Coming home

Some words are absolute.

Either you are pregnant or you are not. You cannot be a little bit pregnant. Either something is real or it is not. You might have a nice argument about what "real" actually means and did just that in my first year at University but today things got more real.

We came home.

Hospital is never a nice place to visit, very few have tripadvisor ratings (although in checking this i came upon the UK's NHS site which appears to do just that) and if they did you might expect some sharp criticisms. "Food was average at best", "people kept walking into our room and jabbed me in places I'd rather not be jabbed", "the view was rubbish"... that sort of thing. Also you will go batshit bonkers insane staying in a small room with only some hallways to walk for exercise. However when you've just had a child, particularly when it was delivered by what was variously called the vaginal bypass or via the sunroof, there is something very reassuring by having a rotating shift of experienced staff advise and monitor you.

Even with the wealth of experience aiding you you can get a surprise because you are not told everything (eg did you know you get the shakes when colostrum gives way to milk production, we didn't but if I'd known I would have worked harder to contrive a milkshake joke out of it). Also you are sometimes faced with advise that doesn't exactly align with that of the practitioner on the previous shift. You're left to navigate that advice and pick and choose a path for yourself. But mostly there's always someone on hand to pick up the baby and have it go instantly silent when you've spent an hour trying every which way to settle him down, to deliver some formula, some pain relief or another tray of food that sounded a lot better on the menu than it looks in real life.

Then you go home. You fill out the paperwork, sign off that you're a responsible human in charge of someone else's life and you're on your merry way. Think of it as a slightly less complicated process then getting some Codeine from the Chemist before you needed a prescritption. We didn't exactly expect a lineup of nurses high-fiving you as you exit but if you think about it when you buy an iPhone on release day that's exactly what you get. For a phone. For humans... critically less enthusiasm. I fear that as a race we may have lost sight of what's important because while both are very similar only one will last more than a few years. You stare at them for hours on end, they interrupt you with calls when you're busy with something else and they both cost a bomb. We three left the hospital alone, down the corridor and into the lift unseen by so many eyes that until barely an hour before had known more about your toilet habits than anyone, ever, including yourself.

You then spend 10 minutes getting the capsule properly hooked up and speed off at 10km/h... in a 60km/h zone. You inherently feel you may be travelling too fast but you've seen too many dashcam videos to risk slowing any further. I bought a new carton of eggs the previous night and in retrospect I feel I might as well have been doing the Dakar rally in comparison to what was going on with a child in the back. Apparently this too is common.

On the bright side he slept through the entire trip home.

Then you get home and ... stop. There's nobody here, you've got to do it all yourself and it all just gets more real. Wife and I are a team, we will do it... we're not always convinced how and we largely keep those doubts to ourselves because it really helps to think the other person has it covered. It's the socially acceptable lie where we each know we're faking it but in the absence of any admission of that fact we are willing to deceive ourselves into believing we'll be fine for the common good.

Meanwhile the cats, much like when a new student is introduced into the classroom, quickly scrambled to claim their spots as theirs just so the new arrival doesn't get any funny ideas about that space in the bouncer or the bed or basically any spot in the house except for the laundry where the noisy machines live that really harsh their mellow. NotHeidi took it in good humour and continued to lie in the detachable capsule with his head at a comfortable right angle to the rest of his body. I mentally note that next time we should try to find something that wedges his head a little less comfortably into position.

Fortunately the rhythms of the hospital are somewhat replicable. Feeding, burping, sleeping and then we set about unstrapping NotHeidi and doing the same to him. There's beautiful moments captured on camera and shared with family and slowly rhythm of the day winds down and you ready yourself to start working through the riches of frozen bolognese that were handily prepared for this time where not much is available to prepare meals.

You notice that home is a far more quiet place than the hospital. There are no beeps, hallway conversations, doors opening and closing (this will no doubt bite us in the bum when NotHeidi becomes mobile) in short the tension you've built up over the past few days slowly cakes off and gives way to a sense of calm. Inside you fervently hope it rubs off on the little one.

As with most parents you are convinced he's very advanced. He can lift his head, he can push his body along the ground if he has something to brace his feet against and the eyes already appear to be taking in his surroundings. Quietly judging his new surroundings and after a look that says "This'll do... for now" he drifts back into sleep and you wonder how you will ever give him all that his potential deserves.