Five Minutes Twelve Seconds

That's how much more daylight we have today than yesterday. At this speed, we gain an hour every two weeks.

It's no longer dark before five p.m. The sun is now rising before 9:00 a.m. We still wake to the shine of stars, but by March twilight will lighten our world, as we wake from our dreams of green grass and days that last and last.

We have not had a lot of snow this winter but the pond, marsh, lake, and even street skating has been good.

After days of rain, the temperature dropped to well below freezing for a long stretch of clear cold days; we even turned a giant campground puddle into a skating rink one Sunday afternoon.

On Elias's birthday, while the kids were at school, Nick and I took a walk along the mostly frozen Spruce Creek, we grew more adventurous with each step, crossing ice bridges over flowing glacial water.

I remember thinking, how appropriate, on the anniversary of Elias's traumatic birth, for Nick and I to be walking on ice. Unpredictable varied layers of frozen water.

No footsteps before us, no safety markers, no charts.

Unsure of the thickness, we often wondered if the glassy surface would hold our weight; but we both kept walking. Sometimes I followed Nick, sometimes he followed me, and sometimes we walked side by side, each forging our way, carefully, brazenly upstream.

A dusting of snow often covered thin sections, and we both eventually broke through, the front of my left foot went under, Nick soaked both feet up to his ankles, freezing his laces, still, neither of us regretted our decision to traverse across the semi-frozen stream.

Call us risk-takers, treading along the ice of a rarely navigated creek. Or call us parents of a child who died during birth--a child revived by science delivered through the touch of gentle knowing hands--celebrating his fourteenth year of life in a way that makes us feel alive.

I can drown in my thoughts or I can move through them with my best friend and life partner by my side. Taking chances, carving out time for adventures, this is what helps me parent more fully, without the weight of countless layers of regret.

I spent four hours yesterday participating in a webinar on the affects of trauma. When the speaker, Dr. Chandra Ghosh Ippen, talked about birth trauma and incubation and what a baby learns in the NICU, I could no longer sit still.

I stood in the back of the room, rocking from foot to foot, vacillating between images of one pound twelve ounce Elias and the guilt I still carry. As if I could have kept his heart from stopping, his brain from shutting down, if only, if only, if only...

And then I'd remind myself, as I swayed side to side, that this thinking only makes my stomach drop, my breath even more shallow than normal, but does nothing for my son who does not need his Mom to throw herself under the bus.

He needs compassion. He needs context. He may not remember all the medical procedures he endured but his body knows--his brain learned to be on guard, to defend, to fight. Even the slightest infringement can set off a nervous system exposed too early to sound and light.

That feather that fractures the child's natural shield.

Maybe I need to help him understand this somehow, so he can connect his experiences as an infant--those of being poked, prodded, cut, injected, taped, wired, sewn--to his current experiences of sensory de-regulation, attention deficit, lack of impulse control, episodic rage.

I am constantly contextualizing Elias's birth, writing it into poems and essays and blog posts, sharing it with new friends, even strangers as we sit in a waiting room or stand in line, and I do this so I can tame it from a beast that consumes me to a story I can carry.

During the webinar, Dr Ghosh Ippen shared a slide of a parent and child with rain clouds over their head to illustrate the unaddressed traumas that follow us wherever we go. This image stood next to a slide of the same two figures carrying suitcases with a picture of a raincloud on each case. She said when we face our traumatic experiences, make sense of them and integrate them into who we are, they no longer haunt us but become stories that allows us to build muscles as we carry our past experiences through life.

So I've been thinking that Elias needs his own storied luggage, told in a way he can narrate, so he is free to create future chapters, beyond my limited view.

He knows his birth story, but its my version, not his. I want to help Elias understand how his early experiences still affect him; and perhaps there is a way for him to organize these traumas into a vessel he can hold.

Where I tend to circle and stray, his narrative may be more linear, with details more specific and grounded than mine. For though we all walk upstream, we take steps at our own pace, dictated by these bodies and minds of ours, no two genetically, spiritually, the same.

Time eventually forced Nick and I to turn around on our creek expedition, as much as we both felt pulled to see what was around the next bend, to test the limits of the ice, to feel the rush of stepping around open sections of water, as we made our way to the safety of the bank. But on this anniversary of our son's birth, the glacier, where the stream originates, was not our destination. We were not traveling to the source, from point A to point B, but meandering between.

Sometimes progress is measured in the ounces a premature baby gains, sometimes in the minutes of sunlight gained, and sometimes in our willingness to take a step, without knowing if the ground will hold, without knowing where the trail ends, without knowing how the story concludes.

Comments

[Julie A]

Hello
I am a long time reader, special education teacher and always enjoy your posts.
I have to share something I have recently started using that I thought of as you mentioned Elias and his birth trauma. Have you ever heard of EFT? Tapping? My mother died when I was a toddler and while I have no memory of it I know the fear and sadness of it lives in my cells. I have been using Tapping for awhile now and feel like it is really helping me in a lot of ways. Since I don't have a memory of anything I was just encouraged to say "I wonder..." or "I bet when I was little I felt..."
It would be interesting if Elias could do that. Nick and Jessica Ortner have good web page and books if you're interested.
Julie

[Kate]

Hi Christy
Always reading but not always taking time to comment. Happy belated birthday Elias!! I think you are right to be exploring the role of trauma in his development. The more we know about it the more we see its impact on the kids and the adults we treat every day. We are exploring an adoption plan and I'm not sure where this path will lead us. I don't know how it will impact our other kids. I think if you can try to find him a therapist who has specific experience in early trauma that might be really helpful. Beautifully written and photographed as always.

[Becka Honardar]

Beautiful 💗

[Nancy Yeaton]

Thank you for sharing.

[Elliesee]

Sheila Frick and her trauma informed approach to sensory dysfunction co es to mind. Happy birthday Elias!

[Christy]

Thank you all for the resources; I am not familiar with Sheila Frick, or EFT/Tapping or the Ortners so you all gave me some info to look into to support my boy. Thank you for your support and for being a part of my greater community, it helps me to keep writing when I hear from readers like you.