Ella woke up five times last night, screaming “Mama sick, mama hurts!” Tonight has been quieter, but it is only 10:30, there is a whole lot of night still to go. My sweet girl - she has nightmares about Swiper the Fox on a regular basis, so I feel horrible that she was in the room when I went into full “I can’t breath” panic mode. In the midst of the ordeal, I was more upset that she was sitting alone on the Dr’s office exam table, wide eyed and scared, than I was that I was about to black out. Thank goodness we were there and not at home though.
It’s been weeks that I have been coughing, and in the last 4 or 5 days I had gotten to the point where I would cough until I was so out of breath that i would have to put down the baby out of fear of dropping her because my arms were tingling. But still, I blamed it on ‘just allergies’. Tom finally convinced me to call my doctor yesterday morning, because I had kept everyone in the house awake with my constant choking cough, but of course they could not get me in until Friday. They recommended I call the nurse hotline for my insurance, where they asked me “How impacted is your breathing, from 1-10?” and I had to honestly answer a 6 or 7. The nurse, who had been rather bored with me until then, told me to go to the ER right away, which I rolled my eyes about. Pshaw, I just can’t breathe, no biggie. Tom was shocked that I wasn’t taking it seriously, and bargained with me to go to an Urgent Care place down the road instead.
Have you been to an Urgent Care center? I don’t know that I had ever seen one until the last few years, but now there are at least three within a five minute drive from my house. There was no way I could drive, so Tom packed a diaper bag and away we all went. The one we went to was next to a restaurant, and was a clean, quiet lobby with only a few people waiting to see the doctor. I was by far the sickest person there, and I felt bad coughing and choking over in the corner, while my baby yelled and my husband tried his best to keep the toddler from licking all the magazines.
In the waiting room I felt my chest constrict more, and could only get one or two breaths in between the coughing fits, which lasted around half a minute. I mentioned to Tom at one point that I didn’t know if I could walk, which scared him into asking when we could see the doctor. A minute later they had me in a patient room, and I sat in a chair on one side of the room while Tom and the girls were sitting on the exam table, playing with stickers. I started coughing, and then I just could not get air into my lungs - it felt like someone had their hands wrapped around my neck, and I felt my body go into fight or flight mode (which was ridiculous since either of those choices require working lungs). I was crying, but just these squeaking sobs could come out, and I closed my eyes and felt my face going numb.
The doctor walked into the room at that moment and, looking at his clipboard, started asking me routine questions until he actually looked at me and yelled for a nurse. They propped me up and started a breathing treatment right away, but it wasn’t for another couple minutes before I stopped shaking and could look over at Ella. Tom was holding Alice in one arm and holding my hand with the other, so Ella was alone, across the room, watching two nurses and a doctor holding a mask up to my face, telling me to take deep breaths (which felt like a cruel joke). I couldn’t really talk, but I shooed Tom towards her and tried to stop crying because I knew that was the part that was upsetting her the most. The doctor mentioned needing to give me a steroid shot if I didn’t improve soon, but about half way through the first breathing treatment I was able to take a full breath, so he recommended I stay and have two more treatments (with different medications) and then follow up with an inhaler at home every two hours for 24 hours, and then every four hours after that. Ella crawled up on my lap towards the end, and gave me kisses to “Help mama feel better? Kisses help?”
Today has been a lot better - I am still coughing, but it isn’t a “punch in the chest” kind of cough, and I am am not wheezing. Alice is starting to act sick, so we took her to her pediatrician who we love, and he assured us that right now she is okay. He also listened to my lungs for me again, and told me he thinks I will live, so that is a plus. I got a 5 hour nap in this afternoon while Tom cleaned the entire house, despite the fact that he is working an insane shift lately and should have been sleeping himself.
So, that is the long drawn out story about how I need to not be such a putz and take care of myself. I am much too tired to proofread, so let’s put this in the “posted in haste” category, aye?
