Matty and Chloe

We’re now down to the ten day count down before Matty’s fourth birthday. Emotions are running high. This time of year always finds me deep in reflection, lost in my thoughts which are a mixture of happy ones and sad ones. I am thankful for my son. I remember his birth and I recall the time he spent in the hospital. And I think about the other babies who each year are born earlier than expected. I remember that frosty morning in early March when we brought our precious Matthew Nathan home from the hospital. I’d become very close to the mother of Matty’s roommate. We’d sit across from each other, open our white hospital gowns and enjoy our daily sessions of skin to skin contact with our little babies. We’d close our eyes and whisper to our children. She’d often sing to her little girl and I would listen to these beautiful French nursery rhymes sung so softly and so sweetly as Matt lay on my naked chest. Although Matty and little baby Chloe shared a hospital room together, they had little else in common. Chloe had been born far earlier, far smaller and far sicker than our son had been. She had been in that room for a lot longer than Matty had. I think when you’re a parent in the hospital you know never to compare your situation to that of other parents. Not only does everyone have a different story, but we all experience our stories differently. And this is perhaps one of the unexpected blessings of having a child in the hospital. There’s no opportunity to dwell on your own experience because you’re constantly reminded that they’re others going through something more difficult than you. And so it was that we got to take our little Matty home almost a month earlier than Chloe’s parents got to bring her home. I remember the short goodbye I said to Chloe’s mother the day Matty was discharged. I told her that I would continue to think of her and her beautiful daughter and that I would never forget the time we’d spent together. I believe she said something similar to me, but I was far more taken by the expression on her face than by the words she shared with me. I could see in this poor woman’s eyes the helpless and innocent envy of a mother pushed to the limits of her patience. And it was this woman who I thought of as we walked out of the hospital, as we drove out of the car park, and as we spent that first night at home. The injustice of it all left me contemplative and sorrowful. Chloe’s parents had watched us come and go, and they remained utterly incapable of speeding up the process of their daughter’s improving health. Parents of preemies are patient, not just because they know their child might have developmental delays, but because they are programmed and conditioned from the very start to wait patiently for their tiny baby to grow and gain strength at their own rate. I vividly remember standing in front of Matty’s bedroom window that first night home on March 8th 2008, looking out at the snow, delighted to be home with my child, and feeling so terribly sad for all the other parents who had to wait to bring their babies home.

I think what one gains from such experiences of patience is a sense that everything happens in its own time. There is a certain peace in knowing that this introduction to parenthood may not have made me a calmer, or more relaxed or more confident mother, but it has allowed me to more precisely define and understand my role as a mother. Sometimes patience and love are one and the same thing. Patience is selfless. It involves surrendering your own expectations up to a higher force and accepting to simply go with the flow in the most sincere sense possible.