Mum’s the Word

Over a decade ago now, I became the mother of a beautiful newborn.

I sat upstairs alone in a hospital room the night he was born -- a little boy in a neonatal cot downstairs alone.

As I’d laid in the birthing suite minutes after his arrival, a nurse handballed my infant back to me with saucer eyes. A doctor fresh on his shift checked my delivery notes, then informed me my child had Down syndrome.

‘What’s his life span?’

The doctor, thinking I’d misheard, repeated his rehearsed Down syndrome diagnosis two more times. I reassured the doctor we were on the same page, I promise, then pulled out my iPhone to google my newborn son’s mortality rate.

I relived that moment over and over that first night. The hospital smell was etched in my brain and I had flashbacks of the moment time stopped and a curtain dropped, as the world spun sideways from its previous axis that was my ‘normal’ life. My first night I was alone and caught in an endless loop of grief, dread and fear.

My life changed in that hospital room. My sense of self-identity was crushed. I was no longer Kat Abianac -- blonde, high-heel wearing, happy-go-lucky, loves life and always puts a positive spin on things. I was now a Hospital Mum.

Neonatal wards weren't built for parents.

They were custom made for their precious charges, while they sustained and nurtured life. In that hospital, I was now simply 'Mum'. My new title had been handed me by the very same doctor who informed me my son had Down syndrome.

'Mum' was used by medical professionals and nurses for the rest of our two month hospital stay. I didn't hear my name out loud in that room unless I was brave and corrected nurses with my real name, the same nurses I already knew on sight, who in the vast majority greeted me with zero recognition on their smiling faces. 'Good morning, Mum, how's our little man?' The word was dehumanised for me by that experience. I was grateful for the few close friends who came to see me regularly during those long weeks. In those moments, I felt like my old self again.

Life is different now.

I don't think about those days often unless I actively choose to, or am triggered by a smell or sound familiar to me from the wards.

I picked a close friend up from hospital after a procedure, having dropped her off earlier in the day. She got in the car and she started talking: "I'm so sorry I didn't know what it was like for you. I just sat in that hospital alone, and imagined you having a baby in hospital by yourself for so long. I felt so lonely in there. The questions they ask -- so irrelevant and they asked the same things over and over. It's none of their business, is it? Did they ask you things like that every day on rounds? I know I visited and I was there seeing you, but I just didn't get it back then. I'm sorry."

'Oh darling, that's okay!' I answered brightly.

She put her hand over mine on the gear stick as we sat at a red light.

"No. I'm so sorry I didn't understand. I didn't, really. Now I do."

I didn't say anything in response. We had been friends forever and it was a moment we both understood all too well.

I drove home to my son and daughter.

Their au pair smiled and handed him over. He wrapped his sweet little arms around my neck.

"Mum," he said. 

"Mumumumumum."

I cuddled him tight and I couldn’t recall the hospital moments any more. The smell of the ward, the curtain drop of emotions I’d just relived while talking to my friend in the car - it all fell away as I breathed in his smell and felt his love for me as he squeezed tightly around my neck.

I'm just a little boy's mum.

And I love it when he reminds me.

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