WHAT CUTTING MY BABY BOY’S CHRISTMAS PJ TAGS TAUGHT ME ABOUT DISTORTED WORRIES |
Steffi Gauguet
I grabbed the scissors to cut off the garment’s tag informing me of the correct size of 9 months and the less reassuring fact that the material is flammable. I’d ordered the super-cute green and red striped Christmas one-piece pajamas two days prior from a high-quality Swedish clothing store. The (unfortunately) flammable organic cotton felt nice in my hands and would undoubtedly calm my infant son’s easily irritated skin.
My hand stopped just before closing the scissor blades over the plastic string when a thought entered my mind that brought me to a grinding halt:
STOP! Don’t cut the tags, yet. The PJs will be much easier to return with tags.
Just in case he is not alive by Christmas.
I held my breath and paused for a moment to consider this.
Where did this thought come from?
What an unhealthy thought!
What the hell was wrong with me?
Horrorstricken, I realized I felt no emotion with this thought. It was merely practical, as if considering whether I should make rice or use the potatoes that were starting to sprout roots for dinner tonight.
Did this mean I did not even care if my son was alive or not?
Then emotions flooded through me. Emotions of anger at myself and frustration and judgment of what kind of monster Mom I might be.
*
Aside from his mild eczema my son was perfectly healthy. Of course, he would be alive in two months! Why would I ever think such a thing? I’d never thought of myself of being an overly anxious mother, nor did I have intrusive thoughts. I considered myself even healthier than my baby boy.
But as a pediatric intensivist I take care of very ill children in a large pediatric intensive care unit at a university hospital. Kids who are very sick, struggling for survival, or even dying is my everyday norm. I am very aware that what I see day and night in the hospital is unusual. That most kids are pretty healthy and lucky, and never even have to be in an ICU in all of their lives. And that according to all odds, my son would be lucky, too. But somewhere, my subconscious must have come up with this distorted thought and deep down I wondered if something was wrong with me.
I shook my head as if I could diffuse this internal struggle and then I cut the tags with such vigor that I nicked the perfect cotton of a red stripe right at the shoulder of the PJ the tiniest bit. I bit my lip.
*
A few days later, I mentioned this incident to a nurse working with me in the ICU. We had just finished examining an unconscious little toddler who had been severely injured several weeks prior by being accidentally run over by his grandfather’s sit-on-lawn mower. This little boy was going back and forth every few days to the OR in efforts to repair as much of his mutilated body as possible. In between, he was recovering in the ICU, where we tried to stabilize him. Today, he had a quiet day. His nurse had mentioned that his family had hoped they might be able to take him home for Christmas. We both knew, however, that this did not look promising. He was not in good shape. He might not survive until Christmas.
I felt terrible even mentioning my silly and frivolous Christmas preparation incident that, as I was fully aware, had been completely in my head. I did it jokingly. She got it. She laughed. And she reassured me how very normal this was. These thoughts. That I was not the only one. “Working in a PICU for years, we all get a very skewed perspective of reality. It’s completely normal. Don’t beat yourself up.”
She was right. The more I mentioned this to others working with me, the more similar stories I heard.
A colleague of mine told me, chuckling: “When my eight-year-year old has a bruise, I don’t think of her fall from the balance beam at gymnastics class the day prior. I wonder which kind of leukemia she has.”
Another nurse told me how she did not allow her husband to use a snowblower after having taken care of a girl whose hoodie strings had become entangled in one. Most lock their medications away at home, even the vitamins, turn the handles of boiling pots and pans towards the back splash on the stove and don’t allow their kids to play football. Trampolines and backyard pool parties make us tense and some of my colleagues even demand their kids wear helmets when sledding in their neighborhood.
*
Two months later, my son is wearing the striped Christmas PJs. Soft organic cotton hugging his healthy little body that is tucked into my side as I carry him towards his first glamorously decorated Christmas tree. The small hole on his shoulder gaping a bit as he stretches his little arm towards a red shiny ornament, revealing the tiniest bit of similarly colored and flaky skin.
I wish I could make his eczema go away. I wish I could protect him from all the bad things that are yet to come in life. I wish, like my colleagues, that we could put our kids in a bubble, yet I know we can’t. And if we tried, our children would probably be so poorly prepared for life and have such little resilience they would have other tragedies to deal with in their future. By trying too hard, we would end up making things much worse – as that little cut in the PJs reminds me. Bad shit happens. Bad luck. Accidents. Traumas. Unfairness. Mistakes. It is all part of life. There is only so much control we think we have.
A new thought enters my mind. Less intrusive. Healthier, I find. We cannot control what happens to us and the ones we love so much it strangles our hearts. But we can choose to enjoy the ride. As long as we are blessed it lasts. With its ups and downs and wild twists and turns.
I marvel at my baby boy’s big eyes, wide in wonder as he gazes at the Christmas tree, reflecting the flame of one of the real burning candles we decorated it with according to my inherited German Christmas traditions. Not once did I think of him pulling at a branch, crashing down the tree, our house going up in flames, engulfing us all, which would have been totally understandable, knowing about the flammability of his Christmas PJs after all. No, I saw the wonder, the curiosity, and the eagerness of wanting to explore all that life has to offer and felt an immense sense of gratefulness for all I am gifted.
Steffi Gauguet, who is a Harvard-trained pediatric intensive care physician, works at UMass Memorial Children’s Medical Center. When not taking care of critically ill children, she writes, runs, bikes, swims, skis and tries to raise her three rambunctious kids into kind and responsible people.