Two Years

Seeing Kit this week has had me thinking a lot about the past two years.

This time two years ago, I was just preparing to move into this flat. I had just gotten back together with S's father for the last time. I thought I had seven weeks left of my pregnancy. 

Mentally, I was completely broken by the stress and strain of what had been going on throughout my pregnancy. I was totally under my ex's control, and he knew it. Having gotten someone else pregnant, and then found himself a new girlfriend in the last few weeks, he had made me beg him to take me back. I now believe both the pregnancy and the girlfriend were deliberately done in order to get me to tow the line, to put me in my place. And they worked. He knew I was petrified of becoming a mother alone. He had made sure from very early on that he pointed out to me every single thing that I would not be able to cope with.

You won't be able to hack breastfeeding. It hurts, and you won't manage. A couple of weeks, tops and then the baby will be on formula.

You won't cope with a baby. You can't even look after yourself.

You're so stressy over the slightest thing... just wait until that baby gets here and it's screaming all day and night!

Alongside this, there was the constant assertion that it was just a baby. I was only pregnant, it was no big deal. Having a baby is easy; just look at all of these losers around us, all of them doing just fine with their kids. It shouldn't be hard. It's the easiest thing in the world, anyone can do it.

I saved up my holiday entitlement from work, which allowed me to leave at around 32 weeks. The plan was that I would move into my flat, and then spend the rest of the time until the baby was born, decorating his kitchen. I'm not even joking; that was his plan for me. And I was just being difficult when I tentatively suggested I didn't want to be climbing up ladders to paint a ceiling when pregnant. At 34 weeks, I put my double bed together myself because he had told me I had to sleep at my house that night (I worked out much later that he had someone else coming round to sleep with him that night, so couldn't have me there). It didn't really occur to me that this was not something a relatively heavily pregnant woman should be doing; after all, it's just pregnancy. No big deal.

A strategically-cropped photo of "us"
- me trying desperately to look happy and comfortable

Around this time, a friend came to visit me. The friend I named S after. She is a very dear friend, who I've known for a long time. She lives a couple of hours' drive from me, but when I had my breakdown she visited regularly to check on me. She had seen me earlier in my pregnancy, when she had driven down and helped me remove my things from the ex's house one of the times we split up. At that point she had tried to gently tell me I was better off on my own, and I had half believed her. She had never met him before, but on this occasion she did. He had me invite her to his house, and got the children up early in the morning to clean the house from top to bottom with as much bleach as they could lay hands on. I was instructed to meet my friend at my house, show her around, whatever - he would let me know when I could bring her to his house to meet him. 

When we got there, the house stank of bleach and I was very conscious of the fact that although it was tidy by normal standards, by anyone else's standards it was a state. My friend was very polite about it. She met him briefly, but then he went out - a local girl had just had a baby and had a very hard time in labour so he went to visit her. My friend left shortly afterwards, and I looked after the children until the ex came home. The first thing he told me when he came home was "that baby is mine. It looks just like me" I questioned how it could have been, when the child must have been conceived after we had gotten together. His response was "yes, but I've already told you I was still sleeping with her when I first got with you..." 

Later that evening I texted my friend to ask her what she thought of my boyfriend. Her opinion was more important to me than most. Her response made me cry: "he seems nice enough, but I would have hoped for you to meet someone who took care of you, rather than the other way around." When he asked me what she'd thought of him, I lied. I'd learned by then that it was best not to give him reason to think I'd made him look bad.

If I had to pick words to describe myself this time two years ago, I would choose words like:

cowed

scared

defeated

diffident

alone

It's hard to explain to anyone how I got to that point, and also how I got back from it. When I talk about it, it feels like I'm talking about a different person. More than one person has expressed shock and surprise that I ever ended up like that. People who knew me before, and those who have met me since, cannot fathom how I allowed any of this to happen to me.

I am one of the lucky few: the minute I had my baby, and was able to comprehend that it was my job to keep her safe and happy, something clicked in my head. I knew deep down, even with all of the mind games and tricks that had been employed against me, that this was a dangerous situation for a baby. 

Someone called me inspirational the other day. People tell me I'm strong. I don't feel like I'm either of those things... but if I had to choose between those words, or the four above, to describe myself, I would come down closer to inspirational and strong than the others, any day. Even on a really bad day.

Incidentally: Yes, breastfeeding did hurt a bit to start with, but I did it until S was 17 months old. I look after both of us just fine, and she has never once screamed all day and night. In fact until she was teething, she barely cried at all.

The Day We Registered S.

April 2012. S is almost 3 weeks old. 

We've been out of hospital just under a week. We have an appointment today to register her birth. 

Because I am not married to S's father, he needs to be at the appointment in order to be listed on the birth certificate.

S enjoying some skin to skin while her father wasn't looking

Things have been strained between us. He wants me to look after his children over night this weekend while he works. I can barely stand and walk in a straight line. I don't want to do it; he senses this and is cross with me. I agreed when I was pregnant that I would look after his children overnight sometimes; I have to honour that agreement and stop making such a fuss over it. It's just a baby. I'm making mountains out of molehills and I need to stop it.

We get ready to go to the appointment at the registry office. It's only a couple of blocks away from where I live. I dress S in her usual, over-sized vest and babygro. She is so tiny, even the "tiny baby" clothes are too big and this depresses me. Once she is dressed, she has to be wrapped in a blanket. I know this, because her father tells me so. 

After that blanket, she needs another. And then she is put into the pram, with another blanket over the top. Once she is all wrapped up in there, you can barely see her. Personally, I had thought it was quite warm today; I never realised babies needed to be so well wrapped before they were allowed into an already insulated pram to walk two blocks and then sit in an over-heated council office. I know nothing about babies though. This man already has several children; he knows all there is to know. My intuition isn't knowledge; it's just me having stupid thoughts. I do that a lot, and they're usually wrong.

We carry the pram down the steps from the flat, and head off to the registry office. When we get there, the lady tells us the waiting room is upstairs, and we need to leave the pram in this space here. I go to pick up my daughter, but her father gets there first. He wraps the third blanket around her, until she looks more like a bundle of blankets than a child. The blankets must go over her head as well as around her body, even though she was already wearing a hat. You can barely see her face. 

We walk to the waiting room in silence, and sit there. In silence. For ten minutes. I ask to hold my child, but he tells me I have all the time in the world to hold her; he has to go home to his other children this evening so he should get to hold her while he's here. 

A nice lady called Dee comes to take us into the room to register the birth. She pulls up our record from the hospital on her computer screen, and goes through some basic information with us. Then we give her the name we have chosen for our beautiful little girl. She comments on what a lovely name it is, and we have the conversation we always have with new people about the origin of her name, which is unusual. He tells her it means "friend." I am fairly sure this is not true; that is the Arabic translation of the mis-pronounciation of her name his work colleague used the other day. I daren't correct him on this though; that would probably constitute "being a dick" and I don't want to make him angry while he's holding the most precious thing in my life.

The lady fills in the form on her computer. She looks directly at me and tells me, "as the mother of this child, it is your decision who is named as the father, and what her last name will be." I nod. She says it again, phrased slightly differently. She asks if I am sure about my decision. And then she says it all again. Three times, I tell her that yes, this man is the father of my child; he is to be named on her birth certificate and she will have his surname. Any hope of approval from him for this confirmation is dashed when I look at him and realise he is cross with me that the lady thought I needed to be told so many times.

