and the boy has been busy growing and changing and such.

“Do you know what is coming very soon?” he asks as he slips his arms around my belly.

I play along;

“no,” I say

“is it my birthday?”

He shakes his head and looks at me as if I am silly

but he doesn’t speak it.

Instead he asks me for some paper and with all the confidence of a first grader he fashions a card with two people (he and I)

holding hands and smiling into the universe.

Inside the cover he has written some words, strung together -

“hape mumvis ba” it announces.

“It says happy mother’s day” he proclaims proudly.

Of course it does.

It does but it doesn’t

and it kind of sums up how I feel about celebrating my motherhood this year.

I am but I’m not.

At home I feel a little out of place.

My things are not where they usually are

and the kids are having to relearn who to defer to when they need things.

I have to relearn too.

It’s been hard to slip into the family again after so long away.

I feel like a ghost of sorts

or perhaps an almost mother -

you know,

the woman who is on the cusp of something big,

huge changes

a steep learning curve -

all of that multi tasking goodness that comes with being responsible for others.

The cook, the cleaner, the driver.

The peace keeper, the adjudicator, the judge.

The bedtime rangler and fixer of all things sad.

I’m not that, right now.

I am here and I am catching up.

Catching my breath.

I look at the white folded paper, the penciled in features of a mum and her son (he and I)

and the early attempts of  his spelling.

I want to laugh and I want to cry.

Everything is so mixed up, disheveled and not the life I left almost ten weeks ago now

but his love and his enthusiasm for me is steadfast.

“Hape mumvis ba,” I repeat,

all of the kids now gathered in the kitchen, observing our interaction

and he looks at me a little embarrassed because he thinks I am picking out his mistakes.

“Hape mumvis ba, I love it !” I tell him and give him the biggest cuddle I can muster.

I love it because it’s him at this age, in all of its beautiful imperfection

but I love it more because it’s me in all of mine.

So, to all of you – mothers in the making, mothers of one or many, mothers of little ones, big ones, angels lost.

Grandmothers, great grandmothers, mothers to others:

Hape Mumvis Ba !

Whether you celebrate or not, I hope your day is lovely

and may we all accept the person we are right now   – our perfectly imperfect selves.

Dear diary,

In addition to the above;

we hope to stay out of the hospital for a very long time.

Could you please let The Universe know we’re done.

We are going to spend some time finding our happy place again.

Sincerely, the small girl and her mother.

I have seen a lot of hospital in my time as a parent

but never in my life have I experienced anything like the treatment

that Ivy (and I) received today.

For a start we had waited for doctors for the last five days

to come and consult

but they just never turned up,

our weekend of gate leave cut short by a day because the anesthetist

failed to show up at all on Friday, so we were made to come

in the hope that someone would see Ivy on Sunday.

Nope.

So, this morning I knew that Ivy was on the emergency list

for aspiration of the abscesses

but we had no time for theatre, we had no plan and

I didn’t even know whether to keep her nil by mouth from midnight.

At around nine

(just when we were on our way to pathology to have bloods taken)

the anesthetic registrar turned up and

after being unable to find her notes,

asked me a bunch of questions about Ivy.

I told him she hated the mask

and that she was hard to cannulate

and that she needed midazolam as a pre med.

I told him she needed hydrocortisone just before she went into surgery

and that she had just spent the last eight weeks in the hospital

and was now frightened of anything to do with needles,

procedures and surgery.

He told me that  he understood and, although he was not the doctor who would

be present for the procedure,

that he would chart some oral midaz for Ivy.

He had no idea what time she was going to theatre

but encouraged us to go and have her bloods taken.

Which we did

and then we had a consult with the immunologist.

As we made our way back to the ward

I received a phone call telling me that surgery were ready for us.

When we got there all hell broke loose.

One nurse said she had no idea what was going on,

another told me they had been looking for us for hours

(clearly that was a lie)

and then the theatre nurse turned up.

She took it upon herself to yell at me and tell me

that I had kept everyone waiting and that I was lucky that they hadn’t

cancelled Ivy’s place.

Then she said that Ivy should have a pre med

and that it was my job to insist,

that she should have been cannulated first

and then had bloods while she was asleep and that she couldn’t have

anything to help her to relax now because there was no time.

We’d had no time to prepare Ivy

beyond the knowledge that she was to have surgery today

and all of a sudden people were poking her and prodding her

and pulling her in every direction.

Of course she stared to cry

and I did too.

The very unsympathetic “paediatric nurse” then told me

she didn’t have time for our upset and that I needed to get it together

for Ivy’s sake.

That made me feel so angry

because if all of this was for Ivy’s sake

then there would have been a good plan

and kind nurses

and doctors who actually turned up on time

to find out all about her little quirks and her allergies and her needs.

Instead the nurse told me if I didn’t like what she was offering I could refuse

and the surgery could be cancelled.

After waiting for five days inside the hospital

and three days before that at home for there to be any movement at all,

I told her that we would be going ahead.

Ivy was hysterical.

I carried her to the anesthetic bay because there was no bed ready

and no porter to push our invisible ride

but before we left the ward we were informed that we were being transferred

to another ward

and that our luggage would be removed from our room

and locked in a cupboard for collection later on.

None of this had been discussed previously with me.

In our own hospital this may not have been such a big deal.

I know it almost as well as the back of my hand

but we were a long way from home

I didn’t even know where the operating theatre was,

let alone a different ward.

In the anesthetic bay they made me hold Ivy’s arms down

so she wouldn’t fight the mask,

all the while telling me what a waste of their time this all was.

My girl did not get any of the things that she needed for surgery

but what I found so utterly disgusting is how cruel they were.

They call themselves a children’s hospital,

a place that is supposedly geared towards looking after tiny humans

and yet not once was Ivy taken into consideration.

The doctors all did what was best for them.

The nurses all looked after themselves

but nobody looked after my girl.

It was cruel and mean that they let her get that frightened,

that they had no set plan,

that everything was so disorganized that when it came time,

Ivy was petrified.

Even the immunologist had no idea that we had been moved

to another ward following the procedure.

Luckily, after recovery, which was also less than friendly

the nurses on the surgical ward were nice enough

and Ivy, for all intensive purposes, did well post operatively.

There is more but this post is already long and ranty

and I need to step back and reassess all that has happened

and try to find the good in today.

I am tired and so ready to go home,

which will hopefully be tomorrow

and let me tell you,

tomorrow can’t come soon enough.

with this status update: