A paddle down a stream of conciousness

I spend a lot of time watching Kaylee sleep.

I am typing while I sit with feet on the edge of her bed base so I can look up into her face and she is sleeping right now, eyes moving under their lids as she dreams. I wonder what she dreams about. Her little life has been a full one so far. I wonder if she sometimes dreams the sounds she used to hear through my belly wall. Anna stroking my belly and telling me her baby was in there. Read alouds around the table. Evening worship and story time. Occasional shouts of "Stop! No! Put that down!" *CRASH* "Oh FAR OUT!". OK, not so occasional. When Kaylee is cranky sometimes I think I should start yelling instructions and directions at the nurses to make her feel like she is in the womb again.

As we start to approach the end of our PICU time (1 week ago exactly my girl was stoned out of her mind and we were preparing her for surgery) my mind is turning to thoughts of when we go home. I asked a veteran cardio Mum if I'm ever likely to relax about Kaylee's health and well being. She told me probably not. Our life will now include hand sanitiser at all the entrances to the house, asking friends and family who pop by if they have been in contact with any illnesses in the last 72 hours and avoiding indoor public gatherings at least until Kaylee's first birthday when the surgeries are finished and she has recovered. This suits me fine. Frankly I think people who go visiting or to public places with gastro should be strung up publicly but nursing a house full of vomiting toddlers will do that to you. Our lives will now include fun trips to Hobart to the Botanical Gardens for sight seeing and the Royal Hobart Hospital for cardio, genetics and palate check ups. Our lives will now include family trips to Launceston which include stops at the paediatrician and early intervention programs. Our lives will work around breast pumping needs and feeding times.

But our lives will also include tiny pink outfits on the clothes line, impossibly long eye lashes and minute shell-like fingernails. We will still be listening to Jon read at the end of the day, children laying on the floor lined up like sausages as we experience adventures in Narnia and beyond and Kaylee nestles in a lap or her rocker, just one of the crowd. We will have trips out bush with a certain boy teasing a certain girl about leeches, fishing and camp fires as Kaylee snuggles into a sling. We will bake and garden and build and study and Kaylee will be taken up in the whirlwind that is our life adding her own special breeze to the mix.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.