Trauma

On the list of my most traumatizing days as a parent, today has to be number one. And on the list of traumatized family members, Ken wins top spot, with me second and Nora – even though she was the one to whom the trauma occurred – ranks a distant third. And I guess that’s a good thing.

Despite having a relatively cranky morning and a different routine due to daycare closure for staff development, it seemed like a boring and normal Monday. That all changed when I got a text from Ken during a very serious meeting at school.

I could hear those capital letters screaming at me over the phone, so I ran into the hallway and called him.

“What is going on?” I asked, listening to Nora screaming in the background.

“Well, she just started choking, and then she was gasping for air. And then she coughed up some mucous and now she is screaming.”

“Is she breathing?”

“Yes. She’s not turning blue. I think she’s breathing.”

He sounded concerned. Ken’s a calm and patient person in almost every situation. If he was shaken by this I knew something had to be wrong.

I flashed back to last night when I had decided to skip a whole day of pulmicort treatments because it was already really late – way past her bedtime for the second night in a row. I immediately thought of asthma, feeling the immediate guilt for skipping that one precious dose. My lack of rational thinking in a moment of panic caused me to immediately conclude that this must be Nora’s first asthma attack.

“Give her albuterol and call the doctor,” I said. Storming back into the meeting I asked for someone to take me right home. Everyone jumped up, either eager to help me get to my needy child or to leave the meeting. I called Ken again and he said she was calming a bit, but I could still hear her, clearly unhappy, crying in the background. This time it was muffled by the albuterol misting out of the nebulizer.

My very calm colleague (who insisted he drive since other not-so-calm-colleagues may have landed me in a ditch in our desperation to reach Nora), talked me through the situation on the long 5 minute drive. We decided that if she was crying that loudly she must be getting enough air. We decided that the choking Ken described wasn’t really consistent with asthma symptoms. We decided that I couldn’t blame myself for the missed pulmicort dose.

About a minute from the house, my phone rang.

“How is she?” I immediately asked.

“Fine now that she coughed out the washer she apparently swallowed.”

No asthma, though maybe the albuterol (which makes Nora cough pretty violently) helped her cough out the nickel size washer that she had somehow swallowed.

I walked in (accompanied by my colleague who probably wanted to make sure everything was fine and that Nora really had recovered as quickly as it seemed and that Ken wasn’t going to spontaneously combust from the stress of the previous 15 minutes), and was relieved to see Nora on her changing table, telling me first off that she had a poop and secondly that she had a hurt throat. Ken wiped his brow of the accumulated sweat and handed her off to me so he could go and fold into the couch and try to recover.

Any parent who has had the same or similar trauma happen to them knows the what-if, could-have, should-have, why-me feelings that lurched in my stomach for the next couple of hours while Nora ran around finding roly polies and building with blocks and eating two cereal bars and a banana. She forgot her trauma quickly while Ken and I relived it numerous times. I had a pretty severe choking paranoia before, watching every bite Nora takes pretty closely, avoiding any food even on the outskirts of the choking hazard list. Now that paranoia apparently needs to focus more on foreign objects, not on the food on her plate.

We tried to explain to Nora that she can’t ever put things in her mouth, that her mouth is for food only. She can repeat that rule. She can tell us she will only eat food. But I’m not sure if she really understands what happened today. I’m not sure if she knows how lucky she is that it went in her food pipe, not her wind pipe, that she was able to cough it out, that she didn’t choose something just slightly larger.

As Ken and I were putting her to bed, we reminded her one last time. “Remember you can only eat food, Nora. Remember to never put anything but food in your mouth.”

“I scared you?” she asked.

“Yes. You really scared us.”

Maybe she understands, but probably she doesn’t. But she knew that she could call me back into her room three times tonight instead of the usual one; that she could get extra kisses and water and cuddles; that she could say “night-night Mama” and make me melt just a little more than I have in a while.

Roller Coaster

I am frustrated and pop Nora’s bagel in a ziploc and throw it in her lunch bag. I chase her around again and attempt to put socks and shoes on her uncooperative feet. Ken steams about the house being a mess despite the fact that I was home all day Sunday. Nothing is going well. I am late for work, frustrated by Nora’s uncooperative behavior (though I can’t really blame her – she has no concept of being at work on time). At daycare, I tell Miss L to feed Nora the rest of her breakfast at snack time and walk out the door, hoping I am right that the day can only imrove.

