Hitting the Pause Button for a Little Bit
Our youngest and newest grandson, Ace Walker Mastroianni, ran into a road bump in his nascent life a week ago today that required a week's stay at Children's Hospital, Minneapolis, in the Infant Care Center unit.
Children's hospitals in general, I think, do everything humanly possible to make this stress overload experience as gentle as it can potentially be for parents, family and friends. The unit is quiet and dimly lit. I mentioned to my daughter Bridget, Ace's mommy par excellence, that you could tell the babies were sick because there was hardly any crying. Everyone in the room is overwhelmed, including the infants. The staff is compassionate, concerned, attentive. But it's still the proverbial hot mess. In Ace's situation, it was a matter of ruling out issues, beginning with the life threatening and working down the ladder from there. Basically his 'bottom rung' was that his tummy isn't strong enough to digest and move waste like it should. Bridget, for whom cheese was invented, has gone dairy free and in the meantime, Ace is on a formula easier for him to digest. After three weeks of a dairy-less diet, she will resume breastfeeding with her dairy free breastmilk and hope that works. Unrelated to the reason for his hospital stay, they found Ace has a deficiency of Alpha-1 Antritrypsan liver enzyme which potentially contributed to his jaundice. It’s nothing severe and could have potentially gone unnoticed his whole life but since it’s been spotted, they will monitor it from time to time.
During this time, Bridget, Darin and Sloane hit the pause button on their lives. I did, too, as I wanted to be available for whatever they might need. Predominantly I was on Sloane patrol--she is my 3 1/2 year old granddaughter who refers to Ace as her "baby brudder." I realize these situations are ridiculously stressful for the parents and I'm weighing in here that they are also stressful for the grandparents. Not seeking sympathy, just saying. Your heart cries out for the tiny grandbaby and breaks for your child going through this with their child. At times it feels as if it is not simply adding together the human components (baby+parent 1 + parent 2+grandchild), which would explode enough, rather more like the human components are compounded to an exponential factor. And you feel, at least I felt, compelled to remain cool, calm and collected for the parents and grandchildren when you are anything but. More than can be abided, right?
And yet, somehow, everyone powers through. This is not the first time the pause button will be hit, nor the last. Prayers and hopes for the intensity of this experience to subside are answered. Something(s)--related to this, entirely different--may and with the eventuality of certainty, will pop up. The experiences are placed into your Bag O'Life, which includes strategies for managing during these times. When necessary, you will retrieve these for use as the ground floor on which to layer further planks. The older we grow, the higher the ground floor rises. We feel obligated to share the wealth honed in all those planks, even if not requested. I reminded myself that making the yummy noises when Bridget talked ("um..um-hum...I see...) is what she needed to just be in her moments with her baby and her husband and her daughter. I wasn't always successful since I am the Mother of 20 (or more) Questions. Ah, lifelong learning.
There were some incredible families for whom the birth of their child caused a forceful slamming down on the pause button. I felt they were remarkable in how, in the midst of that, they seemed capable of taking their fingers off, if only while they were eating lunch or walking the halls.
So today we take the aggregate deep breaths and move on. Ace is home.
Children's hospitals in general, I think, do everything humanly possible to make this stress overload experience as gentle as it can potentially be for parents, family and friends. The unit is quiet and dimly lit. I mentioned to my daughter Bridget, Ace's mommy par excellence, that you could tell the babies were sick because there was hardly any crying. Everyone in the room is overwhelmed, including the infants. The staff is compassionate, concerned, attentive. But it's still the proverbial hot mess. In Ace's situation, it was a matter of ruling out issues, beginning with the life threatening and working down the ladder from there. Basically his 'bottom rung' was that his tummy isn't strong enough to digest and move waste like it should. Bridget, for whom cheese was invented, has gone dairy free and in the meantime, Ace is on a formula easier for him to digest. After three weeks of a dairy-less diet, she will resume breastfeeding with her dairy free breastmilk and hope that works. Unrelated to the reason for his hospital stay, they found Ace has a deficiency of Alpha-1 Antritrypsan liver enzyme which potentially contributed to his jaundice. It’s nothing severe and could have potentially gone unnoticed his whole life but since it’s been spotted, they will monitor it from time to time.
And yet, somehow, everyone powers through. This is not the first time the pause button will be hit, nor the last. Prayers and hopes for the intensity of this experience to subside are answered. Something(s)--related to this, entirely different--may and with the eventuality of certainty, will pop up. The experiences are placed into your Bag O'Life, which includes strategies for managing during these times. When necessary, you will retrieve these for use as the ground floor on which to layer further planks. The older we grow, the higher the ground floor rises. We feel obligated to share the wealth honed in all those planks, even if not requested. I reminded myself that making the yummy noises when Bridget talked ("um..um-hum...I see...) is what she needed to just be in her moments with her baby and her husband and her daughter. I wasn't always successful since I am the Mother of 20 (or more) Questions. Ah, lifelong learning.
There were some incredible families for whom the birth of their child caused a forceful slamming down on the pause button. I felt they were remarkable in how, in the midst of that, they seemed capable of taking their fingers off, if only while they were eating lunch or walking the halls.
So today we take the aggregate deep breaths and move on. Ace is home.
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