Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother's Soul

  Of course, there was the time that I was downstairs in the basement office for a while working on a project. It was Dad’s time to watch his little girl. As I reached the top of the steps after finishing my work, he asked, “Where’s Mary?”

  “What do you mean, where is Mary?” I screamed.

  “I thought you had her,” he said nonchalantly. “Don’t worry, I’ll find her.” He had placed her on the living-room floor for a moment and then inadvertently turned his back. We began our search there. As it turned out, she had crawled over to the floor-length picture window and was hiding behind the drapes. We found her giggling in delight at the birds on the front lawn and at the cars passing by. It was the first time that she had crawled. I seldom placed her on the floor, but Tom liked to give her room to stretch and play. No harm was done, in fact just the opposite. Our baby had reached a new point in her life because my husband, her dad, had let her expand her horizons.

  During all those months of pregnancy while I complained, I never imagined how difficult it would be to let her go once she was born. For me, it was the first test of motherhood—to let Dad be Dad. To realize that someone else could nurture my child in his own way. And to realize that what he had to give her, I couldn’t give.

  That is the beauty of parenting. That each mother and each father has a unique contribution. That our babies need the distinctive love and nurture that each one of us has to offer. And it pays off, too. By the time our second child was on the way, Mary was two years old. She and her dad had a wonderful relationship forged by the variety of experiences which they alone had shared.

  After our youngest child, Kristi, arrived, I was able to give my husband more freedom—and space—in his distinctive parenting techniques. I, too, had grown. And, I had learned from his parenting style, even as he had learned from mine. After all, we were a team.

  “Well, they’re all yours,” I declared one day as I headed for the office.

  “Aren’t you just a little worried?” he teased.

  “No, just remember to check behind the drapes if the baby disappears,” I laughed. “Besides,” I added, “you’ve got everything under control.”

  Susan M. Lang

  “Are you SURE you put her to bed?”

  Reprinted by permission of George Crenshaw.

  A Life or Death Decision

  Amber Brittingham stood in the nursery doorway, tears streaming down her cheeks. Inside, her mom sat in the old wooden rocker singing “Jesus Loves You” and rocking Amber’s infant daughter, Rachel, to sleep. That should be me sitting there singing to my baby, Amber thought miserably. But Amber was under strict doctor’s orders not to touch her own baby, or even to stand too close.

  Amber was grateful for all her mom’s help, but Rachel was her baby, after all. I don’t want to watch Rachel from a distance, she silently sobbed. “I want to feed her and put her to bed and all those other things I’ve waited my whole lifetime to do.”

  Ever since she was a little girl, Amber had dreamed of the day when she would start a family of her own. She could barely contain her joy when she learned she and her husband, Jonathan, were expecting their first child.

  But Amber’s joy soon turned to sorrow and despair.

  During a routine checkup at the beginning of her fourth month, Amber’s doctor discovered a lima bean-size lump in her thyroid gland. A surgeon did a biopsy, and he called Saturday afternoon with the results.

  Amber and Jonathan had planned to go out that night to celebrate her twenty-seventh birthday. Instead she called her mom. “I have thyroid cancer,” she wept. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Anne and Bob Marchant drove sixteen hours from Oklahoma, to Colorado Springs where Jonathan was stationed with the army. Monday morning they accompanied their daughter and son-in-law to the doctor’s office. They all listened intently as the surgeon assured Amber, “Your prognosis is excellent. But we’ll have to schedule the surgery as soon as possible.”

  Amber had a single question for the doctor. “How will the operation affect the baby?”

  “It could cause premature labor,” the surgeon allowed. “We might not be able to stop it.”

  Amber touched her swelling belly. The baby was only four-and-a-half months along. If it were born now, she knew it could never survive. “I have to wait,” she instantly decided. “I can’t risk hurting the baby.”

  Jonathan supported her decision, but Amber’s folks wanted her to have the operation right away. “You’re our baby. We only want what’s best for you,” they pleaded.

