Mama Lion

Vin's sick with some respiratory junk in his chest; he'll be fine but I hauled him in nonetheless because he was really having a hard time breathing. Got a healthy dose of what I like to call THE MAMA LION during this ordeal . . . I was worried about him, I had never seen a child struggle to breathe like he was doing, and since someone stole our seven year old Eddie Bauer stroller from the alley last week, I trucked him (manually) from the parking lot to the ER with my bum back and thanks to the adrenaline, hardly felt a thing. Hadn't eaten a thing all day, really, but didn't feel that, either (which normally would be a majorly huge issue). I didn't think about anything but the air that clearly wasn't making it into his lungs. When they checked his pulse ox it was at 90, which they said they "didn't like."

They gave him stuff and fixed him up good, and throughout the whole experience I was fine because I trusted them and knew he'd be all right, but on the ride back home I got to thinking about mama lion and the times I've had it in the past.

It was born really with Bubby; from the moment they put him on my chest and he took his first breaths, cried, then looked at me with huge almost black round eyes (and stopped crying) I knew then and there, seconds after his birth that I would split an atom for this infant boy if it ever came to that. It was such a clear, defining moment in my life, becoming this kid's mother, that in seeing him, being not the least bit surprised at how he looked or acted or reacted, and that despite being a clueless, first timer----it all made perfect sense. "Of course you're Quentin, just look at you!"

It was different with Zizzy, as it probably is slightly with all second children . . . I felt joy and love and pride immediately (not to mention surprise at her having been a girl) but not until the next morning when they took her away for a weighing and then brought her back did it become fierce. "She spit up a little and it upset her," they said as she came back in the isolette crying; I snatched her back into my arms and didn't let her out of my sight the rest of the hospital stay. Later, when she was about sixteen months old and had never made a violent move toward any living creature, a nasty little toddler bitch at Edinborough Park came at her, unprovoked, with all ten of her bitchy little toddler talons, just completely came at her, scratching and throwing punches. I came running toward her as soon as I saw what was happening, and she broke away from the girl and came running to me with her arms outstretched with this *utter* look of confusion and hurt on her tiny face, pleading, "Mama?!!" She had a crescent shaped scrape just under her right eye where one fingernail had obviously gouged way in.

I know kids mess with each other, I knew it then and I know it now. But that event still to this day absolutely infuriates me, not just that it happened, but that I didn't stop it in time, and that Zizzy's confusion was so raw and heartbreaking, and still is each time I think of it. I picked her up and comforted her, of course, but you know damned well a part of me wanted to physically yank the little girl's wrist, hands, and claws away from my girl's person and march her back to her own mother, wherever the hell that woman was during all this (I never found out). DON'T. YOU. FUCKING. TOUCH. MY. KID. is what I kept thinking, over and over. I can try to empathize and be realistic and as pacifist as is proper, but the honest truth, my honest reaction was one of anger and violence (again, see above statement in all caps).

B was quite a different experience as she kind of came out as a Mama Lion herself. Her birth was fast, like all the others, but somewhat more difficult because the morphine intrathecal stick I got made me violently ill right about ten minutes postpartum. I was nursing her, knew I was going to be sick (fucking anesthesiologist wouldn't give me fentanyl like I asked), barfed probably thrice and then got so dizzy I couldn't even sit up. They moved me up to a nursery suite and the motion made me even more ill, I had to nurse her lying down and could barely even turn my head and they kept worrying about me having to pee . . . this went on until about five that morning and the night nurse asked if I wanted them to bring her to the nursery for a little while so I could try to sleep and I agreed, reluctantly, but only because I couldn't stop throwing up. The minute they took her out I wanted her back, but I couldn't even lift my head up, so I just laid there and tried to sleep (and couldn't). When they finally brought her back, I (again) didn't let her out of my sight for the rest of the stay. I wanted to be angry at the doc, angry at the stupid morphine, and angry at myself for letting them give it to me, but the second day when I could look at her and hold her properly, I forgot all about it.

I've probably had these moments more with Vin than with any of the others because he's unfortunately had the most number of illnesses at the youngest age (with all the rest of them bringing it home from school). He passed meconium in utero and was whisked away from me before I even knew he was a boy. He had the swine flu before he was five months old, quit nursing, refused bottles, quit verbalizing for about a week, and had red dust (urate crystals) in his diaper from dehydration. He teethed early, he walked early, he talked early, he did everything early and was a baby for the least amount of time. Today, while he was struggling to breathe he kept writhing and repeating, "Mama? Mommy?" and then later, "I need have something?" Yes, but what? I couldn't do anything. When we got home I told Matt that he looked different, like a different child; Matt said, "he looks like some college kid who's been up drinking for two weeks." These things happen, are bound to happen, and there's nothing I can do about them, and I get angry.

I once heard a story about a guy I used to work with whose infant daughter needed a spinal tap, and that after it was completed his reaction was 1. to go into the hospital bathroom and barf his guts out and 2. call his parents immediately to apologize for anything he'd ever done to make them worry, as now he had a firm grip on what it must have felt like. I thought that was a very sweet reaction. Mine would be to simply find meningitis and eliminate it, violently. And forever.