From bad to worse............and beyond..........

My conditions is nothing compared to what we experienced the last 3 days.
Our daughter Kyla was due to give birth last week. Her contractions started the night of the 2 February and we arrived in Galvez hospital at 02.00. By 05.00 a beautiful baby girl was brought into the world, weighing 3 KG.  I consider myself so lucky to have witnessed the birth of my granddaughter. Something I will cherish forever and never forget. We were over the moon. Life could not get much better, seeing our daughter and son in law with their little baby daughter.

Sadly, our joy did not last long.  All day nobody came to see them, no midwife, no nurse,  no paediatrician. All day, Kyla tried to feed her daughter, who would not wake up.  She simply slept.  At 19.00 a nurse entered and asked Kyla how often she had fed the baby, to which she explained that she had tried to feed the baby, but that the baby would not feed, as she would not wake up. The nurse replied � if you don�t feed your baby you will starve her�, making Kyla feel as if she failed her new born baby. The nurse disappeared and came back with a baby bottle of formula  milk, she  picked the sleeping infant up and forced the bottle into her mouth, with the result of the baby, Aiy�la, bringing the small amount of milk up again. This was repeated twice, after which even the nurse realised that the baby , which had turned blue, was not feeding. The nurse took the baby , informing us that she was going to �check the baby out� and left the room.

2 hours later, when we still had not heard from anyone, we called the nurse back via the emergency bell, as we could not find anyone in the corridors. A paediatrician  turned up to inform Kyla, that the baby needed to see a cardiologist, as there was �something wrong with the baby�s heart�. She told Kyla that she could not see the baby and that they were going to call an ambulance in order to transfer the baby to a children�s specialist hospital. This was at 22.30. By 23.00 when the ambulance had not arrived, we started to worry. We asked the nurse and paediatrician to call the ambulance again, as we were starting to get concerned. In fact we asked them to hand us the baby, so we could drive it to the hospital, but they refused.  100 (that is what it felt like),  phone calls later, the ambulance arrived at 03.00. 4 hours later!
We followed the ambulance to the children�s hospital, which was only 2 km down the road and watched with horror as the baby was wheeled into the intensive care unit. We were not allowed to see her and by 05.00 in the morning were asked for a meeting with the cardiologist, a lovely caring lady. She told us that little baby Aiyala had �severe pulmonary valve stenosis�. I googled it immediately, which I shouldn�t have. I read that it is not difficult to spot a baby with this condition, as they have difficulty feeding, often look blue, sleep all the time etc. Any half qualified nurse should have been able to spot this, if she had bothered to look at the baby.

So our beautiful granddaughter has been in the intensive care unit since Friday night/ Saturday morning.
Kyla has been trying to express milk to try and feed the baby, but she is sleeping most of the time and it feels impossible to try and wake her.
This morning, Monday, 2 cardiologists and 2 surgeons met, in order to discuss the plan of action. We met with them after the meeting and were told that the operation was set for Wednesday morning, 08.00. They will try to enter a wire into her vein in the groin, feed it through to her heart and will try to balloon it open. We pray this will work. There are risks of course, but both the cardiologist and surgeon we spoke to, filled us with confidence in their ability. Apparently the hospital carries out well over 100 operations of this type every year. If this does not work, then after a few days, they will have to carry out open heart surgery. We can�t begin to even get our head around this, as it means stopping her tiny heart, which is not something the doctors want to do. We just hope that the operation on Wednesday is a success, but who knows, we will have to wait.

Waiting is one of the worst things, seconds feel like hours. Hours feel like months. We have lost track of what day or time it is, we are numb.

I have asked myself so many times over the last couple of days, Why??? Just simply why??? What have Kyla and Dan done to deserve this? What has this tiny little baby girl done to deserve this? Words fail me. 

Interesting to note, that the hospital release papers of the Galvez hospital, stating that 'the baby left with no known issues'. They will be hearing from me, when this nightmare is over!