After I had the twins we stayed in the hospital for five days. When the babies were a few days old they were given the “carseat challenge”. The carseat challenge is where you dress your baby in their going home clothes and put then in their carseat with the base and the nurses hook them up to blood oxygen monitors for an hour. If their blood sats don’t dip then the baby passes. But if the baby cries then it is pretty much a fail because when the baby cries it causes the sats to drop, This test was deemed necessary because my daughter spent her first 24 hours in the Special Care Nursery and because my son was tiny, well, they might as well do him too. He passed but she failed.
My husband had gone with them for the test so that I could have a nap. When he returned he told me that both babies had failed and I burst into tears. My babies was just days old and they had already failed a test. My hormones were raging and I just couldn’t handle it. Because they failed the test we were delayed in leaving and had to wait another 24 hours before they would retest them. All I wanted to do was to take my kids home. I was sobbing uncontrolably and he knelt on the bed to comfort me. I heard and felt a loud crack and the bed went thunk. I thought that he had hit the bed in frustration as a reaction to my sobbing but in fact the bed broke due to the way he was kneeling on it and it was damaged to begin with. He took a look and oil was starting to leak from one of the mechanisms so he headed out to tell the nurses.
I sat there sobbing, unable to see how things could get better, wondering when I’d be “allowed” to take my babies home. Isn’t it funny how at times life seems so hard? Looking back, we should have declined the test and just gotten out of there, but that is easy to say now. Then I was tired, hormonal and feeling unsure of myself as a parent and now I’m usually less tired and feeling more sure of myself as a parent.
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