Just Another Normal Little Boy

On arrival, I was told that I was entitled to a free hospital dinner every night of my stay, and received instructions on how to get to the kitchen to collect it. I wasn't hungry, but at the designated time, I obediently ambled to the lifts, my bright red visitor lanyard and key card hanging around my neck.

I had no idea where I was going - the hospital was a labyrinth. I couldn’t imagine a time I’d ever be able to make it through without getting lost. These days, I know the place like the back of my hand, and I don't know if that should make me feel proud or sad.

I found the kitchen, eventually. They told me I was too late - through my tear-blurred eyes, I'd misread the collection time on my information sheet. I guess I cut a pretty pathetic figure, because the clerk's face softened and he asked me to wait a minute. He came back from the kitchen with a few leftover sandwiches from the lunch run. They looked revolting.

By that time, it was eerily quiet. The staff, visitors and day patients had gone home for the day. I shuffled through the empty corridors in my dressing gown, swiping my pass at each locked door, until I finally reached the maternity ward.

I walked in through the common room. The lights were off and the curtains were drawn. The little red light blinking on the TV was the only other sign of life. 

The communal kitchen had bottomless loaves of bread for the ward residents, as well as all the jam, butter, tea, coffee and milk you could need. But there was no toaster. Apparently, many years back, an unsuspecting new parent had forgotten about their toast and the toaster had erupted in flames, almost burning the kitchen down. 

They confiscated the toasted and replaced it with a sandwich press. You want toast now? You make it in that.

I unpacked my sad lunch leftover sandwiches and smeared a bit of butter on it. I threw it into the sandwich press and hoped that would revive it a little. It did not. In the weeks to come, I would remember to pack my own food. Live and learn.

I filled my water bottle at the sink and tapped my pass once again at the large double doors. They made a loud beep and swung open into the dark corridor. The only light came from the tiny frosted windows cut into each of the four doors. I couldn't hear any crying, which was equal parts comforting and disconcerting.

Back in my room for the night, I called my husband to check in. Ate a small piece of chocolate I'd bought earlier. Brushed my teeth, looked at, and ignored the text messages that were accumulating on my phone. Other than our immediate families, no one actually knew that our son had been born, yet. I turned on the hospital-issue TV that played the sound through a tiny speaker in the remote. And I sat on the edge of the bed and stared through the wall. 

I couldn't understand how I'd gotten there. A few days ago, we were going to have a baby, spend a few nights in hospital, go home and get on with it. Instead, my baby was two days old and I'd barely touched him. Within the past ten hours, he'd undergone a battery of tests: x-rays, blood tests, phosphate, sodium, chloride and creatine checks, and a full blood count. Not to mention changing the breathing and feeding tubes fitted in either nostril. These tests and tubes would all become a very routine part of our lives over the following months. But in that moment, they were foreign, and therefore, terrifying. 

Instead of going out to meet our family and friends, our baby would spend the foreseeable future in the hospital. Instead of dressing him up in the cute little clothes we'd bought him, he'd be wearing tubes and monitors. Instead of feeding him his bottle in the rocking chair we'd bought, he'd be fed through a tube that went in through his tiny nostril and down into his stomach. Instead of holding him and rocking him and singing to him when he woke up crying in the middle of the night, he'd be comforted by the nurses; complete strangers.

We'd been assured that at the end of it all, he'd be just another normal little boy. But until then, even with that reassurance, we would hurt. We would feel guilty for every minute we didn't spend at the hospital by his side, we'd feel angry that our little boy would have to go through so much pain, and we'd feel violently hurt by everything we'd been robbed of. 

There wasn't a shadow of a doubt that he'd be in good hands. They just weren't our hands. He would have a wonderful childhood once this was all behind us, and he wouldn’t remember a thing. But the cost for his happy and healthy childhood would be our tears and pain. And with that thought, I cried so hard I shook, until I passed out into a fitful sleep.