Dee prints the form and hands it to me to sign. Then he has to sign, which means I get to hold my baby. With so many blankest around her, she doesn't feel like a baby; she feels like a bundle of cloth. I am used to having her laying on my lap or chest in the fewest clothes possible. When he is not there, we are naughty and she sleeps on me in just her babygro. When he is there, I have to turn the heating right up and put blankets over her while she sleeps in the bouncy chair or on him. 

She is fast asleep and oblivious. As soon as he has signed the register, he takes her from me again. I am handed copies of the birth certificate to put in a safe place. Because my baby is so tiny (even with the extra blankets), they will fit in the end of her pram. 

We leave the office, thanking the lady as we go. My daughter is put safely back into her pram, and I am allowed to push her most of the way home. 

He helps me carry the pram back up the stairs to the flat, and then makes himself a cup of tea while I feed her. 

Within a week, he has left us.

this story forms part of my Birth Story, a series of posts surrounding S's birth and the first few weeks of her life. The first post of that series is here.

Mother & Baby Big Heart Awards

Yesterday afternoon I was lucky enough to attend the Mother & Baby Big Heart Awards at the Dorchester Hotel in London.

Kit with her super-proud daughter Kate, the award, and Jenny Frost.

Anyone who knows me (or reads this blog) will know that S's birth was fairly traumatic for me. During my time in hospital, a nursery nurse called Kit offered me so much help and support, and really helped me to find my way as a parent. I wrote about the first time I met Kit here.

In November last year, it was World Prematurity Day and Twitter was awash with tweets and photos of new mums with their tiny babies doing "kangaroo care." I posted a photo of myself with S and mentioned that I wouldn't have even known what kangaroo care was if it weren't for Kit. They suggested I nominate her for a Big Heart Award. I took a look at the site, and then emailed in my nomination. This is what I wrote:

When my daughter was born 5 weeks early, she had no suck/swallow response and so was fed formula through an NG tube. The morning after she was born, Kit came down to the ward to feed Samaire. Kit told me about kangaroo care, and how all of the mothers on NICU were encouraged to do it. She undressed my baby and put her on my bare chest, then put a blanket over us.

After a couple of days, my daughter had jaundice so they moved her into NICU. I was distraught. I wanted to breastfeed, but my milk hadn’t come in yet. While Samaire was in NICU, Kit got screens to put around me so that I could sit next to my baby and keep trying to express milk to encourage my milk. When they tested for bilirubin levels Kit would bring the chart into me and show me where her levels were, and what it meant. When we went back to the ward, Kit came down to help with every feed when she was on shift. She worked really hard to help us establish breastfeeding. She helped us try different positions. When I was tired and fed up, she showed me how I could feed my daughter whilst laying on my side. She stayed with us while my daughter fed, and would always tell me well done, you’re doing really well, look how well she’s feeding, she’s really getting it. 

I was in hospital for almost two weeks. By the last few days I was really fed up. Kit came in one day and told me we couldn’t go home yet because my daughter’s bilirubin levels had gone back up, and she needed to go back under the lights. I was distraught at the thought of being separated from her again while she was taken back to NICU. Kit stayed and talked to me until I’d calmed down. She told me that although it felt like the end of the world now, it was just a few days at the start of a long life. She went off to speak to some people and came back with a lamp. She told me we could have the lamp on the ward over night, so that we didn’t have to be separated. Then she had me take my shirt off, laid my baby on my chest, and set the lamp up above us. I suddenly went from “oh no they’re going to take my baby away again” to complete contentment, cuddling my baby on my chest and felt relaxed for the first time since she was born.

I felt like more than just a patient to Kit. She seemed to take a personal interest in our wellbeing and really helped and supported me. She never made me feel like she was too busy to spend an hour sitting at my bedside helping me. I will be forever grateful for the extra work she put into helping us establish breastfeeding. My daughter went on to breastfeed until she was 17 months old.

I forgot all about the nomination, until last month when I received an email to tell me Kit had won the award. I sent her a message to warn her to expect a call, and she thought I was joking!

So yesterday we went up to London for the awards ceremony. There was free champagne and fancy sandwiches, and even a few celebrities - but the main point of the event was to celebrate amazing people who've done amazing things. There were a lot of tears as very emotional stories were told, and I was a bit of a wreck when Kit's award was announced. 

Me with Kit enjoying some champagne!

We had a really lovely day and despite Kit's insisting, "I was just doing my job!" everyone else agreed that she regularly goes above and beyond what is expected of her. She is passionate about her work, and rightly so. She's not just looking after sick babies, but helping their shell-shocked parents to come to terms with what's happening, and helping the whole family to figure out how to cope. She spends endless hours helping women to express milk, to learn to breastfeed, to change nappies, to deal with the emotional hell that can be having a baby in NICU.

I know how lucky I am that S was only 5 weeks early, and that she was relatively healthy. I feel even more lucky that Kit was on shift that first day. Since we left hospital I've heard horror stories of how other women have fared in similar situations. The world needs more Kits in it, for sure.

Well of course, when you go to these things you need to have your photo taken with the doormen!

Early Motherhood: A Single Mum

This is the latest in a series of posts about my experiences of early motherhood. It follows on from this post. 

The story begins here.

The next morning, a Friday, I woke up and found the ex's message from the night before. I replied that he knew very well I had not used him for material possessions, and hadn't asked him for any of the things he'd bought. I told him I would much rather have had his emotional support over the last few weeks.

Distraught, I told him what the health visitor had said and gave him her number. I called, and he answered briefly - to say "I'm not calling that bitch when you've already told her a pack of lies about me and made me look bad." before hanging up.

We texted back and forth a little. He told me this was all my own doing, that I was hurting him and his children, not allowing any of them to have proper contact with S. "Fucking grow up, you pathetic bitch."

On the Saturday morning I was in town, buying school clothes for his kids. I tried to call to ask what size trousers to buy for his daughter, but he didn't answer. Instead he texted, asking what I wanted. Knowing how things had previously gone in this situation, I asked him if he had someone there. His response was "no, I'm not in the mood for sex... might I suggest you don't ask questions that you don't want to know the answer to."

I kept trying to explain to him: his life was more or less the same, but mine had changed massively and very suddenly; I had not been prepared for it, and was struggling to adjust. I asked him to please allow me a little time but he kept telling me I was deliberately hurting him and his children and that he had known it would turn out like this. He kept telling me to fuck off, but when I referred to his having dumped me, his response was always that as far as he was concerned we were still together, and that I should have the guts to dump him.

I offered to bring S to his house over the weekend to visit, but he told me that was a bad idea.  He said I could come up during the week, but only for the evening and not overnight. He told me that until I was prepared to show some commitment to him and his children, he was not prepared to carry on with things the way they had been. He accused me of being deceptive and manipulative and making myself deliberately isolated so as to get attention.  "The ball's in your court Victoria, grow up or lose me."

On the Sunday, he texted asking how S was. It was the first time had enquired as to her wellbeing since he'd stormed out on the Thursday.

