Two occasions immediately spring to mind:
First is from when I was pregnant with my eldest. Horrific hyperemesis. On what I think was my fourth or fifth admission for fluids when I was around 16 weeks I got put on this catch-all gyaene ward. My bay was filled with variously- a fellow pregnant lady who had four older kids; an old lady who glowered at anyone who dared so much as pass her curtains too close and a woman suffering after surgery for a burst ovarian cyst. They were all annoying in at least some small way but fellow pregnant lady was the worst and spent all day that wasn’t visiting hours on her mobile to either her mum or her sister, talking loudly and swearily about how worried she was about “Dal” getting the kids down here “on the bus”. They’d often follow this up with some chat about how shit the local bus service was.
When it was visiting her older four kids and her partner would come and visit her (via bus) and spend the whole time moaning about how awful the journey up to the hospital had been (on the bus) and how much they hated everyone else they’d encountered that day (on the bus). Then she would resume the calls once her brood had left, usually with a quick 45min update to her mum or sister about what a terrible time her family had had getting up to the hospital that day (on the fucking bus).
I hated the other two less as they were quieter, but I had it in for Ovarian Cyst’s partner after he brought her a KFC up to the ward (just the smell of KFC even now is enough to make me gag) and me and Old Lady weren’t on the best terms after she got up one night and, I assume misjudging the space between the curtains/beds, fell on top of me. I was sound asleep and woke to the sensation of being crushed by a screaming lump inside a blue curtain. I was then promptly sick on the woman/curtain-lump and my stand-out memory is of the overhead lights snapping on as the ward sister struggled to get into my bay and her look of absolute horror at the old lady on the floor/curtains covered in my puke.
The other time was after the birth of the same child. It was a heatwave and there had been some kind of baby boom that week, so I was on a full to capacity postnatal ward. I had to have six blood transfusions in close succession so was chained to the machines for over 24hrs and had to have my husband pass me our baby every time she needed a feed or anything. Was utterly miserable as well as hotter than hell.
Because it was so full there wasn’t room to swing a cat and we were pinned in on both sides, surrounded by curtain: It was effectively a fabric cell. Unlike anything brick-built though, it sadly wasn’t in anyway soundproof.
On one side we had a couple who decided to celebrate their newborn with the movies of Adam Sandler, all watched back to back on a tablet with a very tinny speaker that was turned up to eleven. The soundtrack of Happy Gilmore has never been more irritating. I’d actually quite enjoyed The Wedding Singer until then, but I’ve never managed to get past the first ten minutes ever since because just the opening bars of You Spin Me Round make me want to commit bloody murder, let alone hearing Adam fucking Sandler sing it.
On the other side was a woman who didn’t speak any English. She had a partner who spoke a bit, but not loads, and as such every time the midwife came to come and see her what followed was a long, drawn-out five minutes of the midwife telling her something in English, them not understanding it, the midwife repeating it, the husband saying “we need translator” and the midwife replying that one was meant to be coming at the end of the week. Usually the midwife would then repeat the original thing she hadn’t been able to convey the first time again, just for good luck, but this time louder and slower. My favourite time was when the thing that the midwife had come in to tell the new mother had been that she had to keep her knickers on because she was bleeding on the bed so much that it had started to drip on the floor (!) DHs face was a picture.
This woman would also sing long, tuneless lullabies to her newborn in her native tongue, one of which had a repeated line that sounded, to our ignorant, English ears, exactly like “oh but you are my little Gary Barlow”. I have no idea what language she spoke or what she was really saying, but after the third straight hour of the lullaby one afternoon when her baby wouldn’t settle, me and DH were in fits of silent laughter, literally stuffing our fists into our mouths to remain inaudible, as she warbled “oh but you are my little Gary Barlow....” over and over again.
Precious memories of new motherhood.