"Long journey but we're here to tell the story"

Weekend before my mum checked my blood pressure and she sent me down to BGH as it was dangerously high. I stayed in 1 night and got let out on tablets to monitor my blood pressure but the next day it was still high so I went back in and got checked out. They sent me to Ayrshire Crosshouse maternity ward as I was  30 weeks with very high blood pressure and preeclampsia and Borders General Hospital didn’t take babies before 32 weeks.

Up at Ayrshire they kept me an extra week and were so relaxed about things. Then  I had my baby boy at 2lb 14oz. We stayed at Crosshouse for 3 weeks and then transferred to SCBU at BGH. Nurses were helpful and nice but because I wasn’t there early in morning right through I felt they kept judging me on looking after my baby.

It came to the night before he was going to get discharged. I stayed in the family room which was lovely and noticed my wee boy was being sick. So then they kept him in a further 3 days then sent him out.

We got home but my baby kept being sick and I wasn’t sure what was going on so I kept asking for advice from people that said aw it’s just a sicky baby don’t worry. I was with my friend one day that was a mother and she noticed how much he was being sick and said that isn’t normal so I got to the stage I found the dietitian's number and phoned her. This is where things started to move and people started to listen. We tried SMA milk which was good but he wasn’t putting weight on so they put him on high calorie milk with and medication which resulted in him being sick but choking on the sick as it was sticky and was getting stuck in his mouth. So I decided to go back on the SMA and since then he is much more settled.

We have had a lot of appointments cancelled  and rescheduled, it’s been bit of a long 4 months back and forward but we are eventually getting there now. 

I can back from Crosshouse on high blood pressure tablets for 1 week and when I finished I had to ask the nurse in SCBU what happened with me since no one seemed to bother about me. So I went to my gp and she gradually took me off the tablets as the BGH wanted just to stop them straight away. I was seen 2 weeks from my gp to be kept an eye on. 

It’s been such a long journey but we are both here to tell the story.