discharges

I had to make two trips to the infirmary today, initially by bicycle for the normal daily visit (picking up the normal packet of Lidl multivitamin juice on the way in) and again in the evening in the car to collect the people who should have been collected last Thursday afternoon; the estimated time of sevenish was slightly improved upon though knowing they were getting out made the whole day drag more than any has so far since last Thursday morning. Despite being trapped inside in stuffy dead air for the past week the wingpiglet didn't seem to mind the outside at all, and didn't seem concerned by the journey. Fortunately the strange smell (almost exactly the same as fart gas from fairs of yore) which has inhabited the crest of Craigmillar Castle Road for the past week had disappeared and the slight absence of direct sunlight on the car in the morning meant it wasn't as unpleasant inside as cars can be, though the immediate exterior was quite unpleasant thanks to the dickbattish behaviours of the BMW driver who chased me out of the car park and halfway up the road before whizzing rashly past. I usually generate small queues of people desperate to break the speed limit even when not carrying a five-day-old infant on its first journey out of the hospital and anticipate generating further such queues in the future.

As we'd only been here for sixteen days prior to the drop-date it didn't seem at all weird to suddenly find all our extra floor space occupied with infant paraphernalia, especially when Nicky was heavily pregnant for that time and was being treated accordingly. It did seem weird not having Nicky here for the past few nights even after only sixteen days here to grow used to her presence in this particular site which is why I was sleeping on the sofa, where I only slept fitfully but did at least sleep, aided by the living room's thicker curtains. It's a lot of space to rattle about in alone but three seems a much better quantity to make it feel homely. It'll be interesting to visit the flat with wingpiglet in tow; even though it's mostly cleared out it's still the space we lived in as two people for nine years and it's quite likely the "Shit! There's a baby over there!" feeling might be significantly more noticeable in the relatively small space.

Prior to discharge we got to watch the instructive process of the baby of the woman in the next bed being bathed; though similarly hairy and similarly full-term the child looked detectably smaller and more delicate than wingpiglet whilst the midwife demonstrating the cleansing process was very much of the 'treat them with vigour' school. I'm both surprised by how sturdy babies can feel (and how strong their wriggles get) and reassured that my fears of breaking them by handling them unsoftly are not entirely unfounded. As a child I was often too scared of hurting my guinea pig (1986-1991) to pick it up in the recommended manner and had to try and get it to walk onto my hands to transplant it between its box and exterior hutch/run system. It was always the front legs/shoulder hand which gave me the most trouble as I didn't think there was any risk of breaking the hind legs when grasping the rump. Scooping up the arse of a baby lying flat on something is similarly unscary whereas the newborn neck/skull system has always seemed a fragile thing which no amount of birth-video-witnessing where a child plops out of a squatting mother to land on the floor on its head with no apparent injury beyond those sustained by being squished through the pelvis can dispel. I've always thought of fontanelles as things to avoid pressing on too forcibly and had never really thought them capable of being quite forcefully rubbed with a roughish thousand-wash NHS towel to the extent that the chid's face-skin is dragged from side to side. Fortunately it was a different midwife who later assisted in washing wingpiglet who exhibited the sort of positive gentleness I hope to eventually be able to emulate.

Despite the occasional bit of worrying (for n00bs) casualness with people's prised fresh weans and (possibly worsened considering he'd recently been getting treatment for breathing difficulties) failure to stop people who reeked of fagsmoke from entering the ward and the room to visit the woman opposite (we took him out to the fresher-aired waiting area, though not before overhearing a conversation including "She'll hae tae get her wee ears pierced, she's got two pair ae earrings already. HchchRAAARCH" in reference to a newborn) the medical staff are all fantastic, marvellous and deserving of millions of respects. The next time you hear anyone griping about how much their national insurance contributions are when studying a payslip, tell them not to be so ungrateful. They've taken care of my wife and child for the past five days, clearly having far too much to do at all times yet still being pleasantly reassuring as they pause on their way past and having to work in an overheated hospital that the patients only have to sit still in. Though I hope to never have to see them in their official capacities again, if they weren't there the world would be a much less reassured place.