You can keep your diamonds…..

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As I begin to write this, it is 11.26 am on 3rd August 2010. A significant moment in the financial world? No, not really. 10 years ago exactly, my son was born in Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield, North London.

A happy accident – the conception that is, by the time the birth came around I had recognized the signs. He was born by caesarian section with Van Morrison playing in the background (not my choice, but it was almost Shania Twain which would have been immeasurably worse!)

I saw the looks being exchanged over my head as he was being delivered, and as it turns out I wasn’t being a paranoid mother, he was born with a condition called Pulmonary Hypertension. Quite simply, when babies are in the womb the blood pressure in their lungs is higher than it is in the rest of their body.

The first breath swaps that over, but in the rare cases of babies with Pulmonary Hypertension it doesn’t happen, meaning that they are unable to take up oxygen. In the UK only two hospitals, Alder Hay in Liverpool and Great Ormond Street in London have the facilities to stabilize this condition. The stark reality is that if Joe hadn’t been born in London the chances are he would have died.

He was taken away almost immediately, and whisked away to GOSH, where he spent a week on the neonatal intensive care unit – he was also born a month prematurely. I was allowed out of hospital after 4 days to see him (there are no facilities at GOSH for parents who are not fit and well) and it had taken that long to get him stable. That small unit at the back of Great Ormond Street is the most incredible place I have ever been. Babies receive one to one nursing care around the clock. The nurses love those babies, and they care for the parents too. It costs £5000 a day to have a baby on that ward – and for that he even got a dose of Viagra at the tender age of 3 days old.

When Joe was 3 weeks old we brought him home, and the fun of life began in earnest. I look at him today and wonder whether any of it actually happened. He’s almost as tall as me, he wears his hoody with passion, he’s becoming reluctant to wash, he grunts a lot and most questions are answered with “I dunno”.

He’s addicted to his Xbox, loves his bodyboard, his BMX and his mates. And me. He’s noisy, smelly and surly at times, yet he lights up my life every single day. I look at him when I’m tucking him in at night and his arm is round my neck in one of his legendary vice grips and I think back to those dark days 10 years ago when his light was almost snuffed out. It’s at those times I realize that the state of the economy isn’t that important after all.

Kate

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