I spoke to the health visitor again on the Monday morning and told her I thought he was going to split up with me, and I was petrified. She said that since she was visiting again in a couple of days to weigh S, I could invite him to come to that, and she would try and talk to both of us and help us sort it out. I said ok, and asked him if he would come to the appointment. He refused, citing again the terrible lies I must have told the health visitor about him; she obviously hated him now just like the midwife

I suggested I could meet him from work one day in the week, and go with him to pick his children up from school, as a surprise. He told me no, he wanted to know how often I was planning on coming to his house, and that he was sick of his children being fucked around. He was still too pissed off with me to speak on the phone; didn't I know his daughter had been crying for a week because of me? He complained he was too tired to talk properly, but he pushed me for an answer as to how often I would come to his house. Eventually, in a panic at the thought of losing him, I said I would stay 3 or 4 nights a week, but would need to build up gradually.

The idea of building up gradually had never appealed to him; when I first started seeing him, I had to be there all the time. Every time we split up while I was pregnant, when I came back I suggested we start with one night a week and build up, but I was told it was all or nothing; I had to be there all the time. We had eventually agreed that I would stay there one night a week, but I had never realised this had meant we weren't together, and that he'd had various other people staying on the nights I wasn't there.

This time was no exception; I wasn't allowed to gradually get used to staying at his house with S. He was not willing to put up with my games any longer.

On the Tuesday morning, I awoke to this message:

I don't want to keep doing this all my life, I am not going to keep walking on egg shells, I don't want to keep waiting for the next time you decide you can take coming over here.

I don't want to keep being hurt, I don't want my kids to keep being hurt, my kids need stability, they need someone who will always be there, someone who won't let them down.

I am sorry this is in a text but if I was talking I would not be able to get my thoughts out in any kind of coherence. 

I love you and I will always be here for you but not as in my partner.

I will come to see you both on Thursday if you would decide what days you would like for me to come over and visit and what days you would be willing to bring S over to see the kids.

I am sorry and I do love you and this is not easy but this cannot continue. 

I was fuming. The only reason I had been in and out of his kids' lives for the past few months was because he kept splitting up with me, kicking me out in the middle of the night and banishing me from the house.  I was so angry; I had gone into labour 5 weeks early, spent 10 days in hospital with a poorly baby, my life had been turned upside down... and yet somehow everything was still about him, what he wanted, how he felt.

Despite this, I knew that now if we were not going to be together I had to try and bite my tongue and not start a row; we needed to make an effort to get on so that S did not suffer. Because I couldn't trust myself not to be very nasty, I did not reply to the message. I had a little cry, and tried to just pick myself up and move on. I didn't tell many people what had happened, because I was too embarrassed. As the day went on, I realised that this day was no different than most of the ones that had come before it: we got up, we went out for a walk, I fed S, I changed her nappies and her clothes, we saw some friends, watched some TV. It didn't make a difference that I was now a single mother. None at all, so far.

Late that evening, when he had still not heard from me, the ex sent me a message:

God I bet you are loving all the sympathy and attention  now aren't you. Will tell everyone how I'm not seeing the baby, how I have dumped you. Bet you have not told them how you refused to bring the baby here or how you lock her in my room or how you use her as a bartering chip blackmailing the kids with her!!!!!!!

Again, I didn't answer. I didn't want to be drawn into yet another row. He was too quick for me in these situations, and I often ended up floundering, with no idea how to get my point across. He had done this to me throughout my pregnancy, accusing me of all sorts and never pausing for breath so that I could have my say. I didn't want to do it any more; I was exhausted and just wanted to move forward. Because I hadn't replied, there was another message:

And now you will just ignore and not answer, that's ok because now I have sorted  my benefits I can see a solicitor if you want to play it that way!!!

He knew that was the way to get me to respond. Throughout my pregnancy, whenever we had split up I had made a big effort to try and remain in contact and friends with him. I had spent my adolescence watching my mother and her ex-partner go to and fro to court arguing over my younger sisters, and how that had affected everyone concerned. He knew that was my worst nightmare, and that through everything I had always wanted him to maintain a relationship with my child. So I answered, telling him that I had deliberately avoided answering so as not to have a fight, and asking him to please not get a solicitor; I would rather that time, money and effort was spent on our child. I told him I was not loving any of it; I had hoped we could work things out. His response was that this was just like every other time, and I had deliberately caused this situation for the attention. I was tired and going to bed, so I just told him that now my daughter was my number one priority, and that we needed to be civil to each other for her sake. He replied that I was my number one priority, not my daughter. He said we should sort everything through solicitors and the CSA, "then me and my children can see my child!" again I told him I would rather all that time and effort was taken with S. I pointed out that solicitors would take a long time, and that I was not stopping him from seeing S. I said I was too tired to argue, and he told me to stop playing the damsel in distress.

I asked him to let me know if he was still coming to visit on Thursday, before his Anger Management appointment, then I switched my phone off and went to bed.

S was not yet a month old, and now I was a single mother.

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Early Motherhood: Things Fall Apart

This is one of a series of posts about S's birth and my first few weeks of motherhood. The first post in the series is here.

The morning after I had looked after the ex's children overnight, I was exhausted and miserable. I could not see a way this was going to work at all. I was barely able to cope with looking after S and getting into a routine at my house, without having to add in several nights a week at the ex's house, being poked and prodded by his children and expected to do everything he wanted.

That morning we headed home for a visit from the health visitor. I'd only met her once before, but she seemed nice. She came in and sat down opposite me and asked how I was. I burst out crying. I felt I was doing everything wrong, and that I shouldn't be finding everything this hard. Normal people didn't find motherhood this hard; the ex kept telling me, "it's just a baby, anyone can do it, it's not difficult!" As I cried, the ex stood leaning against a table on the opposite side of the room, watching but not saying or doing anything. She reassured me, and told me I needed to take better care of myself. She said I didn't look well, and that I was a high risk for postnatal depression and needed to bear that in mind. She told me to stop setting an alarm to feed S overnight, and to only feed her when she woke. That scared the crap out of me, but I agreed to it. The ex saw her out, and as she left I could hear her telling him he needed to reassure me I was doing a good job. He said he kept telling me I was. That night I left S to sleep and didn't wake her to feed her. She only woke once. When I texted the ex to tell him, he replied with "she would have always slept through if you had let her."

Over the next couple of days I didn't see the ex much. Instead he would go home from work, and send me texts saying his daughter was crying her eyes out because I wasn't there with S. I remember one evening, S had been feeding constantly since about 5pm. I would put her down after feeding, and have enough time to go to the toilet and maybe change her nappy, before she wanted feeding again. Nobody had told me about growth spurts, I didn't know what was going on. I was so hungry but there was nothing in the kitchen I could just grab as a quick snack in between feeding. I felt like I was pretty much stuck to the couch. At 9pm I gave in and called the ex. He had left my house at 4pm and gone to pick his kids up from the neighbour's house. He was still there when he answered the phone, and he was drunk. He seemed to be getting drunk in the evenings a lot lately. I told him what was happening, and that I didn't know what to do. I thought since he kept reminding me he'd already had 6 kids, he might have an answer for me. All I remember is him saying "oh well" and pretty much hanging up on me. I sat and cried and wondered for the millionth time, how the hell am I going to make this work?

