Day +19: It's All Becoming A Bit Of A Blur

Oh what a night,
April 15 in 2-0-1-2,
what a horrid night for us two,
Jeepers creepers; what a night.

Oh what a night,
Please don't have another night the same!
My sanity is feeling very lame.
Jeepers creepers; what a night!*

This is what I can remember:

• Sean and I finally fell asleep sometime between 1.30am and 2am. I was pretty sure I passed out before Sean did.
• Sean woke at around 2.30am and needed cuddles.
• Sean woke again at around 4am and needed more cuddles.
• The alarm on one of the pumps sounded twice - I think it was the morphine pump - because Sean's line was occluded (kinked) at some stage.
• Sean woke again at 6.50am and needed more cuddles.
• At 7.30am, Sean threw up, all over me.

Jonathan walked in about 10 minutes after Sean threw up, to find me close to tears and completely exhausted. Sean was still upset, and I smelled like a cocktail of warm used milk laced with chemicals. It was not nice, at all. I was too tired to recognise the little gag I felt in Sean's back, and just too slow in reaching for the sick bag.

After the night I had, I was just not in the mood to be wearing Sean's vomit again. I was glad Jonathan walked in when he did, because I was in no state to be comforting a crying baby who had kept me up all night.

I fell into the bed and cried. At the end of her shift, Irish Jo had given Emma a good run down on what happened last night, and Emma encouraged me to lie down and sleep. So I did.

I napped until Richard came in to review Sean. Everyone agreed that Sean should remain on the morphine for the time being, and the team would review Sean's pain medications further down the track. Sean's platelets count was now, so Richard ordered some platelets to be transfused into Sean.

I napped until Emma came in to do Sean's obs. I napped while Sean napped. I napped for hours. I finally woke up at midday, feeling like I'd had a big night on the tiles. Feeling hungover without a good reason (or some good stories) was just not fair.

After a big swig of water and some Panadol, I got out of bed and tried to face the world.

With the "faint trace of a sniff of morphine running in the background" (the medical team loved saying this to signify the tiny amount of morphine Sean was getting), Sean was in a better mood today. Sean did play by himself for a while, and sit in the cot too, but he did prefer to be held, and we sat and watched a couple of TV shows in the afternoon.

As Sean was back on morphine, Emma needed to monitor Sean on an hourly basis. Sean was continuing yesterday's trend, being both tachycardic and hypertensive. His temperature was also creeping up to the febrile mark, but thankfully, Sean didn't get any warmer than 37.5°C. Emma gave Sean some nifedipine to help ease the tachycardia and hypertension, and the drug did the trick.

Late in the afternoon, with Sean in my lap, I asked him to showed me all the tricks he knew, and this exercise made me smile. I asked Sean to "clap clap clap", and he did. I asked Sean to "pat pat pat", and he patted my belly. I asked Sean to show me "hooray yay yay", and he raised his hands up above his head and waved them around a bit. I asked Sean to "wiggle wiggle wiggle", and he wiggled. I asked Sean to give me a kiss, and he leaned forward and gave me a kiss.

So cute. So damn cute!

Sean showed us some of his dancing moves as well, when we were flicking through the TV channels and came across the 3 radio stations playing music. Sean's dancing style was akin to that of his father's - poor thing - I have a big job ahead of me, teaching him to dance.

After the huge night last night, Sean was able to fall asleep all by himself at 8pm. I, on the other hand, am wide awake, wired from the coffee I had at 1pm and the few hours of sleep earlier today. I hope my mind will switch off at some point tonight, so I can get some sleep. It's now nearly midnight, Sean has not had any problems sleeping, but I'm still totally awake. It's going to be a long day tomorrow.

*Sorry, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons. I meant no disrespect.