The Best News in the World!

I've known the secret for nine long weeks, but I wasn't allowed to tell! My eldest daughter gave her dad the best Father's Day ever on Sunday but telling him that she is well over three months pregnant. She told me when she was only about four weeks and as she didn't really believe it was true,she was so reluctant to let anyone know in case the pregnancy didn't progress. But it has, and all is well according to the scan. And I am going to be a grandma - I can't tell you how happy I am!

I bought the above Silvercross pram at the little bric a brac market we have monthly in the Church Hall. I knew my daughter was planning on telling this last weekend and then, there was the pram, parked outside the hall, and looking very like the Silvercross pram I had had for her as a baby. It just seemed meant! Hers was much bigger - and it had a complete white body, and navy hood and trim. I paid £40 for that pram in 1979, buying it secondhand (or third or whatever hand it was) and that was complete with all the mattress and white broderie anglais bedding. £40 seemed quite a lot of money then, but it was a smashing pram - so big, with a shopping tray underneath. We had an enormous hall in the house I was living in with her dad - it was as big as a living room and I could just push the pram in and leave it there without it being in anyone's way. I sold it a year later when we bought her a pushchair (no buggies then!) for the same price as I paid for it. The pram I bought the other day also dates from the 70's, according to the lady I brought it from. She said she'd used it for her children, and her grandchildren but now had to sell. I only paid £30 which is nothing really - I shall keep it at mine to proudly push my little grandchild round the village!


The print is called Baby Mine and I think the artist's name is Morrison Fisher. It's dated 1915. I bought it at a car boot a few weeks ago for £4 and intend to have it framed as I think it is quite sweet.

My mother (who incidentally was born the year after the picture was painted, in 1916) is still with us, and is home from hospital. It was quite tricky getting her home as Social Services had got it into their head that my sister 'couldn't cope' - and insisted we take up one of two options. 1 - to put Mummy into a nursing home that they would find or 2 - to have carers come in twice a day. Both of these options would have to be funded by Mummy. Now, the money was not the problem - if we had wanted to take either option up, there is money enough but we (and that's all of us 4 sisters, and others, in the family) felt we wanted to cope on our own, at least initially. And also we don't like being told what we must do for our own mother, by someone who has never even met her! Mind you, having 2 carers come in twice a day adds up to about £400 a week which soon comes to a great deal of money as weeks go into months, maybe. Briefly, I talked calmly to the SS man to make him realise that we could cope and he said he must talk to the hospital meeting. Later it was agreed that we could have our own mother back to the home she has been living in for the last 4 years if we agreed to have the community nurse visit, and accept the services of the incontinence team. Of course we had no objections to these two suggestions, and awaited the return of Mummy by ambulance. It was a long hot day. Despite them saying how urgently the bed was needed, and giving us several times during the day, our mother didn't arrive back until 6.30 pm that evening. She moaned and cried as she was hauled upstairs by the non too careful ambulance team, and back in her lovely aqua and cream bedroom she fell asleep and slept for 15 hours.

I'm not quite sure when this was - my sister keeps a diary of it all, so she'd know the date, but Mummy has now been home for, well, it must be 3 weeks or more. She is deteriorating but it is a very slow process. She has what we are calling hibernation days where she goes to sleep and can't be roused for very long periods of time - the longest so far is twenty-nine and a quarter hours! That's twenty-nine and a quarter hours without anything to eat or drink! One hibernation day she stayed asleep while her nappy and nightie were changed. We keep thinking she will pass gently away while she is sleeping, but she doesn't - she comes to and wants a cup of tea!

It is very difficult to describe how we feel living in this limbo. It is worse for my sister as she is there all the time. We feel anxious and unsettled, waiting knowing that things can't improve and that one day very shortly - tomorrow, or in several weeks time? - we will be arranging our mother's funeral.

After Mummy had been home a week, with my sister coping marvellously and me and my second nearest sister going down as often as possible (our eldest sister lives in Devon and has health problems of her own), the doctor visited. My sister had asked for a home visit and been quizzed by the receptionist as to why she wanted such a thing and had answered tartly that mother was dying and she'd like the doctor to have a look at her! The doctor came and apparently was surprised at the difference since she'd last seen Mummy. She said that she could arrange free carers to come in twice a day - well, we were surprised as the hospital and SS said we would have to pay - so this was arranged and they started coming. I knew they would annoy my sister, and they do - being late and this,that and the other. She cancelled them coming twice a day as she said it seemed they were never away, and currently they are coming morning only. As we felt they would, they do unnecessary things to pass the time or earn their money or whatever - they wash Mummy's face, change her nightie and sheet when it doesn't need it and so on, but to give them their due they are lovely, caring people and go along with Mummy's fantasies. When I was there last time she was telling them to get the knives and forks out of a certain box and put the potatoes on!

