Open Heart Surgery, A Pavlik Harness and My Three Month Old Daughter.
By: T Marie
Tags: Baby, Trauma, Self, San Francisco, Pandemic

Open Heart Surgery, A Pavlik Harness and My Three Month Old Daughter.

3 months into Motherhood, 10 months into a Global Pandemic. Here is where I am today.

Personal photo. Great Highway, Ocean Beach. San Francisco.

My first born Daughter, turns three months old this Friday.

My fourth cup of coffee isn’t strong enough. But it’s going to have to be enough to get me through the rest of the day.

Or at least the first half of the morning.

Currently I am running around the living room, picking up stray burp cloths and toys, my long curly hair is soaking the back of my black sweater.

The formula my daughter is fond of is heating up in the kitchen and the beeping seems like it’s getting louder. I wonder if it will beep until I turn it off or if it will just keep making that noise, alerting me it’s past warm enough and I’m risking letting it become to hot and needing to mix it with water to cool down.

Our first virtual feeding specialist appointment is in 20 minutes and for some reason I can’t shake the idea she will be able to see inside our home and judge us for the mess that’s accumulated from all my daughters belongings.

I’ve always been annoyingly anal about where things go and am always cleaning constantly. It never feels like it’s enough. Having a baby hasn’t changed that, but it’s certainly made it more exhausting trying to keep up with it all in our too small home.

Doesn’t stop me from trying to be on top of it.

I’ve learned in my 35 years its best for my mental health if I have structure and a clean space, no matter where I live or with whom.

I need this. And I see to it that it’s done daily.

If things are a mess I can go downhill pretty fast and I don’t have any time or energy at the moment for my old pesky depression and any annoying nervous breakdowns; so I ignore my aching back, my sore and calloused feet and continue to scurry about picking up and collecting all the many empty milk bottles and washing everything by hand.

What a luxury a dishwasher would be.

I swoon at the thought of being able to put a full load into a magical machine for it to come out sparkling clean.

But who am I kidding? I AM the dishwasher .. what the hell am I talking about?

I’m rambling and talking to myself out loud.

Im always talking to myself out loud, but since I gave birth to my daughter I realize I care much less if people see (hear?) me doing it. My husband is in the living room playing with our daughter, trying to keep her in a good mood before our appointment.

I’m trying to remember the details of the last time she drank from a bottle … we have tried multiple times to remove her nose tube and let her “free feed” by mouth at home, but she never quite meets the ounces/ML/calories (all of this can really do your head in trying to recall it all and every doctor asks for a different way of explanation so you just remember all 3!) that her nutritionist has set for her. Usually between 500–600Ml a day is the goal. Or around 5 ounces.

Our entire day revolves around her feeding. Every day. There’s never a day where this isn’t an issue. Some days are better than others. But my Daughter, bless her sweet newly mended heart, is never consistent with her meals. Never. She could surpass her goal one day and the next barely want a drop.

Therefore — the tube goes back in.

I should mention, WE, my Husband and I, we were trained to put it back in.

They’ve sent us boxes and boxes of the equipment (which cost a stupid amount of money for these plastic things that constantly need to be replaced) which I cried furiously over when they first arrived because it was as if they were setting us up to believe she would be eating this way for years to come.

I hate doing it. Putting her tube back in.

But I am good at it.

So my Husband always insists I am the one to do it. We wash our hands, take out a new tube from its packaging, put it in a cup of water to lubricate it so it’s less irritating going down her esophagus.

Measure from the tip of her ear, to the middle of her nose, down her chest between her nipples and belly button. Mark the spot on the tube with a sharpie, so we know how far to push the tube in.

It’s best to do this when she is either asleep or just waking up. Some of the fits she has thrown, while trying to insert the tube, have stopped me cold.

I can’t do it to her.

Her screaming, the sobbing, it breaks me. The guilt I’ve accumulated from everything she’s been through in her too young life — it’s enough to fill me up with guilt in all the lifetimes to come.

When she doesn’t throw a fit, the insertion of the tube is actually quite quick and easy. I continue to push it down until the sharpie mark is near her nostril.

Then we apply a heart shaped bandage (my husband stays up late cutting hundreds of these when he’s anxious) and once the tube is securely in place, we take our tiny syringe and fill it with air, grab our stethoscope and put the syringe to the end of her tube and listen for a *pop* inside of her stomach, that way we know the tube is in the correct place and not off somewhere in her lungs.

It’s always where it needs to be, the nurses trained us well.

But I still hate doing this to my baby girl.