Good News, Bad News
July 13, 2010, By Craig J. Heimbuch 10 comments
Well, we have some good news and some not so good news.
The good news is that my wife currently pregnant with a beautiful and apparently healthy little girl. Yeah us! I get the question a lot- "Were you really hoping for a girl?" - and up until this very moment, I have given the safe answer. A smile, a nod of the head and a sort-of 'aw, shucks,' "Gosh, I was just hoping the baby was healthy and that everything was going well with my wife." Played it cool, that's what I did. No sign at all that I had been hoping, no praying and pleading with God, for a girl. I have two wonderful sons and they are the light of my life, but I have known for a very long time that I was destined to be that father of at least one little girl. Maybe it was destiny- spoiling daddy's girl and threatening her future dates with a samurai sword - or maybe it was karma - payback for blaming so much stuff on my older sisters when I was a kid. Either way, I knew it would happen some day. And it appears that day has come. So, yes. I will come out of the paternal closet and tell you - I was totally wanting a girl and am absolutely elated to know that our prayers have been answered.
But....
And there's always a but, isn't there? I mean the whole good-news, bad-news thing only works if there's a but and my but is pretty tough (no pun intended). There's something wrong with my son and we can't figure it out. Nearly every night - 17 out of the last 21 by my count - he has been waking up in the middle of the night to throw up. No other symptoms. No fever, no headache. He doesn't do it every time he lays flat - never during a nap, never during movie time - and he doesn't do it during a nap. It's only at night, late at night. And it doesn't matter if he's in his bed or the bathtub, our bed or anywhere else. If he's been asleep for a while, he's going to wake up, throw up and want to go back to sleep.
We've been to the doctor five times in eight days. We've had blood tests, urine tests and collected fecal samples. He's had x-rays taken of his belly and a CT scan of his brain. We've ruled out worms, bacteria, viruses and, so far, brain problems. There's no blockage, nothing in his blood work to indicate a cause for alarm. He's just sick. And we can't figure out what to do.
He's supposed to go to a GI doc tomorrow. His pediatrician is finally out of ideas. They're talking about doing contrast tests. They're talking about a whole bunch of things and all the while, he's waking up nearly every night, throwing up and crying for his mommy and daddy. During the day, he behaves relatively normally. Perhaps a bit cranky, but the kid hasn't had a good night's sleep in nearly a month. Can you blame him?
We feel pretty bad for Jack, our oldest. We're doing the best we can to keep his schedule normal, but there's be so many trips to the hospital for Dylan and, conversely in reason, for my wife, his summer has kind of sucked. I'm trying to do the best I can to stay home, to take him to his swimming lessons, to make sure he has some fun. But there's work to be done. And, in the night, sheets to change and hair to wash. There's medicine to try and routines to keep straight. All the while, there is Jack and, now, our baby girl, who is doing everything possible to come into this world. And every time I want to celebrate her pending arrival, I get distracted - by a phone call, by Dylan's anguished cries and I am lost.
I suppose that's the way it is in life. All things - except perhaps sleep - in moderation. The good and the bad, the yin and the yang, the happy and the sad. And it's easy to tell yourself that; to tell yourself that you have to take all things as they come, be ready for the push and pull, the echo and the fade. But there's something about parenthood that exacerbates the magnitude of tug. Humbled and awed by the creation, growth and arrival of my daughter. Humbled, humiliated and helpless at not being able to offer more comfort to Dylan than what I already have. You take the sugar and the vinegar. You have to, that's the way things work. Still, knowing doesn't make anything easier.
In the mean time, while the doctors work their magic and try to fix my son, the best I can hope for is periodic moments of peace and calm. Anything more than that would be selfish and wrong.
I can't wait to meet my daughter. I can't wait to hold her in my arms and see her smile back up at me. I can't wait to hug her and learn from her. And I can't wait for Dylan to get better, for him to get a good night's sleep and return to being that little boy who lights up my life and makes me laugh until I cry. Either way, I can't seem to wait for one thing or another.
But then, I'm sure it will just be something else.
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