Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Zen Mama

Six Senses Con Dao, Vietnam, 2011
I've always wanted to be one of those serene, bohemian mothers who doesn't get terribly riled about schedules and isn't freaking out over toddler Mandarin lessons or scraped knees. You know the kind. She's usually off ommmming somewhere in the tropics (shrugging off the high risk of malaria), while a her brawny stay-at-home-dad-novelist-hubby is teaching the kids to surf.

But this week, the little guy gave me a lesson in neuroses.

Our 16 week anatomy scan last Thursday was mostly great. My OBGYN practice uses another imaging center for more detailed scans, so we trekked to a no man's land stretch of midtown and settled in for the 45 minute journey. It was really emotional, just being in the dark room and seeing this little person looking very human on the screen. At one point he grabbed his feet. It all looked great to us. It's a boy, etc!

Then the ultrasound tech brought in a doctor, who was trailed by a med student (and eventually another doctor.) There was a smudge of something they were concerned about on the back of the baby's head. There was a lot of fiddling around with 3D imaging as the three men loomed over me.

Long story short, I went numb for about ten minutes while they discussed whether the baby's head was sealed properly. It was.

Eventually, the doctor turned to us brightly and said the baby had what was essentially a pimple on the back of his skull. I was a bit wobbly all weekend, just because their initial worry was so, so bad.

I think I couldn't quite process what they had actually concluded and wound up with this cloudy, panicked sense of something'swrongwithmybaby. It was extremely hard to shake. The hangover that comes from considering the worst case scenario is really rough.

Anyway, after a long chat with my primary doctor, who reviewed the files, things are indeed fine. She reiterated that he has a little skin cyst the size of a sesame seed, and it will either go away by the next scan, or it won't, and we'll deal with it later.

I felt a bit silly calling her relentlessly since she sounded so very, well, serene, about the whole thing.

You feel so incredibly vulnerable when it comes to your children, future, or otherwise. If the kid comes home late after curfew, I will clearly be a nervous wreck.

1 comment:

  1. Congrats on finding out your baby's gender! We will be finding out at our next ultrasound too. I know how panic-inducing it can be while you wait for the results of potential problems and I'm so glad everything turned out okay.

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