Any second now

As we sat in our room we kept looking at each other we were so excited so nervous so many feelings mix into one. I had so many thoughts running through my head yet I couldn’t say one word just sort of stood still in disbelief. They hooked Kelly up to yet another drip which we thought was for pain relief but what actually turned out to be something to speed things along. Kelly was also had a monitor on as well it was so nice to hear the baby’s heart beat but suddenly it stopped I was a little worried but Kelly wasn’t she told me that we have a baby that doesn’t really like to stay still for long and being some what of a veteran of monitoring sessions was used to this and just adjusted the device on her belly until we had the heart beat again. The contractions were starting and at first Kelly said they weren’t too bad, I thought to myself I bet that’s what they all say at first and was quietly bracing myself for the big ones to start. To speed things along the nurse suggested sitting on a large exercise ball and bouncing up and down for a bit which I don’t think Kelly enjoyed as much as me watching cause she didn’t do it for long. After about an hour or so the contractions started to build momentum and intensity and Kelly had change her opinion of them from “not so bad” to “I don’t like it”  By the two hour mark Kelly’s water broke so I ran and got a nurse. She came and checked Kelly and said “its time” It was so amazing we were so close to having our perfect family and in the next hour or so we were going to be able to hold our beautiful baby.

Any minute now

Our first weekend back was great and it was back to the hospital to have the check up like we were told part of me didn’t fancy going back but it was the right thing to do and the safest place to be so we went back to the maternity ward and I assumed my sleeping spot in the waiting room. Which after being in there so much everyone was getting used to seeing a large unconscious guy slumped in the corner. Kelly was being monitored for any contractions which by now was pretty normal for us, this usually took about an hour so when Kelly woke me three hours later I was a little confused why she had taken so long and I was a happy that I still had my wallet. The doctors had asked Kelly to come get me as they needed to talk to us both.. all I could think is “what now” We sat down and received a bit of news we wasn’t expecting at all we were told in a matter hours the baby would be here! After my three hour nap it was the fastest I’ve ever woken up in my life. Like a big slap right round the face. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing even after everything that had happened it still felt so surreal. I was so excited so was Kelly but I could tell she was more than a little nervous and who could blame her knowing what she was about to go through,  you hear so many stories and as this was both our first child  we never knew what really to expect.  As they led us to the our room I just kept thinking the time was finally here, I was going to be a dad.

Not long now

It had been 5 weeks since Kelly’s unexpected ambulance ride to hospital and we were still waiting for the doctor to say when we could go everyday we were told maybe tomorrow Maybe tomorrow. We had made a friends with the staff on the floor we have been staying on (not the cleaning staff)  but by this point we were starting to pull our hair out through boredom we had already exhausted every film, TV series and games we had. So all we could do is sit and wait and wait we did just for something, anything to happen and then we had some unexpected visit from one of the doctors overseeing Kelly’s labour he explained that it needed a joint decision form three doctors to allow us to go home and two of the them thought it would be safe for us to go home but one of them was always saying no. but he wasn’t here today and enough was enough it was time for us to go. Which was good enough for us! We never packed so fast in our lives and as we left leaving the dust cloud in our wake the doctor told us to be back Monday for a check up. Back at the parents house Kelly enjoyed he first unaided shower with out being attach to a drip in over 5 weeks and I was enjoy a nice hot meal instead of chocolate biscuits. That night we went to bed and it was then when I realised how good the little things in life can be, like being in the same bed as my fiancé and so happy just to lie down flat on a real bed that wasn’t made off rotting leather that smelled of 5 weeks of me and everyone else that had used it before me things were really starting to look up.

When the going gets tough

After the devastating news the doctor did his best to explain that at this point there was no need for too much concern as our baby was really small and the problems with her heart could sort itself over time. He also said that would of never even picked the problem up if they didn’t have the new machine they were using. He showed the holes in her heart on the monitor and I tried to understand what he was showing me basically all I could work out not really being a doctor and all that there were red colours where there was suppose to be blue and blue where there was supposed to be red part of me was just hoping there was a problem the contrast on his monitor but probably not. They wheeled Kelly back to her room there was nothing but silence between us. No matter how much someone tells you to not worry that’s all you seem to do, no matter how hard you try to be positive your mind keeps wandering to that dark side of what if… But one of us had to be strong and Kelly had already been through so much with the special diet, all the pills, being poked and prodded like a piece of meat more times than we could kept track of. Me missing out on sleep, walking round like the un dead and surviving on junk food from Lidel didn’t really compare. So i did my best to be positive and told her that the greatest things are always the hardest to get and when the baby is here it will seem all the better knowing what we did to bring our little miracle into the world.

