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I my loved one’s watch am keeping

June 1, 2006

Before Riley was born, I worried – like, I think, all pregnant women do – about something going horribly wrong. I worried at every checkup, every test; the nuchal translucency screening, the ultrasounds, every poke and prod that might reveal some unthinkable problem.

I worried when I had spotting, then full-on bleeding; I worried when Riley moved a lot (is he moving too much?), I worried when he was still (is he…dead?); I worried when we did the 3-D ultrasound for fear we would peer at the glowing imagery and observe in perfect detail: three separate noses.

I became downright morbid at times, sitting propped in bed saucer-eyed reading books that told of nightmarish births where babies choked on cords or meconium or whose hearts stopped for no reason.

There were two things that happened during my pregnancy that scared me deeply, that made me afraid to relax and believe for one second that things would turn out okay. Things that, despite my usual dismissal of superstition, bothered me, kind of a whole lot.

The first thing was when I traveled to Japan last March on business. We had gone to a temple where you could exchange a coin for a tiny rolled-up paper fortune, an omikuji, and when I opened mine, it read “The person you are waiting for will not arrive.”

“I don’t like my fortune,” I said immediately, and my companions showed me how you could tie your bad fortune to a post and leave it behind you. I did that, with shaking hands, but I saw those words when I closed my eyes that night, and I never quite forgot them. The person you are waiting for will not arrive.

A few months later – well after we knew our baby’s sex and had settled on his name – JB and I were down south at his family’s cabin on the Umpqua river, and one afternoon we spent some time walking through an old cemetery in the area. Most of the people buried in this cemetery are multiple generations of families, and many rows have the same last name on each crumbling stone marker. I was lumbering my bulk around in the summer heat, looking for good photo opportunities, when I saw the family name Riley. When I looked down the row, I saw a small, plain headstone that read Baby Boy Riley.

I don’t know how long I stared at that thing. Or how many times I thought of it later. Baby Boy Riley. Baby Boy Riley.

Oh, I don’t know where I’m going with this. Just that I was so scared for his well-being, and he was okay, and he’s still okay, and I am so incredibly grateful (I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately). And the fear never goes away, does it? The worry, it will always be there.

I can’t guarantee his safety. I can’t insulate him from every possible harm in the world. There’s something necessary about truly understanding that, about taking on that burden in order to give perspective to my responsibilities. But it pinpricks my eyes, it takes my breath away, it leaves me reeling.

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Comments

30 Responses to “I my loved one’s watch am keeping”

  1. rebecca on June 1st, 2006 2:22 pm

    I can’t remember if I have ever commented on your site before… if not, hi! I read it all the time. But anyway, talk about pinpricking my eyes. I have a little boy too (13 months now) and your post explains how I feel much of the time. I am constantly thinking how I cannot protect him from every possible harm in the world and it terrifies me.

  2. Niki P on June 1st, 2006 2:45 pm

    The fear never goes away. When you hear an ambulance siren, when you see a child with no hair or even a child with a cast you thank your lucky stars that your child/children is/are safe. It never goes away.

  3. Donna on June 1st, 2006 2:58 pm

    It’s true what they say about when you have a child your heart is walking around outside you.
    I forget the exact quote.

  4. warcrygirl on June 1st, 2006 3:12 pm

    My two are 7 and 4 and I still have nightmares where they’re in trouble and I can’t get to them in time. The next day I think about it and decide that in order to have a happy, healthy childhood I’m going to need to not worry so needlessly about them. And you know what? Nothing has happened to them. Every good parent worries.

  5. Gena on June 1st, 2006 3:53 pm

    Hi. I’ve commented before, but just wanted you to know that I thoroughly enjoy reading your site. It takes me back to when mine were small. I have four children, from 20 years old down to 7. I still worry about all of them. I think that comes with parenting. I stay awake until my older ones get home at night, and I randomly check on the younger ones as they sleep. The funny thing is that my 77-year-old mother also lives with our family. She STILL checks on me, so, I guess it truly never ends.

  6. Keri on June 1st, 2006 4:32 pm

    Hi, I’m not sure if I commented before but here I am. =) I enjoy reading your blog since our sons are almost the same age (mine’s 10 months old). Like you, I had the same fears about my unborn baby (I even had a dream about a little girl with no arms and that was horrible for me because I’m Deaf and use American Sign Language to communicate so naturally I was worried about not being able to communicate with my baby). I still have flashes of something terrible happening to my son once in a while. What comforts me is the Serenity Prayer:

    “God grant me the serenity
    to accept the things I cannot change;
    courage to change the things I can;
    and wisdom to know the difference.”

