ML Interest Tag: hospital-room

My Daughter Saved Me in the Most Unexpected Way

By Jacqueline Waxman

I had wanted a daughter since literally, like, I was the age of 10. There were things inside of me that were inherently broken. Even then.

As I aged there was an ever-present fantasy script in my head that (one day) watching my husband with his daughter would somehow magically heal the broken parts inside of me. And, in all fairness it may have. But, that’s not how my story went.

When I was pregnant and learned I was having a girl—the irony was not lost on the fact that as a fatherless daughter I was (finally) having a daughter— a daughter who would also, in essence, be fatherless.

I was pretty mad at God and the Universe for a really long time. It was a dirty dirty trick I thought.

I spent most of my life feeling as if there was a missing piece. As if something was inherently wrong with me because my father didn’t want me. Side note: my mom was amazing. This has nothing to do with her.

This internal dialogue was the basis for most of my life choices. How I viewed myself. How I viewed my worth. This brokenness, unknowingly to me, dictated most of my life and my self-value. It showed up most clearly in who I dated. Who I ultimately married.

It wasn’t until my dad passed away, two months after my daughter was born and 7-months after my husband had left, that I started to realize the truth. I sat in a hospital room every day for a week watching my dad die. In those days I realized for the first time, ever, that my worth was not based on my father’s inability to be a parent. My worth was not based on his inability to be in my life. None of his demons and actions and choices had anything to do with me. Not a single one. They all had to do with him. I was just a casualty of his personal war.

It was somewhere during that time that it all made sense. I was sent a fatherless daughter to in fact heal me. At the most perfect time.

My daughter is amazing. She’s as beautiful as she is bright. Zero of her worth is defined by the fact that her father is not in her life. None. My daughter did nothing to cause someone who should love her not to.

A father. A father is someone who shows up because that is the nature of their job description. My daughter had nothing to do with her father abandoning that role. And, through watching her and walking through this with her, I realized neither did I.

The script in my mind, for most of my life, was that by watching my daughter with my husband, I was going to heal vicariously through them and their love. By watching her and her father have tea parties and play house and falling asleep together, and see them love each other so much, that it was going to fix the broken pieces inside of me. That’s not reality. And, none of that happened.

But, my daughter did in fact heal me. She stopped the cycle just by being alive.

She is the cycle breaker.

She’s beautiful. She’s smart. She’s perfectly imperfect.

And, she has taught me more in her short life than I ever could have imagined.

JACQUELINE WAXMAN, M.Ed living in New Jersey with her kids. I’m a social worker by profession and Mom by choice. I chauffeur children to their preferred destinations, feed-bathe-and-clothe my little people when we are not playing outside. Passions include writing, photography and advocacy. 
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Miscarriage: A Story of Hope

By Krissy Dieruf

 

Snow fell outside the hospital room window while my husband clasped my hand, and I worked to deliver our third child, a baby boy. The baby’s heart had stopped beating inside my body in the middle of the night, a pool of red blood, our signal that something was wrong. We had waited silently for hours for him to be born, 15 weeks old, unbreathing. When he finally arrived, tearing our hearts in half with his silent stillness, we held his tiny two-inch body in a gift box cradle, wrapped in a hand-knit sleeping bag the size of my palm, and cried.

Months later, in the spring, I wondered sometimes, was he ever really here? Or was the whole winter a horrible dream?

But that winter was real. It left its mark on me. It was so cold it burned me up, crept deep under my skin, my veins, my bones, filling every inch of me with a feeling that started with a sting and ended in numbness. But even that is not true. I only wished to be numb to get a break from the sharp points of the pain. That winter is over now, but remnants of snow and ice still linger and always will.

I could call it frostbite if there had to be a name. A “destruction of tissues,” as the English dictionary states. God, that is so heartbreakingly accurate that the connection elicits a strangled sob from my throat as the icy reach of winter seizes me up again.

There are other reminders. Comments from a well-intentioned stranger, a picture on a screen, a new baby cradled nearby, breathing: all needle-sharp and stinging deep, practically drawing blood. If someone looked closely enough, they could see the red stains I work hard to keep beneath my skin.

