Glitchy Grandma

Glitchy Grandma

Dear Friends and fellow Bloggers – I hope that you are as well as you can be. Over the past few weeks our family came to learn that we were having a baby in a few days. To say I was shocked will have been and will always be an understatement. I looked at our eldest daughter and her swollen belly. We went from ward to ward and bench to bench to ensure that she and the baby were safe. My mind immediately cleared, and all I could see and think about was navigating through a public hospital, trying to stay warm in a really cold winter, and taking them home.

The hospital didn’t have water for over 6 days, intermittent service from much-needed doctors and several grounchy nurses. In the labour ward there are chairs where women are expected to sit in their third trimester for over 15 hours waiting for a bed and further treatment. Our daughter was one of them. After a few close calls which required much bench sitting and sleeping in a car in ice-cold parking lots, she finally went into labour. I went up to her and was not allowed to see them until she was ready to give birth.

I sat in the waiting room outside the ward and cried quietly. We’d confronted so much and I wondered if baby hadn’t also perhaps made a poor choice of grandma who does tend to glitch often. I always believe my mental illness when it proclaims that I am the worst version of myself which I’m mostly not. Mental illness unfortunately is seriously believable when you feel it inside and out. Finally, I was called into the labour room. My daughter looked at me and my tears flowed even more. When she was born my mother had been with me and the first person to hold her.

In what felt like so many loaded minutes, our beautiful grandson was born. I felt a warmness with her, with him, together in his first few moments in the world. Intertwined in the love we both felt for such a tiny little being. We cried as he exercised his little lungs for a blanket. I looked at him and her and thought to myself that if anything, they are living testimony of the good I have and can be. That new beginnings are possible even if you need to shed a tear. This is one happy glitchy grandma that will work through, about, and around her glitches for herself and hers, each and every day.

Leave a comment