A Baby’s Cry
By: Marvelous Ibanga
Tags: Nicu, Newborn, Preemie, Health, Paediatrics

A Baby’s Cry

“Baby Blessing! Baby Blessing!!”, the doctor screamed. Exasperated and frustrated, he returned to my cot. I was answering my name the whole time but he hardly looked in my direction. My mother was nowhere to be found. I thought of the most likely places she could be, “mothers lodge” — a fancy name for a remote room mothers could stay, “under the stairs” — the best bet in terms of proximity to the neonatal ward or roaming the hospital trying to locate pay-points before submitting a frequently requested blood test.

Let’s get back to my obviously tired always-on-call doctor. Within a few minutes, the doctor had called out two other names — no answers. My neighbor chuckled and gave me that “should we tell him?” look through his cot. The doctor seemed to be searching for something while fiddling with a bag of scary-looking medications hanging from the edge of my cot. “This line has tissued and there is no cannula”, he mumbled to himself. I braced myself for what would happen next — an experience any SBU or SCBU baby dreads…. “intra-tissue medications”. In this strange new world, filled with different shades of blue lights, it didn’t matter where or how your medications entered — as long as they ended up inside your body. Luckily for the on-call doctor, the annoying nurse who readily detected tissued lines as a hobby was off-duty for the day.

I prayed silently — who knew a baby could pray? I hoped my mother would show up just in time or the nurse would find a spare cannula somewhere, somehow…..my prayers went unanswered. I just missed my first miracle. I hadn’t learnt how to speak, so how could I communicate with them? Waving my hand only worsened the pain I felt — my swollen hand, held in place with a firm cardboard. The doctor grabbed my hand and in went the drug — I screamed and my fellow babies joined in unison oblivious of what was going on. We sometimes cried for one another without knowing the reason — after all, injury to one was injury to all.

The doctor shook my legs a little bit and the pain seemed to ease. I stopped crying and suddenly craved breast milk. Soon he was scribbling away on the loose sheaf of papers placed precariously beside my cot — I wished I could pee on it. How come they’re always writing? Then again, the nurses wrote more. Our frequent needs seemed to interrupt their constant need for writing. They held regular parades with one another three times a day discussing each baby as they nimbled along — it was called “handing over” although nothing was handed or received.

Oh! I missed the comfort of my mummy’s womb. It was dark but warm and fuzzy with nothing except the soothing sound of her rumbling intestines. I could tell when my mum ate beans or “moi moi” (beancakes) — her antenatal clinic favourite. She always claimed she ate these things for my sake and since I couldn’t speak for myself, everyone seemed to believe her. In any case, it was far better than this large room with its blinding lights, strange noises and constant movements. The noises were amplified during “ward rounds” — with multiple strange-looking faces, some nice, others not so nice. Some talked, others nodded, the youngest customarily wrote. I always wondered why they had to ruin my mid-morning nap. Sometimes they argued about different things, as they held me up or turned me over — if I was pale or not, yellow or not, warm or not — they spoke impressive words like “jaundice” and “sepsis”. I later found out they had a long fancy name — Paediatricians!

But how did I get here? one may wonder! We all had different unique stories behind our admission. We loved crying — it was the only way to get attention and show we were alive. Our cries meant different things and it was the job of our mothers or whoever happened to be on duty to figure out what each particular cry meant. You could even be sent here for not crying after you were born, for crying too much if something was wrong with you or if you arrived way ahead of your time. The first was the worst — you got your tiny chest pounded and pressed all in the name of resuscitation while all sorts of tubes slid down your throat and stomach sucking every bit of amniotic fluid you had managed to swallow. In the end, you had to cry — whether it was from the harsh reality of the country you now found yourself or because you were tired and wanted them to stop. Your cries made them smile — they all clapped and cheered. They turned you upside down and slapped your butt some more — a weird way to welcome a child into the world.

Sometimes we were many, other times we were few. Sometimes they kept you under the blue light, other times they didn’t. Some cots disappeared — we couldn’t tell if the babies went back to heaven or home to their parents. It’s been a lot of ups and downs — one minute they’re poking you all over for blood samples or shaving your cute hair, the next minute they’re pushing food down a tube, into your stomach, all without your consent. You beg your veins to cooperate — they had a way of shrinking away in fear as if they knew what was coming. The best part was when they “discharged” you. It meant you had been pricked enough, drugged without ceasing, weighed, and found worthy. You had taken your fair share of the hospital’s antibiotics and deemed fit enough to go. Your parents wore happy smiles — that’s if they were able to foot the bill.

If they weren’t, you could stay longer and catch some infection making you wonder if you were a curse rather than “baby Blessing”. As they clean and dress you up, you’re glad to escape the newborn “prison”. Other babies stare at you from their cots — they wonder when their day will come. As you reflect on your 3-week “detention”, you smile at the doctors and nurses hoping to thank them when you’re big enough to speak. For now, the future beckons — what will it be like? What if we babies could say our minds? Share our hopes, dreams, and fears? For now, all we’ll do is smile, eat, sleep and most productively, cry!