2. God Bless Cherie and Dr Khan

It is a terrifying moment in life when you leave the hospital after giving birth. I spent 3 days in the amazing maternity ward at Hillcrest Hospital because I had a C-section. For those of you who are deeply perturbed now and are asking the usual list of lawyer like questions to any woman who dares confess she had her baby that way, I promise my child isn't at all damaged psychologically because of my decision to give birth that way. My magnificent and kind Gynae, Dr Ganguram, suggested I have one because of the intense pregnancy I had and because my amniotic fluid was very low. I still housed the child and grew her and she came out perfectly healthy, thank God. (I'll take this opportunity to confess that I also didn't breast feed. I wanted to. I wanted to so badly that I was pumped like a dairy cow 3 times a day by a darling midwife named Annie who relentlessly encouraged me, even when I did not get a single drop of colostrum. After blisters on my nipples and plenty of medication that's supposed to assist with milk production, Dr Ganguram told everyone that we had reached the end of milk production attempts and that it was time to give the baby formula. Don't worry, I felt like a total failure for not being able to give my baby milk, but thankfully science has progressed and we now have other means of keeping the offspring alive!)

Back to leaving the hospital. So you have these incredible nurses and midwives helping you out in your stay at the blessed hospital, and then it's home time. They wheel the tiny little bundle with you to your car, then hand the bundle to you and smile as they wave you off. What's implied but not said is, "Here's your human, now go home and keep it alive forever. Bye!" 

I had a meltdown with that pressure. The first night we had Nevaeh at home, I didn't sleep for even one second because every tiny sound she made terrified me. I checked to see if she was breathing every few minutes, and each little new born squeak caused my throat to constrict in panic. How does something that weighs 3.27kgs incite such terror? You know those instagram accounts with the lovely mom holding her new born's feet and smiling angelically at the camera as she lies in her perfectly made white bed? That wasn't me. At all. I looked like death ever so slightly warmed up; my face was reminiscent of a raccoon from the pitch black rings around my eyes; I cried every single day and again lamented, "WHY didn't we just get a PUPPY?"; the C-section recovery felt as though someone stuck a knife into my insides and refused to remove it - the only relief was from the blessed Panamor suppositories (you lose all dignity in the process of birth, so suppositories are a walk in the park); I stayed in pjs all day because the thought of trying to actually get dressed brought on another flood of tears... In short, I was a proper mess. Not half a mess. Not the sort of mess you can quickly hide by applying some makeup and giving your hair a wash. Thank God for kind people who end up saving your life. 

Enter Cherie. 

Cherie Brazier is the baby nurse I saw at the baby clinic. She got to hear every paranoia and concern (believe me, I was an encyclopedia of paranoia), endure each and every detailed question, patiently watch the videos I sent of my newborn crying as I asked her AGAIN if she thought that maybe Nevaeh was in fact afflicted with some rare disease, and in each situation, she calmed me down and reassured me that I wasn't the worst mother on earth and that my new person wasn't dying. Cherie if you ever read this, I'm so sorry for all the photographs and videos you got from me. I owe you a lot of Lindt - the red one because I know it's your favorite! 

So I survived the first 2 weeks, somehow, and then my worst nightmare happened. My 17 day old baby ended up in the emergency room. She was rushed to hospital and we discovered she had severe reflux and as a result had got a lung infection. This was my literal nightmare. It confirmed my terrors that I was actually the worst mother ever, despite Cherie's best attempts at convincing me otherwise, and I was mortified. The fact that I hadn't really slept since Nevaeh was born certainly didn't help with any vague vestige of sensibility or logic on my part. 

Enter Dr Khan. 

Dr Nadia Khan is the magnificent pediatrician who I was blessed enough to have look after my new baby. She is an incredible human being and her intense knowledge made me see that Dr Google is a liar and that my child was going to be perfectly fine. This was unfortunate, but really quite normal, and it was fixable. I went from sheer hysteria to almost resembling calm because she patiently and kindly spoke through every single thing with me. I would like to mention that she herself was heavily pregnant at the time of Nevaeh's hospitalization, but she just rubbed her belly, sipped her healthy organic tea and kept reassuring me. (We had a good cry together while I was still in the maternity ward like any normal hormonal women would. I think this was the moment we bonded. That and the fact that we love the same music and movies and have the same sense of humor.) 

So often we don't stop to thank the people who got us through the hard times. These 2 women helped me survive, and I will always be grateful to them for that. Friends, family and health care providers are an absolute God send. Just being told that it will all be ok and that you aren't really terrible helps enormously. If anyone out there feels like a proper mess, let me encourage you - it really does get better! I promise you, from the bottom of my sometimes overly honest heart, you will make it through the wilderness and you are way stronger than you think you. You can do it!