Time passed in a blur. We seemed to be holding our breath until fall when I discovered I was pregnant again. Our fourth child, a whisper on my tongue, a hope in my heart, created an endless hunger and wrenching bloat, neither to be satisfied. Fatigue and excitement plagued me while looking down a narrow hallway of time. You would think the dark skies would glow with golden rays of light, and the world would blaze shiny and new with the truth that empty space could be filled again.

You would think.

And yet, all there existed was fear. A terror so deep I could not face it in the light. It could not live in the light, for it brought such blackness it covered everything. It looked like blood, and while I shook with the idea of it, I saw it everywhere.

My oldest son corrected me one day, my sweet tender boy who cried the hardest on the way home from the hospital after telling him our baby went to heaven. “I have three siblings, mom,” he said. My heart beamed and bent with the truth that one of those siblings was already dead, and one had not yet been born. And I never said it, but I thought, might never be born. I fought for every day to come as I never knew I had to fight before by doing nothing but arguing with my fears and convincing my hope it had a right to sing and a place to dance. Hope was the only thing to conquer fear. And fear could not prepare me for the winter anyway.

Then spring arrived. I found myself lost inside; certain I was dreaming because I feared it wouldn’t last. Uncertain if the promises it made with its bright lights and new colors, its flowery scents lingering on the warm breeze, pimpling my skin with goosebumps, were real. Or would they disappear when I opened my eyes? Desperate for something concrete, I embraced spring so hard it took my breath away. Keep going, I repeated like a mantra until the hot tightening and sharp squeezing in my abdomen grabbed hold of me and told me something good.

In the final seconds of my fourth labor, the doctor said, “quick, what’s your guess, girl or boy?” And maybe because our lost baby had been a boy, or perhaps because my husband and I were exhausted, or because all we cared about was that our child would be alive, we both yelled, “Boy.”

And he was. Alive. He kicked and screamed, covered in a white layer of paste. We cried and tried to convince ourselves it was not a dream. That like spring, the moment held promises we dared to believe. Promises not of perfection but existence. Of being. Cares and concerns of being what, or who vanished months ago with the frostbite of winter.

He wasn’t a dream.

Frostbite can leave a scar. It can turn flesh into a permanent reddish-white, burn bone to black. And yet, there is always spring. No matter how many times the winter returns, spring whispers low that soon it will surely follow.

Krissy Dieruf is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She lives in Minnesota with her husband and three children, loves to sing and dance around the house and has a soft spot for rebels and crazy hair. 

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Go Ask Your Mom

By Lindsey Althaus

Photo: Lindsey Althaus

If you’re a mom you know there’s a phrase that you cringe when you hear your husband say it: “Ask your mother.” It’s one that I hear and I think, “Nope! Why are you setting me up for this?” A lot of times I feel annoyed that I have to answer a basic question and Jeremy gets out of it.

But then I’m reminded of our NICU days. It’s this moment I always go back to. I can remember the site, the smell of a sterile hospital room, I can remember the feeling in my chest, the emotions all of it. It’s when Jeremy held Whit for the first time. Whit was on life-support we were hopeful but didn’t know what the next day could bring. We had had a long day. We weren’t approved for the Ronald McDonald house so we were driving almost an hour to and from the NICU every day.

I was the human milkmaid who wasn’t handling the NICU life the way I felt I should. As if that’s a thing. As if they hand you a book upon entering called: How to handle the NICU and other fun facts to get you through this sucky time. I was constantly crying only able to hold my son once a shift because he becomes too unstable. None of this situation was ok. NONE of it.

I remember going to my parents to eat and my phone broke. I lost every NICU picture. Every contact. Everything. I had four days of exhaustion, trauma, and this feeling of guilt that I couldn’t shake and I lost everything. Whitman could easily die and I’d be left with 22 stitches in my lady bits and no video of Jeremy giving Whit his first bath, or a picture of me holding Whit for the first time.

