Delivery day cont.
After my recovery time, I got straight into a wheelchair to come and see you. I was so excited to come and see you, and was gutted that when we got to you there were 2 cardiologists giving you an Echo (Echocardiogram) which was an in-depth ultrasound of your heart. I just wanted to meet our baby, not be reminded of the things to come. Could we not just have this time?
After the echo, the cardiologist told us that nothing had changed and it was, as it was, antenatally which was a relief. He also said the likelihood would be she wouldn’t need to be operated on until at least middle of next week.
There was such a relief, we could have a newborn bubble over the weekend ahead of her first open heart surgery.
We sat with her for about an hour and a half, allowed to touch her in the incubator, discussing feeding with her nurse, I had proudly expressed colostrum at home…she got through it in 12 hours so we got her some formula until I had more and my milk came in. Trying to understand what everything was attached to her. She had her umbilical catheter, a cannula in her hand, NG tube, ECG leads attached to her chest and a SATs probe on her foot. One worry we had was that we wouldn’t have any pictures of her without wires, then should the worst happen we just wouldn’t have these pictures. However once you spent 2 minutes with her you forgot the wires were even there. We just couldn’t believe this little dot was ours.
Tom and Helen took me back to my room on the maternity ward, I was going to be an inpatient for 3 days, there was nowhere to stay on the neonatal ward anyway. Going back to the maternity ward was really cruel, I had a baby but she was on floor 2 when I was on floor 3. Seeing other people with their babies all happy and smiling and I had to go sleep with the sound of other people’s babies crying, it was really really hard. At around 10pm Tom and Helen went home whilst I went sleep to recover from an amazingly busy day.
Leicester Royal InfirmaryKeepthebeatEast midlands Congenital Heart CentreHeart LinkTiny Tickers “The Tiny Hearts Charity”British Heart Foundation Little Hearts Matter
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