1 Mother 2 Another

In the years since Maddie and Cora have
been born, at least one – if not both of them – have
had all of the following:


Thrush

Whooping cough

Scarlet fever

A heart that spontaneously stops beating

Hand and mouth disease

Leukemia

Asperger syndrome

Hemophilia

Concussion

Brain tumor


Before you freak out and start sending condolence cards, no, my
children have not actually been diagnosed with any of these
diseases. But I can tell you that I spent at least one night on
each of these diseases: going the entire night absolutely CONVINCED
my child had (fill in the blank), and trying to figure out how I
would rearrange the rest of my life around this new
perspective.

Am I the only one? I mean, sure, we all
occasionally imagine our child’s going to catch some rare,
incurable disease and then you’ll become the sad stuff of
made-for-television movies, but I go beyond that. I feel in every
fiber of my being that this thing is going to come true, and when I
awake in the morning my child will be covered in 1) oozing sores;
2) unexplained bruises; 3) a head-to-toe rash – the list is
endless. I don’t mean that I’m worried about random
stuff out there – though I am – but rather, I see
something and think, “Ok, the way she’s acting might
mean she’s got a concussion. She probably doesn’t, and
if I rush her to the emergency room now I’m the over-reactive
parent. So I’ll just keep her home tonight. But she might
have a concussion, so I’m going to stay awake and worry over
that ‘maybe’ like it’s a smooth stone in my
pocket that I just can’t stop touching. Did I hear a sound?
Did she just fall out of her bed? Was that her falling out of her
bed? Is she still breathing? The monitor’s turned up as high
as it will go – why can’t I hear her breath?”


Repeat for the next eight hours.


No one ever told me that the nine months I was pregnant were the
EASIEST nine months of the mothering gig. I felt so smugly
martyr-like: I’ve given up Earl Grey tea! I don’t eat
blue cheese! No sacrifice is too great for my baby! But that was
the most in-control of my baby’s health I’ve ever been.
I was actually a protective barrier for her – me against the
world. And now I have to spend the rest of my life with my heart
literally walking around outside of my body – twice.


I think half of motherhood is spent – at least in my world
– talking yourself off the crazy ledge. Where a teeny, tiny
part of you knows that a bug did not actually fly into your
child’s ear and lay eggs, and is spending the night growing
larvae that will, come morning, eat your child’s brain tissue
and cause her to live in a special home the rest of her life, but a
much, MUCH bigger part of you knows that it’s your JOB to
consider that the bug scenarios might ACTUALLY BE TRUE (after all,
your child did say she felt a “buzzing” and
“wings” in her ear), and your child is DEPENDING on you
to figure that out and get her the care she needs before her 50
points of her IQ get eaten.


Which is where fathers come in. They stick around and can see the
crazy starting to appear in your eyes, and if you’re lucky,
your man will combine just the right amount of sympathy and
ridicule to keep you in Sanity Land. Which is how our emergency
room bills do not run in the thousands every month. Actually, just
thinking about what my husband would say if I roused him at 3 a.m.
and said, “I think I saw a bruise spontaneously form on
Maddie’s shin when I crept in to check on her –should
we take her to the hospital for an emergency spinal tap?” is
one of the things that keeps me from actually doing those things.


Believe me, I do not swim in the Scary Pool for kicks –
it’s not some titillating “what if” exercise for
me. I feel the weight of my job – of being THE MOMMY –
so keenly that I don’t have any choice but to join the swim
team some days. I’m getting a better handle on it, and know
it’s simply a part of my life now that I’m a parent.


I’m also pretty sure I’m not the only person doing the
Crazy Crawl in the fast lap lane.