For about eight months over the past year I felt absent from my own life. Between the bedrest and the hyperemesis and the ultralow blood pressure everything felt slow and fuzzy. I was so incapacitated that I couldn’t do the simplest tasks, forbidden by my doctors to even shower without supervision, and I am still playing catch-up on all the months lost. It wasn’t ideal, especially falling during a time when I was supposed to be promoting my very first book (so if you want to share it with a friend I would be very much obliged.) And I felt like I missed so much time with Scarlette when I had hoped to soak up our last year together before she headed off to kindergarten. It wasn’t at all how I’d planned for that year to go.
Then I went missing again, mostly from this space, because after my son’s slightly early arrival I just wanted to settle into this new season and soak it in. Everything is so different this time around, the way that I am able to stroke his face without worry or kiss his head without fear of tearing his skin. How I can just hold him whenever I want and I am completely indulging myself in this.
I love every tiny thing about him.
I am not blinking.
I am coming into motherhood again because it is all new to me, it feels as though it is my first time because there are so many firsts that I did not experience with Scarlette. I gave Ridley his first bath. I watched him meet a milestone on time. He grew out of his newborn and three month clothes. I did not expect him to outgrow things so quickly. Scarlette was still wearing three to six month sized clothing at well over a year old. One morning I woke up and discovered that all of his clothes were too tight and was shocked that I had to buy him new outfits so soon. He is fourteen pounds at four months old and Scarlette was fourteen pounds when she was fourteen months old.
Last week he got a cold and I needed to suction his nose out with one of those bulb suctiony things. (I’m pretty sure that’s the official word for it.) I called J to help me and we readied ourselves. I laid the baby on the bed and J held him firm. I took a deep breath, steadied my hands, and squeezed.
Ridley laughed.
J and I looked at each other in astonishment. “Well, that was anti-climactic,” he said. “You know, I’m remembering now that Scarlette screamed and thrashed because she had an aversion to things being in her nose from the feeding tube,” I said looking down at Ridley, who was still smiling up at us. “I don’t think we actually have to put this baby in a straight-jacket hold to suction his nose out.”
Everything seems different.
Except for Monday.
On Monday I have to take Ridley to the hospital.
Five years ago Scarlette needed surgery to close a hole in her heart. She weighed one and a half pounds and the doctors told us that because she was so small she would bleed out immediately if they accidentally nicked a vein. We waited anxiously in the waiting room and when the surgeon came out he said that they would call us back to see her within fifteen minutes. After an hour passed we thought maybe they had forgotten about us and headed to the NICU. Once inside they intercepted us. They said that Scarlette had crashed after the surgery and that they were still working on her. I panicked. I thought that she had died and that they were just handling us and I veered around them to get to her. It was indescribably awful. (It’s also a good way to get yourself kicked out of the NICU)
I have a recurring nightmare that I am wandering through the hospital looking for her and no one will tell me where she is and I am terrified that she is lost.
On Monday I have to take Ridley to that same hospital to have half of his left kidney removed. They will also be removing an extra ureter and repairing his bladder. They found the kidney issue during one of the ultrasounds I had while pregnant. Usually it resolves in utero. Sometimes it needs to be managed with medicine. Sometimes they have to remove part of the kidney. We had a bunch of tests done and turns out in our case it is the latter.
I had a nightmare that I was wandering through the hospital looking for him and no one would tell me where he was and I was terrified that he was lost.
So if you would, please hold space to offer up a prayer for my Ridley on Monday. I have faith in the skill of his surgeon and the goodness of God. I have faith in knowing life sometimes folds in on itself so that it can blossom for another season. I have faith because I curled up with Scarlette this morning, before the soft tangerine light eased through her window, and remembered how every day I am witness to miracles.
But today I am still just a little bit scared.
