It could be worse...

My one night and one day in hospital left me with a terrible feeling of sadness.
As I tossed and turned (and constantly jolted the alarm on my IV - well who can lay still with their arm sticking straight out for 24 hours, really?) I could hear two voices, constantly through the usual din of buzzers, a burnt-toast fire alarm, phones, breakfast trays being rattled and nurses with their jolly voices and clumping feet and loud laughter.

Somewhere in the distance I could hear a little child's voice, too worn out to even really cry anymore, just moaning 'mummy. I want my mummy. mummy' over and over again.

And somewhere, a little closer, was an old lady who'd had a fall who was in so much pain they couldn't medicate her enough to make it go away.
Even in her sleep she was groaning and crying.

I may have gone into hospital with a pain in my chest, but I left with a broken heart.
I can't imagine being that alone and that sad.

Third time's the charm...

I was leaning over a hospital bed at 4.30am in the morning, vomiting, crying, shaking - and my first thought was 'oh God - I don't want to do this again'.
The only way I can describe the whole experience was labour, but in my chest, with no break between the contractions.

Turns out I have gall stones, or pancreatitis or both - and the pregnancy probably made it worse but it's probably been the reason for my back and chest pains sometimes, late at night, which I'd attributed to the curve in my mattress.

But the scary part was waking up clammy & shaking at 2am and convincing myself it was indigestion...and then having to admit at 4.30am that I'd have to wake the kids up, wrap them in doonas and shovel them into the backseat in the dark, drive myself up the road to hospital & admit that I wasn't coming to work.

The nurses & I were all assuming it was something easier to explain, like indigestion gone wrong, until I started vomiting mylanta & fluro-yellow bile everywhere.

I was desperately writing instructions for the local staff and the potential replacement as they debated whether to give me morpheine as well as the codeine.
I was messaging my boss and kept bending the IV in half and sending off alarms because you can't text without bending your arm, let's face it.
I was fighting the morpheine to make sure the kids were still asleep on the visitor couches and no one rang my parents before they'd normally be up, unless the kids did get up, or were upset.

...how am I going to do this on my own again?
How am I going to manage the midnight runs to hospital for rotavirus or high temperatures?
How am I going to stretch myself between 13-year-olds and 3-year-olds and their different needs?

And you know what broke me, in the middle of all the drama and the vomiting and the pain and the drugs was a nurse I know just a little, rubbing my back and saying quietly 'and maybe you're just a little bit stressed as well eh? maybe you've been worrying a bit'.
It's been a long time since I cried like that.
And when my parents came & picked up the kids I just turned off my phone, rolled over with my head under a pillow & let someone else deal with it all for a little while.

Bully for me...

I've never felt so bullied in my life as I have this past month or so.
So many people with their questions & advice & demands & directions.
Why did my suddenly becoming a mother again mean that I need to be directed like a child?

Ok, so to set the record straight...

I know DeadBeatDad and DeadBeatDad2Be should pay maintenance. But I have handed that over to the government to chase - and maybe Legal Aid when I am officially unemployed - because I simply cannot spend my days and my sparse cash on crying, demanding phone calls to invisible men.
My family can do without the money, we have until now, but we won't survive if I'm a nervous, crying wreck.
I still remember the day my six-year-old daughter told my mother 'I think it's good now - Mum doesn't cry all the time anymore'...and she was talking about before the divorce (so don't ever think they don't notice).
I will NOT go back there to that dark, desperate place again.

I know it's only going to be harder once I can't work the same way I do now, or expect the wage I get, but I cannot imagine coming back to work six days and two nights a week when the baby is a year old - and I cannot bear to see all my hard work full apart while this place waits for me to decide what I want to do.
The people I work with deserve a boss who cares and is committed and will still be here in a year's time.
Yes, & maybe my employers can afford to wait around for a year with 'fill-ins' for my job, but can my community? Can the paper?

The 'advisors' tell me I should quit, I should stay, I should demand my fair share, I should squeeze 'them' for all they've got...why do I have to be a blood-sucking bitch?
Aren't I already a cliche without being a bitter, angry, free-loading single mother of three as well?

My kids, all three of my kids, are going to need me at home this time around.
It's the bravest decision I've ever made because I couldn't do it when I had a husband there alongside me, I couldn't trust him to make it all ok while I stayed home to be a Mum. I couldn't risk him fucking up our world again.
But I'm going to trust ME to make it all ok.

& for all those people who have a piece of advice for me - well hold onto it.
Maybe you'll get to say 'I told you so' later - or maybe I'll surprise us all.