I spoke to the health visitor on the phone and explained (through massive, heaving sobs) that I was having trouble settling into my new life, and that the ex expected me to be spending a lot of time at his house. I think as far as he was concerned, my place was somewhere we would just have for the sake of appearance, so that I could claim the benefits I would receive as a single mother, and so that S and I had somewhere to stay from time to time if it got too much at his house. He wanted us living with us. He was cross that I had been housed in an estate on the opposite side of town from him; he had expected me to get a place round the corner from him, so that he and his kids could come and go as they pleased. He'd also talked of bringing all 6 kids to my house to stay over once or twice a week. The disruption this would cause for everyone, the fact their school was a long way from my house, the fact I only had 2 small bedrooms, was of no concern. I blurted out all of this, telling her I couldn't cope with it; I couldn't even cope with me and my baby in our house, surrounded by all of our things - much less coping with us plus the ex, 6 children, the chickens in the bathroom, the dog, the cat, the snakes, the front door without a lock, the mess, the lack of space for our things, the noise, the chaos. It's not that there was a lack of routine; there was a distinct resistance against routine. He didn't like for anything to be predictable, in any way. 

Looking back, I realise now that the refusal to have any sort of routine was another way to assert control over people. He was entirely unpredictable, in every way possible. You could never say for sure, "if I do this, he will be pleased... if I do that, he will be cross." It changed hourly. 

He had also been pestering me for sex. I don't mean just asking when we would have sex, I mean telling me exactly how many days it had been since we'd had sex (not since he'd had sex; I found out later he'd been sleeping with his ex girlfriend the whole time, and probably others as well). He told me we should be trying for another baby already, because he thought children should be close in age. There are 11 months between his second son and oldest daughter, and 13 months between his two youngest girls. He wanted the same for S. When I told him I was still in pain, still bleeding, and sex was the furthest thing from my mind, he demanded I pull down my underwear so that he could inspect the situation. When I still said I felt uncomfortable having sex yet, he demanded oral sex. I tried, but my heart wasn't in it. He made an excuse and left, and spent the next day sulking at home, refusing to visit us even though he wasn't working.

The health visitor told me that I should give myself time to adjust, and not to go to the ex's house for at least a week or so; he could come to visit us at my house if he wanted to see us, but it was important that we get used to our home and settle in properly. She told me if he had a problem with this, I should tell him, "the health visitor has told me to do this," and that if he wasn't happy I should give him her number, and she would explain it to him. I was petrified of this; he would be angry to think I had said anything negative about him to her. 

That Thursday afternoon, he had an appointment for hypnotherapy (for his "anger issues") after work. In the hour or so in between, he came to see us. As soon as he came in, he turned the heating up, complaining it was too cold. I asked him not to, because I couldn't afford the gas bill. He told me not to be so stupid; he wasn't going to see me go without, he would put money on the gas if I needed him to. Five minutes later, he went upstairs and closed a window I had left cracked open to keep air circulating. I distinctly remember him coming down and saying "the window was open in the baby's room!" He always called her that, never by her name; she was just "the baby." He sat on the sofa, holding S and we barely spoke. He asked if I was coming to his house the next day and I said I wasn't sure. He asked what I was doing over the weekend, and I said I didn't know yet. I didn't want to tell him I definitely wasn't coming to his house for a while, because I was scared of what his reaction would be. 

His appointment was soon, but I felt that we'd hardly seen him. I suggested I get ready and we walk with him to his appointment. It was his first one, and I knew he was nervous so I thought it might be nice if we walked him down there. He said ok, and I started getting things together. I said to him, if you put S's snowsuit on, I'll get my shoes and the sling ready... He said he couldn't put her snowsuit on; he was too stressed. I bit my tongue, and went and got the snowsuit myself. When I came back, he asked if I had given S a bath at home yet. I told him no, because he had told me throughout my pregnancy that all of his kids' first baths had been in the bath he had his first bath in, and that he had done them, and should do S's first bath too. He had still not been into his loft to find the bath though, and I doubted he ever would; still, I was scared to go against his wishes, so S was yet to have a bath. He made a comment and I replied, "well to be fair, you don't really seem bothered about the bath, or anything else; you don't even change her nappies." At that he stood up, plonked S down in her bouncy chair, and stormed out.

Five minutes later, he called me and asked, "how do you expect this to work if you refuse to spend any time at my house?" I didn't have an answer, and he hung up. Later I received a text message: "At the end of the day, if you want to keep S from her brothers and sisters, her kin, her family, on your head and your conscience be it!" I replied that I had been finding things really hard and had spent most of the last week crying, that I had been trying to still do everything he expected but was finding it tough and had never realised things would be this difficult. I tried to explain that my life had changed massively in the blink of an eye, and I needed time to adjust. The response I got was: "You're the one making it blatantly obvious with your totally cold and uncaring attitude toward me and my children that you don't want or need to be with me. Mind you, you are totally set up no aren't you, I have set you up with everything you needed, wanted. I no longer have a purpose, no need to pretend to care for me or the kids!!"

I now know that by this point he was actively pursuing another woman, who lived a lot closer, and had a baby boy not much older than S. Within a week, she would be his new girlfriend.

The story continues here

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Early Motherhood: The Overnight Babysitting Shift

This follows on from a series of posts about S's birth and my first few weeks of motherhood. The first post is here.

While I was still pregnant, the ex had told me of his idea to allow him to spend more time with me and the baby - he would do one or two sleep-in shifts a month at work. This would mean he slept at work, coming home at 7am and could spend the whole day with us without his kids being around. We could play house at my place, go on day trips, out to lunch, whatever we wanted. I agreed to look after his kids overnight on the two nights a month he did his sleep-ins, and he spoke to his boss to change the rotas. Then S was born early, and I forgot all about it.

When we had been out of the hospital a week, the ex broke it to me that he was scheduled to work a full day from 7am that Sunday - and then to sleep in as well. He wanted me to stay at his house on the Saturday night and look after his 6 children for over 24 hours on my own. I said no, I couldn't cope with that so he agreed to get a sitter to have the children for part of the Sunday. I told him I really wasn't comfortable having them through the day on Sunday as well as overnight, so in the end he relented, and I didn't have to go over to his house until 4pm on the Sunday. There was nowhere for S to sleep at his house though, and although she could sleep in the pram, I couldn't get that down the stairs from the flat on my own. As is his style, everything was left to the last minute. Eventually (at lunch time on the day) it was agreed the ex's sister would come and give me a lift. She picked us up with all our stuff, and took us to his house. I remember going through the door and thinking, how the hell am I going to get through this? The children were nowhere to be seen. His sister helped me bring the Moses basket and changing bag into the house, and stood in the doorway asking if I was ok, did I want her to hang around? She'd already lectured me on the way over about perhaps going back onto my medication if I wasn't coping. I was tempted to say to her, "if you were prepared to stick around why the hell aren't you looking after his kids overnight instead of me?!" I wasn't impressed at being cajoled into doing this so soon after leaving hospital, but knew there was no way I could refuse; after all, the ex was only doing the shift because I'd agreed to take care of the children. In the end the sister left. That was the last time I saw or heard from her.

One of the only photos of S asleep on her father's bed

I had been told I needed to cook tea for the children, and although I had been told to get there for 4, they would now not be home until 5. I cooked a big pot of pasta and tomato sauce, and waited. 5pm came and went. I texted and called the ex; he had no idea where his children were, or why they weren't home. He didn't seem particularly bothered either. I was growing increasingly irritated; I'd dragged my child out of our home into this hell hole with nowhere comfortable to sit, nothing clean, nowhere to put her down, nothing to do. And we were just standing around, waiting. I kept S in the sling because I didn't want to leave her in the Moses basket or anywhere else in the house - it was a filthy mess, and since there were no doors on hinges, I couldn't leave her anywhere the dog couldn't get to her. While I'd been in hospital the chicks we'd been incubating had hatched, and there were now 6 baby chicks in 2 cages, under a heat lamp in the bathroom. The heat and smell were overwhelming, and although the bathroom door was kept closed, the whole house stank. I shut myself in the bedroom and opened the window in the hope of getting some fresh air.

