Special Care: The next few days

Morning soon arrived and all we wanted to do was see our girls. I took my wife in a wheelchair back down the long corridor which led to the neo-natal. Upon seeing our girls my wife broke down, It really sounds silly, but you have to be strong from a dads point of view. You just suppress your emotions, but believe me it bubbles under the surface.


Looking at R with this huge tube shoved down her throat is just awful and M was so tiny. It was frightening.

Your thoughts turn to the worst case scenario. You start wondering if they’ll survive and if they do will they have any lasting health problems. I must say though that the care on the neo-natal was second to none.

We spent most of the day in the unit just being with our girls. As a parent it felt as though we were obsolete. Everything we should be doing as new parents had been taken away from us. That role which should have been ours, had been taken over by strangers. It was a very surreal situation and we only had each other for comfort.

The day went quickly and as we were settling down for the night in our room a nurse approached. She wasn’t happy about me staying because the room we had was on the women’s ward and obviously me being a man they didn’t want me there.


I can understand why, but at that moment I just had to stand my ground. Our babies were in the special care unit and there was no way I would be leaving that hospital. I didn’t want to leave my wife on her own and I certainly didn’t want to be in a different building to the one where our girls were.


It felt as though the emotional needs of the parents were being ignored. There needs to be a change. I was 40 miles away from home and if it meant I had to sleep in my car outside the hospital I would have done so.


After expressing our concerns with the nurses they allowed me to stay in the room for the second night. Back to that uncomfortable chair. I wasn’t allowed to leave the room.

The following morning we went to see girls again. In truth nothing had changed, but we were allowed to touch them for the first time. It was overwhelming. The moment was something we just didn’t want to let go. Our girls were beginning to feel part of us.

During the day it was obvious that the nurses didn’t want me to stay on the ward. Thankfully, one of the cleaners came to our rescue. It sounds absurd, but she was like an angel sent from heaven to help us. 

She told us that the special care unit had two parents rooms and that both were unoccupied. The cleaner spoke to the neo-natal nurses and they arranged for us to stay. We were made aware that if someone else needed to use the rooms we would have to leave though. 

I felt so relieved that I didn’t have to travel back and forth from home every day. It meant we could be close to our babies. We could concentrate on them and see them whenever we wanted. Even in the middle of the night and early hours which was great. 


The girls were a long way from coming home though. There were many weeks to go. More tears to come along with more worries, but we had some magical moments that will stay in my heart forever.

In my next post I’ll finish writing about our stay at this particular hospital and talk about our transfer back to our local hospital.