I see at least two big themes in what I've written here in the past: sadness and miracles. This time, I think I've found my perfect intersection between those two themes. This time, I'm writing about my son.
Camille and I are the proud parents of a tall, skinny, precocious two year old girl. Her life is the miracle that inspired my first piece on this blog, as well as the next one. I try not to publish too much information about her online, but I haven't kept my family life a secret.
What I haven't told the Internet is that as of October 2015, we have been eagerly planning for her younger sibling's arrival. The doctors pointed out a few things we needed to watch out for, and they repeatedly reassured us that we could easily deal with these issues--if they even became issues--in their time. Further reading led me to believe that some of those risk factors were potentially pretty serious, and that many families had all of the risk factors with none of the complications they predict.
Yesterday, I hung up on my brother's phone call abruptly (sorry, Joel!) when I saw Camille in tears, looking terrified. She had just spoken with her doctor about some of her unexpected symptoms, and the doctor had told her to head straight to the hospital. We scrambled to make arrangements for our daughter, gratefully accepting her grandma's offer to drive across town, then rushed to the ER.
Writing about this stings... talking about it out loud is hell. And here goes.
After a few exams including an ultrasound, the PA working with us gave us "some news that's not so good." Baby's heart had stopped a few days before. Unlike his big sister, his heart didn't start right back up... it just stopped, and that was that. We stayed there overnight, waiting for all the things that have to happen after a miscarriage. It happened fairly fast... we were cleared to leave by this morning.
And that's where the miracles come in. It's a miracle that they could see all of those potential problems and warn us that there were risks. It's a miracle that there are machines and instruments and people who know how to use them. It's a miracle that those highly skilled people are also incredibly compassionate and good at listening. It's a miracle that we ended up with more than one person on our treatment team who had had a miscarriage, and could relate more completely. It's a miracle that a drop of Camille's blood could tell us so much about that kid and his life. It's a miracle that Camille is still alive and well, even with such overwhelming grief.
And that's where the sadness comes in. I've felt grief before. I've felt depression before. And now when I look at those moments and this one, it looks like I've been climbing the hill at the neighborhood park to train, and now I'm climbing Mt Everest.
I take my role as a parent very seriously. That role is also one of the parts of my life that brings me the most joy, the deepest sense that my life is whole. The thought of enriching that role with a new relationship was exciting. It still is, it just seems a lot more remote now. The realization that that expectation won't become reality as planned, it's... pain. The kind that won't ever really go away.
And the kind that we can learn to live with.
Which brings me back to the miracles. Isn't it amazing how we can survive such intense, agonizing pain? And isn't it amazing how we can feel happy even with all that pain? It's not an "instead of." It's a "both," like how climbers who summit Everest feel completely spent and sick from the altitude, even while they feel... whatever kind of satisfaction comes from sitting on top of the world.
Right now, I'm not ready for both. Right now, everything in me is crying out from the effort of gettin to base camp. I have a better climbing buddy than I could have asked for. I have a team of guides and fellow climbers that is all but guaranteed to get me to the top.
So let's keep climbing. They say the view from up there is miraculous.
We'll miss you, little guy. I won't forget.
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