Raising a Child Is Expensive Baby Sitter When Mom Goes Back to Work
Grand y husband, Brett, and I had wanted a second kid so badly. We had lost a pregnancy, and so got meaning once more. We'd been waiting and preparing for the inflow of our daughter Nella, and finally, it was all only. . . perfect. When my labor pains started, everything was packed and set: the birth music; the receiving blankets I'd made; the nightgown I bought specifically for the first night I'd rock my new infant to slumber; the Large Sister crown for our 2-year-quondam, Lainey; and the coming-abode outfit. I'd hand-designed 50 favor boxes too, which were filled and all set up to exist passed out to visitors. My heart could hardly hold the anticipation.
We left Lainey with Grandma and headed over to the hospital, where I was rapidly instructed to drop trou and gown up. I put my white ruffled skirt and black shirt into a plastic bag. Days after, the mere sight of these clothes -- the ones I wore during those final happy moments before my life was changed forever -- would bring me pain.
By 2 p.m., my contractions were coming full force, and the delivery room was full of excitement and laughter. Several of my girlfriends were supposed to get to a altogether party, only they came dressed to the nines beforehand to check on me. (My infirmary, unlike many others, doesn't have an official invitee policy.) I liked the commotion. I loved the feeling of having people waiting anxiously for our infant.
Two hours went by, and I was off the wall in pain, begging for an epidural. Only the anesthesiologists were busy. I looked around the room and tried to accept it in. . . the candles, the music, the lavander oil I'd brought that wafted through the air. I remember telling myself, "You are nigh to meet your new daughter." And then I heard the sounds of the song we'd chosen to play as I delivered our baby, "When You Love Someone" by Bryan Adams. And I began to cry.
My husband, my friends, my dad, the nurses, all of them smiling, cameras flashing. I pushed, and pushed, and pushed, then finally watched as the tiniest little body came out of me, arms flailing, lungs wailing. . . and so, they handed her to me. And I knew.
I knew the moment I saw Nella that she had Down syndrome and that nobody else had realized it yet. I held her and cried. I panned the room to meet the eyes of anyone who would tell me she didn't have it. And all I tin remember of those moments is her face. I volition never forget my daughter in my artillery, opening her eyes over and over as she locked eyes with mine and stared, boring a hole into my soul.
Dearest me. Beloved me, she seemed to be telling me. I'm not what y'all expected but, please, love me.
That was the nigh defining moment of my life.
Credit: Heidi Darwish and Laura Richardson
Diagnosis
Nella was scooped off my chest and taken to the warming bed where the nurses nervously smiled as they checked her over. I kept asking if she was okay, and they told me she was fine. I wanted to say the words, but couldn't. So I asked why her olfactory organ was smooshed, why she looked funny. But I knew. I cried while everyone smiled and took pictures of her. I kept asking, "Is there something you aren't telling me?" They only kept smiling. The nurses had apparently chosen my pediatrician in for "D.S. suspicions." But they handed my daughter dorsum to me as if everything were okay.
I cry when I think about this time, wondering what I did. I know I prayed to every power in the world that this wasn't happening. Did Nella feel love? Did I kiss her? My friends promised me I did. They said I couldn't stop kissing her.
Someone popped a bottle of champagne and poured information technology into our monogrammed glasses, and a toast was raised -- "To Nella!" -- as I sabbatum there, confused, trying to take information technology all in.
I retrieve feeling nothing. As if I literally left my trunk for a little bit. Our pediatrician, Dr. Foley, walked in, and my centre sank. "Why is she here?" I asked. They told me she was merely checking the baby out, which she did. The room grew quiet, and everyone was asked to leave. I started shaking. I knew it was coming. Brett stood behind me, stroking my hair.
Dr. Foley snuggled Nella up in a coating and handed her to me. She knelt downwards adjacent to my bed then that she could look upward at me, not downwardly. She smiled so warmly and held my hand and so tight. And she never took her eyes off mine.
"I need to tell you something."
I cried hard. "I know what you're going to say."
She smiled again and squeezed my mitt a little tighter.
"The first affair I'yard going to tell y'all is that your girl is cute and perfect, simply at that place are some features that lead me to believe she may have Down syndrome." Finally, someone said it.
Dr. Foley hugged me and told me she'd already had a chance to hold Nella for her examination, simply now she wanted to concord her only for some snuggles. And she did. Then I nursed Nella -- a dreamy moment I had always anticipated, and yet information technology felt so different this fourth dimension. She latched right on with no hesitation, and I realized that she had completely accepted me as her mama and I felt so guilty that I didn't feel the same way. I felt love for her, yes. But I couldn't cease envisioning this other baby, the i who I felt had died the moment I realized Nella wasn't what I expected. Still, the nursing was such an incredibly bonding experience.
Meanwhile, Brett never left our daughter's side. He was quiet through information technology all, and I'thousand not sure I'll e'er know exactly what he felt. But I know the daddy of our ii babies, and he wouldn't know how to do annihilation just honey them with all his heart. And he did from the very offset.
Then I was told that Lainey was on her fashion, and I cried new tears. I hadn't even idea yet about how this would bear upon Lainey. Every beautiful vision I'd had of 2 girls growing up together -- advice-giving, cooking, phone calls, shopping, everything -- would be different now. Numbness started leaving my heart, and sheer pain started settling in.
Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry when Lainey gets here.
I'll never forget Lainey's face when she walked into that room, the cute outfit someone had put her in, her wide eyes, and the way she couldn't stop grin.
I'll e'er recall when Nella was placed in her artillery. I watched in anguish and admiration every bit Lainey showed me what unconditional love looks like. What the absence of stereotypes feels like. She was proud.
Credit: Heidi Darwish and Laura Richardson
A Long Start Nighttime
Brett somewhen took Lainey abode. Then people started trickling out, and I felt paranoid -- so completely afraid considering I knew that the grief would come when darkness set in outside. I was left in the hospital with my two astonishing, wonderful friends who volition never, always know how special they are because of what they did for me that dark. They heard and saw things that no i else volition, and I could never take fabricated it through the night without them. I suppose it's horrible to say yous spent the beginning night of your daughter's life in agony, but I know it was necessary for me to get through information technology and move on.
I cried out that I wanted to exit Nella and run abroad. I said that I wanted to take Lainey and our perfect world of art projects and cupcake-baking, and I wanted to run like hell. I wanted it to be the morn, earlier Nella was born, when I was happy and excited and when I wore the white ruffled skirt and blackness shirt and put them in the plastic bag, knowing joy was on its way. I wanted to become dorsum.
I think I cried for seven hours straight. I held Nella and kissed her, but I literally writhed in emotional hurting on that bed in the dark with our candles and my friends by my side. I begged for morning time, even once mistaking a streetlight for sunlight only to find out it was 3 a.thousand. and I still had hours left to make it through.
Morning time finally came, and with it, hope.
My sister Carin arrived. She told me that I could never go back, and, with tears in her eyes, she told me how lucky I was. She told me that I had been chosen and that nosotros were going to exist just fine.
There accept been lots of tears since that twenty-four hours. There will be many more to come. Merely Nella's nativity has charted a new, challenging journey for our family unit. Although it still seems surreal and then off course from what I had planned for my life, I know that only one thing is required of me: to love my beautiful daughters.
Originally published in the Oct 2010 issue of Parents mag.
Source: https://www.parents.com/health/down-syndrome/the-baby-i-never-expected/
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