During my meltdown, we decided to go back to the NICU one last time before heading home for the night. We walked into the room and the NICU nurse was in we introduced ourselves and she asked if one of us wanted to hold Whitman. I said let Jeremy. And Jeremy didn’t dare argue that logic. I remember the nurse and I moving the tubes and things around and Jeremy sitting in the chair. I remember how delicately he was placed in Jeremy’s arms and I remember this almost calm that had on his face. A weird relief. That maybe, just maybe, we’d make it through with minimum PTSD. We had been through so much in four days. Our lives weren’t anything that we had planned. I was working through a lot. Like how it’s the week of Thanksgiving and I wasn’t going to get to gorge like the big pregnant woman I dreamt of because Whit was here. I was working through the feeling of failure, I’m his mom and I couldn’t even take care of him the right away. I shouldn’t be this guy’s mom. I’m not qualified. He deserves so much better than me.

But at that moment though, when Jeremy was holding Whit the nurse said: “Mr. Althaus he can hear you talk to him.” Jeremy isn’t a man of words so I was expecting his usual: Hi and that was it. But in this deep confident voice, he said: “Hey I’m your dad. It’s not supposed to be like this. But we’re here. I love you. I don’t have any answers but your mom does. Ask her. Always ask her.”

I stood there sobbing which was my new persona those days. The nurse stood there sobbing too. Even though I felt like I failed Jeremy didn’t think so. Even though I was convinced that Whit would be better off with someone else Jeremy didn’t think so. NICU life is a lonely life. No one gets it until you’re there. There are so many roller coasters of emotions. Your sweet babe takes two steps forward three steps back. On days when I feel like I’m failing, I think of the day that Jeremy said ask your mom for the first time. Though today those words can drive me crazy I never take it for granted because there was a time when we weren’t sure that Whitman would be here. The NICU saved our baby and helped make him the thriving 6-year-old he is today. And for that I’m grateful.

 

Lindsey is a mom, wife, and blogger at The Althaus Life. She lives in Ohio with her husband and 2 children. Lindsey is grateful all things and to be able to chronicle her beautifully broken laugh til you cry cry until you laugh life.

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CreateOn Unveils New Luminary Magna-Tiles in Support of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

by Jennifer Swartvagher

CreateOn is known for transforming Magna-Tiles with new designs using popular licenses and custom personalization. They have just unveiled a new Luminary Magna-Tiles set in support of pediatric cancer patients. The new set is an addition to the CreateOn’s first Luminary Magna-Tiles launched earlier this year in support of COVID-19 frontline healthcare workers.

Luminary Magna-Tiles

In recognition of September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, CreateOn’s new Hope Catcher Luminary Magna-Tiles set is a meaningful building toy for children that also raises funds for The Dragonfly Foundation, a nonprofit organization that assists pediatric cancer patients and their families.

“We created the Hope Catcher Luminary Magna-Tiles as a fun toy to keep young patients’ minds busy during treatments, as a family activity for siblings and friends to show love and support, and to raise awareness of pediatric cancer and generate funds for a foundation helping families going through this incredibly tough time,” said Steve Rosen, Vice President, CreateOn. “September is the perfect time to partner with The Dragonfly Foundation, and we are honored to create a building toy with a valuable meaning that contributes to an important cause.” 

The Dragonfly Foundation has been a staple in the Cincinnati cancer community for over 10 years. Jessica Merar, Director of Programs in Chicago, is honored to be leading the charge locally. “We are thrilled to now have boots on the ground in the Chicagoland area. My main focus is to raise funds and awareness in order to support local patients and families through diagnosis, treatment, and beyond. All funds raised locally will stay local. I’m excited and grateful to be partnering with such a developmentally appropriate, child-friendly, useful, and entertaining product.”

The Hope Catcher Luminary Magna-Tiles set includes 10 colorful magnetic tiles plus a light to illuminate the set once completed into a bug catcher shape. The tiles can be combined in a variety of configurations, and kids will love finding hidden shapes in every corner each time they rearrange the layout. An educational hands-on toy, the Hope Catcher Luminary Magna-Tiles teach children shapes, patterns, colors, and more STEAM skills.

CreateOn designed this set specifically for pediatric cancer patients, with the realization that they may need fun ways to keep their minds busy during treatments and while only having one hand free. The pieces are small enough to fit on a hospital table and are easy for small hands to assemble. When assembled as the bug catcher structure, the luminary also doubles as a night light, and brightens up any hospital room with vibrant colors and designs of butterflies, dragonflies, ladybugs, and other fun outdoor creatures. There is also a door slot on the tile of the completed structure to add notes of hope and inspiration.

