Dredging up some mixed emotions…Part 2

The post yesterday took me quite a while to write.  I wrote and re-wrote it a few times to get it how I wanted it.  Thinking about those early days has been quite exhausting!  Today I wanted to share some really personal stuff.  The reason I have decided to share this is partly to give an honest picture of how I felt at the time but also I am sharing in the hope that this may help someone in the future.  

Becoming a parent for the first time is scary in itself, you have no idea what you are getting yourself into, you have no idea what to expect and even the most prepared of parents-to-be can never fully prepare for the impending arrival of a baby because you just don’t know!  So in addition to being a new parent, throw a rare condition that no-one can initially diagnose or that no-one in your immediate circle has even heard of adds a certain extra amount of stress.  As new parents, we were suddenly thrown into this situation that we couldn’t have prepared for and we needed information, support and just someone to tell us honestly how it was and how it was going to be (more on the support we received in a later post). 

During the 6 days that Alfie was in hospital we were kind of in a protected bubble.  We were getting a full nights sleep, something new parents don’t normally get!  We were getting meals prepared for us, our house was being cleaned and nurses/doctors were on hand when we needed them.  Then came the day for us to take Alfie home and things changed.  

While Alfie was in the hospital I was ok, we had a routine, it felt safe.  We came home and a nurse specialist with experience in Alfie’s type of ichthyosis came from Birmingham Childrens Hospital to see us and show us exactly how to care for his skin.  We had midwives coming in to check on us and our health visitor Helen came out to see us.  Mostly I was in pyjamas when they came round (as many a new mum can relate to!)  We developed a strict routine of how to care for Alfies skin, it was intense, we lived in the bathroom and there was bandages, dressings and cream everywhere.  Everything was covered in grease, EVERYTHING.

There was a stream of visitors and well-wishers and throughout all of this my mum was there being a pillar of support to us, cooking and cleaning and keeping us functioning physically and emotionally.  Our nurse specialist and health visitor arranged for the Childrens Nursing team to come out from Burton Hospital 3 times a week to help with the morning bath and cream routine just to give us a little bit of respite from everything because it was quite frankly draining.  We went on auto-pilot, we bathed, creamed, bandaged, fed, bath creamed, bandaged, fed and on and on.  We put on brave faces for visitors, we played things down.

Lee was, and still is, amazing during all of this.  He was strong, supportive and he took on more of Alfie’s care than most people can imagine.  As for me, I didn’t handle things well at all.  I don’t know at what point this happened but one morning when the Childrens nursing team came to see us, I just lost it.  I couldn’t stop crying and I was petrified of everything.  I felt like my whole world had been turned upside down, I couldn’t see how we would cope and I couldn’t see a way out.  I felt like we weren’t capable of caring for Alfie and I wanted him to go back to the safety of the hospital. I couldn’t see past his skin condition and although I loved Alfie with everything I had, I was scared to bond too much with him because I had convinced myself that something bad was going to happen to him.  I felt like I had no control over anything and I was in a constant state of stress and emotion.  Every time we had to cream Alfie I would be scared to death of peeling his bandages off because we never knew what we were going to see.  I remember sitting on the side of the bath one morning while Lee took Alfies bandages off and I couldn’t actually look until Lee had reassured me that nothing bad had happened since the last bandage change. 
  

The initial few months were hard on Lee and I as a couple, I was up and down and unpredictable, liable to fly off the handle at anything, stressed at everything, angry at the world for allowing this to happen, unreasonable and downright upset.  Lee was also stressed out and upset and wanted answers but he was also cool, and kept it together and thankfully one of us was at least functioning semi-normally; except for the time that Lee was changing Alfies nappy and was thinking in some sort of computer algorithm (i would explain what that was but I literally have no clue!). 

We were both exhausted.  We were both getting up every 2 hours during the night to cream and re-bandage Alfie to keep him comfortable.  We would sit in bed at night, Lee would be feeding Alfie after a bandage change and I would be expressing milk into bottles like a cow being milked (literally during one particularly sleep deprived moment I felt like the breast pump was making moo noises)!  At one point it was 4am, we were sat in bed,I think we were probably watching Breaking Bad, Lee eating pork scratchings and me working my way through a box of Ferrero Rocher and we just laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation!  Lee did a lot of the night feeds because I just wasn’t coping with it. 

After having a chat with Angie, our Childrens nurse and Helen our health visitor, I agreed to go to see the GP.  I was diagnosed with Post-natal depression (cue EastEnders style duff duff theme tune haha)!