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Feb. 1st, 2007 09:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lollardfish"Did you have any genetic testing done?"
"I'm not sure. I know Health Partners did a lot of tests, but we weren't told anything."
"Well, he has a number of characteristics indicative of Down's Syndrome."
From that moment, life has changed a lot. Sure, every parent's life changes when their child is born, but those words at that moment (perhaps two minutes after birth), broke me for a few moments. I thought horrible thoughts - adoption, abortion, will the child live, if he doesn't, will it be easier, what does it mean for him, what does it mean for me - truly horrible thoughts. Then I had to tell his mother.
It's really not welcome to Holland. Holland may be where we are at now, or at least where we are going, but at that moment, it was a lot more like Hell. But since then, things have been getting better and better, seemingly by the hour.
When I look at my baby, all I see is my beautiful son, not a syndrome. It helps that he essentially has no symptoms. I guess I can see a little almond shape in the eyes. He rarely cries (although more and more), typical of children with this condition. His heart, we now know, is fully normal. He eats very well, nurses even, and is putting on weight. He tracks objects with his eyes, bats at the monkey, giraffe, and parrot hanging from his gymini (a play mat with toys that hang down). He lifts up his head and rolls to the 45 degree angle from time to time. We may find him susceptible to respiratory infections, slow to develop mentally and physically, and bearing features that mark him as different in our society - but right now, if the nurses, doctors, and the chromosome test hadn't confirmed trisomy-21, we wouldn't know that my darling boy has more chromosomes than you do. We wouldn't know.
But he does.
I really don't cry anymore, although that was an early challenge for me - learning to cry. Men, well, me anyway, just don't cry in our culture, and boy did I need to. Shannon and I sobbed on each other in the hospital once everyone had left shortly after delivery (it might have been 2 hours, who knows really). I cried when I went to the internet in the family waiting room to post my locked birth announcement. I cried as I thought more terrible thoughts - maybe Bruce won't want to be his godfather. I should let him off the hook. Shannon said, "I never want to speak to any of our friends again, ever." I cried. I mostly tried to be stable and strong whenever we were together after that, though I wept on her chest as I heard Kurt's song for the first time, at 6 AM, trying to get ourselves together to make it to the hospital to feed him at 7 (on, I think, the third day of his life?). I still haven't really heard the song. I tried to play it this morning, but still couldn't. I hope that passes someday.
But here's the thing, my son is sleeping (snoring cutely) on my chest as I write this, and there are no tears. Not because I need to be strong for him, but because there's just nothing to cry about.
On the second day of Nicholas' life, Bruce, Karen, Laura Jean, and David all came to the hospital at various points. They brought cake, prosecco, cards, and presents (plush Cthulhu comes to mind). They said congratulations a lot. They all said how beautiful he is (which he is). This was really a moment where my vision shifted, shifted from seeing my child as a bundle of potential symptoms and fears, to being just my beautiful baby boy.
Ok, there are the tears.
I'm never going to forget that moment when the midwife, a wonderful woman, looked at me with such empathy and uttered her terrible sentence. There are worse sentences uttered in hospitals, far worse. A lot of them involve death, and those come with the heavy burden of an imminent ending. This one brings with it the different burden of a life, hopefully a long one. Things change in your head when you hear something like that, when someone tells you that whatever hopes, dreams, visions, ideas, realities in which you thought you were living, it's all changed. Fortunately, it turns out that Shannon is strong, our friends are strong, I'm finding my own strength.
Best of all, Nicholas is strong enough to carry us all.
Except for right now, when his bottom is dirty, he's waking, and probably needs to eat.
"I'm not sure. I know Health Partners did a lot of tests, but we weren't told anything."
"Well, he has a number of characteristics indicative of Down's Syndrome."
From that moment, life has changed a lot. Sure, every parent's life changes when their child is born, but those words at that moment (perhaps two minutes after birth), broke me for a few moments. I thought horrible thoughts - adoption, abortion, will the child live, if he doesn't, will it be easier, what does it mean for him, what does it mean for me - truly horrible thoughts. Then I had to tell his mother.
It's really not welcome to Holland. Holland may be where we are at now, or at least where we are going, but at that moment, it was a lot more like Hell. But since then, things have been getting better and better, seemingly by the hour.
When I look at my baby, all I see is my beautiful son, not a syndrome. It helps that he essentially has no symptoms. I guess I can see a little almond shape in the eyes. He rarely cries (although more and more), typical of children with this condition. His heart, we now know, is fully normal. He eats very well, nurses even, and is putting on weight. He tracks objects with his eyes, bats at the monkey, giraffe, and parrot hanging from his gymini (a play mat with toys that hang down). He lifts up his head and rolls to the 45 degree angle from time to time. We may find him susceptible to respiratory infections, slow to develop mentally and physically, and bearing features that mark him as different in our society - but right now, if the nurses, doctors, and the chromosome test hadn't confirmed trisomy-21, we wouldn't know that my darling boy has more chromosomes than you do. We wouldn't know.
But he does.
I really don't cry anymore, although that was an early challenge for me - learning to cry. Men, well, me anyway, just don't cry in our culture, and boy did I need to. Shannon and I sobbed on each other in the hospital once everyone had left shortly after delivery (it might have been 2 hours, who knows really). I cried when I went to the internet in the family waiting room to post my locked birth announcement. I cried as I thought more terrible thoughts - maybe Bruce won't want to be his godfather. I should let him off the hook. Shannon said, "I never want to speak to any of our friends again, ever." I cried. I mostly tried to be stable and strong whenever we were together after that, though I wept on her chest as I heard Kurt's song for the first time, at 6 AM, trying to get ourselves together to make it to the hospital to feed him at 7 (on, I think, the third day of his life?). I still haven't really heard the song. I tried to play it this morning, but still couldn't. I hope that passes someday.
But here's the thing, my son is sleeping (snoring cutely) on my chest as I write this, and there are no tears. Not because I need to be strong for him, but because there's just nothing to cry about.
On the second day of Nicholas' life, Bruce, Karen, Laura Jean, and David all came to the hospital at various points. They brought cake, prosecco, cards, and presents (plush Cthulhu comes to mind). They said congratulations a lot. They all said how beautiful he is (which he is). This was really a moment where my vision shifted, shifted from seeing my child as a bundle of potential symptoms and fears, to being just my beautiful baby boy.
Ok, there are the tears.
I'm never going to forget that moment when the midwife, a wonderful woman, looked at me with such empathy and uttered her terrible sentence. There are worse sentences uttered in hospitals, far worse. A lot of them involve death, and those come with the heavy burden of an imminent ending. This one brings with it the different burden of a life, hopefully a long one. Things change in your head when you hear something like that, when someone tells you that whatever hopes, dreams, visions, ideas, realities in which you thought you were living, it's all changed. Fortunately, it turns out that Shannon is strong, our friends are strong, I'm finding my own strength.
Best of all, Nicholas is strong enough to carry us all.
Except for right now, when his bottom is dirty, he's waking, and probably needs to eat.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Still proud
Date: 2007-02-01 04:52 pm (UTC)You felt the things I thought you might. You're learning the things I saw that you would. You are recognizing a strength that I spotted straight away in you're earliest posts after Nicholas' birth.
I'm smiling for you.
See you Friday