Fear

I can honestly say that until I had a child I didn't know what the true meaning of fear was. Oh sure, I've been afraid before. Who hasn't? But I'm talking about bone chilling, soul curdling, deep down bone cracking fear. The kind that makes you stand up and take notice of what you're going through. Time really does slow to a crawl. The world caved in on me. My breath caught in my lungs and I felt that I couldn't breathe. My vision narrowed to a small mote of dust dancing in the air.

What scared me? It wasn't one thing, it was two. And I can tell you that they happened within four days of each other. Yep, that's right, the two scariest moments of my life in the same week. The first came right after I gave birth to our son. The placenta didn't detach as expected. Here I was just having had the greatest moment of my life, giving birth to my soul mate's and my son, and an hour later I still had not delivered the placenta. There were concerns that the placenta had grown through the uterine wall. There is a medical term for it but I didn't hear that. All I could think of was the fact that if I started bleeding I could die. And it wasn't death I feared . . . it was not ever seeing my son grow, boy, teen, man. I still cannot think about it without just breaking down into tears. At least I'm not shaking uncontrollably like I did before. So an hour after I gave birth I'm being wheeled into an operating room not knowing if I'm ever going to see my best friend, partner, soul mate and husband again . . . not to mention my newborn son . . . it was terrifying. They didn't give me any additional anesthesia since I'd had an epidural. I went out on my own. Yep, I shutdown completely. My reaction to gut wrenching fear? Hide . . . don't face it. So I was out when they went in to figure out what was wrong. I'm sure that the 23.5 hours of labor had little to do with it. Needless to say, I didn't die. I didn't need a hysterectomy. The placenta had one spot that did not come loose. A small amount of teasing and everything was fine . . . but they didn't know that until they got in there to check. It hit all that much harder because we'd fought the gestational diabetes to get to this point to have a healthy baby boy. I know they have to tell you the risks up front so you can make an informed decision. My reality came down to "save my life" so I could be with my husband and son.

The second scare came 4 days later. My son and I had been released from the hospital right on schedule. We took him to the Pediatrician for his 4 day check up. Nothing new or unusual there. The doctor thought he looked a little orange (the first time I've ever heard "a little" being equated to the color of a pumpkin) and asked to do another bilirubin test. Yep, you guessed it, he had jaundice. At the time, I had no idea that this was a common occurrence in newborns. I know that now . . . hindsight is 20/20. But when they tell you that you have to take your 4 day old son back into the hospital NICU all the really bad things go through your mind. After all you've had this small, fragile little person for all of 4 days. You have responded to his every little cry. Held him. Cuddled him. Cared for him in the dark of the night. And now you have to take him to the NICU because something is wrong. This is something that if you've never been around many newborns that you would not know. It took my husband, who is the oldest in a rather large family, to explain it to me. This of course happened after we got the little one to the hospital and into the baby tanning bed. Everyone else just assumed I was losing it I guess. And trust me, I wasn't losing it . . . I'd lost it. Gone. Bye-bye. He wasn't in the hospital for long. Just barely 24 hours. They left him in the tanning bed all night and into the morning. I don't know that the tanning bed did all that much good, really. My milk came in and he started actually getting more to eat. The nurses were saying that getting more milk through his digestive system would also help clear him up as well. So we fed him, and fed him, and pumped and fed him some more. We took him home the next day. Thankfully he's been the right color, gaining weight and growing as expected ever since.

Even though I can now write this without shaking, I can't really articulate how afraid I really was. It's taken me almost 2 months just to get to this point where I can write about it. They say that time heals. In this case it has to a point, but I will never forget how deeply afraid I was. I'm sure that there will be other times where the fear reaches up and grabs me by the throat. That's called being a parent, isn't it? I can only hope that those moments are few and very . . . very . . . very far apart.