Have you had a premmie baby?

Oh, you have?

So you know.

You understand what it’s like to have your baby too soon.

You know the fear that rises up into your throat like a ball of fire when the doctors say that the baby is coming now.

You know how the world spins out of control as you do the calculations, listen to the statistics.

You remember the different emotions all mingled in together with the tears and the sweat and the adrenaline.

Hope.

Fear.

Excitement

and

reluctance

You know that feeling of wanting everything to be okay,

waiting for that first cry and celebrating when you hear the tiny mewing, so different from your expectations

or

waiting for that first cry and hearing nothing

but the quick, sharp movements of the midwives and doctors -

orders barking across the room and if you look to the open resuscitation table, you catch that first glimspe of your baby.

Boy or girl.

Twins, maybe.

You’ve had a baby born too soon so you remember the tears, you remember those tiny little faces and crinkled eyes with milky blue newness peering out into the world.

You know that first, catch your breath moment of love, the first tentative touch before watching scrubbed in,blue gowned nurses run with your baby through the doors and out into the unknown.

If your little baby was ventilated, the memory of the hiss and whoomph of the machine, may still wake you at night,

the thought of the CPAP machine, pushing vital air into tiny lungs, just a little too underdeveloped to be able to work on their own.

The nasal canula covered in tape, pushing up tiny noses, which the NICU nurses refer to as ‘piggy’.

You remember the strange sights and smells and the sounds of the life giving machines that buzz and ping in the NICU and how your baby was wired up and canulated and monitored so that sometimes you could hardly believe that there was a baby in amongst all of that medical copper.

Doctors and nurses giving you updates on this tiny little creature, who is so much yours but in  many ways not your own. You nod and take it in, seconds later not remembering a thing, except for the first time you reached into the humidicrib and stroked the soft downy newborn fuzz and felt the warmth as your baby grasped your giant pinky finger.

There are words that keep you up long into the night, big words, bigger risks, while you sit and pump the milk that will eventually be tubed into a stomach that is the size of a marble.

If you are a dad you might have stood by your new baby’s incubator and wondered when this would end, wondered why it had happened and how you are going to juggle family and work and now daily trips into the hospital.

You will know about the babes that didn’t make it. You will remember them long after they have left this world.

You will know the mixed feelings.

Horror, sadness but thankfulness that your baby is still hanging in there.

You remember.

You might know how it feels when your baby stops breathing.

Those heart stopping minutes as strangers work to save a little life.

The absolute relief when they are stable once more, the apnoea machines that alarm and the sternal rub that you become quite good at in those early weeks because your baby forgets to breathe more than once a day.

You’ve had a premmie baby, so you know.

You can remember the first feed that wasn’t a tube, the very first bath outside of the humidicrib, the first 24 hours without oxygen.

You know that often it’s one step forward and two steps back

and then one day it’s just three steps forward.

You know about the little celebrations,

hitting the 2kg mark (knowing that home is not far away),

the first time they wear clothes instead of nothing but a nappy and how happy it makes you feel.

I know that , if you were one of the lucky ones, you can recall that last day in the NICU when you said goodbye, to the doctors and the nurses who had become your world, for a while.

Those first shakey steps out of the unit.

Perhaps, like me, you stopped dead at the doors of the hospital, unable to move, fearful of what lay ahead, wondering how you would cope with these tiny little beings, without the support of the NICU.

I remember those days that bled into weeks and then months.

I look at them.

I know they are miracles.

I remember.

It’s Premmie Awareness week in Australia.

Two weeks ago, one of the paediatric registrars asked if  we would be interested in taking part in the examination process for the doctors wanting to become paediatricians.

I said yes.

Ivy was the ‘patient’ for, what they call, the long case study.

An hour long interview where the doctor extracts as much information and then examines the client, so as to be able to make a management plan for her care, which he then has to go and feed back to the examiners.

The stress must have been mind blowing because you could almost palpate the fear in the air

and

it put a human face to the medical profession.

It was really interesting and I learnt alot.

Not about Ivy, because, really, I was feeding the diagnosis and everything to the almost paeds to try to make the exam as easy as possible.

What I learnt about was the process it takes these doctors to make the grade.

I was especially interested because, over the last couple of months, Immy has put forward the idea that she would like to go into medicine, specifially with children, which, in itself is interesting but that’s another post in itself.

They come from all over Australia, so they don’t ‘know’ any of the children in the exam.

The two doctors who examined Ivy were  nervous.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a grown man visibly shake.

Everything weighted on this final exam, which consisted of  two long cases and four short studies.

They either pass on the day

or they don’t.

Their second chance basically puts them back a whole year in their studies.

I can’t even begin to imagine that kind of pressure.

The closest I came to anything like that were my midwifery OSCES.

+++

They both had very different approaches.

The first was not such a good historian but he was kind and listened well.

He was gentle with Ivy.

The second was excellent with taking notes but he had very little  interaction with Ivy or me and was quite abrupt and rough during the examination.

Ivy was a little bit scared of him, I think.

Especially when he almost ripped her PICC line out in his haste to do the check up.

I wonder which one will do better in the examiners eyes.

+++

Our girl was as good as gold and spent her time drawing pictures for her paed.

Last week, I had a haircut.

We all had haircuts.

I have to put it down to the fact that we all had haircuts and the poor hairdresser (who I like very much) badly needed a break

and she should have had that break before she cut my hair

because, let’s face it;

It is the haircut from hell.

I have spent the week feeling very sorry for myself and trying to hide the fact that I now have a hair helmet residing on my head.

I cried when it was suggested it took away my femininity.

My daughters have tried to crimp and scrunch some style into it

but it’s no use.

It’s awful and I will just have to cover all the mirrors for a few months  and wear a paper bag, while I grow it out.

I’ve decided though, I am no longer going to wallow.

I am going to have a good, long, hard laugh at myself and I thought you could all laugh with me

because every clown needs an audience.

When you have a PICC line that is connected to IV antibiotics 24 hours a day you need a bag.

When you have to wear a bag all day and all night and you are three and a half, it is essential that it be

a) fashionable

b) washable

c) big enough

because when you wear a PICC line bag you have to have things inside, other than an infusion pump, don’t you know.

It’s important to make it your own.

Yes, the contents of  the PICC line bag should reflect one’s personality.