Bless Their Little Cottons!: A Very Memorable Perth Visit!

I just noticed that my last post was January 31st, three days before we were due to leave for our Perth holiday! Now it's the 18th February and we've only been back a few days! It was not our original intention to be away that long, so I shall tell the tale! (Edit to add: It's now the 2nd March - slight delay in completing this post!)

Arriving in Perth on Thursday 3rd Feb, we jumped into our hire car and headed to our good friends Bev & Dave's place where we were staying. After changing a very impressive dirty nappy, and within an hour of touching down at Perth airport, Hannah and I were on our way to my parents place for them to meet their little granddaughter for the first time.

And they loved her to bits!!

Friday 4th was a busy day! In the morning, Sam and Nicci came to visit and have cuddles with Hannah. Then after lunch I headed off to my old work stomping ground, Shenton Park, to catch up with a whole swag of people! First off, my old boss Barrie, who I worked with for ten years, and his wife Lorraine. As always it was great to catch up with them. Then I met Dani at the cafe; Dani used to work next door to me when I worked at Cumberland, and she had a baby girl Chloe 10 days before I had Hannah. It was great to see them both and meet each others babies! From there, we headed to Cumberland to see Jim, Susie, Jacque and Kim! Cuddles all round for Hannah and fantastic to see them all! That night, we had dinner at home with Bev & Dave and Sam & Ryan.

On Saturday we headed back up to Wanneroo to visit Nana & Pop again.

Proud Pop

Nana cuddles

Crazy Uncle Steven!

On Saturday afternoon, I caught up with Alison and her little girl Caitlin. Alison and I have been friends since we were 13 in high school! This photo is of Caitlin and Hannah - so sweet!

Caitlin was so excited to see "the baby"!

Later in the afternoon, Mark took Hannah for a dip in the pool... I love her little 000 size bathers... "Mummy's Little Love Bug"!!

After a busy day of visiting and catching up, we enjoyed a quiet night in and yummy Japanese take-away for dinner.

Sunday was a fantastic day at home where all the gang came over for brunch. It was brilliant to see everybody, and the best part was the feeling of such familiarity, like it was only yesterday we'd last caught up - not 8 months! Just the way it should be with true friends :-)

The BEST bagels... oh how we've missed these!!

Everyone outside enjoying brunch

It was Ryan's birthday the next day, so we all sang...


I just love this photo; Hannah with our friend's girls!

Big sister Liv enjoyed spending a lot of time with Hannah (and us!) every chance she could get. I didn't think we'd get to see Liv as often as we did so it was fantastic; the bonus of her being all grown up now and with her own mode of transport!!

Sisters having a cuddle during Sunday brunch

A quiet swim on Sunday afternoon

By late Sunday afternoon, everyone had gone home. The evening was upon us, the girls had their showers and Hannah her bath and all down to bed for the night... and this is where our holiday started to go a little pear-shaped. Mark wasn't feeling too good with quite a bad stomach ache. He'd felt a bit off on Friday night/Saturday morning with some bad "indigestion" but then seemed to be OK. He and Liv disappeard off to the chemist to get some Buscopan.

Back at home, we all sat down to dinner, except Mark. He didn't feel like eating. Liv and I exchanged meaningful glances... something wasn't quite right here!!!

Fast forward to about 1am and I woke up to Mark all restless, in and out to the toilet, sitting up, laying down... he wasn't feeling very well at all and in a lot of pain. Being the concerned, caring wife that I am, I fobbed him off with a mumbled "take another Buscopan" and drifted back to sleep - thoroughly enjoying the fourth night that Hannah was sleeping through the night with no wake-ups and determined to get my sleep too!

Fast forward again to 5am and Mark woke up me, saying he was in a lot of pain and clammy and getting worried. I asked him if he wanted to go to hospital, and his reply was "I don't think we've got much choice". SO up we got, careful not to disburb the still sleeping Hannah, and crept through the house to wake Bev & Dave who had to turn the alarm off to let us out, and hand over the baby monitor to Bev! Not quite how I'd imagined leaving Hannah with someone for the first time, that's for sure!

So in my PJ's at 5.15am on Monday morning, it was my turn to drive way too fast to the hospital - and I think Mark was in about equal amounts of pain as I was the night he was driving me at break-neck speeds to the hospital to have Hannah!!

Into Emergency at Sir Charles Gairdner which thankfully was empty, and he was taken through in no time. Knowing Mark was in too much pain to be fully coherant, I wanted to make sure I spoke to someone before I left. Just as well, as the nurse was about to give him some Buscopan for the pain! I told her not to bother, he'd had 4 Buscopan Forte overnight and they didn't do a thing! She had him signed off for Morphine. Here he is with the pain under control...

I raced home to feed Hannah and kept in touch with the hospital throughout the morning. My Mum came down to hang out with me and keep me company, and Sam appeared at the front door as well after finding out that Mark was in hospital. At around noon, Mark called to say that the stomach ultrasound showed gall bladder inflamation and gall stones and I needed to head straight in to meet with the surgeon and discuss surgery options. Cue a mad panic rush around organising baby, myself, some food and water (thanks to Sam for reminding me to pack this!), pram, nappy bag... and off I went.

After a few hours waiting around in Emergency, we met with the surgeons and Mark was moved up to a day stay ward. They weren't sure whether to do the surgery or dose him up on antibiotics and send him home to have it done at a later date; but ruled him Nil By Mouth and stopped his Warfarin anyway in case they wanted to go ahead and operate. So started the regular blood tests to monitor his INR levels in preparation for surgery, at this stage "just in case" it did go ahead! Since the heart valve operation, no other surgery no matter how "simple" will every be straight forward - this palaver of stopping the blood thinners and monitoring his INR is a big deal!

In the meantime, I had come down with a cold which got worse as the days went on. Just PERFECT!

Anyway, I shall now (try to) condense the story!! After plenty of waiting around not having a clue what was going on, and poor Mark starving having not eaten since Sunday brunch, they announced that surgery would be 2pm on Tuesday afternoon. I made all the arrangements that needed to be made; changed our flights, extended the car hire and Al organised for the dogs to stay longer in the kennels.

They finally took him down to theatre at 3.40pm on the Tuesday and as the saying goes, the rest is history! They removed his gall bladder which was "gangrenous", along with "too many stones to count". Several days of recovery, and blood tests to recommence Warfarin to get his INR back up to where it needed to be, and he came out of hospital on Saturday lunch time.

Not very happy looking Daddy or Bub!

I have to say that Hannah was an absolute dream during this entire ordeal. We spent hours at the hospital every day and she never caused me a moments grief. Such a good little girl!

Liv and Hannah visiting their Dad in hospital!

We had a few more days in Perth for Mark to recover a bit longer before heading home the following Tuesday morning. This meant a little more time for me to spend with my family...

On Monday morning, the day before we were coming home, I eventually managed to catch up with my friend Tracey who I met through working at Cumberland. We had intended catching up the previous Monday, but with Mark in hopsital and Tracey and her boys not well with colds, it was looking like it wasn't going to happen at all! I'm so glad we did eventually get to catch up!! I so wanted to meet the latest edition to their family, little Jacob, and for Trace to meet Hannah!

We have to say a very HUGE thank you to Bev and Dave for not only having us to stay, but putting up with such upheaval and us ending up staying almost twice as long as we originally intended! It is never easy having people staying with you for a length of time and we really appreciated this :-)

Here they are with their girls having cuddles with Hannah...