Guilty as Charged

I wrote this post this morning, before I was called by daycare to inform me Will would need to be picked up. I’ve since been at the doctors office for 3 hours and counting. I guess it’s ironic that the chain of events seem to support everything I was writing in the first place–as parents we do whatever it takes to make sure our babies are happy & healthy and while its hard to take a step back, it’s also important to remember it can always be worse. After chest X-rays, nebulizers and labored breathing-it looks like the common cold, that was costing me sleep – has turned to pneumonia and RSV & likely earned us a hospital stay.
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The last two nights have been miserable. Poor little Will has been sick, coughing nonstop and so congested he can barely breath. His chest rattles all day long and his sleep schedule is no more. Our house is functioning on zero sleep and just trying to survive without killing each other. This morning as I was up trying to get Ella to speech by 7:30 a.m. I thought, man this sucks!

Will is never hard. He’s always happy, eats like a champ and sleeps for 12 hours straight. It’s not sucky. On the other hand, when Ella was a baby it was hard & sucky! I’m not sure if all of our struggles were due to her cleft lip & palate or if it was because she is a pistol, but nonetheless it wasn’t easy. On top of surgeries, she cried all day long and hated sleeping.

As first time parents we were so overwhelmed that other challenging things most parents experience went unnoticed. If she had a cough, it was no big deal. Dry skin, constipation, diaper choice? Who cares! We were just lucky she was alive.

A friend of mine has a child born with spina bifida and while a cleft is not nearly as serious, it was nice to have a mom who could relate to raising a child who wasn’t “normal.” We used to share stories of “other” parents ridiculous complaints and laugh. One day a woman, we’ll call her Dorothy, went on and on about her child’s dry skin and how embarrassing it was to take them out in public. Embarrassing in public? I wanted to say, “imagine the stares at a child with a gaping hole in their face or one in a wheelchair!”

I tried to remind myself that we all have our own problems and if dry skin was the worst thing that happened to Dorothy, it just might seem terrible but regardless, choose your audience wisely.

And yet here I am, guilty as charged! A parent to a semi-normal (I’m convinced there is no such thing as normal) child, complaining and feeling sorry for myself because for two nights I haven’t gotten any sleep because he’s sick. I have had worse, I’ve dealt with more but because my current reality is much easier, these past two days seem like a big deal.

The fact is-no matter what your circumstances are-every parent wants their baby to be happy & healthy and when things go wrong, no matter how serious-it’s a big deal. We want things to be perfect, but that’s not life. At the end of the day, all you can do is what you think is best!