DRAMA

What a weekend. Started off fairly slowly. A catch up with a girlfriend on Friday night and a trip to the shops to buy a new door mat on Saturday. You get the picture.

On Saturday evening around 8.15pm just as I was adding the finishing touches to my ’60’s outfit to go and celebrate a friend’s 60th birthday (yes I know, but it’s my first) I had a mad panic call from my brother. All he said was “can you come, we’re in an ambulance”.

Fuck.

My sister-in-law was scheduled in for an earlier than normal caesarian in four weeks time because she had “Placenta Praevia” – that frightening obstetric complication in which the placenta is obstructing the cervix that is a leading cause of antepartum haemorrhage (vaginal bleeding) and unfortunately whilst Wikipedia says that it only affects around 0.5% of all labours, she was one of them.

Major drama. Ambulance. Blue light. They thought she might arrest in the ambulance because her blood pressure had dropped so low. When my brother called me they were about to get in to the ambulance and needed me to rush over to stay with their nearly two year old daughter. I took off my Abba boots, cheese cloth top, washed the little flower power face tattoo I had carefully drawn on and drove over to their house like a mad thing and got there in 15 minutes. This is why family shouldn’t live too far away from each other.

Once there, with my niece was asleep all I could do was twiddle my thumbs and wait for news. The news came in fleeting, dramatic bursts. First call was that she was going into theatre but that they couldn’t find a foetal heartbeat. They had been warned that the baby probably hadn’t survived the ordeal. Commiserations all round the hospital as they numbly took and then conveyed the news. At that point he was calm. Ten minutes later and he phoned me back in floods of tears to say that they had found a foetal heartbeat after all and that she was going to have a caesarian any minute – they were just waiting for specialist bloods for her.

Another agonising hour – sitting on my own waiting for news. Next a call from a male nurse on my brother’s phone and a heart-stopping moment when he introduced himself and I wondered what he was going to say – ” I just wanted to let you know that they’re all doing really, really well” and how lovely of him to call. Honestly at times like this you can’t fault our bloody NHS AT ALL. Even if tomorrow I might show you a photo of the food she had to eat this evening. THEN a call from my brother saying “WE’VE HAD A BOY!! and he’s beautiful and mother and baby are both doing well all things considered”.

So. HOORAY. Amazingly happy outcome. An early baby Boy. 5lbs something. 5 weeks early. He’s in the ICT unit and will be there for some time, but he was looking pink and beautiful and although they haven’t got anything ready and he doesn’t even have any clothes yet, that is when you realise that nothing else matters in the whole wide world.

That is the moment when you collapse in a heap.

My daughter this morning said “that’s why we all need to give blood – for situations like these” and she is so right.

My brother got back at 1.30am with his mother-in-law who had driven like a lunatic once she’d heard the news to be there with her at the hospital (they’re very close – she’s a single mum – and can I just note that her daughter phoned her mother to tell her what was going on before even thinking to phone an ambulance or the hospital – that is how close they are).

So the three of us talked it all through until 3am ish. What a horrific and yet massively amazing rollercoaster they’d been on in the space of four hours. In the ambulance he thought he might lose both his wife and unborn child. Now he was home and both were alive and well.

We drank Amaretto and coke (which normally I would have thought was revolting but on this occasion because we couldn’t find anything else was perfect) and we smoked cigarettes we found and pretended they were cigars.

Life eh? What a way to come into the world.

But WOOHOO. So happy.