August 1… Cont’d
As I am up and about all the time now, others mothers and those still in waiting, come sidling over to find out the exact story because surely I have been the ‘soupe du jour’ the last few days. I tell them, “I’m fine, I’m fine”, with a flip of my hand (like Dr. D. to me?). Still they persist, “Why were you in ICU, then a wheel chair? Why is your baby not in the General Nursery?” “Oh, you know, trouble with waking up from surgery and a small to date baby.” They nod their collective heads sagely, having never heard this condition even existed, then walk down the hall discussing it together. Does that mean that the Wheel of Fortune hit me so they and their babies are safe, they ponder in their heads.
However, there is good news for us and bad news for another Mom and Baby that pushed you and me out of the lime light. A mom came in to delivery with a wild fever that they could not control before the baby passed through the birth canal. The mother was sent to ICU, the baby sent to isolation since no one quite understood what virus was relentlessly attacking their bodies.
A couple of days later the baby was in the Special Nursery with you so I can only assume that he was no longer contagious (fingers crossed) but I never did meet his mother… did she hemorrhage, develop sepsis… so I’m just saying, you just don’t know… for whom the bell tolls.
August 3
I am sharing my semi-private room with a lovely East Indian lady who also had a baby boy who is big and strong and in the General Nursery so is brought in the room all day and at night for feedings. She is a cheerful soul, and all the reprimands she gets from the nurses that she does not get out of bed enough, does not walk enough, does not feed her baby the right way slides off, her like water off a duck’s back. As they point at me and tell her, this is your second baby, why can’t she be like me, she says and rightfully so, “Who cares? Someone keeping score?” Yup, I have been lucky.
I have shared my room with so many great mom’s, different cultures, different socio-economic backgrounds, way older than me (and I was almost 31, way younger, like 17 and pregnant with twins. I often wonder, “Where are those kids now and will their paths ever cross with you, Wonder Boy, one day?”