Wow, isn't she advanced!

This was said to me by a well meaning father once as our children played together at a soft play centre. Heidi had just started crawling and was understandably very proud of herself, she was wriggling around on the floor with a beaming smile on her face, this she directed at the man whose daughter was running around and playing with Heidi. Being a rather charming little girl the man started talking to her, and eventually me. After chatting for awhile the man is watching Heidi crawling and comes out with ‘wow, isn’t she advanced’, now don’t get me wrong I was so proud of Heidi but she was 18 months old and had only just started crawling, so I don’t think advanced was quite the right word! But she was also the size of your average 3 month old, so I can understand why he said it, I just smiled and nodded and tried to carry the conversation on. It didn’t work…’So how old is she?’ ‘well’ I mutter under my breath ‘about 18 months’…a look of confusion crosses his face, and then realisation that he may not have said the most appropriate thing. I politely return the question ‘how old is your little girl?’ I wonder why his face starts to turn a little bit pink, and then he answers rather sheepishly ’10 months’. WTF that huge toddler running around is 10 months!! Is he saying it just to wind me up or is she really the worlds most advanced child?? ‘Isn’t she doing well’ I say, after a few more minutes of awkward chatting we go our separate ways.

As a parent to preemies you come across so many assumptions that are made about your child, some more frustrating than others. This assumption was one of the positive ones, in comparison to some others that have been made about Heidi, although slightly embarrassing for the man!

I have to admit I did find seeing him squirm quite enjoyable, does this make me a bad person, or just a preemie mum??

Okay

Just one little word can have so many meanings.

This was made abundantly clear to me when my second daughter was born at 34 weeks, after having my first at 27 weeks getting to 34 weeks with my second was a miracle and a completely new experience for me. I ended up having an emergency c-section under a general anaesthetic, so after I left recovery I was wheeled down to meet my little girl. As I was taken into intensive care I had an overwhelming feeling of déjà-vu, there was one of my favourite nurses stood next to the incubator with a huge grin on her face and a welcoming comment of ‘what are you doing back here?’ charming!

Then I looked in the incubator and was faced with a completely different sight, there was an actual baby in there, not a strange alien looking creature like her sister, but an actual baby, with chub and everything!! So even though she was in intensive care she was really not requiring much help, just a bit of CPAP and light therapy, I was feeling quite pleased with her, and myself, so I decided to text a few people to let them know she had arrived. The text went ‘Baby girl arrived this afternoon by c-section, we’re both ok’.

The next day my friend came to visit, she’s sat next to my bed in maternity and having dispensed with the pleasantries and I notice she is looking around, a lot!

Me -‘What are you looking for?’

Her -‘The baby’

Me – ‘She’s in the NICU’

Her – ‘But you said she’s ok’

Me – ‘She is ok’

Her – ‘Then why is she in the NICU?’

The conversation carried on for awhile, with me explaining that the baby was fine, that even though she was doing well she was still 6 weeks prem and so it was expected that she would need to spend some time on the NNU, and in my eyes she was fine. I think my friend was forgetting that I had previously had a 27 weeker, as she really couldn’t understand why I was saying that my baby was ok. It made me think about the times people would ask how Heidi was doing while still in hospital and I would often answer with ‘fine’ or ‘okay’ and how this might have been misleading to them. I didn’t say it with the intention of being misleading, I genuinely meant it.

So here is my definition of the word okay…

‘Okay’ means that although my baby is in hospital and currently ventilated/on CPAP today is good, she isn’t going downhill/requiring a blood transfusion/doesn’t have an infection/has not needed any extra tests/scans/x-rays, today she is stable, today she is okay.