Cot Side Chatting

When I first started visiting Smidge on the NICU in the early days, I thought a time would come where I would be able to sit down with a doctor and have a good old chin wag about Smidge and how she was generally progressing.

I kept asking One-day Hubby 'When will we get an appointment?'

'What for?' he'd say.

'You know to talk about Smidge..in detail'

'Well the doctors are here all the time, you can talk to them whenever you like.'

But for me, chatting with doctors at the cot side was like bird watching at the fairground, it just didn't make any sense.

With so much invested in her getting better, I wanted to know everything there was to know. Because for some strange and ridiculous reason, still unbeknown to me now, I thought this would be helpful.

But where as the flashing red lights and monitor alarms would send my heart plummeting, The doctors would only briefly cast their eyes upon Smidge's numbers, then, confident the nurses had everything in hand our conversation would resume. 

Only now, for me, the words.. they wouldn't make any sense - I was back in hyper alert mode, one ear to the Doctor and the other to the monitor.

This two way attentional processing meant I had to by pass the details (which would have stretched my intellectual ability, even at the best of times) Instead I tuned in to the rhythm and the tone, my ears pricking up at the use of important key words such as 'worried,' 'pleased' or 'reasonably well'

Even with the responsibility of engaging in these two auditory processes, I still has to make sure I heard something nice to over-analyse ponder over later on when I was at home and monitor free. My task was to make sure the doctor didn't leave our convo with out dropping in at least one of my favourite key words or NICU lines.

This sometimes involved a bit of repetition on my part and some stylish rephrasing on theirs but hey, we'd get there in the end.

Some of my favourite one liners..