Twenty-four hours later I am watching Nora play calmly with play-dough as she eats all of her bagel without me even asking her if she is ready for another bite. She happily gets dressed and puts her shoes and socks on while holding her nebulizer cooperatively to her face. She dances in her chair as the music on Sesame Street changes. I am dressed, have had my coffee, straightened my hair, and we even have time to spare. And to top it all off, when I put Nora down at daycare, she runs over to Miss L and gives her a giant excited hug, pushing any possible mom guilt way to the back of my mind. I thank Miss L and walk out the door, hoping that the day is going to stay as good as it started.

How can these two morning happen right in a row? Well, that’s life with a toddler, I guess. You never know what the next moment is going to bring. It could bring hopping around the house with a huge grin and a proud clap; or it could be tears and clinging and constant “no.” Ah, the roller coaster of toddlerhood.

Talking About Talking

When Nora was a tiny baby she would cry and I would say, “If only you could tell me what’s wrong.” I wished for the day Nora would begin to truly communicate, for a time I wouldn’t have to try everything to find the right solution.

Those days aren’t totally here – but for a two year old Nora does have a pretty impressive vocabulary (if I do say so myself). I love that she can say hello to me in the morning, that she can tell me what she wants to eat, that she can tell me many of the imaginative and silly things that blossom in her little head.

But there are some unexpected “troubles” that come along with the ability to express herself.

Last week at a restaurant Nora noticed a woman coming to sit at a nearby table. The woman was in a wheelchair, which I guess Nora had never really seen before. As the woman approached Nora began her typical excited grunts, and then right as the woman was in front of her, she said, “Look, dada, a car!” It could have been a lot worse, I know. But it made me wonder about that day. What do you do? Say? when it is a lot worse.

On the way out of that same restaurant Ken and Nora were playing a high-five game. Nora hit Ken’s hand, Ken hit Nora’s hand, etc. But then she just stopped. She looked at me. She said: “Dada hurt me.” And we laughed. But that could be not so funny one day too.

And today, when I came home from work for my off period to let Ken do a little work since she was home sick again, Nora did it again. She showed me that maybe it is easier when you don’t know what is wrong, when you can believe that it is only hunger, a dirty diaper or sleepiness. I told her that I had to go back to school. She hugged me and said, “I miss you, Mama.”

I choked up, so I couldn’t tell her I miss her too.

Guess who’s sick again?

If you guessed Nora you win: two different steroids, one albuterol, an antibiotic just to be safe and a talkative toddler who’d like to breathe better.

Personal Day

Nora slept until 7:15 today. I can write that because I am sure it was a fluke and will never happen again even if I do put it out to the universe. But it was amazing. Amazing. A great beginning to my day dedicated to me.

I had planned a few weeks ago to take a “personal day” today – on my first day of my two week school break. I had determined that I would put all my mom guilt about daycare aside for a day and just think about me. I would send her to daycare and I would stay home. Alone.

Ever since I started sending Nora to daycare last year I have had this horrible nagging guilty feeling from the second the bell rings at the end of school to the time 10 minutes later when I pull into the church parking lot to pick Nora up. If I am not in school I should be with her. Now. Even being 2 minutes later than normal makes my heart race. It is irrational, I know, but I can’t stop it.

Or, I couldn‘t stop it. Sometime in the last three weeks, as Nora’s health returned to normal, I realized that I was tired. That I hadn’t really had a guilt-free gone-from-Nora moment in two years. That I needed to kick that awful guilty feeling to the curb and relax on the couch. Take a day for me.

I prepared myself for this for a while. I confessed to Miss Laura this morning when I dropped her off that I was taking time for myself. I felt that guilt rise up. But I kissed Nora goodbye and went out the door to begin my day for me.

I had pictured myself reading a whole book wrapped in the covers of my bed. Or watching trash TV on the couch all day. Or napping all day long to catch up for two years of sleep deprivation. I warned Ken that I was not to be bothered about chores on my day to myself. He complied.

None of my super-relaxing scenarios turned into reality. I didn’t have a book to read. Trash TV got boring really fast. And I did nap, but after sleeping to 7 am today I didn’t feel as wiped as I sometimes do. I left daycare, went to the post office to mail my Christmas cards, came home and did the dishes, watched some Ellen, surfed the Internet. Ken and I went to Ikea to get Nora’s Christmas gift. And then I did nap for an hour or so after we got home. Then I went to get Nora. And we went to the park.

I did enjoy being in the house without Nora around for a bit. But it got quiet. And all the little reminders of her – including the ornaments she hung on all the knobs around the house before she left this morning – made me miss her at the same time I was relishing my silence. The nagging guilt left me alone today, as I had hoped it would. And now, after taking time for me, I am more than ready to spend my two weeks with little “me” time and lots of “us” time.