This isn't the first traumatic experience I've had with my kids. Let's revisit some of my lowest moment of motherhood. There was the time I was sitting on the bathroom floor getting ready for church on Easter Sunday. Dan had already gone to church to help set up for the special services. I was home alone with Lauryn and 7 months pregnant with Morgan at the time. Lauryn was sitting next to me in full Easter dress as I was finishing putting my makeup on. She had found my stash of tearjerker candy and stuffed one into her mouth and was choking on it before I could get it away from her. I could even panic I went into auto pilot and plopped her into what little lap I had left and gave her a mini Heimlich maneuver. The candy went shooting out of her mouth and skittered across the area rug. I didn't even get a relieved sigh out, when she lunges for the still bouncing candy, and I am left wrestling her little grasping hands for the candy she had just choked on. I finally pry it from her sticky fingers and flush it down the toilet as she watches me indignantly.
There was also the scare during my pregnancy with Maxx. To start there was the early belief that his pregnancy was actually twins since I was measuring so much larger than for a single pregnancy. (I wanted to scream it's not twins I'm just fat!!) An early ultrasound proved that false. At a later appointment I agreed to the quad screen blood test to test for genetic problems. That choice added another 2 weeks to the most stressful times of my life list. (it's a mental list.. my list making obsession isn't that bad.. yet) My doctor called me to tell me that the results were positive for Trisomy 21 or in more common words Down Syndrome. It wasn't even the selfish thoughts that raced through my mind of how my life would be changed by this. The worries that haunted me were the common health problems that occur with down syndrome. The scariest for me was heart abnormalities. With a long family history of heart disease this broke my heart anytime I let myself dwell on it. We had to attend a counseling session with a genetic counselor before they would even begin my scan. I was on the edge of tears all morning after spending the previous two weeks praying and crying for the little being being carried inside my body. I knew that no matter what the little one would be loved. We just wanted to be prepared for what would come. Sitting through the scan I couldn't even sit in awe of seeing him move and could barely muster a giggle when the baby stubbornly refused to stay in position for measuring, making the whole process take twice as long. After a second check by the doctor we finally received the news that we not only had a healthy baby but it was a little boy. I was told that it was just a false positive on the quad test. My due date was off by a few short weeks which caused the timing of the blood test to be off. (there is only a short window when you can have the test and the results be even remotely accurate.)
That wasn't the worst of my trials. There was the week before Morgan's 3rd birthday when she almost died. I still have nightmares about this period in my life. I feel my hands begin to shake and palms sweating just thinking about it. I'll just leave it at, my children are not allowed to have any kind of jump rope or long ribbon or even any long strings. There will also never be a set of bunk beds in our house ever again. I'm left with the trauma that whenever a movie or TV show depicts a person hanging lifelessly I feel the bile rise into my throat and tears spring to my eyes. Even though it happened over 7 years ago I still flash back to that moment of discovering my little girl not breathing with the strap tied around her neck. Then the doctors repeatedly telling me over the next 5 days that I am lucky I found her when I did or she would not have survived or could have been left seriously harmed.
When people call me a paranoid parent or a helicopter mama for hovering nervously over my children, I just look at them with eyes glazed over with the horrors of my parenting experiences flashing behind them. They will never understand what I have been through until they have walked a while in my shoes. Call me a worrywart or whatever you will, but my kids will survive and thrive into adulthood. Despite their best efforts to do themselves and each other serious injury.
Long into the future when I am a crazy old lady sitting on my porch rocking away in a chair that isn't a rocker and holding conversations with people who aren't there. Just look at me kindly and remember the horrors that this mother has experienced on her road to raise her children to adulthood.
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