Hospital life!

11th November 2015 - The day I was meant to be induced! Our first full day as a family! My first day as a mummy! 

We fought so hard and waited so long to become a mummy and daddy and yet here we were, less than 24 hours since giving birth, feeling all the mummy feels and bursting with love and pride for this wee bundle and yet someone else had washed her, fed her, changed her nappies and spent the night with her all before I had.

Arriving in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit that morning was such a relief. It was also one of the scariest moments of my life. Adam arrived soon after me and we talked and stroked our precious girl, so tiny in her incubator and surrounded by all sorts of machines. Every beep sending our hearts racing! 

We didn't know at this stage how the initial tests on her heart had gone and while we waited for the Consultant to arrive on the ward we got our first proper skin to skin time. Those moments will live with me forever.  

Skin to Skin

I had always wanted to breast feed however it can sometimes be difficult for heart babies to feed due to the effort it takes for them to suck and often they need to be tube fed. Although I so desperately wanted to feed her myself, I hadn't allowed myself to get my hopes up as I knew it was highly unlikely to happen.  During my first skin to skin contact, the Nurse looking after Lucy asked me if I would like to try feeding her! Of course I did!! It was all I had ever hoped for! 

I had no idea what I was doing but luckily Lucy did and she latched on straight away!! Having my baby girl feeding from me was unbelieveable! At that moment I felt like a real mum! My body had produced this beautiful wee girl and was finally doing what it was designed for.

We weren't allowed to stay over night when she was in PICU and so the Nurses bottled fed Lucy and when I was there, she would breast feed. 

I was discharged that day once my catheter was removed and we spent the rest of the day with Lucy, feeding, cuddling, and just taking it all in.  There were 4 babies in the room, each with a named Nurse and at times, alarms would go and we would have to clear the room while the medical team tended to the emergency.  Each time this happened was a stark reminder that Lucy was ill and it could so easy be her alarms sounding. 

The Cardiology Consultant on call when your baby is born becomes their named Consultant who will oversee their care.  Our first meeting with Lucy's Consultant didn't fill us with warmth!. She was quite abrupt, straight to the point and came across quite emotionless! She told us initial tests were positive and it didn't look like Lucy would need surgery right away (most heart babies require surgery within the first 24 hours). We were ecstatic but this was short lived when she informed us this could change so not to get our hopes up!

I was so upset that we wouldn't have the Cardiologist who had seen us antenatally and couldn't see any relationship forming with our new Doctor (luckily, as we got to know her, these feelings have changed and I wouldn't trust anyone as much as I do her).

Daddy Cuddles!

As I mentioned, we weren't allowed to stay overnight while Lucy was in PITU and so about 11pm the Nurse looking after her that night sent us home. We didn't want to leave but we knew we had no choice.  We lived about 45 minutes away and so we set off home, just the two of us. Walking through the door to be greeted by our Labrador and am empty house was heart breaking. Having given birth to our precious baby the day before and not having her in our arms as we arrived home was horrendous.

I went for a shower and climbed into bed. Nothing felt right! I had longed for a baby for so long and as soon as I was away from her, my whole body ached to hold her. I did sleep on and off but by 7am we were back in the car and on our way to Glasgow.

The Nurses in PITU are amazing. No words are enough for what they do. The thing I loved most though is they way the call the parents mum and dad.  This sounds odd but instead of saying Adam and Lynn they would call us mum and dad. I'm sure this is because they see so many different parents that its difficult to remember everyone's names but each time they said it to me something inside would light up!

We spent the second day asking Nurses if we could hold Lucy, waiting to be told to feed her, asking if we could change her and generally feeling like we had to ask permission to be her parents! This wasn't something the staff made us feel it was just the situation we were in and we didn't want to do anything that might harm her! 

We left again for a second night at home without Lucy.  

I was expressing by now and at least felt like I was doing something for her. I wasn't producing much but every little helps as they say.

The next morning we had to wait for the Midwife to visit before we could leave for the hospital and the morning dragged on. We got a visit from a close family friend which helped occupy us and it was so lovely to be able to talk about Lucy.

When we eventually arrived and went to wash our hands, we realised Lucy wasn't in her incubator. Another baby was in the space where we had left her.

My heart stopped. Where was she? What had happened? 

Seeing the panic on my face, one of the Nurses rushed over to tell us Lucy had been moved to the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) on the floor above. The relief was immense. Not only because she was okay but she was now out of the critical stage and on her way to coming home!