Filed under: 50 book challenge, As you simplify your life the laws of the universe will, Cricket, Ella, Motherhood, posted in haste
I’m back on a reading kick (it seems to go reading, crafting, tv watching, & back to reading) and am reading two very different books right now. The first is Trees Make the Best Mobiles: Simple Ways to Raise Your Child in a Complex World by Teich & Bravo, and the other is Julia’s Mother: Life Lessons in the Pediatric ER by Bonadio. On the surface, the books have almost nothing in common - one is a series of short meditations on simplicity and empathy in parenting, while the other is a stark picture of childhood traumas - but both inspired me to set out an old blanket and have a (chilly) Spring picnic with my girls.
Both books come at childhood from very different angles to reach the same conclusion: that these tiny people are people, who, if we let them, can teach us tenacity, patience, hope and acceptance. That, while children are more complex than we often give them credit for, it is their simplicity that we can learn the most from. This isn’t at all revolutionary, but it is something that I need reminded of every so often. It’s the woods for the trees I guess - I am with these girls so much (so.much.) that it is easy to focus in on this tantrum, this crying jag, this diaper, and miss the big picture of who they are.
I’m of the school of thought that children are closer to the source - call it the soul, call it the Id, call it the Earth’s energy. Children hear an inner voice that doesn’t logic out possibility. They are not embarrassed by joy or anger; they forgive quickly, and will ask for exactly what they need. I don’t think I am overly romantic about childhood - if you live with a two year old and a 3 month old, it’s hard to be maudlin about a span of time defined by diapers and sleepless nights - but occasionally I can see a moment as an opportunity to reconnect with that source, to slough off the weight of adulthood and sit in the sun, letting the earth spin around us.
But only for a moment, because there are crackers to be unwrapped, swings to be pushed, and small hands to warm between my own.
When I was young and in a sour mood, my mom would see me moping around and she would tell me to “Keep on keepin’ on”* which makes more sense in my head than it does when I write it out. Basically, “Just keep moving forward, things will get better.” It’s been my manta these last few months, and while I would prefer to be able to call my mom and have her tell me herself, her voice is still loud and clear in my memory. “Buck up, Sam, keep on keepin’ on.”
The depression that sank over me almost 2 months ago was smothering, and through the rough days, I lived in one hour lifetimes. If I could just get through one more hour, it would be okay. One more hour, and then I could call Tom and ask him to come home. One more hour, and I could put Ella down for an early nap (and not feel bad when she sat in her room and yelled that she wasn’t tired). One more hour. I could do an hour. A day felt like eternity, and the idea of what a month from then would look like was impossible, but I could do an hour. And during that hour, I would just keep on keeping on, one foot in front of the other, one more forced smile to keep my daughter from asking “Mama sad? Mama want kisses? Tickles?”
And slowly, it’s gotten better. Depression is not the sort of thing you go to sleep deep in the mire of, and wake up the next day suddenly able to see the sun. It’s slow going & you circle back on your own footsteps time and again, but eventually you realize that you are not sinking quite so deeply with each step. And then you use bad metaphors and realize that you can laugh at yourself, which is to say: it gets better. You just keep on keeping on.
I guess here I have to say that if you are struggling with depression, and more to the point, postpartum depression, sometimes ‘keeping on’ isn’t enough. It’s individual, and I feel like, having been down the depression road before, I knew my limits. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have kept the appointment I had with a counselor. Maybe I bet right, and I have come out of the fog without their help as fast as I would have with it, but looking back, it’s not worth the bet. If you are struggling, reach out. I am blessed with friends, both local and online, who have been down this road, and just knowing they were there at 2Am, ready to pick up the phone if I called, made it easier to get through that hour. If you come across this, and need to chat, comment. I can’t say I’ve fought the dragons and won, but I fought a good sized gila monster and see 2AM more than I see 9AM.
Because if you are where I was, you can’t realize how happy you are still capable of being. You can’t understand how one day soon you will look at your family and realize that this, this is worth keeping on.
*Edited to add because I win at Google: Oh my, it’s a song that I suddenly remember my mom singing, which makes me blink back tears. We just keep on keeping on.
