The Lodger and Us

It's meant to be one of the best days of your life. It's meant to be full of joy and amazement. It's meant to be filled with well wishes and time stopping moments as you just marvel at how incredible your tiny baby is. It wasn't like that for us. Not at the start.  We had one carefree hour with The Lodger before everything turned horribly wrong and we were left feeling empty and confused, angry, guilty and sad. Terribly sad. The second time I met The Lodger  he was hooked up to wires, in a room with twenty incubators with tiny little babies all fighting their own battles. Beep.... beep... beep... beep beep beep. It didn't take us long to understand tubing, wires, machine sounds, hospital routines and hushed conversations. The frustration of trying to change a nappy with wires attached to his feet and chest. The feeling of inadequacy as you try to feed him 10mls of his bottle that he just won't take, as you manipulate his jaw to suck and wish you had...

It's Saturday night. For the last few weeks The Lodger has been struggling to keep his mask on at night and we're struggling to get up every half hour to check, so he's been promoted to our bed.  The usual ritual is we put the lodger down about 8 o'clock, he asks for his mask and nose pads, we read a chapter from the horse book and off he goes to Neverland.  So it's still Saturday night. It's gone ten. We're deep in the latest boxset when there's suddenly a bang...but not on the tele. Followed by the crying. We both sprint for the stairs to be met by this: Although a little unhappier than the picture depicts. The little baby elephant crawling around dazed and confused. We shouldn't have but we did. We had a little chuckle. The elephant was fine by the way. I assume he landed on his trunk. Onwards on upwards...next stop containing the sleeping elephant.