  “I may be your baby, but please understand that right now this is my baby I’m fighting for,” Amber replied. The doctor warned that if she waited, there was a chance the cancer could spread into her lymph nodes. But Amber’s mind was set. “If I hadn’t gotten pregnant I might never have discovered the cancer in time. This baby saved my life, and now I’m going to do whatever it takes to save its life.”

  Amber left the doctor’s office convinced she’d made the right decision. “I can do this,” Amber told her family and the other women at the preschool where she worked as a teacher. But every morning Amber woke up clutching her husband, all but paralyzed with fear. “Is the cancer spreading?” she worried. “Am I going to live or die?”

  One day during her sixth month, Amber was driving home from work when the baby started kicking. Amber put a hand on her belly, and suddenly she could not hold back her tears. “What if I don’t make it and somebody else has to raise my child?” she panicked. “What if I’m not there to tuck her in at night, or help her get dressed for her very first day of school?”

  During her eighth month, doctors did an ultrasound on Amber’s thyroid. Now, instead of a single cancerous nodule there were five. The cancer was growing, but Amber was determined to hold out for one last month. “Whatever happens to me, at least the baby will make it,” she comforted herself.

  On Amber’s due date doctors induced labor and delivered a healthy baby girl. “I did it,” Amber rejoiced, counting fingers and toes. “Look,” she told Jonathan, “our baby is perfect.”

  Amber took her baby home, but she had little time to enjoy being a new mom. It was time for Amber to begin her cancer treatment—and pray to God it wasn’t too late.

  Amber’s parents and husband paced the waiting room as a two-hour thyroidectomy stretched into five. “The cancer was even worse than we thought,” the surgeon explained when Amber awoke in the recovery room. The cancer had spread dangerously close to Amber’s vocal cords, and now she couldn’t say a word. “There’s a chance the damage to your vocal cords may be permanent,” the doctor grimly reported.

  Amber’s mom took time off work to care for Rachel while her daughter convalesced. But the surgery had left Amber so weak, she could barely get out of bed. When Anne brought the baby in, Amber didn’t have the strength to hold her, or the voice to say “I love you.”

  Will I ever sing my baby lullabies? Amber anxiously wondered. Eventually, Amber’s voice began to come back. But then, all too soon, it was time for the new mom to return to the hospital for her radiation treatment.

  In a Denver hospital, Amber was given the strongest dose of radiation a human can withstand and still live. Then she spent a week in a tiny isolation room without so much as a photograph of Rachel to help wile away the lonely hours. The dose was so strong, no one could come near Amber without exposing themselves to dangerous radiation as well. And trace levels would linger long after Amber got to go home.

  “You can’t go near your baby until the radiation fades away,” the doctor sternly ordered.

  Amber felt crushed. “The one thing in the world I want to do most, and you tell me I can’t,” she anguished.

  At home, Amber also had to eat off separate dishes and sit across the living room from the rest of the family on a blanket that would later have to be destroyed. She felt like she’d died and come back as a ghost—always hovering at the very edge of happy family life.

  Every day Amber w
atched from across the room while her mom fed her baby, changed diapers and picked Rachel up when she cried. “Rachel thinks my mom is her mother,” she sobbed as she watched her precious little girl happily cooing in Anne’s arms. But Amber kept her pain buried deep inside. My mom has been so wonderful, she thought. I couldn’t bear it if she felt guilty for helping out.

  But standing at the nursery door listening to her mom sing Rachel to sleep, Amber vividly recalled the day in her car when the baby had started kicking. It’s like my worst nightmare has come true, she thought. Someone else is raising my child.

  A few days later, Amber had to fight back tears when Rachel spoke her first word. “Mama,” she said, only she said it to her mom instead of to her. It’s been so long. Will my baby ever remember I’m her mother? Amber wondered.

  To Amber, it felt like half a lifetime had gone by, but finally the time arrived when the doctor said she could hold her baby again.

