Family Circles

By nature, I am a night owl, but since my husband is an early riser,  most nights I am in bed with him by 10 or 10:30.  Last night, however, due to some more of the same old, same old online chatter, I was on my home phone with one of my Mom Friends "discussing" these recurring "happenings".  At about 10:45, my cell phone rang,  unusual since my family and friends are aware of my altered routine and normally don't call after 10.  And, since we live in a valley where cell phone service is sporadic, at best, often it doesn't even ring  at home, and I only discover I missed a call when I see that see it on my messages.

However, this time it rang, at 10:45 p.m., and I saw that it was my younger son, David.  I had spoken to him just a few hours earlier as he and his wife were putting their 2 year old daughter,  down for the night after a horrifically busy weekend.  I quickly ended my call with my friend and listened as my son told me that he was following the ambulance that was carrying his wife and daughter to the Emergency Room because the baby had a first-ever seizure!  He was beside naturally beside himself with worry because this was his only child, his precious daughter, who when he travels tell her Mommy, when she tucks her in, in her so-sweet, baby-voice, that she wants to "Cuddow, Daddy"  (Cuddle with Daddy for those who don't understand her particular brand of baby-speak).

He told me about how he had been alone in the house with her, as his wife had run across the street to her sister's home and he was watching TV in the bedroom.  He heard an odd noise on the monitor, but almost dismissed it, thinking it was probably just a baby night-noise.  However, just to be safe, he went down the hall to check on her.  What he found was his daughter, with her back arched, blue in the face, not breathing, in a full blown seizure.  He scooped her up in his arms, ran across the street to his wife, who just graduated last month as an RN, and they called  911. 

He seemed embarrassed that he and his wife had panicked, but I thought it entirely natural that they did, considering the circumstances.   He told me, with horror in his voice, "Mom, what if I hadn't gone to her. She could have died!"   It is one thing to be totally prepared to handle medical emergencies, even a medical professional when it is someone about whom you can be objective, but when it is your own precious child, the objectivity goes right out the window.  I think they did an amazing job!  They may not have been bricks, but they got the job done.  They can forgive themselves their panic as they continue to get their daughter the help she needs and then get her well.

As David was talking, and I was trying to calm him, my mind drifted back to a day when he himself, this frantic father on the phone with me, was 3 days old and sleeping in a bassinet on the dresser in our master bedroom so that I could easily get to him to nurse him in the middle of the night. My cousin's baby, 4 months old, had recently died of SIDS, and we were all very conscious of sleeping babes in our family at that time.

No crying baby, no sound, no change that I was aware of caused me to awaken that night, but I did.  I lay there for a moment, listening, but heard nothing.  However, as did David 36 years later, I got up and went across the room to check on him.  What I found was a baby I had lain on his stomach (the conventional wisdom of the day for safe baby sleeping positioning) a few hours earlier, still on his stomach, but with his arms stiffly holding him off the mattress, his head thrown back so he was almost U-shaped, blue in the face and not breathing.  He was silently choking to death.  Not sure what to do, I picked him up by his feet, held him upside down, and slapped him on the back.  Immediately a huge glob of "stuff" came flying out of his mouth.  It looked like phlegm, but was actually, apparently, amniotic fluid that had not been expelled and had thickened and he was, truly, choking to death. 

My uncle was our pediatrician and I had his home phone number.  I called him and told him what had happened, thinking that I would have to take David to the hospital or something.  What he told me, however, was even worse considering my cousin's baby.   He said that David was a potential SIDS baby, and that my husband and I should take turns staying up with David while he slept, to insure that he was okay.  That was in the days before the baby monitors and the electronic gadgets that are available now, so that was the only option.  My husband worked a physically exhausting job outside, summer and winter, and I was home with my 3-year old older son.  So, since I wasn't working at a job, and was the Mommy, it was ALWAYS my turn.

For the next 8 months, I would stay up all night, with David in a port-a-crib next to me, reading, watching TV, ironing, sewing, anything to stay awake.  Then, in the morning, I would get my husband off to work, get my 3-year old up and dressed, fed and ready to entertain for the day.  I would have dinner ready for my husband when he got home and then I would go to sleep for a few hours until it was time for him to go to bed, only to begin the process again, over and over.

