Contact centres have been very hard to, well.. contact and never get back to you and have 5 month waiting lists and really just amazingly horrible stuff so I pleaded with Jo to let me see Suki somewhere public and she agreed to let her go with Catherine and Keith to the Logan Hyperdome for a couple of hours today. My mum and I drove to Brisbane and after getting thoroughly lost and panicking we would be late if we ever found the place at all we figured out how to get there and navigating the parking nightmare before getting inside. Well, outside inside. The piazza there is really nice and has a lovely grassy area there and we waited at the coffee club for them to arrive.
Suki was radiant. Her long eyelashes were the first thing that amazed me although she’d lost a bit of hair. Catherine said that she was six months old today. I didn’t quite see how the math worked to support that but regardless it seemed like a milestone to me. She was wide awake and fascinated by everything. Catherine passed her straight to me and she sat on my lap and almost immediately let out the hugest cackling laugh with this massive smiling mouth. She’s still on the oxygen and there was a small tank in the bottom of the stroller but the tubes were long. I’d long since been used to seeing her on oxygen so it was nothing for me and I concentrated on just smiling at her and seeing her interested face look up at me and at everything around her. Suki likes a busy world and she looks like she’s taking it all in at once.
I held her for over an hour and she was awake and alert for most of it. Towards the end of my time holding her she would turn her head in towards me and start drifting off to sleep. It was great to see her sleeping in my arms again like I had at the hospital. It makes you feel really good inside when you know your child is willing to fall asleep in your arms.
Our time was over all too soon and after mum had a turn holding her we had to say goodbye. I’m really glad that Jo was willing to give us this chance to see her on Mother’s day and it helped my mum feel a bit better about being the absent grandmother. Since visitation centres seem so hard to get, I can only hope that soon we will see Suki again with either Catherine or some other of our friends. I look forward to it.
