The Rough Start

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Son #2 had a rough start. He was born in May three weeks early. We had to drive through a blizzard that dumped almost 6 inches of snow in Cedar City to get to the hospital. By the end of his second day on earth, doctors were running tests to see why his intestines didn’t seem to be working. Day three found my husband loading the baby and me into our car for a trip to Salt Lake City and Primary Children’s Hospital. I cradled the baby on my lap and hung his IV bag over the coat hook in the back seat. It was a long, grim journey—one which forced me for the first time to confront the possibility that my baby might not live.

On our arrival, Son #2 went straight to ICU. My husband headed home to stay with our first two children, and I settled in with my exceptional aunt and uncle who lent me their car so that I could travel back and forth to the hospital. Each day I sat on a bench outside the Intensive Care Unit and worried until my 10-minute hourly visit with the baby arrived. His doctor told me a section of my son’s intestine had atrophied, so he could not expel waste. Without intervention, he would die.

Babies are not supposed to have IV’s and heart monitors and oxygen masks. But until then, I had never known how sick babies could be. One infant in the unit with my son was born without skin covering the surface of his chest cavity, leaving his major organs unprotected. Another had an esophageal abnormality which restricted his air intake so severely that by the time he was 18 months old, he could not breathe without a trach tube. One tiny person with multiple birth defects passed away while I was there. The other mothers and I didn’t talk much. It was the only way we could protect ourselves from yet another bout of exhaustive weeping.

When he has less than five days old, Son #2 had major surgery. And then we waited. I’ll never forget almost a week later walking down the hall toward his tiny room on the fifth floor and hearing cheers erupt from the nurses and techs taking care of him. HE HAD POOPED! We high-fived one another, and none of us could stop grinning. By the time he was a pre-schooler, Son #2 obviously believed that the world revolved around him, probably a carry-over from the days in the hospital–when it literally did.

Son #2 had an open, mischievous personality that didn’t care much for rules or boundaries, and he had a justifiable reluctance to interact with doctors. One morning he came in screaming because he’d shimmied down our wooden fence without a shirt and had about 30 slivers embedded in his stomach. I called the pediatrician to see if there were an easier way to extract the splinters than one-at-a-time. He laughed—quite a while, actually.

Later that same day, Son #2 insisted on trying to catch a bee who was obligingly pollinating our zucchini plants. The bee was annoyed and defended himself. Just a band aid and some cortisone cream this time. But that wasn’t the end. “Helping” his dad later that afternoon in the garage, Son #2 balanced a 2 x 4 on a couple of rocks and tried to walk across his bridge. The board slipped and flipped, hitting him in the forehead. This time, he obviously needed stitches.

“No doctor, Mom. OK? No doctor?” he pleaded with a two-inch gash just below his hairline dripping blood into his eyes. I felt like a traitor when I told him he had to go. My husband and I bundled him up, and I held him close as he sobbed all the way to the doc’s office.

Our pediatrician was a good guy who really loved kids.  It was obvious he didn’t want to cause any more distress than necessary. Speaking soothingly to my son, he gently dabbed at the wound with a topical anesthetic before he deadened it with a couple of shots. Son #2 watched him fearfully. Me too. Such a little boy who had already suffered so much trauma. I don’t recall how many stitches the doc put in—maybe, three or four? But I do remember that by the time the doc was finished, Son #2 had fallen asleep in my arms.

On our way out the door, the doc touched my little son’s face affectionately and grinned at me.  “Go directly home. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200 dollars,” he whispered. I laughed out loud, and for the first the first time since Son #2’s birth, I knew that he was just a normal kid.