Friday, October 16, 2009

The Secret Life of Wasps - Part One

So it has been hard to try and sum up some of the events that have transpired since the middle of August. Some good, fun milestones and some hard and sad ones as well.
I have gone back and forth as to whether I want to share this or not. But in the end I decided I should right it down.

This blog is for me and for you. I document things that you won’t remember, and I let go of things I need to process.

These last few months have been big. This whole year has been big, but after your first birthday, things just seemed to start happening.

It all started with a sickness. It has been one of my biggest fears since bringing you home that I would get sick. So sick that I would not be able to take care of you. It finally happened and I was the sickest I have been in years. Sadly, being sick in this household these days is a double edged sword. Not only was I plagued with a stomach virus, but I was saddled with great worries of spreading germs to not only you but your Daddy. Luckily, it did not last long and no one else seemed to get it.

Then the sickness spread, it wasn’t the same sickness but it was sickness all the same. You were listless with fever, the highest fever you have ever had in your life.(100) It was so scary to see you fall asleep in my arms at 6PM. I thought it has to be teething because it was fairly low grade and I thought for sure you were working on your molars. But overnight the fever got worse and continued on through the next day. When the third day came around I decided we better get to the doctor before the weekend comes. And what came after clearly marked one of the worst days of my life.

The doctor had a few theories on you just having a fever and no other symptoms. They said your throat was a little raw so they did a Strep culture-negative. He suggested that it was a good possibility that you might have a urinary tract infection. He said it is common for young girls to get them, and to not have any pain, only fever. The only problem is to diagnose it you need a urine sample. And the only way to get a sterile urine sample from a young toddler girl is to put a catheter in.

My sweet baby girl, I want you to know that I did not make that decision lightly. I looked down at you so ravaged by sickness that I knew I needed to help you. If I decided against it, I took the possibility of you getting worse and a trip to the ER over the weekend, or I could try to do what I thought was the right thing. It was so horrible. Having to hold you down, when you felt your worst, and subject you to something I can’t even describe. And when it was all over, you just cried and hugged me so tightly. There was such sadness in the way you held my body. Such a maturity in the way your head hit my chest. Even the doctor stopped and realized the weight of what we had just done. When we got home, it was then that it really hit me. I felt sick to my stomach and could barely get off the couch. I was so traumatized that my body was physically acting out even though my mind could not comprehend what we had just went through.

It wasn’t until the next day, when I went to change your diaper and you wouldn’t relax your legs and you held them so tightly against your body, that I realized that your body was physically acting out against the trauma you had experienced. I want to tell you now that I am so sorry. I am so sorry that I acted on what I thought I should do as a worrying mom and not what I felt was right. It is my job to protect you and I feel in this way I failed. When we found out a couple of days later that you actually had roseola and NOT a urinary tract infection I was devastated.

Motherhood is filled with so many uncertainties and worry, infinite worry.

When my Mom, your Grandma V was raising me it seemed like there was so much less information available to her generation. These days the internet makes it possible to look up any thing and come up with a billion different “solutions” and “answers”. These days we are so overloaded with information that it becomes anxiety inducing. There are too many choices and opinions for us to consider that it makes it hard to make an informed decision when everyone has the “right” way of doing things.

Point is, at the end of the day everyone does the best they can. I want you to know that I don’t know what the future holds for us yet, but I promise to do the best that I can do.

And I hope that it will be enough.
Enough for you to forgive me.
Enough for me to forgive myself.