  7. JennB on June 1st, 2006 4:59 pm

    I used to make dead baby jokes and now the very thought of them makes me ill. P has her first ear infection – complete with a fever spiking to 104.5! – so on my way home from work, after G took her to the doctor’s, all I could think about was the horrible brain damage she had sustained these last few days while I overlooked her fever and thought it was just the heat and teething….
    Happily, the fever has broken – although we’re not out of the woods yet, my mom says wait for 24 hours until calling defeat over the fever – and tonight when I put her to bed, after brushing her teeth and having a little bit of bottle, she blew me kisses. All I could do is thank her angel, and mine.

  8. Jen C on June 1st, 2006 5:02 pm

    I feel the fear every day. Especially when I read the news/see the news/hear about something horrible happening to a child in a “normal” home. Swimming pool drowning, kid running into street/getting hit, etc.

    It’s almost more than a person can handle.

  9. Joanne on June 1st, 2006 5:04 pm

    Oh Lord, you hit the nail on the head as usual. I try and advise my friends who are pregnant now not to worry – because, I say, the pregnancy will take care of itself! The baby just keeps on needing worry! I worried and worried when I was pregnant, I had spotting, and I’m ‘elderly’ (read-35 years old at time of delivery), I never slept and I just worried and worried to the point that I didn’t enjoy one thing about my pregnancy and I hated women that told me I should be enjoying it. Now I look back and I think – WHAT was I worried about? He slept when he was in the womb, he moved around but didn’t poke me in the eye or pull my hair. I always knew where he was and I didn’t figure he was dead every time (and there haven’t been many) that he sleeps past 7:00 a.m. It’s so hard, isn’t it? I feel like such a different person and I can’t hear any story, or see any baby anywhere, without feeling how I’d feel if it happened to my baby. It’s no wonder we’re not all in asylums.

  10. Jenn on June 1st, 2006 5:31 pm

    Yeah, I touched on this on your clubmom blog… I worried, no kidding, all day every freaking day that something was going to happen and my baby would, for whatever reason, never live for me to hold him. I worried about listeriosis, down syndrome, cord problems, stillbirth for no reason, getting into a car accident… like you, I worried when he moved too much and I worried when he didn’t move enough. Several times I called my doctor’s office freaking out because I hadn’t felt the requisite number of movements in so many hours, raced to the office and had them locate the heartbeat and make sure he was still alive. And what happened? He had a stroke, caused probably by a cord problem but we’ll never really know for sure. Not a thing I could have done to prevent it. And everything turned out ok. He’ll be two next month and is perfectly healthy, no delays or issues.

    That was probably the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life… no matter how much I worry, there are things that I won’t be able to protect him from. And the older he gets, the more I’m going to have to let go, when what I would really like to do is just have him stay here with me forever where I like to think I could keep him safe. But it’s like Dory said in the movie Finding Nemo… “If you never let anything happen to him… then nothing will ever happen to him.”

    Anyway… guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s nice to know that pretty much every other mom in the world obsesses over the same things that I do.

  11. Contrary on June 1st, 2006 6:19 pm

    I’m probably not the first, and I know I won’t be the last to say, that fear? It never goes away. My oldest is now 19 and in the Army and I can ruin a perfectly good night’s sleep worrying about him getting shipped out.

    The best I can do is keep my worrying to reasonable stuff. For instance, I no longer allow myself to worry about one of my kids getting hit with a chunk of that nasty blue ice from airplanes flying overhead.

    I’m working on not worrying about rabid racoons. We’ll see how it goes.

  12. biodtl on June 1st, 2006 6:56 pm

    Mine are 9 and 2 and I still am left breathless when I hear about somehting bad happening to a child. Any illness, accident, whatever, I picture it happening to mine. And I can’t stop thinking about it. Or the thought of something heppening to me – and my children losing their mother. I never used to be afraid to fly and now I spend the whole flight praying that we’ll land safely. If my kids are in the car with me, I see every other driver as a potential drunken killer. I mean, I’m not TOTALLY crazy, as in I can’t function, but it’s just always there – right under the surface. When I was pregnant with my first, they discovered a problem on a late sonogram (multicystic kidney, which is basically non life threatening- just something to watch), but the doctor misdiagnosed it as polycystic kidney, which is really much worse. So until I found out the truth, I was insane with worry about kidney failure and life expectancy. Even now, I see every fall from a bike or wrestling match as a chance to lose the one kidney he has. OK, maybe I AM crazy, but it helps to see I’m not alone…

