Birth-day...

Archive blipped 15th August 2017 
 
15th August 1996.  Time 12.10am.  Weight 4.29kg
 
As I begin typing this, it is 12.10am and exactly 21 years to the minute from when you finally arrived in this world and the cord that bound us physically together was cut, separating our two bodies forever.
 
As you left the warmth and safety of my body and became a person in your own right, the lights were to be dimmed, this would be playing to welcome you; the song I had sung to you during my pregnancy that always settled you. You were to be placed on me as soon as you were delivered, skin to skin contact, and allowed to naturally root for milk should you be peckish after your exciting and exhausting journey into the world.  Your dad was to cut your cord, and as soon as possible we were to be left alone to marvel at our new arrival, counting 10 little fingers and 10 little toes and discuss whose nose you had and how much you looked like Churchill (or God forbid, the milkman :-)  Your dad and I would look at each other and you, incredulous at this creation of ours. Love personified.  Joyous phone calls announcing your safe arrival would then be made to family and friends who had been anxiously awaiting the news.  And all this would be encapsulated in two words; utter bliss.
 
Well that’s what it said in the Birth Plan your dad and I had written, but being a Scot and a fan of Robert Burns, I should have known that in his immortal words, “The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley, An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!”
 
Instead an emergency alarm was pushed and you were born into a room so bright it made our eyes squint, full of people all shouting instructions, pulling and pushing the bed, pushing your dad out the way whilst barking instructions at him because even in a room with all these people they still needed another pair of hands, pulling and pushing me and pulling and pulling on you.  Searing light, noise, confusion, panic, pain, chaos. 
 
And then you were here.  Thrown onto my shoulder, where I got to feel the warmth and weight of you (literally the dead weight of you) and my brain tried to compute why under all this bright, white light, your skin was so dark.  My eyes told me dark blue but surely that couldn’t be right?   

Your cord was quickly cut (not by dad) and you were taken from me and placed on a what I now know was a resuscitation table.  The room emptied, leaving behind only dad and I and the three medics working on you.   The silence that now filled the room was worse, so much worse than the noise from a few moments earlier.  This silence should have been filled with your gasps and lusty cries as you took your first breaths and made your presence felt.  But there was only silence.
 
After what seemed like forever, the three medics rushed you out of the room to NICU and dad and I were left still in stunned silence, as an auxiliary nurse came to attend to me followed by a junior doctor to stitch my fourth degree tear, where they had literally sliced me open, to get you out.

A woman we hadn’t seen before popped her head into the delivery room and said she had no news other than you were in intensive care and getting the best medical attention.  She advised someone from the Paediatric team would talk to us as soon as they could.  In the meantime, I would be transferred to the maternity ward. 
 
Your dad phoned both our mums with the news that they had a grandson but that you needed a little help and he would phone them back as soon as there was any further news.  I know how distraught and helpless they felt.
 
Meanwhile I was taken to the maternity ward and placed right in the middle of it, among all the new mums busy fussing over their precious little bundles, giving night feeds and changes, and singing softly to soothe them back to sleep.  The empty glass cot at the bottom of my bed made me catch my breath and my love for you overwhelmed me and for the first time in my life, I felt real fear and pure, unadulterated grief. 
 
But we refused to believe you wouldn’t make it and focused hard on willing you on. 
 
Finally, almost four hours after you were born, a doctor came to speak to us bringing two small polaroid photos of you.  You looked so distressed in them but we were so grateful to have proof that you were still alive.  Your dad can’t bear to look at either of those photos now so I haven’t blipped them.  Instead I have blipped the first photo we took of you ourselves, later that day.  Not quite the birth announcement photograph we’d been expecting, but so precious to us because it meant you were alive, you were fighting and there was hope.
 
As the early hours of that first 15th August gave way to morning and then afternoon, we sat holding hands gazing at you, jumping every time a bleeper bleeped or an alarm rang, soothed by the presence of the most amazing team of paediatric nurses, and realized that in order to cope with our new situation, your dad and I had very different strategies.  He focussed on the here and now and what needed to be done, thought about and prepared for over the next 24 hours – literally one day at a time, whereas I was already leaping ahead, thinking about our house and how suitable it would be for you, what school you would go to, would you ever walk?  Talk?  Know who we were even?  Was I strong enough to be the mum you needed?  It was overwhelming but the only way I could prepare was to think ahead and be ready for the obstacles, dilemmas, situations we would now find ourselves in as a family.  
 
When it all threatened to make me buckle, a little thought came into my head.  And it was this.  Stop worrying, go with the flow, be the best mum you can be whilst remembering nobody’s perfect.    
 
And in those first scary hours and days I tried to imagine you as a 21 year old, who you’d look like, how your laugh would sound, how happy you would be, how independent you would be, how healthy you would be and most importantly, how far behind us these terrifying first hours and days would be.
 
Imagining twenty-one years into the future brought me peace and gave me strength to believe you would make it.  The only problem was, sitting anxiously at the side of your incubator, it seemed so, so far away.  A lifetime away.
 
And in the blink of an eye, we are there.
 
   
Happy, Happy 21st Birthday my precious boy xxx