It amazes me how 8 months later, there is still so much emotion. Well I guess amazes isn't the right word cause if I think of anyone else who walked through what we walked through I would expect them to still be ...raw. In the last two weeks, there have been several occasions where I actually went "woah" and felt like my head came up out of the water for just a second. I wasn't scratching my nails along the corridor of time begging for it to just stop. one. darn. second. so I could breathe. so I could process.
My little monkey is crawling, and babbling and follows his brothers down the hall way. I don't know if it is his increased mobility (and the chance to use the restroom alone), my arms being a little more empty lately, perhaps the passage of time...but somehow things have felt not necessarily healed but not so raw and wide open. I can't speak for Will but I can say I know I have and am struggling with the whole "post trauma" syndrome. It's not like you come home, and you have a baby that did this amazing recovery and he is so normal and every things normal and you go back to that ignorant bliss of life in normal oblivion.
It's still there. Every day. You teeter on the line of being a neurotic clingy parent and pushing your kid too hard to be normal. Not that I really push Ollie. But the lines blur. You see things in a different way. And sometimes those different perceptions are not necessarily asked for or welcomed, but they are there and you have to address them. I watched a documentary recently and there was a comment about how there is post traumatic stress and then there can be post traumatic growth. Now that's something to write about...
There reaches a point where you don't want to be the mom of a baby that was in ICU anymore. Or the mom of a kid that might be (fill in the blank). You don't care anymore about what could be and what if, and how is he, and what do the doctors say because you live in it and with it every day. It's not about how we were in ICU and he was sick. It follows you home, and you live with all that aftermath, every, single day. And I go back to my mantra during that hospital stay. "It is what it is." We didn't care then what it was.
You have to just set it to the side and move on. Because right now, we need to change a diaper, or feed someone, or drive someone somewhere. We have to be able to move on and function. And then you start to think about how you can soften the blow for the poor guy behind you that is just now checking into the same ICU room, their baby in the same ICU bed. What could someone have said to me? What helped me through that? What about after they go home? What can I give back?
I guess I am at a place where, maybe I am not miraculously stepping back into normalcy. But for just a little bit I can lift my head and look at the world in the eyes again. I can take my baby to the park for a moment like we did today, and no one knows, and I don't think "if they only knew his story" every time someone says "he's cute." I am learning that it's okay to be normal again. We went through hell. It sucked real bad. It still sucks. I often feel guilt that it still sucks. I am also learning that it's ok to not have transformed into this gracious, thankful, beautiful model of well and wonderful. And I am sharing it with you because it might help someone else. It might help you understand so you can help someone else who 8 months later still hurts sometimes even though everything seems like it should be okay and well and wonderful. Parts of me still are saying "wow." Parts of me are still saying "wait a second." Part of me is frozen in that first moment of watching my midwifes assistant dial 9-1-1 and thinking "oh my God, this is big." And I have to leave that part of me behind so that I can move forward. That part of me that didn't know what something like this was like.
And part of me wants to turn something like this into hope for someone else. Because it'll help me. It'll help them. And it's part of who I am now. This different person. Still the same, but somehow different. If you've ever gone through something big like this, that will make sense I'm sure. And if you haven't, it's okay, I love you even though you're still the same. (yes that was my sick sense of humor) I don't know how yet. I don't have some amazing plan or humanitarian website I can link you to, or even some great speech about how we all need to give.
I just have this little tugging at my heart. And when and where it takes me I don't know. But I just feel like it has to be more. I just think there must be something bigger. We grow and we heal and time passes, but there will come a day when it's time to give it all back...to do something. I want to be able to say "yes, I will."
Today my baby picked up a handful of grass at the park right out of the lawn. He squealed in delight. The couple on the bench said he was cute. He was. And I said Thank You.
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