  13. MRW on June 1st, 2006 8:36 pm

    Well thank god I’m not alone. Like biodtl just said, now I worry something will happen to me and my son won’t have a mom. Then I think “what if something happened to me AND Mr. MRW?” and my son had to be an orphan. Who would love him as much as we do? And then I’m off to the races panicking about things that haven’t even happened. I still clearly remember bursting into tears when I happened to come across the St. Jude’s Hospital telethon and saw a piece on a woman whose son was born without any immune system so he had to be in a bubble and his mom didn’t get to touch him without gloves. My heart was breaking for this person I’d never even met before. Motherhood is so powerful. It’s exhausting and thrilling and terrifying. Once you are a mother it never goes away. Never.

  14. ls on June 1st, 2006 10:36 pm

    Seriously, that fortune story took my breath away. That shit is freaky.

    Now that I type this, I realize that it is one of those comments that is really stupid and totally not worth the keystrokes, but I am lazy enough that I am going to “say it!” anyway.

  15. Elleana on June 2nd, 2006 4:56 am

    The fear of what could be… I think it never leaves you. Mine are only 5 and 6, but every day, EVERY DAY, I have some sort of fear for them, big and little.

    Your post left me a little breathless, and welling up with tears. It was very well said.

  16. Anais on June 2nd, 2006 5:59 am

    I am not a mother. I hope to be someday, though. Anyway, I read your blog on a regular basis and have commented before, and every once in a while, your blogs leave me teary-eyed. I think you have a gorgeous little boy. Anyway, now I think I can better understand what my mother and father go through everyday and that they aren’t calling me a million times a day because they want to be nags. Thanks for the new perspective. Also, although I don’t have any children, every time I hear about anything horrible happening to a child, I seriously have trouble breathing. I can already tell that I am going to be an over-protective, constantly worrisome mother some day, and I can understand how it comes with the territory of being a parent.

  17. Kaire on June 2nd, 2006 6:51 am

    The worst case did happen to my dear cousin just a few weeks ago with her first child. When he was born the umbilical cord was knotted. Tragically he was stillborn. Perfect baby other than that … my heart just breaks for her. They plan to try again and I cannot even fathom the terror that time will be. Me? I’ll just stick with my cats. That’s enough drama for me. I’m a wimp that way. I couldn’t do it. My deep admiration for anyone who even tries ~ and even more admiration for those who are such loving parents!

  18. Mel on June 2nd, 2006 7:43 am

    Soon after Ian was born, we were watching one of those Lawn And Order SVU marathons and there was this mother on there who smothered her baby with a pillow. All I could do was hold Ian close and reassure him and me that it wouldn’t happen to him. It’s strange; even tv shows where mothers do things to their babies, or babies are hurt, make my heart jump and I begin to panic. I had to stop watching the Discovery Health channel; all those rare chromosomal disorders or diseases that some kids have; I knew I couldn’t worry about it and if something were to happen, we could cross that bridge. I worry too much sometimes, but I’m so glad I’m not alone. Ian has turned ot fine and the biggest problem, which isn’t much really, is getting many teeth all at once.

  19. Carrie on June 2nd, 2006 7:52 am

    My son will be fourteen in a few weeks and I still jolt myself into wakefulness when the image of him getting hit by a car or finding out he has cancer comes unbidden. It’s being the Mom. It’s why we get our own holiday.

  20. omuchacha on June 2nd, 2006 8:46 am

    I’ll never forget the dipping heart rate of my baby in delivery. All the thoughts of “I really don’t want a c-section and I’d do anything to avoid one” gave way to “Hey, if a c-section will get him out and make sure he’s okay, could you just start it right now?!” The call for NICU when his arrival was imminent and after his little smurf blue self came and after they cut the cord that was suffocating him when the NICU folks worked on him and no crying was heard were excruciating in a way that’s undescribeable.

    Makes the sleepless nights from teething a little less troubling to think of what could have happened.

  21. Albus D. on June 2nd, 2006 1:36 pm

    All I can say is, if a certain Dark Wizard (who I don’t want to mention by name) knocks on your door- Do Not Open It! Really, I can’t stress that enough. If there is a wand in evidence, leave out the back, and never come back.

