Rebecca

I briefly saw, I very briefly saw my husband and he, then I woke up the next morning and I was in the High Care Unit at [name]. Which was another unpleasant experience because you’re not, you’re with people with all different traumas. You’re not as I would thought, in a place where may be there’s other people who have been through pregnancy related or birth related issues. I was in this, some old man ranting, there was a man ranting and pulling out his drips on one side. There was a man who’d had an accident opposite me. They brought in somebody who they discovered had e coli next to me and then she died next to me, and they were busy cleaning up. 

 

It was awful experience to wake up, and you know, you’ve had a baby. You can’t see the baby. She was in the neo natal unit. I couldn’t see because I wasn’t even on site then, because I was at the hospital. I woke up, my husband wasn’t there because it wasn’t visiting times and they weren’t flexible. And you know, I couldn’t, my leg had swollen up, my whole body had swollen but my leg had swollen up and a few, I think he next day they ended up having to take me into, into surgery again because I’d got a, I think it’s called an embolism where, in my leg. And they had to do a fasciotomy which involved three more operations, to open up, to close one side, close the next side and which is in the end resulted in me having drop foot. I can’t move my foot. I need to wear a brace in my shoes now and things like that.

 

But I was also still in the process of having leg operations and they put me in a bed, pulled the curtain and that was it, literally they left me to take care of her. I had a really hard time. As I said, I was still, I was still on pain, painkillers, not the self… no I was still on the self-button pressing one. I had loads of, bad experiences there where they wouldn’t… because these were nurses that were geared to do post labour, not surgical trauma and recover, because the caesarean scar, was you know, that was a minor point of all the other things. I mean had blood bags and urine bags and you know, I had lots of… I had staples all down my leg where they had to do, where the embolism had been and various things like that. And I don’t think they were geared up for that type of care. 

 

I remember things like trying to get. [Second daughter] out of a cot bed with the cot next to the bed. It wasn’t tall cot, and I couldn’t pick her up and I used to get her… and I was horrible, hold her by baby grow and put my hand under her and yank her out like that and all those things were really hard for me. 

 

But as I said, two years on the go, now, I don’t tend to… something that’s in the past you tend move on, because I have young children. I can’t dwell on it. My leg, you know, there were issues in the beginning that I couldn’t it has changed my life. I stopped driving for starters. And I was a woman who would get in a car and drive myself everywhere and my children to all their clubs and, and you know, it became a really complicated life for my husband who then had to do that. We did get a car that was adapted, so that I could drive it, but I think, I built up such a fear of having to drive with my, with my other leg and worrying that I wouldn’t be, I did, I went for assessments and I took driving lessons and I just got a phobia about it and I think had somebody spoken to me about things, you know, a counsellor after I come out of hospital, it might have helped me get some of my anxieties out, you know, in that sense. And you know, so my whole life is walking everywhere. I walk an awful lot. 

 

But you know, our lives changed a lot from, from you know, from what a simple, you know, from what we thought was a simple birth. I mean my husband now has to drive the children to all their activities, which he’s always complaining about [laughs] that’s his main hang up. 

 

But yes, we try to move on. As I said, I now walk everywhere and with a brace life is, you know, life does carry, you know, carries on as normal. You know, we weren’t entitled to any help or anything with [son] benefits or anything. They said that at the time when we applied which was just after I could walk with aids so that didn’t entitle me to any help whatsoever. I couldn’t even get a blue badge for parking the thing, and you know, I, at the time, I really did struggle with walking. You know, I was walking with crutches and you know, I couldn’t push the pram. I couldn’t, if I walked around the block you know, I would have to turn round half way with my Mother, and come back, because I couldn’t physically doing it was in, I was having such bladder problems and things.

 

But you know, two years down the line, you do, I have, I’ve just got on with it. You know, my leg is there. I have a brace. I now go to [place] every, once a year and they assess my leg. Not as to what’s wrong with it, but the… I see somebody to get a brace. I have a simple brace, but he sees if I’m eligible to get new one every, because it is a simple one, so they need replacing. So I go and see him once a year and he assesses if I’m able to have a brace. They don’t assess you know, the improvement in my leg or whatever. It’s just whether I’m eligible for those things.

 

But you do you just get on with it, and you know, I’m very lucky that [second daughter] is okay. She, you know, she was, it was very difficult taking care of her after. She suffered from colic and she couldn’t poo or anything. She would go for a week without it. She didn’t sleep. We couldn’t take her. You know, she wouldn’t lie in her pram. She wouldn’t sit in her car seat without screaming perpetually and I couldn’t do anything. Me and my Mum would come, came and stayed with us to help me out and you know, she would have to take [second daughter] out into the garden for hours to try and calm her down. Because I couldn’t physically do those type of things.

 

And to me, you know, mine was the worst thing you could ever do. To them it’s just one of the things. Like my doctor said, “Look,” he said, “You know, you’re the third person in this hospital that’s had this.” You know, so it’s not, you know, it’s all square at the time. He said while he’d been doctor there he had had one more experience. So it’s not something that’s completely new and out of this world, but to me lying there it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me, you know, its… you know, very traumatic and that and I think it had an effect on me. As I said, I stopped driving. Well I couldn’t drive for a long time. Then when I went for assessments and I had a couple of lessons. I never had the courage to drive again. And I think that took away from a lot of you know, independence for me, for the rest. It was a really tiring time, because everything had. I couldn’t do a lot of things for myself. And my husband had to do a lot of things, and things that you don’t want your husband to have to do for you and that. Yes, no I think the main thing is I lost independence. It took that away from me and also the ability to take care of [second daughter] by myself. Because nobody wants to feel that they’re reliant on everybody else to do things.

 

 

It did have a great impact. As I said my husband you know, he still to this day says he can’t… he doesn’t have a normal weekend. That he spends all his time carting the kids to… Because we tried to keep their lives on track as much as we could, which meant keeping all the activities, moving them to the weekends. I do all the activities that involve the school or karate that is within walking distance. He then has to do things like swimming and gymnastics and football which is further away. I do feel that he had a lot of pressure. There were a lot more things that you don’t think about, but everything changes. Insurance on things. They go up because you know, it costs you, I mean you don’t think about these things, but everything costed more. We had to you know, take into account things and you know, my husband his work suffered. He had to be, he was a person who always used to go to work half past six and come home around you know, seven. It’s only now that he’s starting to regain that. Because I can now, you know, apart from not being able to walk without, I mean I can walk around the house without a brace, but I can’t walk out of the house, because I will trip up or things like that. So, I can, other than that, and a few ongoing gynaecological things which are not affecting me physically, you know, I can take care. But my husband’s work suffered. He couldn’t, he had to wait and go in late in the morning. He’s into, finance which means you might be told you work from 9 till 5 but essentially you need to be there from 6 till 7, 8, 9 you know, at night. So you know, he had to take off extra time, unpaid, unpaid leave, you know, to be with me. He couldn’t progress because he couldn’t stay you know, in his career couldn’t progress for a good time because he had to be home. He had to be home to bath [second daughter]. He had to be home to help put the children to bed and sort them out. You know, things that nowadays I can do. But then I couldn’t.