Four and a half years ago I was preparing to have a c-section to deliver Kai. This entailed a quick trip into the doctors office to give a blood sample the day before the scheduled c-section. In Queen Mary Hospital, you are admitted for the whole day for effectively the same thing. I arrived at 9AM, was given my pink pj's and shown to my bed, which because it is the year of the dragon and ridiculously busy, my bed happened to be in the hallway giving me equal view of patients recovering from delivery and patients who were in labour but hadn't reached the crucial 4cm to allow them into the labour ward where all the nice cocktails of pain killers are!
Although I felt on display in the middle of the hall, I was rather contented looking through Xmas magazines planning what I would bake and cook this year - I swear, my memory sucks, because I had completely forgotten how little time you have with a new born and here I was planning lovely little family xmas projects where in reality, since Bryo was born, if we are all watered, washed and fed, we have had a successful day! 1130 I started rumbling about being forgotten and when would my blood be taken. 30 seconds later it was done. Great, I can go home :) NO, you have to wait for the anaesthetist to come around and meet you (which happened to be another 6 hours!!!!!!!!).
My stay was so much calmer than week 35 when I thought I was in pre-term labour. But, leaving aside dealing with pre-term, I felt I wasn't prepared enough to deal with feeding Bryo when I was at week 35. At 35 weeks I was nervous, very nervous about Bryo being born and being hungry because his mother was unable to feed him. After I was discharged from the week 35 scare, I got to work researching and asking for help. Joanna Chu from HKCLAPA and a HK Mom came to my home and spent the morning with me showing me how to use the Pidgon bottles, reassuring me and giving me confidence. I also got in touch with Great Ormond Street Hosptial in London who have a full time feeding specialist who deals only with clefts. She shared incredible information with me which I will write about when I write my feeding post. So between the 3 ladies above, I felt confident and prepared. The closer I got the delivery, the less I thought about the 'medical' side of things and when it came to the day before, all I could imagine was Bryo taking his first breath. Letting out a roar to let me know all is OK! But I also had 3 things to distract me during my day - let me share......
1. The Consent Forms. 'Here are you consent forms to sign'. Like any other medical consent I have been given when I gave birth, I put it one side - because, lets face it, it is not like I am going to call in lawyers to negotiate the details within the contract. BUT, in the Queen Mary Hospital, your consent form is read out to you - out loud! I tried to stop the Resident Doctor, explaining that it wouldn't be necessary, I will sign but it is 'hospital policy' for a doctor to read it out to you. So, I had two and half pages of how I can die and get harmed seriously during a c-section! Are they trying their best to give me an anxiety attack! In hindsight I should have pretended that Chinese was my first language and asked for it to be read to me in Chinese!
2. NICU - Casually at the end, she mentioned that when my baby is born he will be brought to the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit).
Me: Why?
Doctor: Because your baby will be born with a cleft lip and palate.
Me: Yes, but we know our baby is healthy so why does he need Intensive Care. You can ask the cleft nurse to come to bed side please?
Doctor: We don't have a cleft nurse
Me: Well, can you ask the feeding specialist to come to my bed side
Doctor: We don't have a feeding specialist
Me: So why do you want to send my baby to Intensive Care?
Doctor: So we can figure out how to feed him?
Me: He is not an experiment, he is my Son and I will feed him. And why would I send him somewhere where there is no one trained?!
Doctor unable to know how to handle me goes to nurses station and gets on phone only to come back and tell me that her senior say I have to send my baby to NICU. The above conversation happened again pretty much verbatim except this time she left and someone more senior returned. In between, nurses were sent to me
Nurse: You must follow Doctor's way
Me: Doctor must talk sense to be followed!
repeat above many times........
Eventually when I saw that many of them were panicking unsure how to deal with Gweipo display in the middle of the hall, I agreed that if my baby was born ill I would send him to NICU. It seamed to ease their pain a little.
In the meantime, 6 hours later the anesthesia turns up and picks up the 8 page consent form and off she goes. I stopped her, obviously patience running low and asked for a little common sense. If anything goes wrong you will put me under a general anesthetic - we can talk about it when I wake up. She agrees. She makes one last attempt and trying to get me to agree to send my baby to NICU but thankfully she has common sense that when I said it back to her
Me: The hospital wants me to send my healthy new born son to Intensive Care where nobody is trained to feed cleft babies but they want to figure out how to feed my baby. Surely a mother knows how to feed her baby better than untrained professional.
Thankfully she agreed and let me alone while I ran out the door before they changed their mind about letting me home to sleep for the night. As soon as I got out of the lift I phoned Mark telling him of our Plan B (he didn't' know we had a plan A). Mark, if they put our son in NICU tomorrow you are to discharge him immediately and go to the Adventist Hospital. Mark's head is spinning but I ask him to trust me on this one!
3. I return home to find that my child minder has committed a gross misconduct act for the second time in 13 days and I have to fire her 12 hours before my scheduled c-section. SERIOUSLY!
For all our friends and neighbors who rallied around us to get us through the delivery and first weeks at home and you all know who you are - we THANK YOU so very very much XXO
I just re-read this, I think their pre-op procedure has changed, I need to go on Monday to do all that but it is outpatient appointments rather than being admitted (at least that is my understanding!!) I don't have to be there until 2pm at least. I already signed the consent forms after my filed ECV. As she was reading them to me, she got to the place where it said "Future pregnancies" and I said "STOP - don't talk to me about that right now! There are no future pregnancies, move along!" She didn't know how to take that but obviously they "have" to read you the whole thing so she just kept going anyway ;)
ReplyDeleteUnlike you guys, we know this little one will need NICU because they wouldn't do all the x-rays etc from the regular ward...