So my sister had got this new routine going - with the incontinence team turning out to be someone who dropped off nappies rather than some wonderful people in white coats who come in and do the yucky jobs leaving everything pristine! And now, surprise, surprise, she has been told that she can only have the carers free for another two weeks, and after that they will have to be paid. We are annoyed that this wasn't made clear to us at the beginning - we innocently thought that it was a free service as my mother is dying at home rather than taking up a hospital bed. My sister hasn't decided what to do yet - after all she might not have to make a decision whether to keep them or not.

After a hibernation period, when Mummy wakes up, she is fairly normal for a while, and I told her our good news and she was vaguely pleased. As the time goes on, she goes into her fantasy world and it can be quite amusing. When I arrived the last time, she told me that Granny Gray had visited. Granny Gray was Mummy's mother's mother so passed away a very very long time ago. She was telling me about this visit, and also was concerned because there was a lion in the room and then said 'Oh, there's someone at the door!' - to humour her I went to the bedroom door, and she said 'No the front door!', so I looked out of the window and down, and said 'No, there's no-one there'. But of course I was wrong, and the imaginery visitors came trouping into the room. 'I'm sorry I'm so poorly' said Mummy 'Did you see the lion as you came along? Did the children see the lion?' Then she said aloud 'How do you get on with your mother-in-law?'... 'Oh' I said 'She's fine'. Mummy looked at me directly 'I'm not talking to you!' she said. I got up from the chair and said 'Well I'll leave you all to have a chat, and go and make some tea'. When I went back an hour later, Mummy said 'They're leaving now'. When alone, she chats away to herself, pulling at the bedclothes.

So that's how it is at the moment, and we want it to change, and we don't want it to change.... but change it will and we just don't know when.....
The end.

Update on my mother

1.6.09

First of June and Mummy was supposed to be sent home from hospital today. I asked my sister to text when she arrived, but it is afternoon and she hasn't done so. Maybe she is too busy - if Mummy is back - or maybe she hasn't come back yet.

The hospital don't let you know anything. Even when you ask - it seems. But let's go back in time a bit. I stayed Friday night and Saturday day with my sister and visited Mummy twice, giving sister the time off. It is quite time consuming visiting someone in hospital every day. Also expensive - this is Chichester hospital and they charge £2.60 for between one and up to two hours. I think that's pretty damn expensive.

On Friday when I went Mummy was awake all the time, but practically nothing she said was relevant to now or even reality. We talked all through my visit and I tried to reassure her about things she seemed upset about but don't know how much she really is aware of what is going on. She asked several times where she was. The first thing she said when I went up to the bed and told her that I was there was 'I'm in such a muddle with this' - she was plucking at the bedclothes. I understood what she was talking about straight away (knitting) and said 'Don't worry, xxxxxx will sort it out'. 'Oh yes' she said 'xxxxxx is an excellent knitter, but I wanted to help her'.

She then asked me if it was teatime and I said that they would probably bring round the trolley soon. She wanted to know why we couldnt make it, and I said it was because we were in hospital but when she went home we could make tea whenever we wanted it. Oh, she said 'Would you like a sausage roll?'.... 'I'm ok for now' I said 'I've got this' and I indicated the nutty bar I had brought in with me to eat. Ignoring this, she then asked me if I would like a salted prawn. 'Not at the moment' I said.'Well' she warned me 'They'll probably be all gone by tomorrow'.

The bed had the rails up, of course, and Mummy now speaks very quietly. The only way I could hear her was by kneeling on the bedside chair, and leaning over onto my elbows on the bed, bottom up - luckily her bed is at the end of the ward.