From great to worse

As I said before Kelly was having daily monitoring sessions and weekly scan pics so we were getting quite an collection going and I just couldn’t help but stare at this little version of us growing with every scan taken.

 

 Our little baby girl was here right in front of us and with every picture I saw I felt more and more like a dad I just couldn’t wait.

Already we keep looking at the pictures and thinking how cute and perfect she was.

I mean to think that we could have done something so wonderful and great. Then on one morning after my always enjoyable wake up call the nurses came to take Kelly away as usual and I was trying to figure out what film I was going to watch again for the 3rd time when the nurses told me that I could go along as well this time as they were going to do some internal scans of the baby this time. On the way down I was feeling excited as I haven’t be allowed in with Kelly whilst she was having her scan for along time and was looking forward to seeing the baby move around on the screen. The doctor was friendly as was doing a good job of commentating on what parts of the baby he was scanning but when he got to the heart the commentary stopped and his expression changed to a look of concern. I thought to myself that there couldn’t be anything else wrong not now, not after all that we have been to get here. Then he dropped the bomb “I’m sorry but the baby has 3 holes in her heart”…..

Hospital nights are the longest

We were still in hospital which was starting to feel like forever even more so for Kelly who had to be here every waking hour so we tried to amuse ourselves playing a few games and watching a lot of films and t.v programs on the laptop, Which I had brought in from home Now this didn't really impress the cleaning staff too much as I needed an extension lead and a multi tap to run the laptop and external hard drive. The doctors and nurses were very helpful and polite with us but the only complaint I have about the staff were the cleaners I don't what I did to annoy them but i must of upset them in a previous life because every weekend when I wasn't at work I would receive my daily wake up alarm which included a nice kick of the bed, get the hell up followed by funny looks and a nice melody of what are all these cables plugged into the sockets where the life support machines would normally be.With me working all week and not sleeping well at night getting out of bed early on a weekend was getting harder and harder no matter how uncomfortable the bed was sleeping at night was no longer a given but more of a bonus. I've never really been around new born babies before and living on an maternity ward mostly awake at night I soon discovered how much babies really cry which was to be expected but it was the variety of the different cries the babies had which amazed me the most one baby actual sounded like a car alarm going off I kept waiting for someone to come along with a car fob and turn him off or hit the snooze button and another baby's cry was so high pitched I think only dogs could hear her.As I mentioned before we were sharing a room and we had a lot of different people coming in giving birth and then leaving whilst Kelly Just watched on and waited. I could see this was starting to get to Kelly who after 3 weeks was getting a little bored and testy.All I could do it just try to reassure her and kept telling her that we were in the safest place we could be for both her and the baby and it wouldn't be long before we could all go home or so I secretly hoped.

More hospital blues continued

After speaking to Kelly all I wanted to do is get to that hospital but being over an hour away and covered in dirt from a days work I first had to get to a shower and then to the hospital. It always seem strange to me that when your in a rush you start to notice how much slower everyone is going and that you always feel the need to let them know with a bit of friendly yelling and gesturing, but when your not in a rush everybody else is speeding around like manics that should really slow down and stop yelling abuse at you. When I finally arrived I burst into the room expecting to see my fiance still in tears but instead I was presented with a rather sheepish looking fiance instead. As it turned out there had been a slight misunderstanding Kelly explained to me that it wasn't the baby with one artery but the umbilical cord that only had one instead of the usual two which the doctors had explained happens from time to time and was no real danger to the baby it would just mean that the baby would be a small baby and nothing to worry about. I asked Kelly how she had made this mistake and she told me that all she heard were the words cardiovascular and only 1 artery and all that was going through her head was that there was something seriously wrong and no matter how much the doctors tried to explain Kelly was in too much of a state to understand the mistake. I wish that maybe I could of had this information earlier to save the breakdown at work in front of clients, the fastest shower ever and the fact that it seemed like I had broken the land speed record to get here. But as long as Kelly and the baby were safe that was all that mattered, we just kept thinking that we would all be laughing about this one day....Well at least until I get the speeding ticket through the post.

