my husband

my husband's a much calmer person than i am. or is it correct to say my husband's a much calmer person than me? i'm an educated person (i'm educated but sometimes i wonder if i'm smart. i think i'm smart & socially aware i guess but i don't know if i'm intelligent) and i am not even sure which is correct. oh, that reminds me - i used to get extremely depressed when i first started googling "neonatal stroke" because i'd find some stories of babies who had this and they lived in the middle of nowhere and their moms looked like, well, they looked like trashy, old, unhealthy messes. like some of them looked totally ghetto or like trailer trash. ok is that really mean? i don't mean it in a mean way, really. and i was so f*cking depressed that i was now in this category. i mean, some of these moms looked like they probably didn't take the best care of themselves or maybe smoked crack or whatever during pregnancy so maybe they caused the injury to happen? that's such an awful thing to say but i really started thinking that maybe strokes happen to babies whose moms are unknowledgeable & unhealthy & i don't know, just not good moms i guess. but anyways, then the more i googled stroke & blogs & support groups, the more i found that this happens to normal moms. it made me feel better to see that most of the moms out there who had kids with special needs were actually smart, young, attractive, NORMAL moms, and because of bad luck this happened to their babies.
i'd email with some of these moms and read their blogs and i'd realize that these moms are very smart and educated and normal. i don't know why i'm talking about this. i think before this happened to my own baby, i would see moms with special needs kids, and the moms always looked like slobs. ok that's mean. but i guess i understand now. i used to look good. really, i did. i used to take care of myself so well. i'd exercise every single damn day, dress nicely, wear nice clothes & shoes & look polished, get waxed, get facials, put on makeup, blowdry my hair, etc. and now, i am a f*cking mess. in the first month, i wouldn't even get up to shower. i would dread showering because that's when i'd stand there crying and freaking out over my baby.
if i did shower, i wouldn't bother washing my hair - for days. why look nice? who cares? my baby has brain damage. my life is over. there's nothing to look forward to anymore. the only reason i shower now is because i'm back at work from maternity leave. i used to look forward to summer, it used to be my favorite season. now i'm dreading the spring/summer because i'm going to have to feel obligated to go out with my kids and not keep them trapped at home. i'm also dreading summer because by then, noah might be showing some serious issues. in a way, i want time to fly by so i will know what he is able to do - will he crawl, walk, talk? will he walk normally without a limp? will he walk before the age of 2-3? but in another way, i don't want time to fly by because right now he's not doing that badly. maybe these first few months will be the only time in his life where he seems completely normal. i mean, yes, he's showing a hand preference but only my husband & i notice it because we know what happened to him. we don't know if his leg is affected because he's not at an age where he's crawling or walking yet. right now he can get away with looking like a completely normal, healthy baby. but when he's a year old, that's when the issues will be noticeable because that's when the big milestones happen, that's when babies become more mobile. i think of weird sh!t, like i imagine a friend or relative saying something like "give me five noah!" and he's unable to do it with his affected hand. so then the friend/relative will be like, "what's wrong with his hand?" or the friend/relative hands him a toy and he's unable to grasp it. and then that's how the friend/relative notices that something's wrong with noah and says, "is his hand ok?" am i crazy? at christmas, i remember my aunt holding him on her lap. he was rubbing his face with his left hand only and i was inwardly freaking out that everyone in the room noticed that something was weird. no one noticed but if i'm freaking out this much already and nothing's severely wrong yet, how will i be when/if things really do start showing?

also, sometimes i see ghetto or trashy moms with like 5 kids who are ALL healthy & normal. what the f*ck. all i wanted were 2 healthy kids. is that too much to ask?

anyways, this post is titled "my husband" so i meant to write about him. i don't know if this is the difference between men & women or dads & moms but from the moms i've spoken to, it seems like they're the main ones suffering from their child's issue. they're the ones panicking & frantic & depressed & on the internet nonstop. i wonder if the dads/husbands do this sh!t. do they go online searching for blogs and stories? do they go on support group boards? i guess they do but not as obsessively as the moms/wives do. my husband is much calmer & much more optimistic & i think in general, he's a much better person than i am.

i am constantly asking him, "what's going to happen to noah? what are we gonna do?? i'm so worried" and my husband just says, "he's going to be fine. he was born a month early, 4.8 lbs, and had 2 strokes. and i think he's doing pretty well for a baby who's gone through all that". and then i say, "but what if he turns out badly like those kids i read about on the hemi-kids support group and all those sites i've been on?" and he says, "what if he doesn't? why do you think of things that haven't happened??? just focus on him right now. those people on those sites are in a support group because their kids turned out bad. if their kids were fine, they wouldn't be on a support group, they'd just move on" and then i'm all, "no, that's not true. i'm on a support group and noah isn't even doing that badly yet. so i don't think it's true that only people with bad outcomes are on those. i don't know what to do anymore. his hand is NOT improving at all despite all the therapy we're doing. what if he just never improves and is in the bad category? what if his hand is non-functional? and then his leg is affected? and then he needs all sorts of help. then what do we do?!?!?" and then my husband's all, "STOP IT. i'm sick of rehashing the same thing everyday. just keep doing what we're doing and we're going to help him get better. we're going to keep doing therapy. we have a neurologist, a rehab doctor, 2 physical therapists. none of them say he looks bad right now. he will come out this ok" and then i'm all, "but what if he comes out bad? what are we going to do?!?! i won't be able to handle it! i can't deal with a special needs child!" and he says, "if he's special needs, then he's special needs. but he's our son and i love him. just love him & take care of him. i have faith that he will be completely fine. i don't want to talk about this anymore". so yeah, this is the conversation that happens every single day. i'm not even exaggerating. i do this to him EVERY single damn day. i think i just need to be reassured or something? i don't know what is wrong with me. i want to believe my husband and think things will be ok. things DO turn out ok for a lot of babies who have strokes. but then i think of those moms who have faith & hope and wait and wait and wait for a miracle that just never happens and then their kid ends up in the "bad" category. and why wouldn't we be one of them? i mean, our luck's been pretty
sh!tty so far so why would we get lucky?? our son may not turn out ok at all. it terrifies me so much that i can't even function. sometimes i can't even breathe. sometimes i think of holding my breath and killing myself. anyways, my point was that my husband is a much better person than i am. i mean, i love our son too, but i just can't handle the thought of him not being normal. my husband though, i mean he doesn't want our baby turning out bad either, but to him i don't think it's the end of the world like it is to me.

actually, sometimes i feel sorry for my husband cuz i can tell he's desperate too. sometimes i think he's in denial when he says things like, "people with good outcomes don't go on support groups". and i can tell he's grasping for straws, is that the correct saying? you know what i mean. he'll say something like, "the outcome is better when the stroke happens in-utero compared to strokes that happen when the baby is like 6 months old". or he'll say "the kids who end up bad are the ones who keep their hand in a tight fist from the beginning. noah doesn't have that". or "he didn't have seizures. the kids who end up bad are the ones who had seizures". although i have a feeling that noah's apnea episodes were really seizures. they just hooked up the EEG too late. don't you love how i just diagnnose this sh!t myself?? i feel sad when my husband says these things because i can tell that he's desperate for noah to be ok too. i'm the crazy panicky one so when i see him worry, i get more worried and more depressed.