question of how bad really. They said he might have cerebral palsy (he doesn’t). He had jaundice, and a stomach operation for pyloric stenosis (unrelated just more bad luck) at 7 weeks.
During his first 4 weeks they gave him 5 lumbar punctures, because he was developing hydrocephalus. If you have ever had one you will know how terribly painful having a needle stuck in your spine is. They used to send us out of the room as his screams were too distressing and we could do nothing to help. The neurosurgeon insisted on it, in fact. We were incredibly lucky in being able to avoid a shunt.
He had a neurosurgeon, developmental specialist, visiting nurse and of course paediatrician for the first 18 months of his life, several CT scans and finally came off the at risk list at 18 months, having achieved all milestones on time, amazingly.
Luck doesn’t even describe how fortunate we were to end up with a healthy boy. We owe a huge debt of gratitiude to Dr Muhonen and the staff at CHOC at Orange and Mission Viejo Hospital, Orange County, Southern California, without whom both Jacob and I would be dead (I was haemmorhaging too).
Jacob has some minor issues (some nerve damage, slightly tense reflexes, unusual ability to hear very high pitched sounds, had to have some OT for handwriting when younger), but nothing anyone else would notice. Incredibly, he is extremely bright with a high IQ, and can do all the things his peers can do, albeit with a little more of a struggle at times.
My Jake is 15 now and I can genuinely say that a week has not gone by in his life where I have not been grateful for having a healthy child, everything else is such a bonus. I am also grateful that we had the easy, healthy baby the second time around. Had I already had Ruth I would have realised just how excruciatingly ill he really was and been even more terrified. As we measured his head every day, twice a day, it never occurred to me that there was anything all that unusual about having to do that.
I will never forget the room we were in in the hospital, the look on the three faces as they told us the news and my husband squeezing my hand tight, tighter, tighter. I will never forget Sari, Jake’ nurse, giving me tissues to wipe my tears, although I did not realise I was crying, was just sitting staring at the floor thinking it was all my fault. The only time I looked up was when the doctor said “This is nothing you have done wrong. This is not your fault.” I remember gazing at him and willing that to be the truth. I will never forget my husband’s broken voice as he asked to be left alone with his wife, and going back out to Jacob’s humidicrib, where he lay, tiny, yellow, covered in what looked like a million wires and tubes. I remember Bruce carefully extracting him from the crib and putting him in my arms and saying “Hold your son” as I sat there, numb with shock. How stroking his skin and rocking him and singing to him calmed me a little, brought me back to myself.
I remember him having to be tube fed as he had no sucking reflex. I remember endlessly pumping breast milk till it dried up completely with the stress. I remember the day we came in and they had moved one of his needles, his tiny premmie arm vein was hard to find, so they had placed this huge needle along the side of his head, as the veins were closer to the surface there. How sick that made me feel, though it apparently didn’t bother my baby.
We had nightmares for weeks after his birth. Worst of all, we would wake up and the reality was not much better than the nightmare. Not knowing if he would be able to walk or talk and just having to wait was hard.
I didn’t mention any of this prior to now as I figured you were going through the mill and didn’t need any more to fuel the worry. There is literally nothing worse in the world than something going wrong for your child. I am very very glad for you all that your Evelyn is doing so well now, I was quite worried for you all, but didn’t speak up for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, I suspect you will remember it all, forever, as I know I will. But oh, what joy and luck to have been down the rabbit hole and emerged from the other side 🙂
Much love.
Oh Alison, what a story. Thank you for sharing it and I am so glad that Jake pulled through so well.
xx
Thanks, beautiful. It’s not one I share with pregnant women in general, for sure! Or new mums of babies who are premmie… But figured it was safe enough now. Reading your blogs has been a big trip down memory lane. My baby is playing on his lap top just now, all 5 feet 11 inches of him, with his hairy legs and fuzzy moustache, and we are lucky indeed to have him here, hale and healthy 🙂 xxx
Thank you so much for this insight.
It has helped prepare me as to what may very well happen in the weeks to come as I try so bloody hard to get my placenta to behave so this baby can stay within for just a bit longer.
Once again, I love your honesty.
I truly hope that your outcome is as good as mine.
I bled through my entire pregnancy with Isaac and he was born 10 days early with no trouble – despite steroid injections at 24 weeks and some preterm labour issues. They ended up finding a big clot behind my placenta that caused all the issues.
I’ve been thinking of you. xxx
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