Tonight Sophie and I went to get haircuts. At 6:42pm I received an e-mail on my phone with the subject line: “Dinner is going well.” I opened it and saw this:
And at 6:48pm I received another e-mail with the subject line: “Even better now.” And then there was this:
We’re having a rough week.
“Temper tantrums, however fun they may be to throw, rarely solve whatever problem is causing them.” —Lemony Snicket
Sophie’s scheduled to have surgery tomorrow. She has an inguinal hernia. It’s minor, outpatient surgery—the actual operation only lasts about 45 minutes. I had the same surgery when I was 6.
One of the biggest comforts in my life has been my dad always saying he would take on any illness, surgery or procedure for me, if he could. I always understood the love in those statements and now, I find myself repeating them.
We bought and read Sophie the book, Franklin Goes to the Hospital. She loves being read to but often she’s fidgety. However, she was perfectly still during the entire length of this book, and so quiet after—even when we tried to talk to her about it.
We took her on a tour of the hospital—Cincinnati Children’s Liberty Campus. It was wonderful. She practiced being weighed and having her blood pressure taken. She sat on the bed that she will be wheeled in from the prep room to the room in which she’s given the medicine to be put to sleep. She got to smell all the different scents she can choose from—bubble gum, grape and, her favorite, cherry. She got to practice putting the mask on a doll on a bed. She got to ride around in the wheelchair she’ll sit in when leaving the hospital. She loved it.
They sent her home with goodies, for her and the boys—gloves, masks, hospital cap, gas mask, disposable thermometer and coloring pages. Since then, every so often I’ll peek into her bedroom when she has the door closed and I’ll see this:
When I ask her the scent her baby doll chooses to go to sleep, she always says, “all of them.” She then pretends to cut, then cuddles her doll baby—her doll baby always gets through the operation just fine, as I’m sure Sophie will, too.
I get to hold her, well, one of us gets to hold but I think Andy knows I’m, selfishly, wanting to do it, while she’s put to sleep. And we get to be there when she wakes up.
She’ll be fine. They do these all the time. It’s so minor. We’ll most likely be home in time for dinner and she’ll most likely be back at school, running around, on Monday.
Still, I’d do it for her in heartbeat, if I could.
“Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.” —John Steinbeck
I would have liked to zip in and out sans kids but because you close at 5pm and my husband doesn’t get home until 6pm, I had no choice. Plus, I want to take my kids to the post office. I want to explain how “mailing a letter” works and what “stamp” means and I want to help them understand how our mail gets from here to there.
My children are 4-1/2 and 2-1/2. The line was long. When Sophie complained about having to stand, I talked to her softly and she stopped. I made everyone stay close to me. No one was running around. They started humming and singing, and I asked them to do it quietly. When Owen and James started whining and asking to go home, I held them one at a time. Yes, the other child was whining while waiting his turn to be held but I did what I could.
So, dear postal worker, when it was my turn to make my purchase I was sort of upset when you pointed to Owen, who was in my arms, and said “You have a spoiled one there, don’t you?” And then, when I mumbled a response while lifting each child up so they could see over the counter (something they love), “I have a stamp that says ‘spoiled’ if you want to put it on his hand.”
I would love to have toddlers who never cry and whine when having to wait in a long line in a place they have no interest in. I would love for them to always be content standing next to me (although, I admit, after awhile I’d miss occasionally holding them in my arms). I’d love to go somewhere with all three of my children and once, just once, have such a quiet and calm experience that no one even so much as glances at us.
But right now, that’s not possible. Both my boys are getting over colds, colds which required regular at-home nebulizer treatments. They’re hopped up on steroids, too, which makes them more irrational than usual. Owen also is battling an ear infection and is on antibiotics. And yesterday, they only got a 40 minute nap.
These may sound like excuses and, perhaps, they are. But just know that I’m trying my best. I’m trying my best to lay down rules and expectations for my children while also taking into consideration that they don’t feel good. Maybe I shouldn’t have given into Owen’s whine/cry to be held but honestly, I don’t mind holding him—especially when he doesn’t feel good and especially when he just wants to see. The woman who sold me a cup of coffee understood that yesterday. As I picked up each of my three children so they could see what I was seeing over the counter she smiled and noted how hard it must be for young children to miss so much when everything around them is so tall.
I realize I should let these comments go. But these comments are like tiny gnats buzzing around my head that I can’t seem to kill. They bother me. They make me wonder if I’m screwing this thing up, if I really am raising spoiled children. And part of me hates them because maybe there’s truth to them—Owen and James have been so whiney lately. I try not to respond to it. I try to insist on “nice words.” But, sometimes, I fail. Especially in tiny, crowded post offices when I’d rather just hold my child than deal with—and make everyone else around me deal with—a full-blown tantrum.
