Thursday, June 23, 2011

The best laid plans...

Dilena was a beautiful baby, but soon after her birth we realized she wasn't typical.  I read all the books, watched videos and talked with the wonderful mothers on my parenting forum.  We took her to the pediatrician frequently.  She was diagnosed as a colicky baby.  Ha!

My Dilena was not simply colicky, she literally screamed for about 18-20 hours a day. She slept in 45 minute increments.  The advice new mothers are given to "sleep when you baby sleeps" certainly does not apply to babies like this.  I fell into a funk.  I wasn't the mother I had dreamed of being.  I wasn't the carefree, multitasking supermom I knew I would be.  Dilena screamed, I couldn't comfort her.  I would wear her in my Moby wrap all day and pace my apartment, waiting for Mark to get home.  If I stopped pacing, tried to sit or eat or change pace, she screamed.

I got sick with what I thought was a flu, but was mastitis, twice.  She screamed at the breast and I eventually began to pump milk for her which I thought, at the time, was my only option.  It was very hard work, but in our case did turn out well.  When Mark got home I would sleep, for a few hours in our bedroom.  He had a trick, taking her into the bathroom, the fan would usually calm her.  I even napped in our bathtub with her just to get some silence.  At night, I would get up and take my little Di into the bedroom and Mark slept on the couch.  I held my baby, watched silent Roseanne reruns while she screamed.  I talked to her through her cries.  Told her what we would do when she was older, how we would fish and swim and play together.  I would beg her to sleep so that we could ride unicorns together in dreamland.  Occasionally, I would get a 45 minute reprieve.  Otherwise, she would cry and I would hold her and cringe at what our neighbors were thinking.

I was lucky enough to be able to work part time after Dilena was born.  I didn't sleep at all the night before my maternity leave ended.  I begged Mark to let me stay home, I told him I couldn't leave her.  We found a great little daycare but I can't, I cant leave her with strangers.  My heart ached, I was nauseous.  All these months all I wanted was some time away from my screaming baby, but now I can;t bear the thought of leaving her even for a second.  I have never experienced this intensity of anxiety.   I drop her off, I give the sweet women a long list of very specific instructions.  I warn them I will be calling every hour...maybe more.  My heart is pounding.  I leave, prepared for big tears and then...nothing.  I go back to my job,which I love, and I feel good.  Happy, balanced, even empowered.  As I get back into my work groove, I realize I can be a mom and work.  I can balance it all.  I don't call daycare as much as I expect I would.  I miss her, but her absence doesn't consume me.  I am doing it.

Dilena starts sleeping more, crying less.  Eventually she is diagnosed with severe reflux.  Medications help.  When she starts solids foods it helps too, and she loves food.   I like being a mom now.  Mark and I buy a house in the town we had dreamed about living in for several years.  Thats when I realize that we are really parents, homeowners and adults.  Scary.

Life is settling.  Our cute house in our beautiful town.  We discuss more kids several years down the road.  We are happy, settled.  Still.  Something menacing is deep within me.  Postpartum depression?  No, it is something deeper, but something else.  I have this sense of impending doom.  I stare at my beautiful surroundings, and yet, deep within me, a sadness.  I cant pinpoint what it was, or why.  I think about my own mortality a lot.  Why?  My dark cloud looms.  We go on with life.

I visit my parents a lot.  I love them so much.  I love being friends with my parents.  Mark and I vacation with them every year.  We hang out.  I don't go very many days without talking to my mother, never have.  My mom is a small woman, active, healthy eater, non-smoker.  I have always felt protected by this bubble of longevity in our family, our spotless family medical history (save for some alcoholism) and my parents healthy lifestyle.

Then, one night, my mother says to me "Julie, feel this, what is this?".  She has a large, soft bump in her belly.  She is laying flat, and it is obvious now, but not so when she is standing.  A hernia?  It isn't painful.  A cyst?  My great-grandmother had a cyst so large she looked 6 months pregnant.  I am not too worried.  This popped up so suddenly.  It has to be nothing.

It isn't nothing.  It is something.  Something awful.  It is cancer.

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