Hello blog. So we meet again. I have much to tell you and no coherent way to go about it so I’ve decided that once again the best way of doing this is probably just to do it and not worry about it flowing or sounding nice or, um, maybe making sense.
We had our first visit with the high risk development clinic this past week. It went well and we should get the written report in 2-3 weeks but preliminarily everyone we met with was very happy with where T is at right now. He was called a flirt multiple times and he laughed and smiled his way through pretty much the whole thing. The kid is a social butterfly and Paul and I are constantly wondering where he gets that from since we both skew towards being introverts.
Despite the fact that it went well, I came home from the visit with mixed feelings. It wasn’t really about how T did (because like I said he did great) it was more The Feelings it stirred up about our NICU stay and how sick he was during those first few weeks of his life. I actually found out something that I did not know, and looking back, am glad I didn’t know, was part of his diagnosis. He had something called DIC which is a complicated medical thing that I don’t fully understand except that it relates to the body completely being unable to clot on its own and that a disturbingly high percentage of people who develop this (extremely rare) condition die.
I knew he was sick. I knew he was very sick. But I don’t think I ever fully let myself understand that we could have lost him in those early days. I can’t even think about it without tears coming to my eyes and my heart jumping into my throat.
The social worker we spoke with talked about a Stanford study about PTSD in NICU parents. And yes, I can see that. I can feel that. It’s not with me every moment of every day or anything like that but there are definitely times when I hear a story, smell a smell, see something and I am gripped with terror or sadness. I think when you’ve had a traumatic NICU stay (is there any other kind really?) it just stays with you forever and it’s never going to go away. I hope that none of it stays with T because he was so small and can’t remember any of it as real memories, but I do often wonder…are there aspects of his personality that will be forever colored by those first few weeks when his life was completely atypical of the majority of babies in the world? I guess I’ll never really know.
My own health has not been great. I’ve been weaning myself from the pump these past couple weeks and plan on working on T’s nursing sessions over this next week. Maybe if I’m feeling ambitious I will write a post on exactly how I’ve been doing that. The goal is to be done and switched meds by the time I see Dr. Kidney again on 10/21. I think my doctors would have liked it if I went cold turkey with nursing and just started the meds already but I GTS (googled that sh*t), which was obviously a bad idea, and found all these sites saying I will Traumatize The Baby if I don’t ease into it. So in the meantime I just pray I’m not doing any serious irreversible damage to myself. My blood pressure sucks but it’s been somewhat stable in terms of the suckage. So got that going for me?
The silver lining of this flare (yes, it’s a flare, I’ve given up trying to pretend it’s not) is that it pushed me into talking to my boss about working four days a week instead of five and he was amazingly supportive. Like I wanted to hug him but it wouldn’t have been appropriate – supportive. Not only did he talk to HR and the guys I work for directly about me going part time, he also told me to start coming in a half hour later at 6:00am, which may not sound like much but is HUGE at that hour of the morning. He said if I don’t think it’s enough he would even be willing to look into job sharing my position. Amazingly. Supportive. I start my new schedule next week and I’m excited! I feel SO blessed and so lucky to be working for such an incredible boss and company.
And now for the good stuff…T is growing and developing by leaps and bounds. I am annoyed at myself that I’ve been so bad about documenting it all. He has one ridiculously adorable tooth that finally came through a few weeks ago with pretty much no fanfare whatsoever. It was just like “oh hey, I has a tooth now guys” no real fussing or anything. It’s the bottom right in case you were wondering. His top gums look pretty swollen so I think maybe those will be next. He also finally started rolling both directions and now rolls as his method of transportation. He’s also quite a fast tummy pivoter too but just hasn’t quite figured out the crawling. It’s so cute how pissed he gets when a toy is just out of his reach because I think mentally he *gets* how to crawl but he just can’t physically do it yet. T has NO social/separation anxiety to speak of. When we drop him off at daycare he’s like, “see ya later!” and the other day when I was at Dr. Kidney’s office, I left him with the nurse while I gave a urine sample and I could hear him laughing his little head off outside with no regard at all for where I was or if I was coming back. People tell me this is a good thing and that it means he’s well attached, so I try not to take it personally. He does know who I am though because he recently started reaching out for me to hold him once I get home from work and my mom brings him to the door to greet me. I should really do a whole post on him soon. Maybe with my extra day off!
