Raising Bailey

. . . . .

Looking back from this point in time, six years later, it seems so easy. At the time, though, it seemed so hard. My every waking moment (with two-hourly feeds around the clock there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands of waking moments), my first thought was always Bailey.

I could just record his ‘milestones’ but that would only tell half the story, so I’ll start at the beginning.

The first contact I had with Bailey was actually through his mum, who had been hit by a car at Toowoomba on June 21, 1997. I volunteered to transport her to Moggill Koala Hospital on June 23 and there it was discovered that she carried a tiny baby in her pouch.  Mum hung on for a week, but finally reached that stage and was kindly euthanased.

Maybe I was lucky, but I happened to be there at the time. It was felt that he was too small to hand-raise but as far as I was concerned (being fairly new to raising orphans and not knowing any better) he was alive so therefore had to be given a chance. Even after being informed of the odds (about 90% against success) I still wanted to try.

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