It was 6am. I’d just given birth to my first child – a baby girl – and wow, could she scream.
I’d been teaching in kindergartens for a decade and heard many screamers, seen many ratbags but not once did I think I’d have one. I don’t really know why. But was I mistaken. My eight pound, thirteen ounce daughter had the lungs of an opera singer, but not the voice. And she screamed from the moment she was born until she was six months old thanks to a heavy bout of colic and reflux.
There were only two things I could do to stop the screaming; walk her in the pram or breastfeed.
I was woken up five times the first night I attempted to sleep after giving birth but the second night was better – I wasn’t woken until 2 am. The nurse came running in with my screaming child. I sat up, pulled my nightie to the side and put her head to my breast and the screaming stopped. She fed. And the nurse was gone.
Once she finished feeding, I pulled her head away and for a moment I just sat still. Frozen. I had no idea who this child was. All I knew was she was not mine.
I was soon running down the hallway of the maternity ward with some other mother’s baby in my arms and when I reached the nursery I screamed to the three nurses and ten newborns in the room, “I’ve just fed the wrong baby!”
And as I saw the look of horror wash over all three nurses’ faces, I saw it. And damn, was I furious.
There she was, my daughter, laying there in her capsule – sound asleep. She could have almost been mistaken for an angel.
I’d had three solid hours of sleep in the past two days and I’d been woken up to feed the wrong freaking baby.
Before I knew it the newborn which had just gulped down a whole heap of my breast milk was gone. The nurses took her away as quickly as they brought her to me. And then the whispers began. In every corridor. There’s the crazy lady who fed the wrong baby.
It felt like that anyway.
The head of the nursing department visited me in the morning, and she was sorry. Everyone was sorry. But by then I was okay. I was just worried about the other mother. I would have been furious if the shoe was on the other foot. My baby on the other breast.
But I never met the woman. All I knew was “she’s upset” – understandably – and her baby girl was called Brooke. That’s how they made the mistake.
My daughter’s name isn’t Brooke. Far from it, actually. But our last name is Brooks. And when they saw the screaming baby in the ward they automatically thought it was mine.
If only Brooke had screamed one day later because by then, my firstborn was well and truly out of the nursery. And you’re probably thinking, of course, they didn’t want another mix-up, but not quite. My daughter was waking all the other newborns with her constant screaming.
So she was expelled. What baby gets expelled from a nursery? I was apparently going to be in for a ride.
But she was never expelled again. She turned out to be a pretty well-behaved student, surprisingly, and by Year 10 she was Form Captain. Her report said she made a great Form Captain, but she had never told me about her leadership role. And when I asked her why, she laughed.
“I’m not Form Captain, Mum,” she said.
“The girl next to me is. Her name is Brooke.”
Those nurses weren’t the only ones fooled.
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