I asked her if Daddy had been there. She said that he had and that she had seen him 'in form' she said, and not just heard his breathing. Good, I said, if you see him again tell him I love him; we all love him. You love him too don't you? Well that started her off. She wasn't at all pleased with him, she said, he had let her down. She told me that he had married another woman. I am prepared to go along with all her hallucinations and fantasies, but not that. 'No Mummy' I said 'He was married to you and he died while he was still married to you'. She looked at me pityingly, like she was thinking 'you poor deluded creature' and said 'I know, but he has still married someone else'. 'He couldnt do' I said 'He's dead'. She looked straight at me, which is difficult as she is so crumpled. 'We thought he was dead' she said 'But he wasn't really'. 'Yes he was' I insisted gently 'You didn't want to see him, but I did and I promise you he was dead'. She thought we hadn't had a doctor in, but then remembered that we had. But she still wouldn't be convinced that he hadn't married someone else. I felt like saying something she always used to say to us when she thought one thing and we thought another, and she wasn't going to argue about it 'Well, you have it your way and I'll have it mine'.

The baby I talked about in the last blog is still there. It wasn't there at one of my sister's visits and she said Mummy was very upset at this and the fact that she didn't have a jug to make up formula (we were all breast-fed but this baby is not Mummy's apparently). My sister just told her that while she was sleeping the staff had taken it away to feed it. But the baby was there this time, and she asked me if I didn't think he was very sweet. I agreed he was. 'Whose baby is it? I asked. 'Daddy's' she said 'With another woman'. I was rather taken aback. Mummy looked down at the nothing in the crook of her arm and said 'But you can't help loving the little thing, can you?' 'What's his name?' I asked. Well she said we were going to call him Colin and then we decided on Duncan. Duncan XXXXXXXX (our family surname) sounds good doesnt it?'. I have no idea why she would fix on Duncan. It doesnt seem like a name that would've been used in our family. I know she was going to call me Peter if I had been a boy.

Although this conversation was totally surreal, afterwards it played on my mind a bit. My 2 eldest sisters (18 and 16 years old than me) have often hinted at Daddy being unfaithful and each time I've brushed it aside saying I didn't want to know. And I don't. It really doesnt matter that much now, although I appreciate that if it was true then it would've caused my mother a great deal of pain at the time. But if there had really been another child, a half-brother to me, how would I feel then? I couldn't resist using my www.ancestry.co.uk account to look up the name in the searches. There was no Duncan XXXXXXXX... but our (fairly unusual) surname is frequently spelt wrong, so I put in a search for the name using the wrong spelling. And there it was...... This particular Duncan was born in 1961 in Hounslow. Not very far from where we were living, and when I was 4, my next sister 7 and the eldest two 20 and 22. The 22 year old unmarried and still at home and my 20 year old sister was having problems with her marriage and had two children of her own aged 2 and newborn. With this kind of full-on fraught family life, maybe my father had steered off the marital path a bit. And he was a charming and good-looking man. Or I could be putting 2 and 2 together and making 105!!! Or maybe I'm not....'Don't be too disappointed with Daddy' was another thing she said 'But I thought it best that you know'.

So, I steered Mummy away from that topic of conversation, and instead asked her if she had seen her mother. 'No' she said 'Has she been to see me?'..... 'No' I said 'She passed away many years ago, but I wondered if she had visited you in spirit'. But she hadn't and I wished she had, and here's why, but of course I didn't bring this up again with Mummy at this time. My granny, my mother's mother, died of cardiac failure when she was only 67. She died in hospital, and when my parents arrived at the hospital she had already died and been put in the mortuary. Daddy persuaded Mummy not to go and see her. He could put a lot of pressure on, and was disagreeable when he didn't get his own way, and apparently said it was too far to the mortuary from where they were, and it would upset her to see her mother dead. She gave in, but many times over the years, she told me how much she regretted it. Only last summer when she was in the nursing home, she went over it all again with me and I tried to reassure her that her mother would've understood. 'I've regretted it ever since' she said with a tear trickling down her cheek. So for 48 years she has had those painful regrets, all because she wouldn't stand up to my father and he couldn't be bothered to trek through the hospital to wherever the mortuary was to pay his last respects to his wife's mother. I'm not saying people should see dead people if they don't want to, but they certainly shouldn't stop those who do want to from doing so. For years, Mummy has said that her mother always put a red rose in the hands of the dead relative and I promised years ago that I would do the same for her, and give her a second rose which will be from her to her mother.

