We've come a long way, baby.

17 months ago today, we brought our son home from the hospital.  Zachary was born via scheduled c-section, and it was an uncomplicated and normal birth.  He had some problems the first night - after nursing, he would fall asleep and then make horrible choking noises.  I still remember the terror like nothing I'd ever felt the first time that happened.  I was still attached to an IV and catheter and could not get out of bed, his bassinet was out of my reach, and I couldn't GET TO HIM while he made these awful noises.  It was my job to press the panic button and communicate what was going on.  The nurse came in, took one look at him and grabbed him up to literally run him down to the NICU.    As a C-section baby, he had some amniotic fluid that hadn't fully cleared because he didn't travel down the birth canal and have that compression.  This, coupled with the fact that he had undiagnosed reflux, was causing him to choke a bit on the thicker fluid.  He cleared that incident on his own without having to have a tube into his stomach.  After the heat of the moment, the nurse turned to me and said "OK, you have this panicked look on your face.  Talk to me.  What's going on?"  I couldn't really put words into the absolute helplessness I felt, being connected to tubes and unable to get to my baby, unable to help him.

Nursing was not an easy adjustment for either of us, and Zac lost 12% of his body weight in the first two days.  I was instructed to wake him every two hours to nurse, and we supplemented with a little formula while waiting for nature to do it's magic, my milk to come in, and for the whole thing to get easier.  On the first day home, we had snuggled up for a nap together and I had an alarm set to wake me up to nurse him.

The alarm went off and Mark and I woke up, but we could NOT get Zac to wake up.  I played music for him, stroked his face, we clapped and snapped, I poked and prodded, we even put a cold washcloth on his face and he was having nothing to do with it.  I started to get scared, and we called the consulting nurse line.

I went through their script of questions, and I provided answers.  "No, he has not had a wet or poopy diaper in the last 2 hours.", "Yes, he's breathing", "No, it doesn't seem like he's in distress."  After about 10 minutes on the phone answering questions, she told me it just wasn't worth it to take a chance with a newborn, and that we needed to return with him to the urgent care immediately.

As I was hanging up the phone, there was the tell-tale sound of a soiled diaper and we changed him while he was still refusing to wake up, and returned to the hospital.  I couldn't tell if the diaper was wet AND poopy or just poopy, so I bundled it into a bag and put it in my pocket, and off we went.

I sat in the back seat with him, shining the light of my cell phone on him so I could see if he was still breathing, and could assess if there were any changes to his skin color.  It was a silent ride while Mark drove with focus back to the hospital.

By the time they got us into triage, he had started to wake up. By the time the pediatrician got into the exam room, he was wide awake and ready to chow down.  It turns out, we had brought our baby to the emergency room because he was just really soundly asleep. It became a story we shared with a lot of chagrin and self deprecation.

Fast forward 17 months.  A couple nights ago, Zac tripped and took a header into the door jam, resulting in a scrape and a SPECTACULAR goose egg.  I held him to comfort him while he cried, and blew gently in his face when it seemed like it had been too long since his last sobbing inhale.  He looked up at me with the giant eyes that I love so much and he wailed "BAAAAAAAAAA?"  Even though it was dinner time, I said "Absolutely, sweetheart.  You can have a bottle."  Mark heated him up some milk and I continued to hold and rock and shhhhsh him and tell him he was ok.

"Do you think we should take him to the emergency room?  Does he need stitches?", Mark asked worriedly.

"I think he's fine.  Let's just put some ice on it" I replied.

Zac calmed down, and then I got the shakes and started crying.  He was playing happily on the floor while the tears dripped off my cheeks and nose and I put my head in my hands.  "I just worry about him SO MUCH", I told Mark.

We reassured each other that he really was acting fine, and I went forward with preparing Z's dinner for him.  By the time he sat down to eat, he had completely forgotten about the whole thing, outside of a little annoyance at me for putting a band-aid on his head.

I was out for drinks with a few of the moms from our parenting group, and I showed off the picture of Z's goose egg.  One of the moms asked if we took him to the emergency room, and I shrugged and said "No, we just kept an eye on his pupils and how he was walking and gave him a little tylenol before bed.  He shook it off pretty well."

She said "Wow, you've come a long ways from taking him to the emergency room because he was asleep."

I thought about that, and I thought about this journey.  We really HAVE come a long way!  Emotionally, mentally, and physically for Zac, we are not the same parents today that we were when we brought him home.  Neither one of us worry any less, but I like to think we've all changed for the better as we've got to know each other.