The
differences in the first 10 minutes of Maya’s life and the first 10 minutes of
Will’s life were enough for me to cautiously note, even in my post-delivery
haze, that it seemed like our kids might have markedly different paths. While I had already spent time thinking about the
differences that we would encounter as parents of both Maya and a child (possibly)
without the extra challenges that she faces, I did not realize that the
differences would be immediate . . . literally from the first moment of life.
Will
cried when he was born, loudly and steadily, continuing as the nurse toweled him
off and looked him over. I sat in the delivery bed and watched him from across
the room, arms flailing and incensed, his cries declaring “I am angry and I am strong”
and to me they carried the subtext “I’m different, this is different, from the
very first moment.” I thought back four and a half years to Maya’s first
moments, punctuated by only a small cry before she was quickly carried into
another room for some suctioning and examining.
With Maya, residents had questions for us immediately about prenatal
screening and the spacing of her eyes . . . with Will, a nurse cleaned him up
and handed him over to me, and that was that.
Angry, yelling Will
I
held Will and Dave held Will and we took pictures and soaked in the awesomeness
of a brand new person. I knew that a
test was coming, and I was hesitant to put Will up to his first evaluation . .
. would he be able to nurse? When Maya
was born I didn’t know that the ability to feed is really the first unspoken
milestone that a baby hits, ideally at birth . . . but now I knew that feeding
was a kind of developmental test, and I almost didn’t want to know whether he
would pass.
Maya
had done the cutest little thing, right from birth-she sucked on her
tongue. She liked to stick her tiny
tongue out and she liked to move it all around—I had never seen another baby do
that, and I was still blissfully naïve . . . seeing her do something totally
novel had me thinking “that isn’t typical--she has a little unique personality
already!” instead of “hmm, that isn’t typical, maybe it’s a sign that something
isn’t right.” I didn’t know that
something may have been amiss. I just thought she had character.
Maya, and her little tongue, getting ready to leave the hospital
She
couldn’t latch on to nurse, and when she was 1 day old a nurse came to teach me
how to cup feed her. Cup feed. A one day
old baby. They put some formula into a little
medicine cup and showed me how to hold her up and dribble drops of the formula
into her mouth. This was exactly as
crazy as it sounds. Little streams of
formula ran out of her tiny mouth. She coughed and sputtered and I worried that
I was drowning her (she already needed regular suctioning, still congested from
birth, and now she was choking on formula that I clumsily poured into her
mouth).
As Dave slept at home that second night (we didn’t have a private room,
so he was kicked out overnight) I became increasingly frazzled with
each cup feeding. The thought of
bringing Maya home with a little stack of medicine cups and my breast pump was
terrifying. I didn’t know how this would be sustainable. It certainly didn’t feel sustainable.
When
the pediatrician arrived in the morning to examine and discharge Maya and
asked, “How is she doing with eating?” I unraveled, tearfully confesssing
that I didn’t know if I was good enough at the cup feeding to take her
home. The doctor seemed puzzled and asked why we hadn’t
tried a bottle, and I replied, wide-eyed, “They didn’t say we could use a
bottle. I thought that we couldn't use one because she couldn’t latch.” (I later learned
that because NY state is (was?) so pro-breastfeeding, they push cups instead of
bottles for babies whose mothers intend to nurse. What a freaking mess. If I had known then what I know now, I could
have avoided a lot of stress in the hospital by demanding a bottle right away.) She called a nurse immediately, had a bottle
brought in, and together we figured out a way to get Maya to latch on to the
bottle (it wasn’t easy and required some maneuvering, but it worked). For the first few days, Dave and I were the
only people to feed her, as we had mastered the “how to get the bottle in”
technique. I didn’t know that it shouldn’t
be so hard . . . I thought it was just a tricky newborn quirk, and I thought
that after a few days she would outgrow it.
Once
at home, we started a crazy schedule of pumping and bottle feeding. In the early days I would pump every 1.5-2
hours, round the clock. Between pumping
and bottle-feeding Maya, little else got done.
The silver lining was that Dave could help. There were many nights when he fed and took
care of Maya, and I just pumped and slept and pumped and slept. I developed a
system for the pumped milk, rows of bottles and bags accumulating in the fridge
and freezer. I was proud of having an
organized system . . . I didn’t know that it shouldn’t have to be so
complicated. I didn’t know how much
easier nursing, or bottle-feeding formula, would have been. (Not that I would have changed my choice, I
simply just didn’t understand that we were dealing with layers of complication
that weren’t typical.) Physically, the
pumping was hard to get used to . . . I’ll spare you the details, but there
were several painful side effects of pumping that took a few weeks to
heal. I didn’t know that nursing would
have been less painful (not pain-free, exactly, but much, much easier
initially).
And
now, here was Will. Less than an hour
old, wide-eyed in the same way that Maya had been after her birth, small and
swaddled in my arms as I sat in my labor and delivery bed. Dave and I had each snuggled him and taken
pictures, and I was ready to try nursing, to find out whether we would be
facing some of the same feeding struggles or whether we would be embarking on a
different path. It took him about 3
seconds to latch and start feeding.