Eventually word came through that the children were at their grandad's watching a film, and would be home when it finished; they had also had tea. Eventually the younger children came home. It was late and I was tired. I let them come in to see S, and we chatted a little. I explained it was late, and asked the 4 and 5-year-old to please get ready for bed, then S and I would come and read them a story. We did that, and they went to sleep. The older children were less easy to cope with. I let one of them go back out to play on the proviso that he stay on the green out front, and come back in as soon as the street lamps came on. He disappeared. One of the other boys did the same. The eldest boy came in for a chat, and then also disappeared. The eldest girl came and sat on the end of the bed and chatted to me for a while. I think she'd missed having me around, and wanted to tell me all about everything that had been going on. I had asked the ex to at least make sure there were school uniforms washed and ready before he went to work, but he hadn't so his eldest daughter started about finding all the clothes and making sure they were clean. It was usually her responsibility to do this for her younger sisters any way. She found their clothes, but couldn't find her school trousers. She thought perhaps they were at her grandad's house, and wanted to go back there to get them. I couldn't let her out of the house now as it was almost dark. There was a brief tantrum before she found the trousers, under a pile of other clothes.

Eventually the boys came home, and I asked them to put the tea I'd made into a container in the fridge for tomorrow night. I could hear them play-fighting and mucking about downstairs. By this point it was past 9pm. I had to feed S again at 10, and was desperate for them to be in bed by the time I did that, so that I could get some rest before the next feed at 1am. I asked the eldest girl to go to bed, and she did to start with, but she could hear her brothers messing about downstairs and went to join them. I had 4 unruly children banging about downstairs and a baby that needed feeding. I was so tired and stressed, I didn't know what to do. I called the ex, and he told me to hit them. I told him he knew I couldn't do that. He told me to go next door and get his other sister; she would hit them. I refused to do that, either. In the end, I left S in her Moses basket and stood at the top of the stairs. I shouted down to them, "I don't care whether you go to bed or not, but I am going to bed now and you need to be quiet." I went back into the bedroom and fed S. Eventually the children came upstairs and wanted to come in and see S but she was asleep, and I wanted to be so I told them no. There were tears and more tantrums, and eventually they all went to bed.

S asleep on me. Behind her you can see some of the
piles of crap that were a major feature of the house.

The next morning, nobody wanted to get up for school. I told them if they could get themselves up and ready in time, they could come into the bedroom and see S before they left. Still nobody moved. The eldest girl was in a shocking mood from lack of sleep, and was screaming at her sisters. I went in and asked her to please just get herself dressed and help her sisters for me. In the boys' room, nobody was moving. I did some strategic removal of duvets, and bodies began to stir. The eldest girl was still screaming at her sisters. I was nearly in tears by this point; I'd had no sleep and was exhausted. I said to the eldest girl, "what makes you think I want you to spend time with my daughter when you treat your other sisters like this?!" She still didn't stop shouting at them, calling them names, pulling their hair and making them scream. This was the norm for them; it was her job to get them up and dressed for school (as well as bath time, putting them to bed, de-ntting their hair, weekend meals... anything else you'd think of as a parent's job), and she resented them for it. She was ten, and this had been her role for the last 2 years. I didn't really blame her for it, I just wanted her to be quiet this morning.

The ex arrived home and began shouting at the children. They all soon got dressed for school and wanted to come in and see S. I said no, because we had made a deal that they could come and spend time with her only if they got ready for school on time; it was now time to leave the house. I thought I would be there again in a few days, and that they could spend time with her again then. I didn't know what was coming. Their older brother took them to school, then came home to pick up his things before heading off to secondary school. As he was leaving he said to his dad, "oh, when I made the sandwiches for school there wasn't enough ham or bread, so I made sure the younger ones had lunch, and I'll just get something when I get home." The ex went mad at him, shouting that the boy would be making him look bad at school if he turned up without a lunch. He gave him £10 and said "make sure you buy some lunch in the canteen with this so they see I've provided for you." The boy went to school. By this point I had packed up all mine and S's things, and was waiting in the living room for the ex to get himself ready to leave; we had to be at my house for a visit from the health visitor. 

Eventually we left, and went to the bus stop. When the bus arrived, the girl the ex had got pregnant a few weeks previously got off right in front of me. I felt sick. I had tried my best to just ignore the whole situation, but now I was faced with it again. She pulled a face at us both, and walked off. When we got on the bus I sat at the front with the pram, and the ex went and sat right at the back of the bus. He said he had to do this; he couldn't take up the seats for the elderly or disabled at the front. I would have believed him, but the bus was empty. He sat at the back of the bus, sending me text messages about how the other girl had deliberately lit a cigarette as the bus went past her; she was taunting him because he'd asked her not to smoke while she was pregnant. He complained that he had bought her pregnancy vitamins, but was sure she wasn't taking them; she looked pasty and ill. I wanted to say to him, She's always looked that way; if you find her so disgusting why did you sleep with her when I was your girlfriend and pregnant with your child? I thought that was probably a bad idea though, so I sat in silence and prayed I would never run into her again.

That was the last time I went to that house, though I didn't realise it at the time. I remember spending the entire time looking around me, trying to figure out how the hell my baby could ever live in this place. There was no space for her, or for her things. Where would she learn to crawl? How would she survive without picking up and munching on the lid of a bleach bottle, or discarded cat food, or crawling through dog pee that hadn't been mopped up properly because a 7-year-old had been sent to do it? How would I keep her from playing with the dirty, bleachy mop bucket that was usually left hanging around the kitchen for days at a time? It was so dark in that house, everything seemed so miserable and out of place. I kept trying to figure out how the hell I could ever make this work.

The story continues here.

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Early Motherhood - The End of the Paternity Leave

This post is one of a series I have written about S's birth and first few weeks of life. The first part is here.

The next few weeks were very stressful and confusing for me. 

I have already posted about how the ex hated my midwife, and I was therefore keen to have her discharge us from hospital care. S was still jaundiced, and I was terrified they would take her back into hospital; I knew if they did this, I wouldn't be admitted with her, and would have to be separated from her. That first visit, the midwife did another heel-prick test on S for her jaundice levels and weighed her. She had lost a bit of weight and I nearly cried. She told me the best thing to do was to feed, feed, feed, and to prop up the head end of her Moses basket to avoid any vomiting. I was also supposed to express milk into a cup or syringe, and top her up after feeding. This was the most depressing thing, as I didn't have a pump and had to do it by hand; it took ages and hurt, and was often wasted as S turned her head away at the wrong moment. Premature and jaundiced babies are often too tired to suck enough to feed as much as they need to get rid of the jaundice and put on weight. S slept most of the time, and I was still waking her every 3 hours to feed.

