I was so very worried if he went back to sleep he may never wake again. He was awake for about 20 minutes before he gradually drifted off again. He woke later on when I went up there and they told me he had woken a little bit and had cried like a little kitten mewing when they had moved him around. I remember hearing his first cry it was so very sweet...nothing like other newborns cries...it did get stronger over the next few days and soon became full force baby cry lol.
He had been through so much in the previous few days. He had been through blood transfusions and the full intensive care package. He had IV lines in his feet and his arms, he had blood taken and things done with his cord stump. It was never clamped with one of those plastic pegs. It had scissor clamps on it at first and then they sewed it up with what looked like darning thread. In fact he was about 4 weeks before his little cord stump fell off. I did not think it would ever come off. He has a little sticky out belly button now bless him.
I do not even know the emotions I had gone through those days of sitting by his incubator. I know I would quite often go up there in the middle of the night and sit with him and talk to him and beg him to come through all of this (before he woke and was still being cooled). I remember talking to him all about New York as daddy wanted to go there for his 40th birthday that coming October. I told him all about the big tall buildings he would see, how we would get there by flying high in the clouds on a big silver plane (American Airlines) and that we would go for a walk in Central Park and he could see all the trees. That we would go on a boat ride around Manhattan and go on the big yellow boat to Staten Island and go past Liberty. I also sung to him. I sung the Carpenter's 'Close to you'. I had sung it in hospital and it pacified my 3rd child Jordan when he had to have an operation and was treated for pyloric stenosis. I sung it to Jules too but normally ended up breaking down in tears. I made a deal that if he carried on doing well I would not sing him Donny Osmond songs lol.
Hormones...ahh hormones...what a terrible thing when your baby is so ill. I was all over the place. The minute they had heard that Jules had come off the ventilator I was whisked and removed from the Daffodil room. They gave me a single room on the post natal ward. It was hard as it was of course full of happy mum's with babies. I don't know if it was because I was from another hospital but the care was seriously lacking with hindsight. Don't get me wrong, on NICU they had lovely nurses (except some of the crazy foreign night ones). The midwives were lovely but they had no time, I had no advice on anything to do with the c section, no physio advice and I know they had someone coming round as I kind of gatecrashed one about a week later but she told me she was for first day advice so it was worthless to me by then. I didn't know they did not bring breakfast round either...no one had told me you had to hobble to the other end to get it yourself and the rest of the food was the absolute worse I have ever had the misfortune to experience in any hospital. It really was slop, who would serve up lasagne with mash potato? It all tasted the same. Even a ham and tomato sandwich tasted like toxic plastic. I was more or less a ward lodger and I just came and went and spent most of my time in NICU....they lacked comfy chairs and I think that not being able to relax really did not help my recovery from the C section. I was in constant pain.
On the Monday when he was 5 days old the most amazing thing happened...I got to cuddle Jules. I can not even begin to tell you how it felt apart from amazing!! The feeling of his weight on my chest was amazing, the smell of him was amazing, having him nuzzle into me was amazing. I cried and broke down...what else could I do? I felt like I had waited a lifetime for that cuddle...well I guess I had, Julian's lifetime! One of the nurses was taking photos and she just click clicked away, we have some lovely pictures of our first time together as a family.
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