  Shortly afterward, Anne returned home. “Thank you, Mom, for everything,” Amber said as Jonathan loaded Anne’s bags into the car to drive her to the airport.

  Amber stayed home with Rachel so she and her baby could become reacquainted. “Come to Mama,” she said, but the instant she lifted Rachel into her arms, Amber could tell by the way she fidgeted and turned her head away—her baby had forgotten her. “I finally have my dream to be a mom, only my baby doesn’t even know who I am,” she sobbed.

  Amber was determined to win back her baby. Every day for a month she stretched out on the living-room rug and played peek-a-boo with Rachel. Every night she sang her to sleep in a voice still raspy from her surgery. During the day she hugged her baby and told her again and again how much she loved her. “You mean the world to me,” she said, and, slowly, Rachel began to respond.

  One day when Rachel lay crying in her playpen, Amber hurried to comfort her. And this time when she picked up her baby she felt the difference. “Mama,” Rachel said, and Amber burst into happy tears.

  “She knows I’m her mom!” Amber exulted.

  Today, five years later, Amber is still cancer free. And Amber is not only Rachel’s mom, these days the two are best buddies. They do one another’s hair and paint each other’s nails. Amber still sings Rachel to sleep with their own, special lullaby every night, and this autumn one of Amber’s most cherished dreams came true. “I got to help my little girl get ready for her very first day of kindergarten.”

  Heather Black

  Cute, Cuddly and Calls All the Shots

  Nothing I’ve ever done has given me more joy and reward than being a good father to my children.

  Bill Cosby

  What would you do if someone told you that a demanding, illogical, selfish, boorish bully was going to move into your home and hold you hostage for the rest of your life?

  How would you prepare for the arrival of a person who represents the most basic form of human life—a grunting, drooling, screaming illiterate with absolutely no regard for property or personal hygiene?

  Anyone with an ounce of sense would call a cop, maybe the entire SWAT team.

  But nobody ever does. Instead, we prepare for these human leeches by knitting booties and sweaters, soliciting gifts and opening bank accounts for them. Some people remodel and furnish rooms for them. Others actually move into bigger homes or apartments.

  When it comes to welcoming a new baby, no expense of time or money is too great to be justified or rationalized, even though that baby is going to make us willing slaves to its everlasting well-being.

  If I seem to have a somewhat negative attitude toward parenthood, however, I have given the wrong impression. I love having kids.

  But I don’t think anyone should enter into such an arrangement without full knowledge of its consequences as well as its benefits.

  And according to a survey I read about this week, a lot of people are doing just that. The survey, published in the February edition of Baby Talk magazine, says 52 percent of expectant parents don’t believe a new baby will change their lifestyle. Another 25 percent say parenting will be easy.

  Boy, are they in for a surprise. Because anyone who doesn’t think a baby will change his lifestyle is more naive than the infant.

  The last time I heard such a statement, it came from a colleague who was about seven months pregnant. “Having a baby won’t change our lives that much,” she insisted. “We won’t let it.”

  Ha-ha! I thought. That is a good one; the assumption that you can “let” or “not let” a baby affect your life. Because once the baby is born, it does the “letting.”

  The baby lets you sleep or it doesn’t, lets you go out for an evening or not. The baby decides whether you can eat your dinner in peace or watch the news or other TV shows, as well as where, when and whether you will take a vacation.

  In fact, the baby’s needs and your own sense of responsibility to the child will influence nearly every move and decision you make from the day of the baby’s birth.

  Now that her baby is two years old, my friend is willing to admit how foolish her pre-parental prediction was.

  “When I finally sit down at 9:30 or 10:00 at night,” she says, “I’m too tired to even think about doing something for myself.”

  But she still doesn’t have all the facts. Because like many others before her—including me—she is operating under the delusion that it will somehow, someday, “get easier.”

  It doesn’t. In fact, it gets harder. So forget about all that freedom you are going to reacquire “when he goes to school,” or “when he’s old enough to drive himself around” or “when he goes off to college.”

