Denial

Baby's First Christmas

When a woman finds out she's pregnant her first thought is not usually, "I hope the baby is happy." I didn't, anyway. After those first few weeks, though, I kept hoping my child would some day align himself with normal. When you DO suspect a problem, though, you don't go telling everyone. Generally there's a rather enormous sense of denial despite that unshakeable undercurrent. Nobody wants to admit their child has a problem. Every time I bore my soul and dared mention his unhappiness to family, they would verbally pat me on the head as if I were an angry child, telling me I was just expecting him to be the sweetly compliant and gentle demeanor of my first. They also continually told me, "He's a boy! You're just comparing him to your girl and he's not going to be like her." I took these statements with a grain of salt, wanting to believe them but still unable to shake the feeling that something wasn't quite right with my baby. He rarely smiled, barely cooed or laughed- just screamed. He wasn't meant to be this unhappy. It just didn't seem right. I read back over my private blogs from that time and I see that I'm just oozing over my sweet boy, how he just wants to be held by Mama, and resolving to break away from the Post Partum Depression that was trying to swallow me. I even had myself fooled from time to time.
   When my sweet gift was four months old, his screams went from "I'm an angry elf!" to "Ouch, that hurts!" Mamas(and some daddies) will know what I mean. Rather than his general angst with life, his screams were sounding panicked, high-pitched, and urgent. He began running a constant low-grade fever that everyone- doctors, friends, family- attributed to early teething. After a week, the fever got higher and his screaming was soon joined by projectile vomiting. One particular sleepless night I had just finished nursing my little guy after changing his clothes and diaper from a vomiting fit at 3am when he began to scream again. Within minutes, the vomiting started again- all over himself, me, and the bed. I woke my husband up on his only night off of the week and told him I was taking the baby to the emergency room. And I went. Five hours, many tests, vials of blood, a catheter for urine collection, and pokingand prodding later, we left with a diagnosis of a urinary tract infection so severe they worried about his kidneys, and dehydration due to vomiting from the extreme pain. My mommy heart broke. My tiny baby had had this infection for who-knows-how-long and the pain was so severe his stomach was churning and rejecting his meals. He was started on oral antibiotics, had ultrasounds and still more catheters and urology exams, and a month later he was written a clean bill of health. And still he screamed. But of course! He was, after all, just being a boy.