the wall

The offer on our new house was accepted the same day that I discovered I was pregnant, back in May. This was my little stone and sea wish and blessing that we would become 5 and that we would be happy in our new home.

Today I am 31 weeks and 4 days. I got into the taxi to Wexford General Hospital at 20 weeks and 3 days. So 11 weeks and 1 day I have been a patient. In the last week or so I am gradually realising what a blessing that is. For so long I felt more like a prisoner etching lines on the wall, half wishing for the next stage to come, not really considering what that really entailed.

A few days ago I bought Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death. Quite why I wanted to read something so seemingly macabre whilst in hospital I can’t quite say. But for some reason I wanted to read it over and above all the other books kind friends have brought me, sent to me. So far I have read of a man who wrapped a binocular cord around her neck, of a near drowning and of her four year old self escaping from her parents grasp into oncoming traffic. She writes of how close we are to disaster much of the time.

I think of this as I speak with a woman with huge, kind eyes who has stopped me in the corridor to talk. You’ve been here awhile she says. I know she has too – I see her waiting to be buzzed in to the NICU ward most days. I learn that she came in to the hospital at 22 weeks with bleeding. Once, she tells me, she bled right through her trousers on to the chair below. This has happened me countless times. But at 25 weeks her baby came. And somehow, 11 weeks and one day later, mine hasn’t. I can physically feel the weight in this lady’s chest as she tells me of the heart surgery, the suspected meningitis, the ecoli in her tiny sons blood stream. But you’ve made it to 31 weeks, that’s so great, she says to me over and over as she recounts her tale. Holy fuck, I realise, I have.

One midwife said to me that my little one must be hanging on tight to the cord in there. I think of –is it Jack? – and his red headed bird dangling for dear life as they climb the icy monolith of The Wall in Game of Thrones.

The woman lowers her voice as the door of the family room opens and a couple comes out. There is a hand written sign on the door that says Do Not Disturb. That is never a good sign she whispers as they walk heavily by. There is another sign you sometimes see on the doors of NICU, of a private room. A circle that contains a kind of Celtic swirl. There is a beautiful description of it on the wall downstairs – a non denominational universal symbol for loss. Also never a good sign.

We are speaking about a particular paediatrician as he happens to appear around the corner. Speak of the Devil! I say as he passes. I think he is the tidiest, most precise man I have ever met. He has the perfect physique for a premature baby doctor. You can picture his spotless tidy hands easing a needle in to a 1KG baby’s vein. Which is something they can do. Which I think is amazing. I tell him I was just saying that he spoke to me when I nearly delivered at 24 weeks. Yes, he says, and we normally expect to see mothers like you in the NICU a week or so after I have that conversation. And yet here you still are. Holy fuck, I think.

My baby weighs 1.8KG now. Soon I will take the premature baby hats and vests I bought ‘just in case’ out of the hospital bag. I’ll leave the tiny baby ones in there for another little while. But, two of the midwives and I agree, one of the hats I have knitted won’t fit for too much longer. It was a symbol of hope when I knitted it so I will keep it, put it on one of the kids dolls perhaps, but it is as much a symbol of hope now that it doesn’t fit, perhaps even more so.

I am hoping to get a date for delivery from the consultants today. They haven’t spoken of this until now, they tell me, as no one thought I would be still here. My dear friend had her little girl here six days ago and she is tiny and smooth and perfect in every way. And seeing her and holding her and stroking her big mop of black hair allowed me for the first time to imagine holding my own little black-haired bundle, to imagine him or her not having to go anywhere but my bare chest after they are born.

Maybe, still, something will happen before the date they give me. I have been having funny tightenings and twinges and there is always the threat of a big bleed. But somehow, against the odds, I seem to have clung on to the rope on the icy wall for far longer than anyone expected, sidestepped the very worst of the disaster and clambered miraculously closer to the summit