 Finally, one day I was so tired, so totally exhausted from the care of my toddler, the night watch of my infant, and the care of the house and my husband, that in desperation, I called my uncle, the pediatrician, and begged him to hospitalize David for a night so that I could go to sleep, just for one night, just for a few hours. I was so exhausted and so terrified that I would doze off at the exact second that my son would begin to choke...to death this time...because I was too tired to awaken and save him.  My uncle listened to me and when I finished sobbing, begging him so that I could get some sleep, he answered me, surprised, "Oh, are you still doing that?  You don't need to do that any more, He is fine."  I hung up the phone, waited for my husband to come home from work and went to bed for 3 days!

As I listened to David's words, "...what if I hadn't gone to her. She could have died!"...it all came back to me.  What if I hadn't gone to him? What if something hadn't wakened me?  What if he had died?  Life had gone full circle, and this infant that had so terrified me with the possibility that he could die, now was terrified himself that his beloved child could die.  The wheel of life had turned a full revolution and would someday turn again, and this granddaughter, the beautiful child of my beautiful child would likely someday be a mother and herself be in a panic over her own child, as her Daddy was now, and as her Daddy's Mommy, me, had been in my turn. 

Later, in bed, as I lay there thinking about all this, I thought about adoption, and about the son who was lost to me for so many years.  I thought about the wheel of life, turning, turning, turning, and how we gain awareness a gradual awareness of the importance of events in our lives. 

I thought about how after we delivered our babies alone during the BSE/EMS, when they took them for adoption,  we were told to go home and forget about them and have children and a family of "our own" and how I and other mothers like me tried so hard to do that, but always, always, always in the back of our minds we wondered about the ones that were not there.  We thought about them waking in the night, of their lives being in danger, of their boo boos, of them choking as babies and breaking bones as children, or in accidents as young adults. Always we thought of them, whether consciously or unconsciously, they were there.  Their loss was felt.

I thought about how, as I was coming home from my daughter's house a few weeks ago, one of the wheels on my little red Jeep Wrangler fell off as I was driving.  I was driving along at about 30 mph in town, almost to the freeway where I would reach 70 or more heading home, and someone who had decided that they needed my lug nuts more than I did had removed some, throwing off the balance in the wheel and eventually breaking the ones off that remained and losing the entire wheel.  I thought of the damage that had done to my Jeep, the brakes, the lugs, the wheel itself.  Before I could drive my little Jeep again there would have to be some major work done. 

I saw that the damage done to my car by someone removing an integral part, almost destroyed my car.  Essentially it was like a wheel with a spoke missing.  My family was a circle with a member missing...a wheel without a spoke.  My son missing almost destroyed me and affected every single aspect of my life from then on, throwing the balance of my life off just as the missing lug nuts did the wheel of my car.

I could remember, last night as I spoke to David, and today as I await his call to tell me that his daughter is okay, the results of the test they took last night, the next steps that need to be taken, the medical plan to treat whatever it is that happened, or to calm our fears saying it was simply because she was overtired, a little dehydrated, two, overstimulated or something and that it was simply a fluke and will likely never happen again that many, many times, when my mind would allow itself to drift to my lost child, those same anxieties would arise on his behalf.  Soon, we will know something about my granddaughter's condition, even if not enough or soon enough.  We will know what to do, how to act, how to plan, how to martial our forces to fight a good fight on behalf of this beloved child, or we will know that we can lay down our arms and relax.  We will know, and if not immediately, at least soon. 

With our lost children, however, we believed that we would NEVER know.  When those demon questions would enter our minds,  when our other children were hurt or ill, or it was near the time of a birthday or holiday, or we were washing our hair or taking a shower, or just watching television, often the thought would occur and we would have to quickly squelch it before it overwhelmed us....WE DID NOT KNOW, but neither did we forget... we limped along with a spoke missing from our wheel of life, like the wheel on my Jeep, in the week or so before it fell off, damaged, compensating, doing the best we could, but not whole, not right, not perfect, compensating and adapting, until we finally cannot take it anymore, and we search, hopefully we find, usually we spend long amounts of time waiting, so we can KNOW.  It is always better to KNOW, I think.