  22. jenny on June 2nd, 2006 1:57 pm

    Whoa. Sundry.

    No kids here, but the fortune and the headstone would have been enough to send me right over the edge, I am sure. I am the type to not worry about conventional things but I would put way to much stock in those mystical signs. :looney

    I am glad you could finally write about them, out loud. Now all their power is gone. Poof!

  23. Nona on June 2nd, 2006 1:58 pm

    My first pregnancy was a child with Anencephaly. (http://www.anencephaly.net/) It’s rare, 100% fatal, and broke my heart, my husband’s heart, and it still hurts. There was nothing I could do, and it was terrifying to try again. My next pregnancy ended in miscarriage. My third was accidential, and I have the sweetest, fattest 6 month old daughter I could have ever hoped for. While pregnant with her I became obsessed with “signs”. I counted crows, I wished on clocks, and I wept from fear from time to time. Waiting to hear the results from every ultrasound was like running a gaunlet. Because of all this I treasure my kid so much, and am thankful for her every day. I still despise the whining, but hey, you take the good with the bad.

    It takes great courage to be a Mom. From the moment they are born you have to learn to let them go a little more each day, so that they can grow and become their own wonderful little selves. You are smart, funny, and a great Mom. Worry, because there’s no way to stop it anyway, but love Riley more. And if the worry starts to overwhelm you, well, fuck, I don’t know what to tell you. There are always anti-anxiety meds.

  24. kalisah on June 2nd, 2006 3:35 pm

    it does get easier as they grow and begin to take care of themselves. My son will be 13 this summer (THIRTEEN!!!!) and I send him off to school every day without even thinking anymore than some horror will befall him.

  25. Donna on June 2nd, 2006 3:59 pm

    On coping with a special needs child:

    http://belovedmonsterandme.blogspot.com/

    We should all be so lucky to have such good parents as Riley and Schyler.

  26. Robin on June 2nd, 2006 6:48 pm

    I have a beautiful, healthy 16 month old boy. The worry never ends and from the other posts I can see that it never will. I think that it’s what makes us mothers-good mothers at that.. and like you said, I now look at other people and think to myself that they were once someones baby and cherished and worried about like I worry about mine. It’s kind of eye-opening and it makes me incredibly grateful to read posts/stories like Nona’s. I’d never heard of this disorder and I am so very sorry that anyone would have to go through that. Sundry, your post made my eyes tear up and again, I can completely relate. Thanks for expressing something so personal.

  27. sarah on June 2nd, 2006 11:08 pm

    The reason you are a phenomenal mother is because you have these worries. Life is unpredictable, but whatever happens, your boy will know that you love him more than seems possible. He is a lucky lucky little dude.

  28. Susie on June 3rd, 2006 8:34 pm

    I hear you, loud and clear. I now know what my mother went through (or should I say, what I put her through) with my sister and I. The thought of something (or God forbid, someone) hurting your child, no matter how bizarre, is always enough to make your throat close with fear and sickness. And from what my mother tells me, it never goes away. And get this — when you have GRANDCHILDREN, it just gives you MORE people to worry about! How about that, huh? ;)

    When I was preggo, I kept telling myself, this would be the only job I could never quit. Or even get fired from. LOL I also knew that I never be alone in my thoughts again. Not only that, but Baby J would always be the first thought in my mind. It was one thing to think it, it was quite another to actually see it happen. When he is in school (not yet, my darling baby!) and I am work, I will be plagued with thoughts of how his day is going. Was he OK? Did that mean kid say something to break his little heart? What about the girl who is chasing him to kiss him? Did he let her catch him? Oh, the thoughts are endless. In number, in frequency, and in occurrence. *sigh* Such are the tribulations of motherhood.

  29. Anna on June 4th, 2006 7:08 pm

    Ok, this is so wierd. I am currently pregnant (3mths) and I have been worried constantly about my baby and hoping like anything that he/she is going to be healthy and fine. It worried me so extensively in fact that I needed therapy for anxiety attacks. Now, before you go thinking that I am overly nuts, I will let you know that I suffer from excema quite badly on face and hands and so I have had to use quite harsh creams during my pregnancy which can pose a small risk of affecting the baby. Anyways, i guess what I’m trying to say is thanks for showing me that I am not alone in the antenatel worry department. It helps to think I am not alone when it comes to things like this. x

  30. Anna Coverly on January 14th, 2007 2:17 am

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