More hospital blues

Later that night we were moved form the emergency ward to a a room on the 7th floor as we arrived I was disappointed to see that it was not a private room but a double room with a curtain divide and the to make things worse there was no spare bed for me just a small old leather chair that has seen way too many bums that slightly reclined back. This didn't really worry me as i we won't be here to long or so i thought, after a long and uncomfortable night in which me and Kelly hadn't slept a wink Kelly was wheeled out of the room down to observation to have her contractions monitored leaving me twiddling my thumbs in the room with only a t.v which the other person in the room was already watching. I always find it strange that no matter how boring the program you will still sit and watch. After watching daytime t.v for the longest ever Kelly's breakfast was brought in I was so hungry by this point and took all my will power not to have a peak which would have lead to tasting. When Kelly was brought back she had a big long tube with a drip attached to her arm she was told that this was to stop her contractions as they were getting to big and could cause her to go into labour. Kelly started her breakfast and I made my way down to the cafeteria as I looked through the prices I realised that this was going to be an expensive week and didn't fancy having to have my bank manager with me every time i needed to eat. There were signs all over the hospital saying that outside food was not permitted so that began the week of smuggling food in and out of the hospital. As we still have rent and bills to pay I continued to go to work leaving the hospital early in the morning and coming back and staying the night and that's how it was for a while,each day hoping to go back home and each day the doctors saying that we would have to stay longer, then one day I had a phone call from Kelly in tears my heart felt like it was being crushed as Kelly told me that the doctors had done a scan of the baby and it showed the she only had one artery and as much as i wanted to be strong for Kelly i couldn't fight back the tears.

Hospital blues

So the next thing I know I'm racing back to our house trying to think of all the things that Kelly would need and put them all in to an over night bag. This of course is another thing that we should of had ready but didn't because we thought we had plenty of time. The hospital was about an hour away in a city size town that I didn't know my way round so I started to panic as I was slowly forgetting where the doctor had told me the hospital was. But its a hospital and how many could there be in one town.... Well as it turns out four! four that I had found anyway. So turning up at the forth hospital car park i raced into reception and ask where i could find Kelly. The receptionist clearly seeing how worried I was and this was clearly an emergency went as slowly as humanly possible looking through her computer after yet another lifetime had passed I was told she was down in the emergency maternity ward which was on the bottom floor. So off I raced again into the lift to the bottom floor only to find I had been directed to which i can only describe as the waste disposal area after, about 15 mins of aimlessly wandering the halls looking for signs for the ward I was told by the only helpful person I had met that day that the ward was in a different building on the bottom floor which I had to go outside cross the staff car park to get to. Now why wasn't i told this in the first place or maybe just a helpful sign. "you know the ones with you are here sticker" would of saved a lot of time and me looking stupid in some basement. I go into the emergency ward and dam another hurdle or receptionist as there more commonly called. I started again Is Kelly here... no I was told again, by this point starting to get a little annoyed but just as i was thinking about taking the guy out of reception and into a hospital bed one of the ambulance drivers recognised me and took me into the ward where Kelly was. "you know the ward where 2 mins earlier I had just been told she wasn't" Seeing Kelly all safe and o.k was the best feeling i had all day and immediately calmed me down. Kelly explained how she will have to be here for a while whilst they check her contractions and I explained why the hell I had taken so long...

Back to hosiptal

Around the time Kelly was seven months pregnant we went to the hospital just like we have been doing for pretty much the whole pregnancy we sat in the waiting room then went in to see the doctor. The doctor asked how Kelly was feeling and she told her about a bearing down sensation she started the to have the night before. I had put this down to braxton hicks contractions and nothing to worry about but in Kelly's eyes i wasn't a doctor and i wasn't really qualified to make any diagnosis on the subject and thought it best to tell the doctor. It was a good job we didn't rely on my doctoring skills as it wasn't braxton hicks it was in fact Kelly had started to go into labour and was already 2cm dilated i couldn't believe what i was hearing. I was asked to leave the room for a moment whilst more checks where done. So there i was out in the hall trying to take in all that was happening but one of the main thoughts running through my mind is we're not ready this is too soon and it wasn't just that i don't think we were ready to be parents but the room wasn't even finished and we didn't have all the things that the baby needed and the things we did was still in there boxes! We were under the impression that we still had about two more months to finish. But really i should have been thinking not about whether i was ready but if the baby was ready and if it was even safe to have the baby this early. As i waited in the hall where it seemed like time stood still I saw Kelly being wheeled out on an ambulance trolley! I spoke to our doctor and she told me that they didn't have the necessary facilities to handle this situation and Kelly was being transferred to another hospital almost an hour away I just couldn't believe this was happening it all seamed so surreal.