As a mother, every day I feel like I’ve failed some way, some how. I make mistakes, constantly. I question myself and worry, worry, worry. But I’m waking up every day. And I’m getting them out of bed every day. And I’m trying to teach them, guide them, share with them, show them, play with them, feed them and care for them the best way that I can. And I know my best isn’t as good as it always could be, or should be. But I’m trying.
In closing, I know my son was acting spoiled. I’m sorry about that. But I don’t need it pointed out. And I certainly don’t need to stamp it on his hand. What I need is a knowing smile, a small word of encouragement, a friendly “hello” to my upset child or, at the very least, just my stamps and receipt so that I can exit as quickly as possible. I imagine throughout your day you experience many unpleasantries—upset children, upset customers, maybe an upset boss. But I was doing what I could to make your day as pleasant as I could—given that my three children didn’t want to be there. In return, I had hoped for something different than the offer to advertise my parenting failures on my son’s hand.
Sincerely,
a sometimes-frazzled, constantly worrying, hoping-tomorrow-is-better mother of three
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
Place: living room
Time: boys’ nap
Game: Candy Land
Game No.: three, I think (we play it over and over and over and over …)
Situation: I took a break to go to the bathroom. When I came back, it was Sophie’s turn.
Sophie: “Hmmm, what’s this card under here? I think I’ll pick it. Oh! It’s double yellow! Just what I needed!” (Her honest-to-God exact words.)
Sophie’s Candy Land game piece: hopping along the board, taking the shortcut Sophie so coveted
Me: “Sophie. Did you hide that card under the game instructions while I was in the bathroom so you could take the shortcut?”
Sophie: “No. I mean yes.”
Talk: about cheating and lying and truth-telling
Game No.: four, after I told her game No. 3 had to be abandoned because of cheating
Cheating Since Then: zero, unless she’s simply gotten better at it
“A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.” —Edgar J. Mohn
“It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge.” —Phyllis Diller
Scene: Owen is sitting on the leather chair in the living room. His milk is in a cup (with a lid) on the floor, 6 feet away from him.
Owen: “Where’s my milk? Where’s my milk? WHERE’S MY MILK!”
Me: “It’s right there, Owen. You can get it.”
Owen: “No. I can’t, Mommy. You get it.”
Me: “No. You can get it.”
Owen: “Get it! Get it! Get it, Mommy! Get it!”
Me: “Owen, you’re a big boy. Get off the chair and go get your milk.”
Owen: “But you’re the biggest.”
“Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes
epilogue: James, tired of the whole thing, got up and gave Owen his milk. Owen threw it at his head. And with that, I put his milk away.
I try very hard not to overreact to medical issues with my children. In fact, I usually under-react. Twice now, during well-child exams, the pediatrician has discovered ear infections. Cue the oh-so-that’s-why-he-has-been-so-cranky-and-tugging-his-ear-and-this-cold-never-seems-to-go-away-I’m-a-terrible-mom response. I will never be one of those mothers insisting on antibiotics unless absolutely necessary (largely because I’ve now had c-diff for a year and a half thanks to antibiotics I was given for a cough). I often take the “let’s give it one more day” approach before asking the nurse on the phone “do you think we really need to come in?”. And my last post, the one in which I talk about taking Owen in because he was having trouble breathing? The pediatrician said it was “probably” OK I didn’t take him to the ER the night before leaving me to believe I “probably” should have.
For a month, Sophie has had small bruises running up and down her spine. Her shins are always bruised. She’s active. She wrestles with her brothers. She falls and bumps into things and apparently has no sense of spatial relationships when doing somersaults in our crowded living room. But the bruises on her spine did give me pause. I would wonder how they got there and then I would explain them away in my head, thinking about the time she slid down the steps or the side of the bed.
And then last night I found myself up with her from about 3am on. She had a fever. She couldn’t sleep. I gave her Children’s Advil. We watched the Sprout channel. I noted the dark circles under her eyes and thought about how tired she always seemed. I made her oatmeal at 5am.
At 8:30am I called the school to say that Sophie couldn’t come—she had a fever. The kids and I watched our morning show. We played Set Junior. We had a hat party, cleaned the playroom, did chalk drawings, dressed up stuffed animals, had lunch. Sophie seemed fine.
She was curled up on the couch, eating popcorn and watching a movie, her dress bunched up around her when I noticed the bruises again on her bare back.
I don’t know why I did it, but I did.
I Googled “child bruising spine fever.”
Two seconds later I found myself on The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s home page.
I messaged Andy. “Just call,” he wrote. “Better now while they’re actually open.” (When I do finally cave and call the doctor, it’s usually nights/weekends, which I’m sure our pediatrician loves.)
