The Royal Children's Hospital Visit

As I sit here in a fog of ‘more than normal tiredness’ I’m trying to work out the message I want to convey in this brief blog.

What stands out from last night’s experience in emergency?

Firstly, how lucky we are! Ed, William and I live within a five minute drive of the Royal Childrens Hospital. As I looked around the crowded, multicultural waiting room at 11.30pm I thought, people have probably driven their sick children for hours to get here tonight. My next thought was, we are all so lucky to have this state of the art hospital and access to (arguably) the best free health care in the world.

My second standout thought about last night’s episode was, Where’s the old Morgs? Where's the Morgs who cries watching all emotive TV commercials? The girl who finds MA15+ movies completely out of the question? The girl who turns away when her brother is in a contest on the footy field? Even my husband Ed was wondering where that Morgs was in her first real under pressure parent moment.

Will experienced his first real pain yesterday. I picked up on it in the afternoon and put him to bed early with some panadol. When he woke a couple of hours later in agony we just got in the car and took him to the Children's. Turns out the poor possum has an infection in his 'old fella' and was in huge amounts of pain passing wee. We kind of worked it out before we arrived but it was a long night waiting tests results, seeing him and other precious children in pain.

Weirdest things was, I was cool calm and collected. What? Even at 2am when we saw the big dog paediatrician on call. What’s going on with me?!

Expert response from What Were We Thinking! expert, Sue Doogan

You've become a parent Morgan! And…you've just discovered one of your first “strengths” you didn’t know you had!

Whether consciously or unconsciously you know your baby is depending on you. If you fall in a
blithering heap (i.e. the “old Morg’s”) who is going to care for your baby? Who is their advocate and voice in a time when they can’t speak up for themselves?

Even with this scare, you had already worked what was wrong. Something you probably thought you couldn’t do! The medical advice gave you confirmation and reassurance

You will be amazed at how strong you can and will be now you are a parent. Granted, once all the “fuss” has settled, you can fall apart a little but at the time you gather strength and soldier on, doing whatever is needed at the time to make sure your baby is safe and well.

You are right, Morgan, with our hospital system - we are extremely lucky. We didn't need to walk 3 days to seek medical attention or have to provide our own food, linen, and medications for a stay in hospital. When we have to wait for 2 hours or so to seek medical attention, it can be frustrating but it means that someone else unfortunately is in more urgent need of attention than us.

Selfishly for us, that’s a good thing!

Posted in: Baby 17-20 weeks