Elly at 6 Days old

Elly at 6 days old in the ICU. It was not allowed to take photos, but you all know Africans will always do the opposite😂.📷

I grew up knowing that people who were admitted in the ICU hardly or never came out alive, and even with those scary thoughts i still had the strength to take photos of my son. 

Elly’s being in the ICU ended my fears for dead bodies, yes i used to fear dead people until i witnessed three people in the ICU taking their last breathes,doctors rushing to cover them with white bedsheets😥. Every day there was one or two bodies being moved from the ICU to the mortuary, This is one of the reasons i refused to use the maternity wards and instead spent all my first 7 days and nights as a mother outside the ICU in the cold. How was i to go and comfortably sleep not knowing how my son was doing. 

Visiting hours were strictly 6:00am, 12:00 pm and 6:00pm, any other special call in between these times mostly meant bad news,most people who were called in in those hours would come back in tears, their loved ones were gone. There was this day i was called in around 10:00am, i froze, my body got heavy, my mind told me it was my time for some bad news as i dragged myself to the ICU, my feet were too heavy to lift up ......My eyes got teary, then one of the female doctors shouted “hey, are you ok, are you Rose? Are you the childs mother?”... I only nodded, to mean yes. 

She walked towards me, held my hand and before she could atter a thing i opened my mouth and asked.”Is he dead? can i please see him before you take him away?”

Ohhh i was wrong, they had only called me in to let me know that Elly was to be transferred the next day to the newborns unit for photo therapy because he had developed jaundice.  

Phweeeeeeeeeew! I dint even want to know what jaundice was, the fact that he was still alive was just enough. 

I smiled and politely asked if i could see him anyway, thats how i sneaked and took this photo, thanks to my Motorola C113 there was no click sound from the camera. 

#ellyscpdiaries