myguys_sam_dean (myguys_sam_dean) wrote in 7_days, @ 2007-10-11 09:16:00 |
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Current mood: | tired |
Time Always Passes
Title: Time Always Passes
Author: myguys_sam_dean
Summary: Written for 7 days prompt - time. How time passed when my son was born prematurely.
I remember sitting in the NICU, watching my son's chest rise and fall. He was 13 weeks premature and very sick. He was on a respirator and kept under a sheet of plastic because his skin was so thin and transparent. My first instinct when I saw him was to pull the plastic off. I didn't want him to suffocate. Then, I realized the machine was breathing for him so the plastic wasn't an issue.
I sat there for many hours every day. Every time his chest fell, I held my breath until it rose again. I hovers over his open Iowa bed in 85 degree heat while my body tried to heal itself from his birth. No matter how bad my body hurt, it was nothing compared to my heart. My baby that had always been inside me had to be left at the hospital when I went home to sleep.
Time crept by, hour by hour, sometimes second by second. When he was off the respirator and quit breathing, turning all colors that no baby should be, seconds seemed like hours. Only when his body startled back into breathing did I feel my heart beat again. Those A&B spells were commonplace with preemies, but that didn't make it any easier.
My first days of motherhood were spent alone. I had one friend tell me that I was lucky because I would be able to rest and feel better before having to take care of a newborn. I told her that being able to hold my son would be the best medicine for how I felt. Our friendship did not survive my son being medically fragile, even after he was discharged from the NICU when he was 100 days old. He was to have lifelong health problems, but he was alive. I figured we would be able to handle his health issues, I just wanted him alive. I didn't know how hard our day to day life would be.
Our time is spent shuffling between school, therapies, doctor appointments, medication times, exercises, and trips to the nearest Shriner's Hospital/Clinic for Children to get exams every six months along with new or revised braces. We make additional trips to Shriner's for procedures or treatments to help his mobility.
I try my best to let him just be a boy. I make sure to get him to area activities for children, but his short attention span and ability to become over stimulated tends to cut the outings short. I make sure to take pictures so that when he looks back, he can see that had experiences that had nothing to do with his special needs to time spent at medical facilities. We have plenty of pictures of him in the hospital. I wanted to capture his smiles and the little joys we found while there.
My baby is getting close to 10 years old. I felt like I aged 20 years the day he was born. That's the toll it took on my mind and body. Now I have multiple medical conditions that are either caused by or made aggravated by stress. I was running at top speed for too long.
It's all been worth it. I wouldn't change being a mother for anything.