Tag Archives: hospital

Emergency

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When your child hangs limp in your arms, flopping forward like a battered rag doll, it’s terrifying.

Everything leaves your body. Your breath, your mind, your soul, everything. I sat on the floor in my empty husk of a body while I clutched her as she drooped.

I said her name.

I shouted her name.

I cried her name.

And then, with a choke, she cried.

She sat up and looked at me and I came down from the place on the ceiling where I had been hovering, waiting and watching. I came down with all the force of the universe behind me and I pulled her close and rocked us both.

Ten minutes before she had slipped in the bathroom and hit her head on the side of the bath. She cried, I cuddled. She calmed down and we went through the usual routine of massage, pyjamas, cuddle, bed. No huge bump, no red marks – nothing as bad as I was expecting after the loud thwack of head meeting bath.

I put the blackout down to how frantically she was crying, how when she is wracked with gulping sobs she gets breathless. I put her to bed, sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star when she asked and kissed her goodnight. I shut the door with tears rolling down my face. Never again do I want to feel my baby go limp in my arms while I am powerless and clueless and senseless.

Half an hour later the husband went to her when she cried. I felt something wasn’t right so I followed. And then came the sick.

Beans has never vomited before, so it really scared her. She screamed and panicked and we shushed and stroked and tried to calm her down. She started wagging her finger at herself and saying no. She was telling herself off.

Clearly she had no idea what had happened and, assuming that she had made a mess, saw fit to reprimand herself. My heart splintered, bursting out of my chest with the impact.

No sweetheart, it’s ok. You’re ok. You are just a bit poorly, you’re not naughty. You’re a good girl. It’s ok.

Her frightened eyes blink back at me.

No?

Sweetheart, you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s ok.

Oh dear.

I cuddled and shushed and paced.

We clean up as best we can and at some point it dawns on me that we should get her checked by a doctor. That’s what they tell you to do isn’t it? Isn’t it? Suddenly I feel as helpless and lost as I did when I cradled her as a newborn and wondered what I was supposed to do with her. I didn’t know whether we needed to take her to A&E or whether we were over reacting.

I remembered sitting with a friend at the age of eight in the sick bay at school, staring at the flaking layers of paint on the walls, red then blue then grey then blue, while she threw up into a mixing bowl as I held her hair back and tried to think of something else. Her mum came to pick her up and take her to hospital.

Yes. We should go.

And there we were for three hours. I naively assumed that young children – babies, she’s my baby – are seen quickly, as are head injuries. I was wrong. For three, long, torturous hours we paced and soothed and paced and cuddled and paced and sung.

We sat in the overflowing waiting room and watched the sick and injured file in; the old in wheelchairs with bandaged legs or cut arms, the young with ice packs on knees and grazes on faces, the huddled pairs of women with no obvious affliction, eyes fixed to their mobile phones.

We questioned why we couldn’t wait in the children’s area. Where the door is closed and it’s quiet and she can toddle and sit and be safe and calm. We just couldn’t they said.

We soothed, we paced, we rocked, we sung.

I tried to keep my panic at bay.

We were seen, finally, and Beans was greeted by a woman in latex gloves shining a torch in her eye. She decided this woman was not her friend and I had to pin her against my chest while her shakes and her sobs reverberated off my rib cage and through my body all the way to my toes while the torch was shined and ears were checked I could soothe and pace some until the sobs subsided.

And then, once we had been made to feel like those parents, the ones who jump at the slightest scrape, we were sent on our way. Sent back home with a leaflet telling us that with children under four you only need to seek medical attention in the case of fits or constant vomiting after a fall or bump. Back home feeling stupid and scared and stressed and upset and worried and relieved.

I know I have a lifetime of worry ahead of me, a forever of caring and loving and feeling the fear. I know that wasn’t the last time we will have to visit A&E, but I hope with every last ounce of my being that never, ever again will I have to be so helpless and scared as I was for the eternal five seconds that she hung lifelessly in my arms.

What If…?

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It was quite early on in my pregnancy when I decided that I would ideally like to have a homebirth.

I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to hospitals and the idea of being able to go through what would likely be the biggest, scariest and most painful moments of my life in the safe cocoon of my own home really appealed to me.

Homebirths however are not that popular these days and as people heard of my choice concerned advice and ‘you’re so brave to want that’ proclamations rained down on me. The biggest hurdle that I had to overcome was the husbands resistance to the idea. ‘Babies are born in hospitals, not homes. That’s just how it is’ he said when I first broached the subject with him.

I spent a lot of time scouring the internet for as much information and statistics as I could find regarding home birth versus hospital births. I openly admit to being a control freak and I felt I needed to arm myself with facts and figures to calm my own nerves and to win the husband around.

I found out what kind of care I would receive outside of hospital, what pain relief would be available to me, what would happen in an emergency and endless figures about scary things like mortality rates, hospital transfer rates and complication facts.

The husband warmed to the idea, fears put to rest by the promise of fantastic midwife care, and one night in late January 2011 I went into labour. Around twelve hours later, surrounded by three midwives and right in the middle of our front room, Beans arrived into the world and took her very first breath. A miracle.

I consider myself so lucky to have had the amazing birth experience that I did. Beans was born exactly where I wanted her to be and we were all safe, well and impeccably cared for throughout.

But what if I had never had that choice? What if I had to give birth at home, but I was alone with no health care professional there to help? I have sat behind the screen of my computer trying to imagine giving birth without the support and guidance of a midwife. The only word that I can come up with is terrifying. Absolutely, utterly terrifying.

What about the aftercare? The invaluable help with breastfeeding, weaning and what to do if your baby becomes ill – without that I would be absolutely lost.

Some people don’t have that choice.

Nirob’s mother Shipra lives in the village of Bosikali. Shipra has given birth to four children. In each instance, she gave birth at home without a doctor or trained midwife, and she did not receive any antenatal medical attention. Her first three children all died within hours or days of their birth (1 day, 6 hours, and 3 days respectively).

From April 23rd 2012 Save The Children are running the Build It For Babies campaign to raise money to help mums and babies in Bangladesh. A place where every hour of every day, 11 newborn babies die in Bangladesh. That’s about one every six minutes. That’s up to 960 newborn babies in the time that will pass between now and the start of the campaign. That is why we all need to do something.

Get involved, read more about the campaign here. Donate £1 by sending XVRL71 £1 in a text to 70070 – it takes less than 30 seconds and is so worth it. Help to spread the word by writing your own post and get involved in #blogitforbabies. You can even meet the legendary Mammasaurus for fun/humiliation/frolics all in the name of charity on her epic tour of the country.

As bloggers our capacity for promoting change is huge, it would be amazing if we could all really get behind Save The Childrens campaign.

This is the NHS, my hand are cold…

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Yesterday was the day I had been dreading since the appointment letter dropped through my letter box. In fact, only now it’s over do I realise just how much I was dreading it. My time had come to go to the hospital to have my breast lumps looked at.

My mum came over so that the husband could look after Boo while she drove me to the hospital (yes, sometimes I still need my mummy), I pulled my red jeans on in an effort to prove that they really are life changing and would bestow me with courage and off we went. Continue reading →