Two
roads diverged. Instantly.
We've already taken the road less traveled by.
As it turns out, the road more traveled is pretty nice, too.
These
first few weeks with Will have been lovely in the same way that the first few
weeks with Maya were. Baby baths, a warm
little pile of baby in the crook of an arm, sleepy gassy smiles, tiny hats and
stretchy outfits. The sweetness of
something new. And it’s a good thing
they were both so cute, because these initial weeks have been exhausting,
too. This morning Will went to sleep
five minutes before Maya had to get up for school. I think they’re tag-teaming
already.
Will
wins the prize for easiness, though.
Take away the constant pumping that I did with Maya, and life is a lot
simpler. When he wakes up hungry, I pick him up, sit down, and feed him. It's that easy. We took the kids to the zoo
when Will was 8 days old, and all that I had to bring to feed him was my
nursing cover. With Maya, we would have
needed the cooler bag of pumped milk, the instant hot pack for heating it up, and
clean, empty bottles.
If we wanted to stay for more than an hour (plus travel time) I would
have had to bring the big pump bag---but I wouldn’t have done that in the first
week, it would have been too overwhelming.
So it just wouldn’t have happened.
I
also don’t worry about Will as much . . . or at least not in the same way. Despite the insistence of everyone before we
left the hospital with Maya that she was fine, a seed had been planted that
maybe-something-could-possibly-be-atypical-maybe-but-probably-not-no-definitely-not-well-maybe. Something
about some of her little features. My crazy post-partum brain spent a good
chunk of the first week studying her and wondering if everything was really ok.
(Hindsight being 20/20 and all, I now know that I wasn’t really crazy, I was on
to something . . . but I gladly let myself be convinced otherwise.)
With Will, things are “normal” . . . for now , anyway,
and I will soak up the easiness of every moment of normal that we get. (Seriously, I’ve had so many moments of “holy cow, this
is so easy” already, and I know that there will be many more to come.) But I know, all
too well, that things can change in an instant, and I don’t take a single
normal, typical day for granted. Right now the only thing expected of him is
eating well and sleeping poorly, and he does both of those like they are his
job. Right now, he’s on the road more
traveled, the typical path of a typical baby
. . . and he’s taken us further down this road than we were able to go
with Maya. It’s nice to get a look at
it.
The
beauty of being a seasoned traveler of the road less traveled is that I don’t
have the same fear of that path that I did several years ago. We’ve traveled
that road for years now, and I know that it’s bumpy and hard to navigate, but beautiful
and unique and rewarding. So whether we
stay on this road with Will, or whether he veers to another course, I have the peace of knowing that things will be just fine. Our little
family will be happy travelers, safe with each other’s company, no matter which
roads we each end up traveling on.
11 comments:
You look fabulous and oh, so, skinny already!!!! What a beautiful family!
You are simply AMAZING! Your outlook, your grace and they way you write it all to share with rest of us are simply, AMAZING! I have never NOT appreciated my 3 healthy little boys, but there are certainly days where I lose sight of the blessing of them all...amidst the constant bickering and fighting that goes on between them...amidst the never ending "to-do" list...amidst the stack of bills always waiting to be paid...amidst all that is life. Thank you for the reminder to count my blessings, no matter what! Hopefully one day we will run into each other on our old block and I will get to meet your precious babies!
Jaclin
Well said, Dana!
You are eloquent and amazing. You will travel whatever road you end up on with style and grace.
Love, love, love this post. We too have a 4 year old little lady with unexplained "stuff". We are expecting our second in April and I think ALL THE TIME about how it will be either different or the same...but know that the fear of the less traveled road is not near as high as before. Thanks for the great read! - Alyson
Congrats, Dana! I'm so thrilled for you and your growing family! This post was so insightful and well-written. I love keeping up with your life.
beautifully written...moving...heartfelt. Thank you for sharing...and keep working on the book that you must write that includes all the amazing stories from your blog.
Great post. For the obvious reasons it hits very close to home. Nava was diagnosed at 10 days old and though she was not super low tone and didn't have any major health problems at birth...Whoa.
What a difference now with her new little brother with the regular amount of chromosomes.
Both journeys wonderful. But very different.
So beautifully written. You definitely should write a book,. I don't have children, but when I read your blog it gives me a little window into your world. Your beautiful well written words move me so much.All the best to you Dana and Dave and Maya annd Will
Charlotte Moore commented (in her book George and Sam) that she doesn't know why people say babies are blank slates- when her son George was born he already had an awful lot of things written up on there. I concur with that... my Alex, who is autistic, was 'different' from the start. Plety of things written on his slate, too!
oh girl, Im overjoyed to hear you got the have the "typical" first baby days with Wil, and yes you are right which ever path he takes your little family will be A-OK. I just had a thought earlier today, one Ive never ever had before, that if i had another Ryan well that would be ok too.
BTW you look GREAT!
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