Jasmine Stalker-Firth

It has been an exhausting couple of weeks. Grandma left last week and it was sad to see her go. We hoped Jasmine was feeling better with the vomiting and horrible diahorrea, after our hospital visit ruled out any kidney related illness, but it wasn’t to be. Things seemed to get a lot worse, including a great big horrible rash that she got over her legs, arms, and face.

Luckily, as we were wandering around the train station putting Grandma on the train, we bumped into one of our lovely nurses from GOSH, who even though she was on her day-off was fantastic and gave Jasmine a medical exam outside Starbucks and calmed our fears about the rash, which is typically post-viral. So that was good. I was worried that it might be mild measles or something from the MMR, because I had looked up rashes on the NHS direct website which was very vague and didn’t say (as our lovely nurse did) that measles after the MMR jab is quite rare. It just said oh yes your child might get measles 7-10 days after the jab (which fitted Jasmine’s rash) or mumps or german measles.

So throughout the rest of the week, we gave Jasmine loads of fluids as the horrible end of the virus worked its way through her body. She was pooing and puking day and night, but she never stopped drinking her milk and more – glucose water, ordinary water, in fact anything we gave her, which was quite amazing. The poor thing must have been dehydrated some days, even though we were checking her blood pressure more than usual, but it is so variable depending on whether she has had a vomit or a poo, or whatever. We just made sure she had loads of fluids as we didn’t want her to be a crispy baby on a morning after a night on dialysis. And sometimes in the night we would whip out the blood pressure cuff and do a quick check.

Today, Jasmine seems back to herself or thereabouts. Her weight is back up, and her vomiting is back down to its normal (rather large) amount as opposed to the abnormal scary amounts, and the pile of washing going into the washing machine has gone down to its normal once or twice a day as opposed to the three or four when things got really bad. We are relieved. Today she refused some milk for the first time in days, so she can’t be dehydrated anymore. Hallelujah! She also ate a couple of spoonfuls of fruit puree, so that was amazing.

In the middle of this, the hospital where Neil has had a load of tests rang several times over various test results and new tests. And then one of my relatives was rushed into hospital and is poorly. And, then someone suggested some VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarian) websites for me to read, which I would never do normally.

Unfortunately, they weren’t the happy successful stories that the person thought they were. Let’s face it, if you have a happy experience you just live it, you don’t write it down, you only write down the bad stuff (ah yes, I know all about that). So, I read some really frightening scary horrible childbirth stories which made me first hysterical and then really angry, as I have avoided random websites about any medical condition since Jasmine was born, because you can die of fright reading them. Anyway, got over that and my top-tip to anyone is don’t read forums about medical stuff, and try not to be rude to the people who send you the links.

I also keep getting random women coming up to me in the street and then we have this kind of conversation:

Random woman: Oh my God, you are pregnant, when are you due? How old is your baby?
Me: Next month. 13 months.
(Well this bit normally takes much longer and does have a few ‘how cute is your baby’ and ‘you look so well to be that pregnant’ bits, which I quite like as sadly, I am vain)
Random woman: Oh your daughter looks so much smaller.
Me: *Big bad stare*.
(this is not the way I want the conversation to go, where are my compliments?)
Random woman: Did you plan this?
Me: No, it was a pleasant surprise. My husband is disappointed it’s not twins.
Random woman: Blah, blah, blah….
(which extends into big rant about insensitivity of my husband how rude!)
Me: *Polite fake laugh*
(whilst hunting round for an exit)
Random woman: Well you are going to have your hands full. How will you cope? I only have one child, but it was a nightmare, my friend has two and she can’t cope at all, blah, blah, blah, blah…..etc…
Me: Bye then.
Random woman, gabbling on, grabbing my arm as I try to flee: Good luck, you are going to need it, with all those babies, oh my God….

And then I am off – I can run quite fast for an eight-months pregnant lady pushing a buggy full of baby and shopping.

Neil always says that people don’t know the half of it. And it is true. Because the idea of us having a baby that doesn’t vomit everywhere and doesn’t need to be plugged into a machine for 12.5 hours and you don’t have to count (or force down or restrict or pump through her nose) every milligram of specially prepared to a specific recipe milk that passes her lips, to say nothing of the medicines, dressing changes, and injections, seems like such a delightful idea, so much easier to look after, it is hard to get too worried about having your hands full. And I wouldn’t moan about the baby we do have to do things to either. Jasmine is such a delightful girl. She is cute, and smart, and beautiful. And we love her to bits! And I am thrilled to be her mother and to be pregnant.

I do feel we have learnt a lot about ourselves just lately. It is amazing, it doesn’t matter how bone-tired we are, Neil and I always manage to stand up and do whatever needs doing for Jasmine, whether that is dialysis, injections, trips to the chemist/hospital/doctors, nappy-changing, cot-changing, clothes-changing, dialysis orders, deliveries, whether that is at 4am or 4pm. And we do know our Jasmine really well, and understand a lot more about dialysis, blood pressures, weight and why we do what we do everyday, a lot more than we used to.

The new baby is kick, kick, kick now so I am not sleeping that much in the night and wander about quite a lot. Neil suggested that I go back to bed today, so I did and slept until 1pm. So poor Neil didn’t get his Sunday lunch until 3pm as he waited for me.

This week we have another round of blood tests, scans, consultant appointments, counselling and all the rest of it at various hospitals, so we are just making the most of relaxing today, before dialysis and dressing change time kicks off. Oh, Jasmine has just started complaining about lying in her cot – she was supposed to be napping – so I am off to play with her, since she says ‘Mam mam mam mam mam mam,’ all the time and enjoys being kissed (don’t we all?).

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 5:01 pm and is filed under home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.