  Instead, you will do homework, attend PTA meetings and suffer through class plays and other forms of torture. You may become a Scoutmaster, coach, band parent, stage parent or one of many other parental subsets.

  What’s more, you will pay dearly for all that, not only in time but in currency.

  And according to what I’ve been hearing and reading lately, you don’t even get off the hook when they graduate from college or get married. The latest trend—perhaps because of the economy—is for adult children to move back in with their parents.

  So the very idea that a child won’t change your lifestyle—immediately, drastically and permanently—is a real hoot. Because the fact is that they never leave you alone.

  A least, not if you raise them right and have luck on your side.

  Ray Recchi

  5

  SPECIAL

  DELIVERY

  Babies are bits of stardust blown from the hand of God.

  Lucky the women who knows the pangs of birth for she has held a star.

  Larry Barretto

  A Trusting Love

  As I placed the last few items in my suitcase, I could hear the radio playing in our bathroom. My husband, Mark, listened to the news as he shaved every morning. “There are reports of bombing within three miles of the Saigon City limits.”

  Mark came into the bedroom. We stared into each other’s eyes, unable to look away, yet unable to speak. He turned and left the room. When I had agreed to be the next volunteer to escort six babies from Vietnam to their adoptive homes in the United States, there had been no escalation of the war for many months. Still, the decision to leave Mark and our two chubby-cheeked little girls for two weeks was difficult at best. When I asked Mark what he thought I should do, he only said, “You’ve gotta do what you gotta do, Honey.” But I knew the words, “Please, don’t go!” were screaming inside him.

  I considered how firsthand information would be helpful for our local Friends of Children of Vietnam chapter. Mark and I had applied for adoption of a son through FCVN and expected him in two to three years. I thought it might mean something to our son someday to know his mom had been to his homeland. Every call we made to the State Department gave the same encouraging advice: the war was not expected to escalate. Go. So after much prayer and thought, I said I would. One week later, a fierce Vietcong offensive began. I doubt I’d have kept my
promise to go if I hadn’t had the powerful, faith-confirming experience on Easter Sunday, the day before I left. I knew I’d be safe because God would take care of me.

  During the thirty-minute drive to the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, airport, Mark and I hardly spoke. It was strange not to be able to talk about all of this. We had always prided ourselves in our ability to communicate. Mark was not only my husband, but also my confidant, my best friend. There was nothing I couldn’t discuss with him—until now.

  At the airport, we spent most of my preboarding time wrapped in each other’s arms. When the final boarding call was announced, I lingered there a little longer hoping his love and trust for me were greater than his fears.

  “I’ll assume you’re okay unless I hear from the Red Cross,” Mark said, knowing phone communication from Vietnam was impossible.

  “I’ll be fine,” I assured him. Still, as I walked across the open concourse to board the plane, I couldn’t bring myself to look back and see the pain I knew must be reflected on his face.

  Once on board, I forced myself to look out the window and blow him a kiss. He returned it, trying to smile. I leaned back against the seat and allowed the tears to fall.

  Days later at my final destination, the Tan San Nhut Airport, the sight of camouflaged jets lining the runway brought to the fore my questions and doubts once again. That is until Cherie, FCVN’s Saigon director, greeted me. “Have you heard the news?” she exclaimed. “President Ford has okayed a giant orphan airlift! Instead of taking out six babies, you’ll help take out three hundred if we’re lucky!”

  All the questions were answered; all the doubts, erased.

  As she drove through the overcrowded, chaotic streets, Cherie explained how dozens of babies were being brought to the FCVN Center to prepare for the evacuation. Despite my years as a pediatric nurse, I was not ready for what I was about to witness there. Every inch of floor was covered with a mat and every inch of mat was covered with babies! We spent the entire first day helping the Vietnamese workers diaper and feed scores of babbling, cooing, crying infants. Our night’s sleep was shattered by the sound of gunfire; harmless, the staff assured us. Still, as glad as I was to be on this mission, I was eager to complete it and get home to Mark and the girls.