So I called. And they asked if I could come in at 4:30pm. It was 3:45pm. Now, looking back, I’m sure they gave me that time because that was the last appointment time before they closed for the day but after spending five seconds on The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s home page I was sure they gave me that time because they needed to see her right away and that I was going down in the record books as the worst mom ever for not taking her in a month earlier when I first noticed the bruising.
Andy must have sensed my underlying panic, because he met me there.
We waited a long time.
The pediatrician looked at her spine. He noticed two very, very small bruises near the bottom but said the other discoloration was the result of some big vein that runs along the spinal cord and a shadow. He noted the dark circles under eyes and asked her if she was tired. She gave a very dramatic yawn and fell back on the examining table, as if going to sleep (yes, we’ve entered that stage now). He felt her belly and checked her lymph nodes and listened to her lungs and noted her temperature and looked for other bruising (there was none besides the usual shin bruises) and noted her excellent weight gain. And then he checked her ears.
She had a g** d*** ear infection.
Of course. I mean, she did tell us last night her ear was “hiccuping.”
So.
Not only am I the mom who consistently doesn’t take her children to the doctor when she should for ailments that require antibiotics to cure, I’m also the mom who when she does take her children to the doctor is convinced her children have cancer.
I can only imagine what’s being written about me in my children’s charts.
“If you treat a sick child like an adult and a sick adult like a child, everything usually works out pretty well.” —Ruth Carlisle
I don’t know what’s worse. Using my legs and arms to pin Owen against myself, a nebulizer mask over his mouth and nose while he thrashes and screams, feeling him soften every few moments only to say, muffled and between sobs, “all done, Mommy, all done.”
Or looking at the look James gives me at the doctor’s office while I’m doing this to Owen—watching James cry and scream from across the room, not understanding that what I’m doing to Owen doesn’t hurt and is, in the long run, going to make him feel much, much better.
Our entire family got hit with a cold this past weekend. Colds always land in James’s chest and he had already done the doctor’s visit with the nebulizer treatment and the every-four-hours at-home albuterol treatment. He’s on day three of steroids. This has become the norm for James. He’s calm with masks over his face now. He inhales the medicine, knowing it’s helping him breathe, feel better.
But Owen. This is all new to Owen. Andy and I averaged about two hours of sleep each last night, staying up with him, watching the retraction in his chest, listening to the wheezing, calling the doctor on call, sharing James’s albuterol with him, debating the ER.
So tired. Everyone is so tired.
Owen had to have two 10-minute nebulizer treatments at the pediatrician’s office today. Ten minutes is a long time when you’re pinning a 2-year-old down and when the 2-year-old’s brother, full of steroids and lacking sleep, is beside himself with worry for his twin brother.
When it was all over, I asked James if he wanted to hug Owen. James said, between tears, “yes.”
Oh my heart.
Of course Owen, furious at the world, refused to accept James’s hug and pushed him away.
Still.
Even on the bad days, the really bad days, there are moments—these small and beautiful moments.
Slow inhale.
Slow exhale.
Breathing.
We’re all breathing.
“There’s no other love like the love for a brother. There’s no other love like the love from a brother.” —Terri Guillemets
Sophie and I had a rough night tonight. One of my failings as a parent is to threaten and then not follow through. For example: “Sophie, if you scream like that one more time you lose dessert after dinner tonight.” Sophie screams. “Sophie, I mean it. If you scream one more time you lose dessert after dinner tonight.” Sophie screams. “Sophie, I’m serious!” Sophie screams. “OK, no dessert. You can get it back if you don’t scream for the rest of the night but …”
Seriously. Super Nanny would have a field day with me.
Anyhow, I promised myself, after a particularly rough weekend, I would start following through. And tonight, I did. There were a lot of tears. But I held my ground. Long story short, Sophie went to bed tonight without “stay up time,” without a snack, without books. I sat in the hallway and painted my toenails. She laid in bed and cried. It was horrible. But also good. Very good, for both of us. I was less friend and more parent. I followed through. I think, I hope, we’re in a better place now.
Andy went grocery shopping tonight. And came home with tulips. “From Sophie.”
Tomorrow I know Sophie will be overly loving, with her constant “I love you’s” (her “thing” as of late) and snuggling on the couch. Even if tonight she screamed “never” to me no less than three times. Am I doing this right? I wonder. Have I messed up? I worry. And then I look at the tulips. And listen to the words Andy says to me.
It will be OK. I am doing OK. We are all OK.
Sometimes, being “mean” is necessary and needed, I know. Still, that doesn’t make it any easier.
“The flower that follows the sun does so even in cloudy days.” —Robert Leighton
I’m thrilled to share that TIME is going to occasionally feature some of my essays in the Healthland section of its website. My first one was posted today and you can read it here. Check it out!
“Writing is both mask and unveiling.” —E.B. White
