Sabrina ... and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

I decided to take my oldest daughter with me to the hospital, today. They do not allow anyone under ten years of age - she is eleven. We left the house at 8:30 - arrived at the hospital at 11:50! Traffic was ridiculous. It took us forty-five minutes to travel the length of 2 10ths of a mile. By the time we got to the hospital, I was spent, exhausted, on my last nerve. I had been up since 4:30. So, when we finally arrived, I just.wanted.to.see.the.baby. Imagine my ... chagrin when the security guard denied me a pass for my daughter, stating that the NICU was closed to all visitors except parents. Swine flu concerns.

So, I have an 11 yo, milk that needs to get to the NICU (and I ain't letting it out of my sight - it took too much effort to get that measly amount), a security guard who will not even let my daughter come up to the waiting room, and me - a mom who is just frazzled at this point and has no intention of turning tail and heading home. Now, lest you think I wanted to be the exception to the rule, or that I thought the whole policy stupid - while I am certainly glad that the hospital instituted this as a safety precaution, it was short-sighted to NOT notify the parents of the babies, given the fact that there are going to be at least some with siblings at home.

I decided to seek the assistance of the people in Admissions. They made some phone calls, and Social Services met with me -in the waiting room, the very room the security guard denied me access to. Social workers are not exactly high on my approval list. Their very training is so counter-productive, in my opinion, to what the world needs at this moment - less "me, me, me" , more "it just is not about me". And this particular social worker - with her dripping-with-honey voice and her need to constantly put her arm around me - just fit too well with my pre-conceived notions of social workers. It would have been a laughable moment if I was not so flustered.

(Please realize that my feeling toward social workers is more a bias aimed at the field of social work - based on my training as a clinician. In graduate school, we were trained in systemic therapies. If we truly wanted to "save the world", that, in a nutshell, would do it.)

The social worker's solution was to have my 11 yo sit in the waiting room and ... well, wait. Now, I could not help but feel it was ironic that, if I left my 11 yo unattended in the waiting room, that could be considered neglect - but since it was the social worker's idea, her okay, her stamp of approval, well, then, it was a perfectly government-sanctioned idea. (Yeah, I am jaded.) She would keep an eye on my older daughter while I visited with the baby. And, when the playroom opened, Sarah could go and play with the toys. Uh, hello, have you met any 11 year-olds? Sarah could be in charge of the playroom. She had three books with her, and began to read, thanking the social worker for her time and stating that she would be just fine.

This is really starting to read like a lambasting of social workers, and that is so NOT the point. (I will leave out the part wherein she visibly bristled when I admitted to the fact that I homeschool my children. Shhhh. And I won't discuss the fact that the social worker LEFT - yup, as in, FOR THE DAY - without a word to me.) I did get to see Emma, I did make it home safely, my older daughter was fine. That is what counts. Today was just another indication of how the baby is not really mine right now, and I need to relax, and let them take care of her - everyone from the nurses to the security guard, who had the interests of all the children in mind. Emma is doing okay, the edema is still a concern, she is still on Lasix, and requires blood transfusions to keep up her strength.

All this to say...

8 weeks down, who knows how many to go.