Day 1- Day 4 (It only hurts when I don't laugh)

If you were listening to your husband make the initial round of phone calls saying "He's here!" and realised hubby was referring to you not by name but as "The Zipper", you'd probably deck him. Not me, I thought it was bloody funny, and the perfect nose-tweak to life's little annoyances.

Anyhoo.. back to the story. It's about 8am on Wednesday morning, 19th October 2005, and I've just had a very welcome sponge down by my midwife, who has also brought us tea and toast to combat the exhaustion that threatens to overwhem us.

Wayne is back, and reassures me that Braeden’s doing better. He’s on oxygen and has drips and lines etc, but his breathing is less laboured and he’s got some colour. They couldn’t raise a vein on him (just like his Mum) so they put the drip in via his umbilicus. I’m allowed to see him when I’m able, but not for long because he’s still under direct intervention.

After ages and ages, I’m taken off in a wheelchair to visit my son in ICU. (As we zoom through the labour ward corridors, I hear women screaming in various rooms - seems to me there's been a constant chorus of screamers all night, and I take fierce pride in myself that I managed not to let out even a single one, despite otherwise wimping out entirely. What a twerp...)

I’m not allowed to stay long in ICU, but I am allowed to touch him again. Horrible to see all the lines and wires coming off him, more horrible to hear his ragged panting and wheezing as he struggles to breathe past the crap in his lungs. As we watch, they siphon more bubbles and gunk out of the line down to his stomach. Nothing I can do here, and I’m told to go up to my room and go to bed. I can come down later after I’ve slept and showered, but only two visitors at a time please, and remember we have to be allowed to get on with our job of looking after your son. He’s okay, now go on up. And stop worrying.

Wayne wheels me up to my room, one floor up and almost exactly overhead from where Braeden lies in ICU. My leg is still dead so it’s impossible to consider the shower I so desperately want, but at least I got a bed bath while they were stitching me so that’s something. I’m put to bed, kissed and hugged, then Wayne leaves for home and some desperately needed sleep (which of course he didn’t get).

Around 10am I wake and despite being under orders NOT to get out of bed or shower without help, I do it anyway. The shower feels unbelievably wonderful, especially when I notice the shower head is detachable and there’s a bench to sit on while I direct the hot water where I please. Have a gentle prod at the stitches.. ow. Feels like forty miles of bad road with gravel rash. Best not to look further, eh. Denial sounds like a plan.

Afterwards I lift my heavy suitcase on to the bed and fossick through looking for suitable attire. Not interested in PJ’s, I dress for the day, and even apply makeup and hair gel. Notice someone’s left me breakfast (cold toast, cornflakes and some tinned peaches), pick at it. Wayne rings me to say he can’t sleep – can he come up? Please honey, I can’t sit here alone. While I wait, I head down to ICU and sit there with our baby, trying to be upbeat and positive. At least he’s now off the oxygen and his breathing has improved, but it’s still hell to see the little guy so wired up and limp.

So begins a pattern of the next few days, of my traipsing back and forth to ICU, sitting with my baby, holding my end up with visitors and trying not to be a misery-guts. Almost immediately I was set upon by the first of many hospital personnel who were determined to help me go into full milk production asap. (Good thing I wanted to breastfeed, eh.. I got the feeling though that even if I’d felt otherwise, I wouldn’t have got away with it). As a result, after the attentions of two of these staff members I had a whole new area of soreness to add to my woes. Or should I say, two new areas. We did get a little colostrum out on two separate occasions, and this precious commodity was duly taken down to ICU and spooned into Braeden’s mouth. Clever little bugger gobbled it right up, without even waking.

That first night was the worst night. Waking from fitful sleep at 11pm, I wandered the maternity ward corridors with aching swollen feet (all those bags of saline catching up with me), hearing babies cry in the night and going quietly nuts for my own child. Making matters worse, I was freezing cold and couldn’t find any blankets in my room. I asked one nurse and was given a flannelette sheet and told it was a blanket. Hmmm.. seems I’m also now hopelessly insane and don’t know a sheet from a blanket?

I go back to my room and sit miserably on the bed, wondering if ICU will freak if I go back down again and realising I don’t care what fire eating dragons from hell stand in my way, nothing is worse than not knowing. Just then a head pops around the door and an angel in uniform enters – it’s the duty midwife and she’s finally caught me in the room and awake. She listens to me grizzle on about cold and helplessness and worry, and comes to light with a real blanket. She also tells me that she went through a very similar experience with her first child, and knows how wretched it is to be on a floor of mothers and babies, but your baby is not with you. She asks if I want ICU to let me have more interaction with my son, and I instantly lose it completely and sob on her shoulder. After settling me down, she tucks me into bed and departs like smoke in the night…

(What I didn’t know is that she rang ICU and said “the mother is going crazy up here, please let her see her baby more, and please let her help with whatever she can”.)

An hour later I’m woken out of a deep sleep by a nurse standing over my bed, asking me if I want to go to ICU because “your son has woken and he’s asking for you”.

Stitches, cucumber feet and spasmed tailbone or not, I’m out of that bed faster than light speed and hobbling off towards the elevators. Security is very tight after hours, so I have to be escorted down to ICU (and afterwards, back again) because the lifts and doors won’t work if you don’t have access cards. Strangely, I am never given a temporary access card despite many people promising to get on to this. The next two nights are a succession of long suffering staff members zapping me here there and everywhere as I rotate in and out of the ICU.

Scrubbed into ICU, I am introduced to Braeden’s nurse of the night, a former midwife called Pat who literally saved my sanity that night. This was to be my first attempt at breastfeeding, and if not for Pat, I’d have given it up as an impossibility by dawn’s first light. I’m naturally clumsy, my boobs aren’t exactly manageable at the best of times, I couldn’t sit straight in the chair (ouchees), and Braeden wasn’t exactly up to helping either of us, but somehow Pat’s cheerful patience and clever re-tries helped us get something out of me and into him, and made me feel less like a lump of uselessness.

