Sick Baby

Now before you readers go all ape-crap on me and start worrying about the baby, or why I'd blog about her sickness, I'll say up front that Eva doesn't seem to be very sick at all. The baseline indicators of health--like I was told once about my cat, oddly enough--are, (1) is she eating and pooping, and (2) is she sleeping well? The answers to both are yes, and always have been. (That girl's plumbing is about as robust as it could be.) But Eva's come down with a cough and wheezing recently, which has sent Kate and me through some minor emotional contortions.

A silent anxiety sinks its talons into the shoulders of parents of a baby with breathing trouble. Is this cough and wheezing a simple cold? Is there a major infection, which is starting slowly and even good doctors would likely miss at first glance? Is this a chronic condition? Will our baby survive her first year? How can someone so small, gentle and delicate, mount any kind of fight against a virulent disease?

Breathing affects everything. I've had more experience of that in the last year than I ever wanted, with bronchitis becoming asthma, which still limits my ability to exercise and sing (I'm up to 12 minutes on the treadmill at 6 mph, and I can make it through a chorus rehearsal with only 2 or 3 shortness-of-breath fits, whoohoo! Tomorrow I try basketball again. Will I last more than 15 minutes? Unlikely, but we'll find out). If you have any doubts or curiosity as to the importance of a thing, look to other cultures to see how prevalently it's mentioned. This is a good rule in art, and you'll discover the universality of human concern with our origin as a species, with death, with birth and sex--especially, male fascination with and fear of female sexuality and reproductive powers (and the resulting obsession with tightly controlling both). But that's off-topic to my post.

My point now is, the Indian yoga which Kate practices, emphasizes first and last, the breath. Breath is acknowledged as life itself, and control of the breath leads to control of the mind, body, and all things.

So when the baby's breath is messed up, we get worried. Every breath Eva draws is precious to us, and when those breaths are difficult for her, they're difficult for us too. On those mornings, or even other times of day, when she seems particularly hard asleep, I'll lean closer and inspect her chest for motion. In the morning, since she's due to get up soon anyway, I might stroke her head to see if she stirs. So far she always has, but it's a thought I don't like dwelling on--a life as small and gentle as hers, could so easily and gently slip away. Eva's grasp on life at times seems no more firm than her hold on any toy we might place in her hands--a toy which she lightly drops as she looks elsewhere.

I treat life in myself, and in the other adults I know, as an assumption. Whether people I've known for many years, or folks like Kate's family I've gotten to know only in the last fifteen months or so, everyone's existence is more or less synonymous with my own. And I've seen death. My own parents', of course. Dad's was shocking in its quickness--brain cancer, and it was like an ambush--and Mom's was slower, more inexorable. I mourned Mom more as she died than I did Dad, but I was also more exhausted by the end. And in taking care of her for her last year, I got to know many of her and Dad's friends, most of an age to be of increasingly failing health themselves.

And two were struck that same year as Mom died, 2005. As fine a lady as ever lived, Nancy Starrett, who provided invaluable help to me all winter by watching Mom as I went out to do errands (and go to the gym, of course!)--she was dying of breast cancer at the time, and knew it, but said nothing of it. I'd known that she'd had it once before, but it had seemingly gone away. And the most hideous irony of all is that, I believed of Nancy, the very thing people believed of both my parents: she's happy, strong, and spirited--she'll beat it. If anyone can, she will.

She didn't. When I found out about her death, five months after my own mother's, it hurt worse than when Mom died. The surprise, the broken faith, and the building anger and despair made me start to feel a little savage. Then two months later, her lifelong husband John (and one of my father's very closest friends) died of a broken heart. I began feeling like I was going a little crazy, like I had no emotional bearings any more. I watched my mother slowly die, and devoted all my effort to preparing myself for it. But these two family friends, gone without warning, started breaking my control over my emotions. That's as far as I'll take that story for now, except to say that, at least as far as my career is concerned, I'm still feeling the repercussions.

But Eva...a baby whose mind is still developing, who can barely communicate at all, who's innocent of everything except the simplest needs and feelings...the world wouldn't notice the passing of so small a life. I, and Kate, would feel it for the rest of ours, of course. She's a very smiley baby, and I take it as a compliment when people observe how happy she is. Above all else I want her to learn happiness from me. Love too, of course, but that permeates the happiness.

So when this little baby girl, this beautiful little bundle of hope and possibility, seems to have some trouble surviving, her mother and I can think of almost nothing else.

Parenting is, like everything else in life, a learning process. Sicknesses come and go, some more serious than others. We'll be dealing with the emotional ups-and-downs of this one, and hopefully others, in years to come. Not to mention all the other practical issues, like the occasional car accident or broken bone or mishap of some other nature. And through it all, parents (not to mention children) develop a sense of balance, a sense of recognition as to what clues are telltales of more important things, and what are trivial.

But my bride and I are new at this. Our balance isn't so good yet. Kate in particular is a hard-core worrier, prone to terrifying herself with YouTube videos of sick kids when she suspects some illness in her baby. (Now I like to go for some comic effect by writing that Kate terrifies herself. Obviously, she's intelligent about it, and is listening for points of similarity to Eva's issues, and she can readily recognize the differences. But she's gone hunting on the web several times to study up on baby coughs. And one of her hunts succeeded in scaring me into a sleepless night. Thanks, babe.)

So a few weeks ago, Eva turned up with what at first seemed a very dainty, "excuse-me-but-I-require-your-attention" cough. Kind of an "eheh" noise, a baby clearing her throat. But soon it seemed to me that her lungs couldn't cough with too much more force--they're the size of my thumb, after all, so they can't push much air--and I took more notice. Kate did likewise, and soon it seemed that she was coughing constantly.

That led to the first frantic online search for whooping cough sounds, and my sleepless night (thanks again, darling). And what we heard was partly reassuring, partly not: Eva's cough wasn't so bad, but we'd heard the whooping-style wheeze more than once. (Besides, we'd already heard about the eating-pooping-sleeping thing, and she still had no trouble with any of those.) But we were now worried.

Despite being on half budget, we sprang for a basic vaporizer to put in Eva's room, to help moisturize the air she breathes at night. (Kate puzzled over the seemingly paradoxical advice we got, to both moisten the air and dry out Eva's mucous passages with a pediatric antihistamine. So we held off from the drug.)

At first, there was improvement, but a week later the cough returned, and in the last few days, the wheeze has become prominent when she's reclining or lying down. This was enough to scare both of us, and send me into the kind of thoughts I described above. We wangled an appointment with Eva's doctor today, and brought her in for an emergency checkup.

Of course these folks are used to dealing with terrified parents, and the whole staff--all women--are superbly gentle and reassuring in their demeanor. So right away I felt more comfortable once we were in the examination room, and with the physican's assistant (we couldn't see the doctor on such short notice). After the standard preliminary observations, the PA spent several minutes listening to Eva's front and back with a stethoscope, and gave me the most reassuring assessment of the day: "Her lungs sound perfectly clear. There's no wheezing or rasping." The wheezing, she judged, was more in the throat, likely the result of post-nasal drip, itself likely due to an allergy. And she recommended the vaporizer and antihistamine.

So Kate was back to her paradox: moisten 'er up and dry 'er out. But hearing the advice again, and from a pro, after a full checkup (including booster shots! Awright), was the best outcome I could've hoped for. And Kate was immensely reassured. She went from stiff and fearful in her demeanor, to relaxed and willing to smile again.

I don't like it when my little bengal is scared.

Eva's upstairs now enjoying her evening nap, and placidity reigns in the Sutherland home.

Now it's time for me to git cracking again on that Hebrew...

Shalom am tov!