By partnering with The Dragonfly Foundation, CreateOn is supporting their efforts helping young cancer patients and their families. 20 percent of proceeds from each set sold will be donated to the foundation to support their mission to help families find strength, courage, and joy. 

The Hope Catcher Luminary Magna-Tiles are available now on CreateOn.com. For more information, visit CreateOn.com and follow on Instagram and Facebook. To learn more about The Dragonfly Foundation, visit Dragonfly.org, follow on Instagram and Facebook.

—Jennifer Swartvagher

Featured photo: CreateOn

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You Were Born on a Saturday Morning in Philadelphia

By Missy Woodruff

Photo: Author

You were born on a Saturday morning in Philadelphia. It was early, and the January sun was shining. It wasn’t like it was in the movies. There was no rush of activity or newborn screams. The room was calm and you came out—your eyes wide open, taking in the world around you. You barely made a sound; daddy likes to say you were like a wise Buddha. 

Those early months seem so far away, another lifetime ago. But there are things, feelings, that stand out so clearly in my mind, I can almost put myself right back there again.  The feel of your body on my chest, how much you hated taking baths, nursing you in your glider with my eyes sealed shut so I would hopefully be able to fall back to sleep again. But what I remember most is how I felt like you were mine.

There you were, a brand new person with a brand new personality, and yet, I felt so connected to you—your laugh, your tiny feet—that I felt like a piece of me was embedded in you. In a way that was unfair to you. You weren’t mine to own, but you were my first, the one we had placed so much hope in after our first devastating pregnancy. I couldn’t help it.

12 years. New houses, new siblings, new pets, new schools. All of it tumbles by. Days I wish I could freeze time and days that feel like they will never end. Much of you is still like you were on that cold January morning when we first met. But now you are taller than me. You laugh at YouTube videos that I just don’t “get” and speak in code with your brother and friends about “Fortnight kills.”

One minute you have it all together, and I stop in my tracks as I catch a glimpse of the man you will one day be. The next minute you’re being so annoying and fighting like a toddler with your siblings. It’s normal, I get it. But it’s so weird.

In 6 weeks you will finish elementary school. It’s time. You tower above the first graders in the car line. This milestone moves you one step closer to independence, one step closer to the kind of person you want to be. I’m trying to hold on to these last weeks– the three of you all in the same school for the last time. While a piece of me is sad, most of me is so excited for what lies ahead—for all you will get to experience, the endless opportunities and choices waiting out there just for you. 

And one day, it will be you in that hospital room. You will hold your newborn child and feel like he is all yours. Believing that baby belongs to you is what makes those first few exhausting weeks and months so magical.

But now, 12 years later, I’ll tell you the truth: the most beautiful thing is that you do not belong to me.

You are here, on your own journey, walking a path that I can help you navigate, but one that we won’t share for long. 

I’m lucky that for this brief time we can still travel together before our paths diverge. When they do, the most I can hope for is that I’ve equipped you with a strong, steady compass to guide you on your way.

Happy 12th birthday, Connor. 

I'm Missy, a mother of three and a middle school drama teacher at a private school. I'm obsessed with my Vizsla (dog), traveling, and the musical Hamilton. I also enjoy writing and sharing fun parenting stories, which is what brought me here.

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The Jonas Brothers Brightened This Teen’s Day with a Very Special Visit

by Erica Loop

Lilly Jordan wasn’t going to let chemotherapy ruin her chances to see the Jonas Brothers. Even though the teen couldn’t leave Penn State Children’s Hospital to go to the Hershey, Pennsylvania show, she still got an evening filled with all the Nick, Joe and Kevin she could ask for!

Jordan, who was supposed to go to the Hershey area Jonas Brothers show, shared an Instagram post, inviting the pop starts to pop in and visit her. The post got plenty of attention (even from state congressman Scott Perry) and eventually made its way to the brothers themselves.

Not only did the Jonas Brothers see the post, but they stopped by the teen’s hospital room before their show. In a video clip from the visit, Joe said, “We saw your message, we had to come over.” Nick added, “Do you have a favorite song that we can dedicate to you?”—to which Jordan replied, “Definitely S.O.S.”