It also meant I got cuddles with my child – hard to do with a baby wired up the wazoo, but every snuggle felt better than Christmas.

I get back to bed at 5am, and at 6.30 Wayne’s on the phone asking for updates. Felt amazing to give him the good news, but not so good to hear he still hasn’t slept and that he hasn’t been able to eat since before we went into labour. Good grief… Admonish him severely to get some sleep and some food, and I’ll see him later on in the afternoon.

Naturally he ignores me and is in my room by 10am. He did bring Subways though..

The next few days pass as a blur - I'm only in my room long enough to shower (repeatedly), spend some time with the endless parade of visitors (who kept me sane), and occasionally snatching a little sleep between phone calls that told me it was okay to come on down again. I notice that bubba doesn't wake much for feeds during the day, but is asking for feeds pretty much constantly all night (this is an early herald of his pattern). Between his night feeds and the day visitors, I get an average of an hour and a half's sleep each night. By day 3 I'm close to exhaustion, but adrenalin and excitement keep me going because finally, at 10am on Friday 21st I am told Braeden's getting discharged from ICU and I can take him up to my room with me.

I instantly burst into a flood of tears, which has the concerned staff asking if I have worries I'd like to discuss. Nope - just bloody happy. Don't mind me. Thank you all, you're wonderful!

You'd be hard pressed to find a prouder, more fit-to-burst Mama waddling behind the crib as I took my baby back to the maternity ward. (By now my feet were so swollen that they seemed in danger of exploding at any moment).

Back in my room, it was time for yet another wincy potty stop, and let's just say that I was rather surprised by the appearance of a great wad of surgical gauze that fell out mid-pee.

I guess I should have fished it out, but really... the staff would just have to take my word for it's existence. (Strangely, many seemed very sceptical.. case of not wanting to believe, I suppose).

The next day, btw, something resembling a mini placenta fell out, and this I DID keep to show the staff!! It wasn't a piece of retained placenta, because my placenta was intact. The diagnosis from the charge midwife was that it was "mostly tissue with some clotting" but no one's any the wiser as to what tissue it is. Something's missing on the body's stock take, but as yet I don't know quite what (about the size of a human kidney, btw.)

A fibroid, perhaps? No one's saying. Seems the surgical packing was probably holding it up, and I'm lucky that I didn't get any complications from the forgotten packing or the absconding bit of mystery meat.

So to say I'm in a world of hurt is pretty fair, but I don't care because I've got my baby and I don't have to keep wandering the corridors day and night. (Huh.. you know what thought did!)

That night, Braeden decided that I was simply not sufficient as a milch cow, and bellowed the place down from 1 am to 5.30 am. By 2am (realising he was hungry and that I wasn't coming up with the goods) I finally joined the ranks of Night Boingers and buzzed for help. I'm told that it's a common trick of 2-3 day olds to pull "the four hour stint" whereby nothing works and you just have to wait it out. It seems the most likely reason is their bodies adapting to milk and digestion, and the inevitable wind it produces is quite beyond their understanding. Once they learn to fart to relieve the pressure/pain, it all gets much better, but until then you just have to work through it.

It takes Braeden a couple of hours all right, and in the finish they wrap him up in bed with me in a sitting-up position (not great for my tail or toes but I'm happy to compromise my comfort for his), and straight-jacket us in so that I can't possibly drop him in the night.

This works for about an hour until I desperately need to pee, so I'm helped up. Braeden has also been given a little formula to top him up (I'm completely dry), but refuses to settle if put on his back. Only one thing for it... waddle up and down hospital corridors with a snoring baby on my shoulder. Easy to ignore feeling physically unwell when there's a warm bundle of wonderful puffing air against your neck. (but girl you'll pay for this tomorrow...)

So Saturday rolls around, and I've had a whole hour's sleep that night too. Can hardly move due to back spasms, undercarriage corrugations and fluid retention that now spreads right up to my knees. Visitors start early (10am) and I'm so pleased to see my sister in law that I thrust Braeden at her, call her an angel and hobble off to a desperately needed shower.

Wayne arrives soon after; he's spent the night at his mother's and actually got some SLEEP and some FOOD for the first time since Monday night. We'd discovered the day before that he'd been taking his flu medication every twelve hours instead of once in 24, and as a result was running continuously on uppers. Sheesh....

Rather than have him drive an hour and a half down State Highway 1 on the start of Labour Weekend traffic, his mother took him in for the night and saved us all a lot of worry. The animals were left unattended for the night, but they survived (and of course, so did Wayne which was the main thing!)

Busy day with visitors, baby sleeps pretty much continuously because he's been up most of the night. Wish I could.. but even if there wasn't someone visiting, the staff kept banging in and out. Cleaners, lactation consultants, midwives, nurses, caterers, then the shift would change and it would all start again. Even in the middle of the night the hospital is a noisy place, with the Phantom Boingers hitting their room buzzers every few minutes.

I'm so exhausted that I'm starting to get ratty to everyone (except baby - he gets a lifetime free pass from where I sit right now). My midwife calls in for another visit and signs me out to let me go home the next day, however by late afternoon I've totally had enough of all the bustle and annoyances, and I want out NOW.

Hit the boinger - ask the new duty midwife if I can discharge now. She gets permission from my midwife via the phone, and we're on our way out the door before someone changes their minds.

Saturday 22nd October, 7.30pm. Home sweet home at last.... As we drive in the gate, we notice that the young Pawlonias are flowering for the first time ever, and we tell Braeden that Nutters Grove is putting out a big welcome to the son and heir!