What can I say besides it was difficult... one of the most difficult experiences of my life. I feel sad saying so given that most people regard the birth of their first child as the best day of their life. It was a very long labour ending in lots of intervention because I was very unwell. Turns out that T1 had an infection too. My waters broke on a Tuesday night and T1 was born mid morning on the Friday. Adding to that, there were several medical bits and pieces that went a bit wrong (or rather the small percentage of medical risk happened to me). For example, I had too much spinal anaesthesia which paralysed me from my nose downwards which meant that whilst I was vomiting, I actually thought that I was going to choke and die. I was so traumatised by this that I actually refused contact with T1 when he was born for about an hour or so. Obviously I feel awful about this now. I have no beautiful memories of his first cry or the first time that I looked into my baby boys eyes. In fact, I had very little contact with T1 on his first day because I was so unwell and required lots of morphine and antibiotics. T1 was taken to the Neonatal Unit about 12 hours after he was born. I tried to go and see him but I haemorrhaged so had to stay in bed. In the days that followed, I went down to the Neonatal Unit to feed him when called to do so. I never just sat with him, spending time with him. Was I bonding with him? I'm not really sure. He had to have lots of needles inserted into various parts of his body and about 5am one morning, a Doctor said 'you can stay to comfort him whilst we find a site for the cannula if you like'. I politely declined and removed myself to sit outside whilst they did their job. I think T1 was about 5 days old. I remember sitting there listening to him crying. And then something inside me clicked. I must answer my baby boys cries and I got up and went in to be with T1. I put my hand through the hole in the incubator and took hold of my baby boys little hand and stroked it gently. He turned his head towards me, stopped crying and studied me with his beautiful blue eyes. It was then and there that I became T1's mummy, there for him, no matter what.
T1 had various tests including brains scans and lumbar punctures. It was a difficult time. He had various courses of antibiotics intravenously. It has crossed my mind, very fleetingly, about what effect the medication could have had on his little brain. Could this have made him more susceptible to having ASD? But I know that there is no good evidence to support this idea. I have also wondered whether a lack of a bond in the first few days of his life would have affected him having ASD. But again, the sensible part of me knows that I did what I needed to do for survival at the time, albeit selfishly. The main thing was that I did bond with T1 - my special blue-eyed boy :-)
