The Journey home...

You’ll never forget the journey home from hospital: the tender steps to the lift, (fearing that you won’t actually make it to the ground floor and beyond. And what lurks there? After 3 days inside you have forgotten that there is life outside your paisley patterned curtain). The Sister bearing down on you to check that you have the correct car seat or else your little bundle aint going nowhere. The fear that engulfs you as you realise there won’t be midwives there to answer your every question. What will you do now when bubs hollers? Beneath it all lies an overwhelming sense of relief that you will be back to your own nice clean bathroom, a well stocked fridge with edible food and your own TV to plonk yourself in front of. Most of all – there is your bed. Your bed. Comfy, inviting and calling you to a deep dark sleep – the likes of which you have failed to even imagine, stuck in ward 3B with other peoples’ children screeching all round you.
As you drive home you notice everything. The sun beats down through the windows, burning through your irises making everything feel raw and new. As you glance at the snuffling bundle next to you, strapped into something ten times bigger than him, you realise that you are newborn yourself. Oh not in that new age hippy dippy bolllocks way. No, for you my friend, nothing will ever be the same again. Having been inside the hospital chained to your bairn and bed for the past three days, everything feels new. Look – People! Cars! Sunshine! Shops! Worst of all – if your sprog drops in summer – people in beer gardens! Tip – don’t look. They are happy, carefree, with no responsibilities apart from remembering to keep taxi money in their back pocket to get home at 4am . You don’t belong in their world anymore.