My tiny girl wrapped in blankets

That first day, the ex busied himself unpacking what was left of the boxes in my flat, and putting things where he thought they should belong. He went out to get teabags, and came back with a microwave. He'd forgotten the teabags, so he went back out and came back with a vacuum cleaner, broom, dustpan and brush and mop and some random food: bread, jam, cheese. He wanted to provide for us. I avoid eating bread because it makes me ill. I already had a dustpan and brush. I don't even drink tea. When I took the mop out of its box, it was broken. When I pointed it out to him he shouted at me: "I can't do anything f***ing right can I, nothing's good enough!" All I'd meant was that perhaps he'd like to take it back to the shop and exchange it. At one point he told me he might not be able to get a sitter to be able to see me over the weekend, and gave me £20, sending me to the shops to buy some food for myself. I left S sleeping in her bouncy chair, and him organising things in a cupboard, and wandered into town. It was nice to be out in the air, but I felt like I was missing a limb without S. It also crossed my mind more than once that I might return home and find that the ex had taken her away. I half expected the house to be empty when I returned, but it wasn't so I sat on the sofa with S and fed her early.

Because of the damp upstairs, the council had brought over a dehumidifier the size of a cooker. It was in the bedroom, wired up to some special box because it was too powerful to run off the mains. The man who brought it showed the ex how to work it, but he never showed me. This meant I couldn't switch it off, and the noise and heat it generated were too much to sleep with. For the next week, S and I slept downstairs, me on the sofa and her in the Moses basket next to me. I was still setting my alarm for every 3 hours, and would wake up, switch the TV on and feed her, then settle her back into the basket, switch the TV off and go to sleep. Several times, I then woke up half an hour later in a panic - I couldn't remember putting S in her basket, had I fallen asleep holding her? Where was she? Oh God, you've suffocated the baby, where is she, where is she... oh wait, she's in the basket next to you. I would also regularly wake up in a panic, convinced I'd slept through an alarm and S had gone more than 3 hours without a feed. I was exhausted and it was driving me mad. All I could think about was making sure she was fed on time so that her jaundice went, and she put on weight, and nobody would take her away from me.

The following day the ex was unable to visit. My mother came round instead, with a friend. They brought gifts for S, clothes that would fit her which was good. I forget what we talked about. When they left, the friend gave me a hug and told me I'd done really well and S was beautiful. I didn't know how to respond to that; I wanted to shout at her, no I haven't done well! Look what I did, I went into labour early and now my baby is tiny and orange and they're going to take her away because I'm doing it all wrong!! I knew it was all my fault, that something I had done over the Easter weekend had resulted in my going into labour 5 weeks early. Throughout my pregnancy the ex had told me so many times that other women had been pregnant with his child and ended up having abortions, they'd murdered his babies, and that if anything happened to this baby he would never forgive me.

The midwife visited a couple more times, and then discharged us. I was so relieved at this; no more tension with the ex thinking I was telling the midwife bad things about him. More importantly, if the midwife had discharged us then I thought she must think I was doing an ok job, and wouldn't take my baby away. I was petrified those first few weeks that I would be somehow "found out" and they would take S back to the hospital, where she would be safe away from me.

My little orange baby!

The pushchair I had bought was quite large and cumbersome. I found that I wasn't comfortable bumping it up and down the stairs with my tiny baby in it. This meant that I could only go out of the house when accompanied by the ex. If he didn't visit, or came round and didn't fancy going out, I was stuck in the house. I wanted to buy a sling, but had no money until pay day. A dear friend must have realised I was going a bit mad being stuck in the house, and posted me a sling she had not been able to get on with for her baby. The minute it arrived, I read the instructions as to how to tie it, put it on, and put S in it. That day was like a transformation in me. I didn't just wear the sling to go out; I wore it all the time, happy that I could now keep S close to me. The ex insisted S would not be warm enough in the sling, and bought a snowsuit which she had to wear whenever we went out. 

The week after we came out of hospital, we went to the council offices to register S's birth. As was standard, S was wrapped in 3 or 4 blankets inside of the pram, with a rain cover over the top because of the weather. How she never overheated during those first few weeks, I will never know. She must have been boiling. When we arrived at the office, we had to leave the pram outside and go into a waiting room. The ex carried S. He held her in the waiting room, and refused to let me near her. When we went into the office to register her, he held her. At the time I felt strange, not being allowed to hold my child. Looking back at it, I  notice that I was not allowed to hold my child until I had signed the register, put his name on the birth certificate, and answered the registrar three times that yes, I was sure I wanted her to have his surname and him to be on the birth certificate. I couldn't figure out why she kept asking me, and telling me that it was my choice, and mine alone. I held S briefly while he signed the register, but then I had to give her back. We were given copies of the birth certificate, and we left. 

I was glad when S was back in the pushchair, because I was allowed to push that. I did it wrong, of course, and was constantly told I was being stupid about waiting to cross the road and not bumping up and down kirbs. His favourite trick was to suddenly take off down a steep kirb and cross the road diagonally, then turn around to smirk at me trying to get across the road and keep up with him without getting run over. He also regularly tutted at me for being too slow and cautious. On the days we took her out in the sling, again he stormed off ahead of us, and I had to try and keep up without having S bump about too much in the sling.

None of this turned out to matter though; within a week the ex had stormed out, and a few days after that he finished with me. I was soon to become a single mother.

The happy ending is on its way... 

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Early Motherhood - Coming Home

This is the latest in a series of posts about my daughter's birth and first few weeks. The first of these posts can be found here.

We came home from hospital on a Thursday afternoon, my sister driving very slowly and carefully.

It was raining, and had been almost the entire time I'd been in hospital. When we got out of the car, the ex wouldn't let me carry S up the steps to the flat (I live on the first floor) in case I slipped and dropped her.

Coming back into the flat after so long away felt strange. When I'd left, I'd been heavily pregnant, but ultimately answerable only to myself. It felt weird to have brought this baby back with me. We put the heating on, and sat in the living room. My sister and her boyfriend had bought S a bouncy chair, so I put her in that. She looked so tiny in it; there was no point in fastening the straps around her because even pulled as tight as they would go, they were massive on her. She sat on the floor in front of me, wrapped in several blankets (as the ex had decreed she should be). It felt wrong to have her on the floor, in a chair like that, so far away from me; she had spent most of her time in hospital curled up on my chest. I didn't want to pick her up though, and be told off for holding her wrong or doing something else wrong.

The ex didn't like the idea of me being alone in the house with S, so we had arranged that my sister would stay with me for the first couple of nights. I went upstairs to sort out S's Moses basket, make sure there was a bed for my sister and so on. When I went into my bedroom, horror struck me - the roof had leaked while I'd been away. And not just a little bit; it had clearly been leaking for the entire week and a half. There was water dripping above the window, and the wall was damp almost down to the half-way point. Worse, some furniture was against the wall with the pram attachment of my pushchair had been against that wall, and everything was wet. I went into the bathroom, and dirty, brown water was leaking  through in there too. When I came downstairs to the kitchen, I saw that the water dripping from the ceiling onto bare floorboards upstairs had come through above the sink.

I was distraught, and had no clue what to do. As I took time to think about it, I realised there was no way this was the first time this roof had leaked; if it was this bad, it must have leaked when the last tenant was here. I was livid. I called the council's repair line and told them I had just come out of hospital with a premature baby, and they needed to come and sort this out immediately. Then I had to call back, because half the radiators in my house weren't heating up. Within a couple of hours, there were men on the roof clearing what turned out to be a blocked down-pipe and a foot of standing water above my bedroom. Two men from the council came to assess the internal damage with clipboards, and a man from British Gas came to sort out the radiators. By this point, S was due for her next feed so I was sitting on the sofa with a blanket over me, while the ex showed the men the problems.

