I Cannot Even Comprehend

Right before surgery, 8 months old.

People tell you that you won't really know what love is, or what being a parent is like, until you hold your own child in your arms. I'm here to tell you that those people are right. At every new milestone I have with Weston I think about my own parents. Growing up, my mother always regaled us with stories about how we were as babies; what we ate, when we started walking, etc. As I watch my own son grow, I think about these stories my mother told us, and compare the fabled baby Olivia to Weston. Now that Weston is creeping around and standing, I think about how my mother tells me that I walked so early I had bowed-legs, and the doctors noticed it, but my ever-loving mother thought I was beyond perfect.

But, there is one milestone coming up that I simply cannot comprehend. Weston is just about to be 8 months old. When I was 8 months old, I was wheeled into an operating room, my chest was opened up, I was put on a machine to keep me breathing, and surgeons made two valves in my heart, where previously there had only been one. I was born with an A/V Canal Defect, as well as having two holes in my heart. If I hadn't had the surgery, I would have died. Scary.

When I hold my sweet 8 month old boy, I cannot even imagine what must have been going through my parents' minds as they held their 8 month old baby girl and didn't know whether she would live or die. I cannot even begin to picture their faces as I was sedated and wheeled into surgery. What do you even say to your child at that moment? My mother tells me the worst part was that I was happy, I was calm...and I had no clue what was coming. I often ask my mother what she did while I was in surgery and she says that she just passed out from exhaustion and worry. My parents were younger than I am now, only 25. At 25 I was getting ready to get married, and not thinking about serious life issues like a sick baby. When I rock Weston to bed, I can't help but think of my parents (and grandparents) sitting in a hospital room, holding my hand through the rails of the hospital crib, as I was hooked up to all the machines.

Often, I try to see my parenting-world through my parents' eyes, and yet with this, I simply cannot. I cannot even fathom a fraction of what they felt. I am so blessed to be here, and I am so grateful to have had parents who made my life about Olivia, and not Olivia-the-once-sick-baby.