Luckily, Nick’s new bride, wife Priyanka Chopra Jonas, tagged along on the visit. Chopra Jonas offered to send Jordan a video of the performance!

—Erica Loop

Featured photo: Penn State Health Hershey via Instagram 

 

 

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This Dad’s Amazing Custom Sheets Bring Smiles & So Much More for Kids in the Hospital

by Erica Loop

While sterile white sheets of a hospital room may serve a purpose, they certainly don’t make what’s already a stressful experience any better. Enter Kevin Gatlin: this entrepreneurial dad decided to help sick kids by creating bedsheets that invite play!

Gatlin’s company, Playtime Edventures, makes sheets and sleeping bags that are not exactly of the norm. Instead of solid colors or plain prints, Gatlin’s products are covered with games. While the sheets (and sleeping bags) aren’t exclusively for hospital use, the creator dad designed them with bored, hospital-bound kids in mind.

The Playtime Edventures creator told NewsWest 9, “My wife used to utilize the bed with our son, they would play board games they would do homework assignments it was the biggest piece of furniture in the room.” After Gatlin told his wife that he wanted to put games on the bed (sheets), she asked if he was planning on including something educational.

With his wife’s question in mind, Gatlin met with half a dozen teachers, discussing his playsheet product ideas. “We put together bedsheets and slumber bags that cover everything from Geography, Math, Science, Grammar, word find games, over-sized game boards… all on a three-piece set,” Gatlin told NewsWest 9.

As of now there are roughly 10 hospitals in the United States using Gatlin’s sheets. Instead of hospitals buying the sheets directly, individuals buy the play products online and donate them.But the donations don’t stop there. According to Gatlin, hospitals often give the sheets to the patients to take home.

Visit Playtime Edventures here for more information on buying these perfectly playful bedsheets!

—Erica Loop

Featured photo: Playtime Edventures via Instagram 

 

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How To Bottle Feed A Breastfed Baby Who Doesn’t Like Bottles (ANY Bottles)

By Nealey Stapleton

It doesn’t happen overnight. Consistency is key. Be patient with yourself. Don’t give up. These are all things I tell my clients in regards to getting organized, and they are true. Cliché but true, and so far I have found them to be more than applicable to my status as a new mom. For example, today’s lesson is how to bottle-feed a breastfed baby.

Breastfeeding is hard, especially at first! You want your baby to get a good latch. You want to increase your supply, so you should pump a whole lot in between breastfeeding sessions (aka breastfeeding attempts). You don’t want to interfere with the latch, so don’t offer bottles or pacifiers at the beginning. Do this, do that, now do the exact opposite of all of it. Sigh…

When Mason was born, he was a sleepy baby. And that’s an understatement. The lactation consultant would come in to my hospital room, hand the baby to me after I had unsnapped my gown and gotten into position, the baby would open his mouth, boob would go in and….nothing. He would already be asleep! He would stay awake long enough to open his mouth and that was enough for him to call it a day. As my late father-in-law would say, “You’ve got some life, pal.” But I digress.

It was evident that we had our work cut out for us in regards to breastfeeding, but we took it on enthusiastically. And a sleepy baby (which is otherwise a very good thing) wasn’t the only issue.

One of my nipples is flatter, so that required a nipple shield and a lot more work on Mason’s part for getting a good latch. My milk didn’t come in until the 4th day after he was born, so up until that point (and afterwards of course) our day revolved around breastfeeding attempts and pumping sessions. My husband would do everything he could to help – hand me the baby, wash and dry the pumping supplies, burp the baby, etc. We were an amazing team, and it continued on after we got home from the hospital. #smallvictories

Breastfeeding became easier and easier. With each attempt, Mason latched on faster, it hurt less and eventually I didn’t even have to use the nipple shield. Boom! What an amazing feeling of accomplishment I felt every time Mason would effortlessly latch on and drink away. We were straight up breastfeeding champions, and I was super mom! “I totally got this whole parenting thing,” I thought to myself…naively, of course.

As you’re probably guessing, we didn’t remain on cloud nine for very long but it certainly was nice while we were up there.