After a while, the people left, and the place began to warm up a little. My sister left for work, but said she would be back later this evening. As the radiators began to warm up, we could smell paint. Before I had moved in, the council had decorated the flat - every wall with magnolia paint, every door and radiator with lashings of white gloss. Since the heating had never been on since, the radiators were now heating the gloss. It was bubbling and causing quite a strong smell. The ex went mad and told me there was no way I could stay here with S with such a strong smell, it would damage her lungs. I called the council, but by that point it was after 5pm and everyone had gone home. Their out of hours service was not much use. We moved upstairs to the bedroom, where we turned the radiator off and plugged in an oil-filled radiator. Eventually it was decided that S could not possibly stay here overnight, and that we would stay at the ex's house, coming back first thing in the morning for a visit from the midwife. 

My sister gave us a lift to the ex's house. His children were being looked after by a neighbour, so we went over to surprise them with S. Everyone was crowded around me, wanting to look and touch. She was still so small and delicate and precious to me, I didn't want all these people poking and prodding, and I still didn't feel able to hold up my end of  a conversation. I just sort of stood there, clutching my baby, until we left. As we walked across the green to the ex's house, one of his children did something up ahead of us. He shouted across to her really loudly, and S woke with a start. I asked him to please not shout and he told me off for over-reacting. 

The rest of my evening was spent sitting on the ex's bed, holding S. His children took it in turns to come in and see us and ask questions, and were then sent away. Not sent to bed, or to get ready for school, or to tidy their rooms, just away. "Go away now." I remember the youngest one standing outside of the door, crying. The room was small and full of junk. The ex had boasted to me while I was in hospital that he had cleared it out, and made space for S and her things so that we could stay at his house. Once we were in the room, with the Moses basket and a changing bag, there was nowhere to put your feet on the floor. It crossed my mind that once S was too big for her Moses basket, he might make me put her in a cot in a different room to sleep. One of the rooms that already slept 3 children and had a snake in a tank with a dodgy door. One of the rooms with no door and a big lumbering dog that wandered about throughout the night.

She really was that jaundiced.

I was scared to leave the room to go to the toilet, afraid of what might happen in my absence. When we finally went to sleep, I had set my alarm to wake me every 3 hours in the night. S's Moses basket was as close to the bed as I could get it, and I moved down towards the foot of the bed so that I was closer to her. The ex told me off because I kept the bedside lamp on all night, but I needed to be able to check on her. In hospital it is never dark, and I had always been able to see her whenever I looked over. He told me I was being ridiculous. Every time my alarm went off in the night, the ex huffed and told me to hurry up and turn it off. One time he made a big show of rolling over and putting a pillow over his head. I sat in his bed, feeding my baby, and cried. I had no idea how this was ever going to work. I had put all my energy into concentrating on getting home. I'd thought that everything would be ok once we were out of hospital, but now I realised that even with him next to me, I was on my own.

The next part of the story is here

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Early Motherhood: Escape From Hospital!

This post follows on from my posts about S's birth here and here, and the posts about her first days here and here.

S came out of NICU on a Saturday afternoon, and I believed we'd probably be going home the next day. Maybe, at a push, the day after. She had been starting to try and feed, and I was sure my milk would come in soon.

On the Sunday, the ex didn't visit. He couldn't get a baby sitter. I found it really tough. In NICU you're only supposed to have two people at a time with the babies, and I didn't want to have to deal with scheduling people or having to turn them away. I couldn't bear the thought of two people turning up, and perhaps having to leave my baby's side so that they could gawp at her. Plus I just didn't want people to see me in that state. I had contacted everyone and told them it was best not to visit. When we came out of NICU, I knew there was no chance of going home before we had established breastfeeding, and I wanted to concentrate on that without feeling self conscious about random visitors turning up half way through. I told people it was  best not to come, so that I could concentrate on the breastfeeding and get out of hospital. It was starting to do my head in a bit.

So that Sunday, I saw nobody. All day, it was just me and S and the ward staff, and someone from NICU every 3 hours. By the afternoon it was starting to get to me. I was surrounded by happy couples, men arriving with gifts for their wives and new babies, fawning over them, doing things for them, cuddling up with them. I was sitting on my bed, reading a book, bored out of my mind. S was still very sleepy so she mostly slept on my chest in between feeds. I couldn't get any phone signal to be able to call or text anyone much, and didn't really want to any way. I didn't want to tell people how unhappy I was, how abandoned I felt. And I knew that if people found out the ex wasn't with us I would be in trouble for making him look bad. So I stuck it out, and just cried quietly to myself.

In the next couple of days, my milk came in. I was sure this was a sign we would be going home soon. S still had her feeding tube, but I thought now my milk was in she would just feed, and it would be fine. I began expressing milk and putting it in the fridge, ready to be fed to her in her tube instead of the formula. I felt a lot better now that we weren't relying on the formula to feed my baby. One of the NICU nurses was called Naomi. She had looked after us in NICU, and she also came down to the ward to feed S. I remember she was off for a couple of days, and when she came back she came down to feed S. I was holding her, sitting on the bed and said to Naomi, oh, there's some milk in the fridge I'll just grab it for you. I started to wander off and she said, "aw, can I have a little hold of S while you're gone?" So I left S with her, and went to get some of the milk I'd expressed from the fridge. When I returned, I handed it to her and took S, and she began doing her paperwork - they recorded whether S had had a wet nappy since the last feed and a couple of other things. Naomi was busy going through this, and getting the syringe ready to put the milk into S's tube, when she looked up and said "I've just realised you've handed me expressed milk, not formula!! Your milk came in! I'm so pleased!" There may have been a little yelp there too. She was genuinely pleased that my milk had come in and that S was now getting breast milk.

One evening, S pulled her feeding tube out. It wasn't the first time she'd done it; she'd pulled it right out once before, but had also half removed it a few times too. It was almost feed time, so I waited for one of the NICU nurses to come down. It was Naomi again. She said, well since your milk is in and she's been feeding from you a bit, how about we just don't put it back in? Instead we can top her up from a feeding cup. I was so excited; now there was no feeding tube, surely we could go home really soon. I fed S, and then we gave her some of my expressed milk from a little feeding cup. It was very messy, but I didn't care. The next day the doctors reviewed S's progress, and said that fine, she didn't have to have the tube put back in - but that she must have X amount of milk supplemented on top of her feeds each time. They were worried about her losing weight.

During that first day of breastfeeding, S put on a ridiculous amount of weight in the space of 24 hours. It was Tuesday, and I remember them bringing the scales round, and saying to her, "think fat, we need a big number so we can go home!" they weighed her and it was a good number. I was hopeful they would let us out. I'd got up that morning and sorted through all our things, packing them into bags ready to go. 

When they said we couldn't go home I cried. I couldn't help it; I was sick of being in hospital, on my own.  I remember one of the ward staff coming to collect my plate, and asking if I wanted her to leave any of it with me to eat later. I said no, I wasn't hungry. I think it was the only time I was properly short with any of them, and I felt bad for it. She was lovely about it though, and just told me I needed to keep my strength up. I remember Kit coming down to help with feeding; even though I was breastfeeding S now, they were still coming to support us and make sure it was going well. She told me if I wasn't getting on well sitting up on the bed with her, perhaps we could try it laying down. I cried and said, if I lay her on the bed with me the ward staff will tell me off, I can't remember what else I said but I basically just broke down and blubbed for a while. Kit was so supportive. She told me that it might seem like a never-ending nightmare right now, but in reality it was only a few days at the start of S's life, and soon it would feel like nothing. She put so much effort into helping us to establish breastfeeding, and could see how much I needed to get out of there.

