Five seconds.
Five seconds is all it took for our world to be turned upside down. The day before my partner Josh's accident, we were messing around trying on glasses at Spec Savers. We had a typical night, just dinner at dads, where Josh had told me he planned to go riding the next day. His last ride before becoming a daddy.
The following day on Tuesday, Josh was in a serious bike accident. He was unresponsive at the scene and choking on his own blood, barely breathing. It took 2.5 hours to get him stable enough to transport him via helicopter to the hospital.
I was really unwell with gestational diabetes on the morning of the accident, having a hypo.
I was trying to have a nap, and Josh's friend called me and said he'd been in an accident and hurt his knee - so that is all that I thought had happened to him.
For three hours, we didn't know which hospital he had been taken to. We'd been down at the Royal Adelaide Hospital; he was actually at Flinders.
When we got there, I learned the extent of his injuries. We were told his injuries were the worst some of the surgeons have ever seen and that he should not be alive.
His body has been through an extreme amount of trauma. He has broken ribs, collapsed his lung, split his spleen in half, lost his kidney, broken his back, cracked the top of his pelvis, ripped the muscle of his pelvis, shattered his knee cap, and had a major internal bleed requiring four units of blood. Along with bruising and puncture wounds over his body.
Five seconds nearly took him from us. It nearly meant that our baby wouldn't have his daddy.
I had three minutes to go in and potentially say goodbye. It was devastating.
He was too unstable to go to the theatre for 3 hours. Once they could stabilise him, the hospital staff took him to theatre, where they operated for 6 hours, trying to save some of his organs and stop the bleeding. This all happened on the Tuesday, the day of the accident.
On Thursday I felt really unwell. I went into the hospital to get checked. They didn't check my blood pressure or anything. They said that I was really stressed but would be fine. At this stage, I was 36+4.
I went home early to try and get some rest that night.
At 1.30 am Friday morning, my waters broke. I went straight to the hospital. Once I arrived, the team didn't check as they didn't think I'd be in labour. The staff put me into a waiting room for 4 hours.
Once I was moved to a birthing suite where they still didn't check me for dilation. Because of COVID, I, unfortunately, hadn't been to any birthing courses and didn't realise that I was currently in the process of transitioning.
My student midwife begged to see if I was dilated, but the team wouldn't allow it. The doctor finally came in and said, "oh, you're ready to push!"
This little man decided that he was sick of leaving his daddy in the hospital and that he wanted to stay just down the corridor from him instead.
It was at this stage we got Josh on the phone via Facetime. His friend had to hold the phone as he was too weak to hold it. After an hour and 30 minutes of pushing, Xander was born!
This is not how we had planned our little boy's arrival, but we have made the best out of a terrible situation, and our little man was already so loved by his daddy, who had a visit every morning and night.
It's only been nearly seven months since the accident. We've had two and a half months without having to take Josh to the emergency department due to complications from the accident. We're still waiting on him to have another major surgery, and then hopefully, he will be on the road to recovery.
