Hello girls! Thanks Gayle for this post - I'm blushing but proud as punch too!
What can I say...! Had to have a couple of wines before my speech and Nicola Sturgeon is a waste of space. Oh and her make up was awful!
Here is what I said last night - enjoy and get the tissues ready!
One year ago on February 8th our baby boy Archie was born. He made his appearance 13 weeks earlier than planned weighing 2lb 6oz which is just heavier than a bag of sugar.
It was a whole 6 hours later before we got to see Archie. The first time I saw him is still a blur even today. I can't remember much apart from how tiny he was. I think I was still in sock at the time. His arms were the size of his Daddy's index finger and his whole hand only covered the nail on my pinky. I'd never seen something so small as Archie.
I woke the next morning to the sound of crying babies which were all around me. I was in a ward full of Mums and their new bundles of joy. This was emotionally hard for me to deal with as my baby was a 10 min walk away which felt like 100 miles. Why me I kept thinking, I should still be pregnant, why me.
Archie was beautiful, we were blinded by love which meant that we didn't really see the wires, tubes and a mask that covered his tiny body and face. Archie's body was covered in baby fur and his skin was transparent and very red. I called Archie my little rug rat as that's what he looked like - certainly didn't look like a newborn, more like an alien. Archie was hooked up to 10 alarms bells which could be ringing all at the same time. He also had a few other machines beside his incubator which monitored his heart rate, blood pressure, Saturations and temperature. At first, instead of looking at Archie, we were fixated on the machines especially the saturation one as Archie used to ring it constantly. I would go home with Alarm bells ringing in my head - how did the nurses cope! This brings me to the first observation I made whilst Archie was in Intensive care. For most of his time in there, he was looked after by one nurse however, when the unit was extremely busy the level of care would reduce to 2 sometimes 3 babies to 1 nurse. Fortunately, this was only the minority of the time.
Having a premature baby is traumatic enough but we didn't have any idea of what the next few months and even years would hold. Archie spent 6 weeks in intensive care, 14 weeks in total on the Neonatal unit. Two weeks after his birth, Archie was suspected of having caught an infection. This meant that his tiny body had to undergo a lumber puncture, tests, given blood transfusions and antibiotics - and that was just the start of our journey. All I remember was crying hysterically and wanting to see my baby. All I could see though the doors of the intensive care unit was screens pulled around Archie's incubator whilst the Doctors did what they had to do. We finally got to see him and just willed him to get better. After 4 long days Archie started to pick up a little, in-fact so much so that I was able to hold my baby for the first time - 3 weeks after he was born. Until that moment, I never knew that a cuddle could be so precious - it lasted 15 minutes before he needed to go back into his greenhouse to grow.
After 6 weeks Archie was promoted to the High Dependency nursery - we we so proud of our little boy and could now see the final nursery in our sights and the door home. However, this part of our journey was in-fact the hardest. Nothing can prepare you at how different a HDU is compared to IC. What I mean by that is your baby has had 1-1 or 1-2 level of care and now he's in a unit where there is one nurse to 4 or 5 babies. We must have looked like rabbits caught in headlights. An observation I made whilst in the HDU was it would suffer, suffer hard, if the Neonatal Unit was extremely busy. I saw on many occasions the level of care reduce to one nurse to 6 babies. At 34 weeks gestation Archie started to take regular brady cardies which meant his heart beat would slow down, sometimes to a dangerous level. I remember on one occasion whilst I was holding Archie, he took a really bad episode. His heartbeat slowed down that much that the big red alarm bell sounded. On that day, there was only 1 nurse to 5 babies which meant it took about 30 seconds for a nurse to come to his aid- he had to be resuscitated.
From that moment on my world fell apart. There were numerous times I ran out of the unit saying I couldn't cope. The nurses did talk to me and hinted that I should speak to a Dr, which I did. I was diagnosed and treated for PTS Syndrome. Each Neonatal unit should have direct access to a counseling service, this I feel would have benefited me and may have stopped me getting to the point of no return. At the very least, Neonatal staff should be training in recognising the symptoms of trauma and shock and know how to deal with it. The NHS must not continue to rely on charities such as BLISS to provide this service. How can the Government grant funding for one to one nursing and provide counseling services on Adult intensive care unit, but not on Neonatal?
After what seamed like an eternity, Archie began to put on weight feed well, breath on his own and grow out of brady cardies! It took 14 weeks for Archie to finally come home. I remember that day well and will never forget the look on my Husband Gordon's face, when I surprised him in at the front door with Archie in pram a nurse provided. It was a really sunny day and we pushed the pram round the hospital grounds, not once but twice. We were both really nervous as this was the first time we had our baby free of any monitors. I was offered to 'room in' for a couple of days which meant that I could stay in the hospital with my baby overnight. However, there was no guarantee that Gordon would be able to join us as the two rooms with the double beds in might not be free! I decided to refuse the offer as after 14 weeks of visiting my little boy every day on average 6 hours each time, I surly knew him well enough. May 15th we finally took Archie home and became 'proper' parents. That feeling was one of sheer BLISS.
Archie has just turned one and amazes Gordon and I every day - each milestone he achieves is like a weight being lifted off our shoulders. The hospital are delighted with his progress so far and have said to us that he is a great advertisement for neonatal care. To help more premature babies turn out like Archie, our Government needs to ensure a consistency of approach for one to one nursing care across all Scottish hospitals. They must also ensure that support is provided to parents of premature babies, before, during and after the birth of their baby.
Dona Robertson.
)
to Dona.