I think it must have been on my notes that I was a high risk for PND. Most mothers have their babies, and have left the ward within a couple of days. I had been there over a week now. They still came round to do obs, check my blood pressure and my temperature, but it was a formality. They would chat to me, ask how I was feeling, explain that I could go back onto my medication if I wanted to. We talked through warning signs for PND, and how important it was that I ask for help if I felt I needed it. I hated being in hospital. I'm normally a fairly solitary person, and to be in a position where I was sharing a large room with several other people, with no door to close behind me for a bit of privacy, using communal toilets and showers, having to walk past strangers in my pyjamas, was really getting to me.

I'd been in hospital over a week now, and had run out of most of the things I'd packed in my hospital bag. I'd had to ask the ex to bring more nappies, more cotton wool, more maternity pads, more clean knickers, more clothes, more shampoo. He brought most of the things I asked for, as if he were doing me a great favour by providing these things. He took his kids to school by 8 each morning, and the bus from his house came straight to the hospital, but he still never got to me before lunch time. He never arranged for someone to pick his kids up from school, so each day it would get to the time he would need to leave to pick the kids up, and he would try and get me to call his neighbour and ask her to pick them up. Apparently, I should ask her because it was me she would be doing the favour for, letting him stay with us. I refused, embarrassed at having to ask at such short notice, and he would text her. Sometimes she answered in time, and he didn't have to leave. Other days he had to go. I could never understand why he didn't just ask his neighbour in advance, please would you pick the kids up from school this week so that I can visit Vicky and S in the hospital. He never did though. He would take away mine and S's dirty clothes, wash them and bring them back. But he refused to buy non-bio washing powder for S's clothes. He also refused to sort the washing, so the only babygros I had that did fit S came back dyed dingy brown colours and smelling strongly of the scents used in biological washing powder. I didn't want to put them back on her in case they irritated her skin. The pile of clothes, blankets and... well, just crap next to my bed got larger and larger, but he would never take more than a bag away with him at a time - despite the fact the bus went straight from the hospital to his house. He complained that he was tired and stressed, that his house was a mess, that it was really upsetting him to visit us in the hospital, breaking his heart, he wanted us home. If I asked him to stop off in town and get me something, he complained that he was too tired to walk around town. If I asked him to stop off at my house to pick up something I needed, he complained that it was too far to walk to my house, and would delay his getting to me. The bus from his house to the hospital stops in town, and also outside of my house. He would not have needed to walk further than 500 metres for anything. On the one occasion I did manage to persuade him to pick something up from my house on the way, he arrived a full hour later than usual. One day I asked him why his Facebook status mentioned his daughter being in the hospital, but said nothing about me. He told me he didn't want to tell people I was breaking my heart being stuck in the hospital.

On the Wednesday morning, the shift changed over at 8am and I recognised a friendly face: Joy, who had been with me through most of my labour, was here. She came over to say hello and to see S; she didn't seem surprised we were still there, but I suppose they have a briefing at changeover, don't they. I thanked her for everything, and was so glad to have seen her again. Later that morning, Kit came down from NICU. She looked at S and said she was worried about her jaundice levels again. My stomach lurched. They did another blood test. Kit came back with the graph from before, and showed us how S's levels had gone dangerously high again. She said we'd need to use the lights again. I was horrified. I didn't want them to take her away from me to NICU again, I couldn't bear the thought of it. Kit went to speak to the consultant about it, and came back saying that we would have the lights on the ward, so that I didn't have to be separated from S. I was glad they weren't taking her, but still miserable. I had hoped they would be letting us out today. Seeing how distressed I was, Kit told me to take my shirt off. We stripped S down to her nappy, and she lay on my chest with the lamp over both of us. It was the perfect compromise. I lay like that all afternoon, stopped for some tea and a brief visit from my sister and sister in law, and then spent the evening like it too. I moved only to feed her every 3 hours. At midnight they came and turned the lights off, and took S up to NICU for a hearing test. When they brought her back, I fed her and put her down to sleep in her crib. I fell asleep as far down the bed as I could get, with the crib right next to the bed so that I could see her. Because she was premature, and jaundiced, she didn't wake to feed. So I had to set an alarm to wake me every three hours through the night to make sure she was fed on time.

On the Thursday morning some doctors turned up. One was the lady I'd met the previous Thursday, who had told us they were taking S to NICU. She was with another lady, who wasn't in scrubs; I suppose she must have been a consultant or something. I don't recall her introducing herself to me, but to be fair I wasn't entirely with it. She checked S over and asked some questions and made a comment that if everything stayed ok we should be able to go home in the morning. My heart sank, and I blurted out "why do we have to wait until tomorrow? Why not today?" The lady looked at me in surprise and said, we'll see. A couple of hours later, the ex turned up and I told him I was determined we would be going home today. At lunch time someone came and took blood from S's heel again to test her jaundice levels; they have to leave it for 12 hours after the lights are switched off, to get a true result of how effective the treatment has been. They found some scales and weighed S as well, and it looked good.

Finally, the word came that we could be discharged. Naomi came down from NICU with S's discharge paperwork and said S would need to have vitamins and iron supplements, but that she didn't want to hold us up by waiting for the pharmacy to dispense them, so she would have them ready for us when we came back in a couple of days for the infant first aid class they had offered us. We packed up almost 2 weeks' worth of stuff and waited for them to bring my discharge paperwork. It was a very long wait, but eventually someone came along with some paperwork. It was a lady I was Facebook friends with, and had known when I was younger. It was so good to see a familiar face. She gave me some infinitely useful advice about breastfeeding (buy Lansinoh!) and told us we were free to go.

My sister came to pick us up, and we packed up our bags. S was dressed in one of the outfits her father had bought on that first day, and it was miles too big for her. I hated it, but it was important to him that she left hospital wearing an outfit he had bought. He had me wrap her in about four blankets to stop her getting cold, and off we went. All the way up the corridor, he told me I was holding her all wrong, I looked awkward, was I about to drop her? I was doing it all wrong, I looked like I didn't know what I was doing, I shouldn't hold her like that. When we got to the door, it was raining. We waited under an awning while my sister went and got the car ready. Again, I was told off for not having S wrapped up enough, the rain was going to get on her, I looked so awkward holding her. Eventually we put her in the car seat, and I sat in the back of the car next to her while we made our slow, cautious way home. Freedom at last!

At the time, I hated being in hospital, resented the constant interruptions from ward staff wanting to take my temperature and blood pressure and ask how I was. I must have had latching and positioning advice from every person who worked on the ward, and everyone saw my breasts in the end, as I gave up caring whether the curtain was pulled shut or people were wandering in and out. By the time we left I was so glad to be leaving. Looking back though, I am so incredibly grateful to the people who looked after both S and I. The NICU nurses I have mentioned in this post were truly amazing, and I believe they went well above and beyond what anyone would expect of someone coming in to do a 12-hour shift in a hospital. 

Although my pregnancy, labour, birth and first few days of motherhood were far from perfect, and fairly traumatic in places, I can happily say that, except for the situation with the ex, I would not have had it any other way. I could not have asked for anyone to have treated me any differently, and were I to have another baby, I would have no worries at all about being treated in my local hospital, by the same staff.

The story continues here.

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