Birthdays happen – with five children, often;) Yet it means what – recognition of another year, yes. To them, a chance for parties and presents, sure. To me, it means more, so much that they cannot understand.
Each birthday is a reminder of the day my life changed utterly, irrevocably. Their new life created a new version of me. Each birth (and each lost sibling, for I never forget my other five) brought me new life, new meaning, new lessons. A mother of one, of two is not the same as a mother of three, or four – or five.
Yet his birth was the most profound of them all. It was the most traumatic. The whole birth was dangerous and traumatic in many ways for us both. I hovered in a place between being and not being, life and death. He did die, and was resurrected. I remember looking over in a haze, receding, the theatre feeling distant, and seeing him held up briefly to me. (Then they needed to save him, i suppose, i did not find out until after what had happened. He stopped breathing on the way to NICU, but the angels that work there gave me my son back).
Oddly, in the moment of eternity that lasted less than a few seconds, lasted forever, stretched into eternity, sharply etched in my memory, we seemed to lock eyes, and I promised him I would try if he would. I had been terribly unhappy at home, all I lived for was my children, now I would fight for them too – for him. I heard a voice telling me I could not leave, calling my name. It was the silver thread back, or so it seemed at the time. My sister friend was calling me back, holding my hand, as anesthetists argued over my head about dosages, someone worried about me, losing me. Their argument struck me as funny at the time…and I owe her my life, in so many ways.
My son had a two week stay in NICU, where he thrived and never looked back. He was vast in a world of miniatures, he thrived there, but he had not thrived in utero, it had been a most difficult pregnancy, I lost weight, was very stressed, and he was underweight at nearly 6 pounds. This was bad enough, but not enough for NICU – but he had been breathing fluid in the three attempts to extract him, in a transverse position, head against the existing Caesarian scar, about to rupture and almost certainly kill us both. The resulting lung infection from drowning in fluid was what he needed to recover from.
I did not thrive post birth, I was torn between two worlds, there and home with my other children – and the distant partner, angry and unsupportive emotionally, who I found then was having an affair with a friend. It is just detail now, then it was soul crushing. Not unexpected, not even unusual, but still, it was too big then. So, I put it aside. My poor ex, so unhappy in himself. I feel sorrow for him now, what a confused place he found himself in. A good man but wounded. That is all of his tale, for that is my side I can share, the rest, that is is his to keep.
I was almost numb with sorrow and exhaustion, recovering from a surgical birth, a hugely difficult Caesarian after a difficult tenth pregnancy. I was visiting the hospital, twenty minutes away, every four hours, like a mechanical device, clockwork automatic, stumbling in a haze. If not for my sister friends, with food and visits, my guardian angels, his godmothers, my own personal support team, I would not have made it.
With their help, and my own determination to help him any way i could, I went, with reserves I did not know I had, refusing painkillers so they would not affect my son through the breast milk I would express in a room, on an impersonal, sterile, not him machine. This dragged through a lifetime, an epoch, a mere week. Any parent with a child in NICU tells you the same, time becomes different, meaningless. This dragged on in a seemingly unending churn of days and nights, light and dark, what did it matter, the alarm said time, go.
Until the precious day he was a week old, and I held him, skin to skin, awkward and oddly scared, with his tubes and oxygen mask to be near his face at all times. I held him, and he turned and fed, naturally, and I cried. Tears streamed down my face, and I didn’t know until a nurse handed my a tissue.
Her silence and understanding I will never forget.
The joyful day I was allowed to stay in with him, to get the doctors to sign off if we were successful feeding overnight, was the day of the mistress calling me to apologize, of confrontation and argument. My relationship with my partner was probably, in hindsight, over from that day, not that I think it ever stood a chance. We did go on to marry, I was numb, so dead inside, but it was inevitably doomed. There is more, so many mistakes on both sides, but let those ghosts lie, for it is not about him any more, ever again, I have forgiven and moved on. He is merely a person who happens to be the much loved father of two of the most important people in my life, and as such, he gets that respect. His failures as a partner to me, mine to him, are history now.
Once my son came home, I began to physically heal. It was years before I felt fully healed, I think when I was on my own again, and could stop and breathe and grieve for what I wished I had known, not what was. Peace, a chance to build a new life.
The accident I had had a few years earlier decided my new life was to take a different form than I imagined, as i deteriorated. So it is, here I am, another birthday. Yes, I have daily chronic pain physically, but not emotionally as I had at his birth. I do not merely exist anymore. I live, fully and joyfully.
I look at all my children with an unceasing sense of joy and wonder. These amazing individuals, these brilliant shining people came from me? Not one of them fails to be a joy.
My son, the only boy after four girls, was a shock to my feminine world, but oh! How wonderful, how lucky it was:) He was my surprise, my bonus, my unexpectedly conceived gift. I am so lucky with all of them, but there is a special sense of extra fortune smiling on me when I look at him, so strong and sturdy, my indestructible prodigy, crawling at 5 mths, running at 7 mths, no surface left unclimbed before he was 1 year old…
I am lucky the accident happened before he was two, but held off really crippling me until now. He was a bundle of anarchy, an intrepid explorer who knew no boundaries, who could count to 100 when he was less than 2, could figure out any damn child proof lock or gate or device invented, and has a mind that even now, astounds me with his leaps of intuitive understanding, especially in logic and maths. I suspect he is, as everyone who sees and knows him says, much like his father and mother in his geeky heritage, his intense absorption in anything computer related, and curious to a fault. He is a curious blend in looks of being both the spitting image of his dad and my brother somehow. I was part of it, dammit, none of them look like me!! Probably for the best;)
Perpetual motion next to his sisters...
And thank heavens for a 1/3 acre, with swings and cubby house and sand pit and trampolines, dogs to run with, a grandfather on hand who teaches him about wood working in the shed, as his father also does. Male friends of many years, who teach him paper planes, video games, and kicking the ball delights.
Today we have his family party. Next week, his friends party, at McDonalds (by request), and will have to get further invites tomorrow, as ten friends seems to have, as ever in these cases, grown to 14 must haves. (next month, the social butterfly, HRH Princess turns 9, and I shudder at the various plans she is making. Worst is currently a sleepover. Very little sleep is EVER gotten on those damn things, especially by parents and grumpy older sisters, who are actually real dears with them. I wonder if Ms 24 would like to attend? 
) )
The real celebration of the event is here, in my heart. I do not think anyone can truly understand the depth of meaning when i say – Happy birthday, my son.
- posted from K9, my companion iPad
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