I took my one-week old to the emergency room the other day. Before I go any further with this post, let me start by saying he is fine. He was discharged from the ER with a clean bill of health. But this didn't make the experience any less traumatic for him or any less nerve-wracking for me.
There's something about the emergency room that makes even the most logical of us a little nervous. Maybe it's hearing the pediatrician tell you that a trip to the emergency room is necessary. Maybe it's the fact that the word emergency is in the name of this place. Or maybe it's that we tend to envision the worst possible scenario once we enter the hospital doors. I am not a first-time mom; this was not my first time with a sick baby. This was not my first trip to the ER with an infant, either, but it was the first time I had to take a sick baby to the ER alone.
It's been about eight months since D-Day and about seven months since Wusband left. I have grieved the loss of the husband I never really had and the life I thought I was living. I have come to terms with the reality of my future raising this baby alone. I have worked very hard to rebuild my life while confronting the truth of my abusive marriage. I thought I had reached this place of inner peace and had found the strength to handle it all.
But since I gave birth to this child, this overwhelming feeling of abandonment has come back. It could be postpartum hormones. Maybe it's partly due to the exhaustion of having a newborn in the house. Maybe it's a natural reaction to having a child, wishing for the perfect world for your offspring. I guess it could be a combination of all of these things.
There I was, standing in the emergency room, holding a screaming infant. I listened to a doctor tell me all the tests he needed to complete on my baby's tiny body and watched the nurses draw blood, insert an IV, and catheterize my child. I was genuinely scared. I imagined the worst. I had visions of my baby being placed in an incubator, surrounded by plastic and out of my reach. In my mind, I saw him hooked up to tubes, lying there helpless with no way to comfort him. And in that moment, I felt so utterly alone. More than anything, I wanted my husband back. I wanted my child's father to be there for him. I wanted the love and support he had promised me. I wanted us to be a real family.
I need to stop here and clarify something: I do not want Wusband back. Not the man he really is, the man he hid from me for six years, the man I didn't see until he finally took his mask off when I began to stand up to him. But I do miss the man he pretended to be, the man who loved to play the hero, the man who showed up in the ER to sit with me while I was waiting to be seen shortly after we started dating. That man would come running if he knew his child was in the emergency room. But that man doesn't exist. And although I know that, although I know the man I loved was nothing more than a figment of Wusband's imagination dreamt up to lure me in and make me stay, I still miss him. I still want the family and the life he promised me. And in that moment, standing alone in an emergency room, trying to console my week-old newborn, waiting for test results that could change everything in a single moment, I wanted that man back. I wanted him for me and for our son.
I debated on whether or not I should reach out to Wusband to let him know his newborn son was in the emergency room. I ultimately decided to wait until the tests came back because if everything was normal, there would be nothing to tell him. And let's face it, even if he did bother to read my message as soon as I sent it (which he wouldn't), he wasn't about to come running to our rescue. He's never seen his child, asked to meet him, or inquired about his well-being. I don't even know if he knows his son's name or gender.
I know this will not be the last time I have a sick baby, the last time I need support as a mother of an infant, or the last time something about his health or development will scare me. And I know that I will face all of those moments as a single mom, without my child's father to support either of us. I'm sure it will even get easier as time goes on; my hormones will stabilize, my emotions will find a balance, and I will return to the state of inner strength and peace I had previously found.
So today, I am going to focus on the good things in life. I have a steady job with a good income. I have tons of support from family and friends. I have a roof over our heads and food to fill our bellies. And I have two healthy kids. Today, I am going to give both my kids extra hugs. I'm going to pull them in close, feel the comfort and joy of having them near me, and be grateful for the enormous blessings that they are.
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