Weeks went by. Breastfeeding continued to go so well that I didn’t even have to pump that much. Here and there I would remember to give Mason some breast milk in a bottle. He would drink it and then a few more weeks would go by. About 6 weeks before he was due to start day care, I decided I needed to give him the bottle more so he would be able to go the day without me. That’s when the euphoria of breastfeeding success evaporated like the accomplishment itself was an illusion all along. Mason became so comfortable getting his nourishment directly from the source that he was no longer willing to drink from a bottle. Queue my panic and then the advice I received…

“Don’t worry, your baby won’t starve at day care.”

“He can go hours without eating and might just wait until you pick him up to eat. “

“Or he’ll feed at night more…which will keep you up at night…but he’ll get the calories he needs.”

Oh good, then he’ll be keeping me up at night after I’ve returned to work? That’s all great advice and very comforting. Yeah, none of this is what you want to hear when you’re in the thick of trying to get your breastfed baby to take a bottle.

I write this to you today, because I want to bring hope, relief and an actual solution to those who may be as frustrated as I was (well I’m going to say “frustrated” but the proper description is more like a depleted, overwhelmed, sobbing mess).

THE thing that finally worked wasn’t something I read, found online in my endless Google searches, got from another parent, the doctor, a lactation consultant, the day care provider or anywhere else. It wasn’t how we fed him, where we fed, who fed him, what time we fed him, how hungry he was or wasn’t, what bottle we used or ANY other variable we could think of to change in order to get the tiniest smidgeon of a result. Because believe me, we tried it all.

We tried to bottle-feed him morning, noon and night. We tried when he was hungry and when he wasn’t so hungry. I tried, my husband tried, my mom tried, my step mom tried, my mom’s boyfriend tried. We tried it while holding him in the breastfeeding position in the rocking chair (you know, because tricking him might work). I tried breastfeeding him and then slipping in the bottle while his eyes were closed. We tried while he was in the car seat, and it was in no way similar to the breastfeeding position. We tried 10, yes count them, 10 different bottles! We tried every day, multiple times a day, for almost 6 weeks. We tried. We tried. We tried.

Like I said, we tried everything we could think of.

And then it occurred to me. My nipples are NOTHING like the nipples on the bottles. They aren’t even close, so maybe I need to break out the nipple shield again and use it as some sort of transition device. And guess what. It worked!

THE thing that finally made a difference was the nipple shield, and this is how I did it.

When it was time for Mason to eat, I would let him feed on one side. Then when we moved to the other side, the nipple shield would be there. Although he did suck on it, he wasn’t fond of it and that’s when I slipped in the bottle. Boom!

He was taking it down. Instant relief hit me when this worked the first time, because I finally had something to work on that produced a result. It took some time, but I did this at each feeding session until the nipple shield was no longer necessary and he would just take the bottle.

Now, let me interject a quick side note here. Mason did show a preference for certain bottles from certain people. Yes, you read that correctly. He would only take one kind of bottle from me, and he would only take another bottle from his day care provider. I think it’s safe to say he gets that attention to detail from me (I’m a professional organizer so it does make sense). Anyway, in case it helps you, he would only take the Lansinoh Momma bottle from me and the Dr. Brown’s bottle from the day care lady.

To ensure the continued success of both breastfeeding and bottle-feeding, I would switch between the two throughout the day so he would go with either one. And he does it! He’ll breastfeed, he’ll take the bottle, and anyone can feed him at anytime anywhere and in any position. Also now, with some practice, he’ll even use different bottles. Woohoo! We’re back to feeling like champions…for now. #supermom #supermomfornow

Like I said at the beginning of this article, it doesn’t happen overnight. Consistency is key. Be patient with yourself. Don’t give up…but if you’re at the end of your rope like I was, talk to me. Are you also having this problem with your breastfed baby? What have you tried? What’s not working? Did you try my nipple shield solution? How’d it go?  I’m all ears. Leave me a comment and let’s figure this thing out together. :)

I’m a professional organizer, an author, a small business owner, a DIY blogger, an  adoring wife, a smitten mom, a Pug lover, a hula hooping guru, a cheese addict, and a happy napper.

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