A Mummy’s Story

  Tomorrow is Evelyn’s 3 rd birthday. I can’t get my head round it to be honest. How has it been 3 years? It feels, in some way, like yesterday, but equally like a lifetime ago. I suppose, when you think about it, its more like 10 lifetimes ago; the lifetime we had together. The time around Evelyn’s birth was filled with fear and confusion, trying to get our heads around what had happened and what was going the happen next, not actually knowing how poorly she was until she was a few days old. I barely have any memory of those 5 days between being admitted to hospital and Evelyn’s operation. I say that, I have just considered it, and really its more like the first 2 weeks of her life. I can probably remember about half a days’ worth of time across those days. I had disassociated, my brain trying to protect me from the trauma I was experiencing. I know certain events happened, people tell me about them, I have tiny fragments of memory here and there that confuse me more than anyth...

  So here we were, room 8 of NICU, in what will forever now be Evelyn's Corner. Life became a little more chilled I suppose you could say. We formed more of a routine.  Aly had gone back to work and I spent my days in NICU with my girl. I no longer had to wait outside the room while ward rounds happened, I could be with Evelyn. The blinds were a bit problematic at first (i.e. broken) so a lot of sun was shining in and we had to do some elaborate covering of her incubator so it wasn't disturbing her. Other than that, things were as well as they could be. The day would start for me in the early hours. I would wake myself up around 1am to express. I would have popped the equipment on to sterilise before I went to sleep so it was ready to just hook up. I would express while watching some British comedy usually on either BBC or Channel 4. Once finished I would need to head down to the kitchens, pop the milk in the fridge, wash all the expressing parts and pop them back on to steril...