Saturday 9 October 2010
Saturday 9th October
We popped in to visit some friends of a friend on the way to the hospital today - their baby boy is a graduate of NICU. It was good to talk to people that actually understand what we are going through, and to see their son looking so well gives us a lot of hope.
Friday 8 October 2010
The First Two Weeks - 25th September to 8th October
Leela stayed in hospital for three nights, to recover from the caesarean. Although of course, being her, she didn't want to be pushed about in a wheelchair and was determined to walk everywhere.
The first night, I drove home on my own, feeling completely shell-shocked. Just got home and went to bed, staring into darkness. Not a lot more I could do. I was too numb and confused to feel any real feelings.
That trend continued for the first few days - on the surface, we just accepted what had happened. We spent all day in the hospital, looking at our helpless children.
On the Monday, Leela was allowed to leave the hospital. Driving home from there, without the babies in the car, was totally devastating. Arriving home to an empty house, which has baby stuff all over the place, and an unfinished nursery, was even worse than totally devastating. This was the saddest moment of our lives, and we just collapsed in our own heaps.
The first couple of weeks went by in a bit of a daze. All day, every day at NICU, just looking in the incubators. We started to hear all the things that we'd be hearing a lot over the next few weeks - 'It's a roller-coaster' , 'it's all normal', ' to be expected' . When you ask someone when they think they might be out of hospital, or when they might reach a certain point, you always get the same answer - 'difficult to say, every baby's different'. All we knew was, things were going as expected. Which was pretty craply, from our point of view.
So our babies would start having all the things they'd have to get used to - drips, TPN, lipids, diuretics, cannulas, blood transfusions, x-rays, head scans, antibiotics, steroids, caffeine, morphine, Gaviscon. We'd start learning a hell of a lot more about human biology that we thought we'd ever know.
After about two weeks, the realisation finally sunk in properly. Both of us, at about the same time, had a few really rough days, which we just spent crying. We'd got past the denial stage and kind of woke up. This was actually happening to us and our babies. We just had to get on with it.
The first night, I drove home on my own, feeling completely shell-shocked. Just got home and went to bed, staring into darkness. Not a lot more I could do. I was too numb and confused to feel any real feelings.
That trend continued for the first few days - on the surface, we just accepted what had happened. We spent all day in the hospital, looking at our helpless children.
On the Monday, Leela was allowed to leave the hospital. Driving home from there, without the babies in the car, was totally devastating. Arriving home to an empty house, which has baby stuff all over the place, and an unfinished nursery, was even worse than totally devastating. This was the saddest moment of our lives, and we just collapsed in our own heaps.
The first couple of weeks went by in a bit of a daze. All day, every day at NICU, just looking in the incubators. We started to hear all the things that we'd be hearing a lot over the next few weeks - 'It's a roller-coaster' , 'it's all normal', ' to be expected' . When you ask someone when they think they might be out of hospital, or when they might reach a certain point, you always get the same answer - 'difficult to say, every baby's different'. All we knew was, things were going as expected. Which was pretty craply, from our point of view.
So our babies would start having all the things they'd have to get used to - drips, TPN, lipids, diuretics, cannulas, blood transfusions, x-rays, head scans, antibiotics, steroids, caffeine, morphine, Gaviscon. We'd start learning a hell of a lot more about human biology that we thought we'd ever know.
After about two weeks, the realisation finally sunk in properly. Both of us, at about the same time, had a few really rough days, which we just spent crying. We'd got past the denial stage and kind of woke up. This was actually happening to us and our babies. We just had to get on with it.
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