My visit ended after more conversations about parties at the weekend that she thought she had attended. I waited til she had had a few strawfuls of tea from her beaker, and settled down to sleep. Different staff - often young men- come round with the tea trolley, but I am not sure what happens if a relative is not there to assist the invalid with their tea whether they would actually get any. Mummy certainly might be able to say, yes, she would have tea, but she can't pick up the beaker from the table if it was just left there.

The second time - Saturday - she looked dreadful when I went in, lying with her mouth slack and her face so pale I thought she might have actually gone. I spoke to her and saw her chest was going up and down, but she stayed asleep or not talking 99.9% of my visit.

I occupied myself with taking a good look at her notes and copied down some stuff. I believe she is hardly eating and drinking now. She has not had her bowels open for 9 days - though this is hardly surprising. They stopped her Fentanyl pain relief patches and she was a day without pain relief (I think) but now they have put her on another patch called Buprenorphine (I'm pretty sure its not called Bupremorphine). Another, very compos mentis lady in a bed in the ward told me that she had been crying with pain in the night, and at the times when they moved her position and I was horrified, and glad to see on the notes that they started the other patch. Why would they take her pain relief away? That's cruel.

The hospital had wanted to send Mummy back on Friday - having giving my sister a day's notice! Sister said she couldn't have her back til Monday and that was agreed. Despite the hospital saying that they would 'put a care package in place' they had no intention of doing so once they found out that Mummy has money. All they have done is give my sister a list of care agencies to ring. No wonder she felt so overwhelmed before I went down.

They have provided a hospital bed and it has now been delivered and is very good, with rails both sides and a special mattress that pumps up at the touch of a button. All clean and new.

Sister and I discussed things at length and although she rang a couple of the care agencies she didnt feel happy with them or that she could organise them before Mummy came home. I don't know if it was one agency or both, but certainly one said that they would have to come round to discuss the whole situation with her AND with Mummy, and when sister said Mummy was certainly not up to that sort of thing, they said they still would like to talk to her!

They also said that it would not be possible to send only one carer - they would have to send two each time as one wouldnt be able to manage. Sister said that she would be there but they said no, health and safety blah blah. The cost would be £15 per hour per carer, week days and more at weekends. If the carers came twice a day, we roughly calculated that it would cost in the region of £380 per week.

Now the money isnt really the issue, but my sister's feelings are. As I said we discussed it all at length, and we came to the conclusion that rather than rush into an arrangement with agency carers that she may well find unsatisfactory, she would see how it was looking after Mummy on her own.

We both felt that she would get annoyed with having two carers coming in say twice a day and not doing very much at all. It would not be part of their job to feed Mummy or give her drinks, so all they would be doing, we thought, would be maybe washing her and changing her, and maybe changing the bed.

Sister and I don't think she will need much washing. Her face and hands gently wiped once or twice a day of course, and her 'nappy' changed several times. As her intake is now so little, I don't think her output will be much. The hospital havent got her in proper nappies, just a sort of bed protection pad between her legs and another under her.

She will need to have her position changed, but sister practised with me on the hospital bed (it's very comfortable) and acting helpless and she could roll me from side to side, and Mummy favours one side anyway. Sister knows how they change the undersheet by rolling the person slightly one way and then the other.

The hospital apparently don't provide anything, and neither do the care agencies - you have to buy it all. It doesnt seem like they do much or provide much!!!! Sister and I went out and bought nappy pad type things like the hospital have, beakers like the hospital have and Mummy is using there, some soft plastic spoons, some baby food puree in jars, and various wipes, antiseptic sprays, gloves etc. and a swing bin for Mummy's room. We arranged it all , and my sister felt more confident about having her back.

The woman in the Disability Shop said that if you get in touch with your surgery, the district nurse should provide you with all you need for an incontinent person. The Govt pays (nice of them, after all the expenses they have claimed!) So sister will get in touch with the surgery again - they werent very helpful when she rang before but now she knows a bit more. She will also get the doctor to come and do a home visit asap, so Mummy has been seen by her own doctor and obviously she (the GP) knew what Mummy was like before. It is obviously essential that Mummy has proper pain relief.

I will go back down on Wednesday or before if my sister needs me. I really don't think poor Mummy will be lasting much longer, and wouldn't want her to the way she was on Sunday, although she may pick up a little back in the quiet of her own bedroom..

I was sad at her bedside on the Sunday, but she was able to say 'love you' to me and smiled when I kissed her goodbye.

The end.