SCBU was a much more relaxed atmosphere. The rooms were brighter and parents had much more involvement. I remember asking one of the Nurses if I could dress Lucy and she looked at me as if I was mad! She said "of course you can love, she's your baby"!!

The best part of being in SCBU was that I could finally stay overnight with her.  She had to stay in the ward but I could stay in a private room right next to it.

I was still attempting to breast feed and express but was having problems getting her to feed for long. The Breast Feeding Nurse came to the ward to "help"! All she helped with was making my anxiety levels worse and eventually my mum asked her to leave.

I was so anxious about staying overnight without Adam but I was so glad to be close to Lucy. It had been such an emotional day with the whole feeding issues but we also got the news that the Cardiologists were happy to discharge her from their point of view and to review her in their clinic in 2 weeks time. We couldn't believe it! We had prepared ourselves for a long stay, maybe even months, but 2 days later she was allowed to go home! 

We were to stay that night and have some final tests done in the morning including some bloods to check her jaundice levels.

Once Adam had gone home for the night one of the lovely Nurses on duty came and sat with me a while. I told her about the issues we had with feeding and our experience with the Breast Feeding Nurse and although she probably had loads to do, she sat and helped me try to feed Lucy again.

My anxiety levels were through the roof and I was shattered but within a few minutes she was feeding quite happily! We had had to fit her with a feeding tube earlier in the day but she kept pulling it out and so the Nurse took it out altogether.  Lucy had obviously had enough of that because she fed quite happily after that!

Unfortunately she would take so long to feed that she would get tired and so we would have go top her up which meant I struggled to produce more milk but in between feeds I expressed as much as possible and top up feeds were done with my breast milk.

That night, whenever Lucy woke looking for a feed the Nurse would come and get me and for the first time I actually felt like a mum, providing for my daughter, and it felt amazing!

The next day her bloods came back and because she was slightly jaundiced, they decided to keep us in. It wasn't all bad though as they also allowed me to have Lucy in the room with me instead of on the ward!

Just after Adam left us, the same Nurse from the night before came in to say he could have stayed too! I phoned him immediately but he was on the phone! By the time I got him, he was almost half way home! He turned back though and we spent our first night together as a family of 3!  I would feed and then express and Adam would do all the cleaning of the expressing machine! We were already such a wee team!

The next couple of days were spent with Lucy having treatment for her jaundice. We had our little private room so it felt like we were on our own a lot but we still had to let the Nurses know how much she had fed, weigh her nappies and generally report back to them which made me feel like we were being tested which of course we weren't but I just wanted to be at home doing the normal things a new mum does without being watched all the time.

UV Therapy

Also, because PITU and SCBU are such delicate places to be, it didn't feel right to have lots of visitors so apart from our parents, brothers and his wife and my friend, no one else had met Lucy. Once again I felt deprived of normality.

Obviously we knew Lucy was in the best place but psychologically it was hard going for us. On about day 6 I had reached breaking point. I was tired, hormonal and just fed up. We had known Lucy's heart condition could have us in hospital for months but we didn't expect to be kept in for jaundice!

Rainbow view from our window!

The Nurses that night were obviously getting a little worried about my state of mind as they practically kidnapped Lucy and made us go out for food. It was only a McDonald's and we were only away about an hour but it was such a relief to be outside and not eating Marks and Spencer sandwiches!! 

On day 7, we were told we could go home!! I was ecstatic! Finally we could get home, into our own routine and show off our beautiful girl to the people who were so desperate to meet her! Unfortunately her bloods were still off and when the Doctor on call came to say we would need to spend another night, I broke down!

I just needed to be at home, close to my friends and family and my dog!! 

In the grand scheme of it, we do know how lucky we were to be there just 8 days and that her condition was as stable as it could be but we already felt robbed of so much and being stuck in one room all day every day is hard going no matter how long for.

Luckily the next day they agreed to let us home as long as Lucy could have her bloods rechecked at our local hospital and that we would need to go back if they were still off but I would have agreed to them cutting my arms off to get out of there so that was no issue!

We packed all our stuff, put Lucy in her "going home" outfit and walked out the ward! We were both so nervous and kept looking back to make sure no one was going to stop us!! It felt weird that we were allowed to just take her after having to report to people all week but at 8 days old, we were finally taking our daughter home and life was just beginning!

Going Home!