It’s Not Always Beer And Skittles
By: Life Of Lux
Tags: Judgement, Parenting, Hospital, Single Moms, Baby

It’s Not Always Beer And Skittles

So. Much. Vomit.

I put my four week old baby on my nine year old nieces lap and the projectile vomit that covered her would put the little girl in the exorcist to shame. The upchuck started when my niece said ‘Oh…. Aunty Holly help’ and was STILL going by the time she finished that sentence with ‘help me! It’s everywhere. It’s a hose….. Help. Me’. I laughed so hard thinking it was normal baby spit up at the time. Cut to 12 hours later, when my baby woke me up at 2am to throw up for the third time and had a yellow and green Jackson Pollock painting in his nappy…. something was up. My usually quiet baby wouldn’t settle and his head was hot enough to cook an egg.

Calling the hotline that the midwives literally told me call with any concerns made me feel like I was bothering them.

‘Sorry to bother you, I hope it’s not an inconvenience to ask but…. is my baby dying?’

Calling professionals to ask about the baby vomiting up his weight in creamy liquid, somehow feels like you’re overreacting. Mum guilt comes in many forms it seems.

The hour drive to the hospital was spent dividing my emotions between ‘oh fuck. I’m not allowed to drive after the C Section’ and ‘I hope he doesn’t choke on his own vomit in his chair. I’m going to pull over every four seconds to check him’. Long drive.

Sitting in the ED between the hypochondriac positive she has the plague and the old man with old man gunk coming out of….. everywhere. I covered my baby as best I could because ironically enough, being at a hospital is the worst place for you to be to NOT get sick.

We were shown to a bed where my little bambino threw up all over immediately. They stripped him and the bed and gave me a cup to catch his pee in. Yep. I was sitting there over my naked baby. Holding a cup over his penis to catch his pee. But THAT was not what came out of him. Shit….. so much shit. Oozing out of him like lava. I just sat there watching it. Fresh sheet. Yellow shit so wet it spread through the sheets with ease.

Change the sheets again, nurse. Fresh sheets. Time for piss. Everywhere. I managed to get a bit in the cup. It was….. not fun.

After they sent all this off they took him for an ultrasound and said things to me, the mother of a sick, uncomfortable, yucky baby…

‘Just hold him still’ and ‘ I can’t see if he is wriggling’.

Be better at your job Susan.

Once the ultrasound was over, they put a tube up his nose and yet again….

‘Just hold him still Mum’. We are going to put a tube down babies nose into his throat and apparently he is the first baby in the world that was like umm….. no thanks. Don’t like that.

That was traumatic for both of us. They then pricked his heel. Again, surprised a baby would cry after a needle being stuck into his heel. First day Susan?

We waited and waited and waited and waited. Hours. Hours of waiting, hours of tests. I rearranged the hospital room so I was able to sit with my infant on my chest so his wires could still reach their respective equipment they were attached to. I am aware hospitals don’t hire interior designers but damn. Putting a baby cot on one side of the room while the only portable chair to put next to him was the wet shower chair is just mean.

Hours of my racing mind overthinking ‘oh shit, it could be this. But maybe it’s this. Maybe it’s this’. Google is not your friend when you’re the mother of a sick child. It was up to hour 72 of no sleep and I could see noise. Noise that was coming from not one but TWO…. TWO other rooms. Two separate dads were competing in the Douche Bag Dad Olympics and brought their acoustic guitars to hospital. I don’t know If I’m a snob or if it was lack of sleep but….. what the fuck? Who takes their kid to hospital and thinks oh, I should pack my toothbrush, underwear oh and don’t forget the guitar to play for FIVE HOURS STRAIGHT that nobody asked for!! I swear I’m not making this up. Watch my story. Finished their ‘jam sesh’ – actual words one fedora wearing hipster said to the other kale smoothie drinking weirdo… at midnight. Only to start up again at 7am. If I was actually trying to sleep that night I’d be V angry!!…

These are the moments that I catch myself thinking ‘I wish his dad wasn’t such a coward…. (except that’s not the C word I usually use). That’s not to say I don’t have support, I do. I have oodles of it. My dad left work in the middle of the day to stay until the very last minute of visiting hours, for my sister to take the reigns the very next day bright and early at 7am with a coffee.

Sometimes in a moment of weakness I wish I had that support of someone else who is HIS *parent*, my friends are great, my family is wonderful, but there is only one other person who has that same ‘this is my child’ worry. It would be nice to have someone to lean on while I try to put aside my hatred of hospitals. The judgy ‘oh no dad?’ nurse comments and the ‘so you don’t know his dad’s family medical history?’ judgment doesn’t help either. It would be nice to not be alone in a sterile, freezing hospital room worried sick about my child, watching him cry so much he can’t catch his breath or throwing up the entire contents of his stomach all over himself, lying awake all night with him on my chest, no one to pass him to so I could use the bathroom, us both covered in his vomit in an uncomfortable plastic chair, not being able to shower for those days because that means putting him down in a room alone, terrified he would choke on his own vomit. So for a few brief hours my emotions ran between fear and anger which leads to irrational hatred of…. everyone, especially the douche canoes with their guitars. When the ‘hours of being awake’ timer clocks over to triple digits, you start feeling really weird things.

But then you realise being angry at someone who is so weak in everyday life already, (let alone how they’d act in times like this), is pointless and not what my baby needs in a mother, it forced me out of the ‘feel sorry for myself’ mood and into the ‘You’re Holly Fucking Melia, if anyone can dominate single mother life it’s you’ mood, made me feel powerful and almost thankful I didn’t have to take care of my sick child with an immature asshole of a co-parent on the other side of his bed. Life would somehow be more difficult that way. So I downed my third red bull and got my shit together.

My baby has been a trooper therefore I can be a fucking trooper…… and that I was. Finally he kept down a bottle, then the second bottle, then the third, so many wet nappies. I never in my life thought I’d catch myself saying…

‘Don’t throw away my baby’s shit yet. I need to show the nurse the colour’.

Little man is doing just fine. After hours of gastro and not being able to keep anything in his little belly, we are home and napping our lives away. Happy and content.

….. Sorry this blog wasn’t as upbeat or funny as usual. It doesn’t really have a message either. I don’t know what day it is or what my name is anymore, but I guess the moral is; Trust your instincts with your kids, naps are life and hospitals are shit.

Love to you all. Xx