Wait What Why Waitakere
NICU 22
Day 61
Gestation 32 weeks
We have reached 32 weeks gestation. Lee did the morning visit and said there was nothing to report. I came in the afternoon for my cuddles. Again we had this nice long awake moment to connect. This time I got some milk in a syringe for him to taste. He was loving it and making little smacking sounds. He weights in at 1500grams on the nose and did a few hours in air on his cpap. They have shifted his feeds to compress over 30 minutes trying to get him back to bolus.
Happy 2 months Mr. Kayden!
And they want to kick us out. They are trying to transfer Kayden to Waitakere hospital. I don’t understand, we came from North Shore Hospital and we’ve been saying this whole time that’s where we want to go back. My midwife is there, my obgyn, we came from there, my discharge papers say north shore, my surgeries were all there and we had Sylvie there. Why on earth would we go to Waitakere.
Queue meltdown.
The answer is they need the bed. Well I can see beds, I know of 6 open beds and I haven’t even walked around the unit. So they argue it’s the nurses to staff the beds, I talked to nurses plenty want shifts. So they argue it’s the funding to pay those nurses. But it still doesn’t make sense. If you transfer one baby that makes one bed plus all the work to transfer. If you add a nurse that makes 2-4 beds pending on the care level. She explains they constantly have to shuffle babies around. They assure us the care and the facility is fantastic at waitakere. Uh huh, oh just you wait.
Kayden is due an eye test tomorrow and a very important brain scan in a week. He also had a temperature this morning, of 38 and 37.5 and they took bloods to check his infection markers. He is not in a position to be moved.
It’s a huge fight and I advocate so hard for Kayden and myself. All my support is at North shore, it’s the hospital we always use, it’s familiar to us and there are people we know and trust there.
I take a break and vent to a friend in the mums room. She says that she admires my strength and it’s gives me a little bit more.
The fight continues and I’m not winning, they are talking like it’s a done thing. They seem to have the right to move him without our consent. I don’t give up, we have come so far and I continue to make all my points clear. Another milestone gets overshadowed, happy two months
I see another mum friend on the way out and chat with her. She says but you fought and that matters. Does it when I lost? The only thing more I could do is lay by his bedside until the police have to drag me out of NICU.
There is such much of this journey that is out of everyone’s control. But this is controllable and we are be forced against our wishes. It’s not a conversation it’s a fight. And we lost, they are going to transfer us tomorrow.