Anne TootillTo Be or Not to Be a Mother - Part Three
February 1st 2007 20:46
While Josh was in the ICU my parents came to visit him but my in-laws never came by. They never came and they never said why. Without anything else to go on I wondered if it was because they were too busy. Too busy for their only grandson, who the doctors thought might need a ventilator to survive. Or maybe it had to do with what my mother-in-law once told me, that while she loved infants, she didn’t care to be around toddlers because they were so much work. But they’d never said, so all I did was guess. And feel hurt. And since I didn’t want to make them (and me) feel uncomfortable by bringing it up, I would never know the truth. And then again maybe I didn’t care. I was glad for one thing, Josh never noticed.
After a day and a half in the ICU they moved Josh to the regular pediatric unit (yippee and praise the Lord, Josh was out of the woods). They placed him in a crib with bars on all four sides that extended part way over the top giving Josh the impression that he was a teeny tiny inmate, minus the stripes. Seeing my son, my sick son behind bars was upsetting but the hospital staff explained that it was designed for his own safety so he couldn’t fall or climb out of the crib. But c’mon, with all the money spent on building hospitals couldn’t someone have come up with something more aesthetically pleasing than the baby cage?
The upside of Josh being in this unit (besides the obviously greatly improved prognosis) was that the I.V. was out of his arm. The downside was that he had to take four asthma medications. Two were inhaled through a Nebulizer (an asthma unit), two had to be ingested. It took the nurse, the respiratory therapist and me to hold Josh down to get him to take his medications. It was a challenge and I was getting tired. I was working on barely any sleep because after I left the hospital (and my husband came straight from work….have to give kudos where kudos are due) I had to go home to feed, bath and put Alex to bed and then try and get a few hours of sleep myself before going back to the hospital and reading from the same books for hours and hours and hours.
And even though Alex was almost 8 months old I was still depressed. I was so empty and hopeless. I was so tired. It was so hard to get out of bed every day. So hard to breathe, I still woke up gasping for air.
Every day I’d play these little games with myself. Just get out of bed Donna and feed Alex. Then it was, just change her diaper. Then it was, just brush your teeth. I did this from morning until night. Until everything I was supposed to do was done. Because I always did what I was supposed to do. Because that’s who I was. You know I’ve been an insomniac since I was in third grade. So hard to fall asleep. But suddenly I had no problem. Now I could fall asleep. And thank goodness because sleeping because it was so much better than being awake.
After a day and a half in the ICU they moved Josh to the regular pediatric unit (yippee and praise the Lord, Josh was out of the woods). They placed him in a crib with bars on all four sides that extended part way over the top giving Josh the impression that he was a teeny tiny inmate, minus the stripes. Seeing my son, my sick son behind bars was upsetting but the hospital staff explained that it was designed for his own safety so he couldn’t fall or climb out of the crib. But c’mon, with all the money spent on building hospitals couldn’t someone have come up with something more aesthetically pleasing than the baby cage?
The upside of Josh being in this unit (besides the obviously greatly improved prognosis) was that the I.V. was out of his arm. The downside was that he had to take four asthma medications. Two were inhaled through a Nebulizer (an asthma unit), two had to be ingested. It took the nurse, the respiratory therapist and me to hold Josh down to get him to take his medications. It was a challenge and I was getting tired. I was working on barely any sleep because after I left the hospital (and my husband came straight from work….have to give kudos where kudos are due) I had to go home to feed, bath and put Alex to bed and then try and get a few hours of sleep myself before going back to the hospital and reading from the same books for hours and hours and hours.
And even though Alex was almost 8 months old I was still depressed. I was so empty and hopeless. I was so tired. It was so hard to get out of bed every day. So hard to breathe, I still woke up gasping for air.
Every day I’d play these little games with myself. Just get out of bed Donna and feed Alex. Then it was, just change her diaper. Then it was, just brush your teeth. I did this from morning until night. Until everything I was supposed to do was done. Because I always did what I was supposed to do. Because that’s who I was. You know I’ve been an insomniac since I was in third grade. So hard to fall asleep. But suddenly I had no problem. Now I could fall asleep. And thank goodness because sleeping because it was so much better than being awake.
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