Mummy-bot and me.

When I first started writing about Mummy-bot I did not fully understand who 'she' was.

All I knew was that Mummy-bot played a vital role in helping me to sustain myself when I visited Smidge in intensive care, month after month after month.

And do you know what? there's nothing quite like dipping your toe back in the water to help reacquaint yourself with old coping strategies...familiarise yourself with old behaviours....

Nothing quite like a traumed up trip to resus and a week in paediatrics to pick up that bit of blog inspiration and reignite all that was flickering quietly in the back ground.

Mummy-bot you see, she was designed to deal with these situations, fully trained in trauma, Mummy-bot was programmed to cope with scenes that I was not humanly prepared for.

The thing is you see, I, (Premmy mum Leanna) could only take so much, because there are only so many arterial lines you can bare to see fitted, only so many squeals of discomfort and pain.

There are only so many hours you can sit crunching away at numbers and watching oxygen requirements go up and up and up.

There are only so many times you can watch your milk get rejected for antibiotics and drip feed.

Only so many apneoa's you can observe, transfusions you can witness and transfers you can endure.

How many times can you watch consultants gaze over your baby with a puzzled look in their eyes as they sigh and furrow their eyebrows and tell you about the new plan?

How many times can you hope that the new plan (that is actually just like the old plan) is going to work better this time because it's slower, easier, more gentle?

After a while you just switch off. And yet, you know you have to be there. Yet, emotionally you can not.

So the answer then, the solution, is Mummy- bot.

Mummy- bot know's when to intercept as her radar detects anxiety and feelings of discomfort.

So when that knot forms deep inside my stomach, A surge, a tug, a pull... and I want to turn away because I can't bear to look any longer, Mummy-bot takes over.

And I kind of know it's her because a feeling washes over me and my fear bridles down and quietly re-emerges as 'concerns'

Panic levels stabilise and I appear cool, calm and collected.

Emotions are seen from a far away place, representing themselves as chaotic, pointless, obstructive and unhelpful.

And everything that Mummy-bot see's can now be processed intellectually.

And Mummy-bot see's it all.