Wednesday

I slept surprisingly well. I thought I’d wait for breakfast before going upstairs to see Marty – that turned out to be a mistake.  I was waiting in my room like a lemon when I was eventually told the sign (in French) on my wall told me to go to another room to get my breakfast. Then the nurses wanted to do more blood tests, and then I needed to bloody pump. It was gone 10 before I was on my way up. Argh! I found my way to the ward ok, always clutching my phone with my Google Translate app open at the ready! I got to the intercom security door and found myself putting on a French accent when I said the required “Marty maman” (Marty’s mum), they buzzed me in and I went through the parents locker room to get out onto the main corridor.

I felt a bit more comfortable in my surroundings today, getting my bearings and generally feeling more confident being around Marty and all that came with him. I took a photo of his part of the room so our family could see a glimpse of his little corner of the world.  I sat with him, held his hand, picked his arm up a little and tried to become more familiar with his tiny body. I watched the nurses as they went about their routines and tried to get to grips with what was going on. They asked me if I wanted to help so I very tentatively wiped him when they changed his nappy. I was finally starting to feel a connection, I felt so proud of him. I told him he was my little rockstar, his first mode of transport being a helicopter while most babies get strapped into a Ford Fiesta.

I was building myself up to holding him but the nurse told me he was going to be having a blood transfusion so I’d have to wait until a bit later; a blood transfusion sounded like a big deal to me, did I need to worry? She said it was ‘normal’ and ‘fine’. Ok, again, I had to trust them. A senior nurse came in and gave me a few updates (heart, oxygen etc…), he had no bad news – great!

A little while later a nurse quite casually asked me if Mark was coming in, I said he was, but then she asked me what time. She said the doctor wanted to speak to us. Hmm, this didn’t feel good to me. I asked if everything was ok but she said something along the lines of that being difficult to say because things change so quickly. I messaged Mark straight away to tell him and sort out arrangements for him coming in. I think we both knew deep down that we had some unwanted news coming, but what? The nurse had literally just told me he was doing alright.

 After lunch, Mark, Jon and Robyn all came to the hospital so I could spend some time with Robyn; she made herself at home in my room, playing with a few toys she’d brought, inspecting the breast pump and climbing on my bed. After a little while Mark and I left to go and see Marty. Jon tried to keep Robyn entertained in the confines of my room and keep the volume down in case the nurses caught them.

We weren’t with Marty very long when a Doctor came in, he asked us if we’d like to go somewhere else to talk. I took a deep breath, this wasn’t looking good. We held hands, heads down and followed him out of the main ward and into a room filled with black leather sofas and a big window looking out over the city. We weren’t alone, the two nurses I’d seen in the morning followed us in. You just know when bad news is coming, don’t you?

I don’t remember all of the details of the conversation that followed, I was completely quiet and let Mark ask the questions, thank god he did because I could just about take it all in. The doctor was explaining things really well in English and drawing pictures for us. He told us Marty had a bleed on his brain. It could stay as it was or it could get worse. It could result in him having behavioural or learning difficulties in later life, he could have Cerebral Palsy. He laid the ground for it getting worse than either of those possibilities and there were comments about taking ‘decisions’ based on what was right for Marty. The doctor gave us the time to ask questions, and the time to be silent. The nurses said nothing.

He told us they would look to move Marty into his own room, that felt like a gentle signal towards the direction we were going in here. They would repeat a brain scan the following day and we would talk after that. The three of them left the room so we could have some time to talk.

Honestly, I think I just felt a bit stunned. It was like the rug (or world) had been pulled from under us, it was a huge blow. Last night we felt pretty good. Today I was just starting to get to grips with what was going on but it felt like we were suddenly in a whole different place. We had to just hope and pray that tomorrows scan showed the bleed was no worse.

I had no idea what it was like to have a child with Cerebral Palsy. I thought about people I knew who had children with similar conditions. I say similar conditions but I was pretty ignorant to it all really, I’d never been directly exposed to disabilities or serious illnesses.  But I knew these things impacted the lives of entire families – that feels so selfish of me now, I was thinking of the impact on my life and not Marty’s. I remember Mark saying it didn’t matter what conditions he had, he was our son and we would love him no matter what. We would.

We sat in the room for a while, we hugged, we cried and then we walked downstairs to Robyn and pretended that nothing had happened. That is how the next few days continued, ours sons future hung in the balance as we tried to balance being good parents to both of our children; protecting Robyn and keeping her happy. We’d brought her on holiday and ended up shielding her from a total nightmare.

After the news we’d had, I did not want to be on that ward on my own anymore, I wanted to go back to the house with the three of them and spend the night in a bed with my husband and my daughter. We started to talk to the midwife about me being discharged, she was not up for it at all, she looked at us like we were crazy. Mothers stay in hospital much longer in France than they do in the UK, plus they were still monitoring my infection. It was like some kind of stand off between us and the midwife as we tried to make our points in a way each other could understand. Robyn patiently sat in her pushchair eating snacks, looking like she was watching a tennis match as she watched the ‘conversation’ go back and forth. Marty's doctors got involved, I had a conversation with translators and more senior doctors, had some more blood tests and then they begrudgingly agreed to let me leave, on the basis that it was better for my mental wellbeing. My blood test results showed a reduction in the infection so I was discharged with a weeks worth of antibiotics and a prescription for a breast pump. If any of the blood test results showed anything bad I had to go back in, fine. I was so pleased.

I based myself at the hospital for the rest of that day, I waited for Mark to get Robyn to bed and three days after him being born, I finally held my son. I was nervous, sat in a chair waiting for him to be passed to me; it took two nurses to carefully reorganise all of his tubes and wires, and gently place him down the centre of my chest, my dress pulled apart so he was on my bare skin. I looked down at him as they moved his tiny arms and legs to make sure he was in a comfortable position, turned his head to the side so the tube in his nose was unobstructed. They taped tubes to my shoulder and neck to make sure everything was kept in place and covered him in a blanket.

Wow. Surreal is the only word I could ever think of to describe so many of the situations we were in. It all felt very clinical when they were setting us up, I was scared to move that first time, afraid of knocking something or hurting him. But I was soon able to just enjoy holding him, it was nice to think that he would know he was with me and feel better, like the doctor said last night. The three of us sat together for an hour or so, the nurses took some photos for us, we cried, loved being close to him and hoped he was going to be ok. He looked so perfect.

I left the hospital late that night with Mark; the relief at being able to go with him was huge. Mark lead the way back to the house, we walked past people out having meals, drinks, enjoying the evening heat. That’s what we should have been doing.

(I don’t want to sound ungrateful about my care in Nantes, I’m not. I know they were trying to look after me. It’s not their fault I couldn’t speak French, it’s not their fault I was transferred and not able to stay with the people who cared for me from the start, nor that I had a sick baby upstairs who I wanted to be with, but also a daughter in the city who I didn’t want to be away from. Medically the best place for me was on the maternity ward, but mentally I needed to be with my family)

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