Life without chocolate

A month after we had been to see the doctor the new diet was starting to take its toll on Kelly. She was eating for two but only eating  grilled chicken, salads, fruit with no chocolate,no ice cream, no chips which is no fun. I myself also said i would do this diet too as by this stage phases like "well you did this to me" were starting to surface so diet i did with the odd little bit of chocolate, cakes, fry ups pretty much all the stuff i shouldn't have when Kelly wasn't around... well what she didn't know wouldn't hurt "well will hurt when she reads this.When we first went for a blood test i thought "right  up early to be first in the que no messing about" so up early we were got straight down the clinic first in the que and in the cold. The clinic didn't open until  8.30 and by that time a large que had formed. The doors opened and we were let in, straight to receptionist desk we went and presented all the forms only to be told to join the back of the large que that was behind us but filled with people that knew where they were going had had already formed at the correct door" Useless" This is how it went for a few months up early in the morning queuing up with the pensioners "who by the way can be quite vicious when they think you have pushed in front of them"  to have blood tests then off to the hospital for check ups and the results.But this one time the results came back saying that Kelly's liver was responding well the to the medication and diet which was when Kelly got to hear the doctor say one of the best things ever... " you can start ease off the diet not a lot but a little" that was it i don't think i have ever seen anyone so happy to go to Mc Donalds in my life! in fact i don't think anyone eats a big mac quite like Kelly either I mean she takes the thing a part layer by layer and then rebuilds but introduces chips into each layer until she has built a sky scraper of a burger! which is fine but by the time she has built he little project I've eaten drunk my drink and waiting in the car to leave.

The results are in!

After about a week we had a call from the doctors asking us to see her as soon as possible. Which of course didn't fill us with much confidence.
So we made our way down to the hospital and sat in the waiting room all sorts of worries were entering my head i knew i wanted this baby but until something happens that might take it away you never really know much, "I mean how can i miss something that i never really had but I just couldn't shake the feeling that we might be losing something so great" After what seemed a life time our number appeared on the screen and we made our way into the doctors office.
As we entered the doctor was going through a lot of paper work with Kelly's name on it. We sat down and braced ourselves then we were told... "there's a problem with you and the baby" the doctors said. It just felt like our world had just caved in on us as we sat and listened as the doctor told us that Kelly's liver was failing under the strain of the pregnancy and if unchecked we could lose not only our baby but Kelly as well. It was like our worst fears being told to us.
We were then giving a schedule in which we would have to come and have blood tests and check ups on the baby and Kelly every week also Kelly was put on a strict diet where she wasn't allowed any fatty foods or sugar "which when you are pregnant is the only time that women really feel they can eat what they want when they want and that luxury had just been ripped away but on the bright side no late night trips to the supermarket looking for ice cream bit selfish i suppose but you know the cloud has a silver lining and all that" Also Kelly had to take 5 pills a day to help her liver deal with the extra load.
As we left the hospital Kelly was in tears and i did my best to reassure that everything was going to be fine and as long as we just kept doing what the doctor told us we would still get to have our little family.

Concerns

As I said times were a bit tight on the money side of things so when I picked Kelly up from work in tears because she had be let go from her job "well not so much let go but lets somewhat edged towards leaving of her own accord so they don't look bad firing a pregnant women" I was a starting to worry I still had my job but as an self employed builder didn't really give the job security my new family would need. Part of me was ready to go back down to where Kelly's boss tell them what i thought but at the end of the day i didn't want Kelly under anymore stress so i kept my comments and concerns to myself because the health of Kelly and my unborn child were my number 1 concern.
About 2 months into the pregnancy Kelly started to experience uncontrollable itching which at the time we thought was great.We were told that if you itch whilst pregnant there's a good chance of us having a girl! (not sure if that is true or not) but as the itching got worse we thought we would go and speak to our doctor just to be sure and she recommended Kelly have a scan and some blood tests......

Shes pregnant!

Now i was so happy about Kelly (the fiance) being pregnant i knew we were great together and this would only make things better "my own little family"wasn't scary at all, it was when a few days had past when the reality of things really began to set in.
I mean i didn't regret anything just that this new world of responsibility  has suddenly descended down on me suddenly i had to start thinking about the future and not just mine......
After about 2 weeks Kelly began to experience the morning sickness and unlike the name suggests it was rarely in the morning more in the night when Kelly had to work which as you can imagine this didn't go down to well with the people she worked with and for. Now this had us really concerned as we had a to save as much as we could before she could no longer work for the seamlessly endless list of baby stuff that we needed and well what Kelly wanted.