By Christine Cronin
My son received his first diagnosis 3 days after he was born.
That was hard. The little baby boy I thought I was taking home with me was suddenly different. The entire picture I had in my head of who he was going to be, and strangely, the picture I had of myself, was abruptly deleted.
And it wasn’t even like I could just easily change direction, pick up my new role and just carry on because, I had never been here before. I had never been through a diagnosis before. I didn’t know what this life was going to look like and I didn’t know what it was going to feel like or who I was suppose to be.
It was a process. It was an unravelling. It was stages and steps and spirals of emotion and grief and letting go of what I thought this life was going to be and learning to accept what it actually is.
By the time we got to his 4th diagnosis, maybe I was a little bit better at hearing news by then. It certainly felt a lot different than the first time. It didn’t quite feel as gut-punching but it did feel heavy and I remember sitting in the doctor’s room as she told me her thoughts and broke the new news to me.
She listed off the things he wasn’t doing and the milestones he wasn’t reaching which helped her team come to their conclusion and, I just remember thinking ‘What does this mean?’ And wondering if he was going to change. Now that he had this other label written on his record, will he become something different again?
On the drive home this time though, I watched in the rearview mirror as his little eyes fixated on the same bridge they always do and his little mouth curled into an amazed smile like he was just seeing it for the first time and I remember the feeling I had.
I felt content.
I felt like the noise of the outside world and the voices of the doctors and the scariness of the unknown was really just all noise and I told myself it was okay to just put all of it down, even just for a little bit, and just enjoy him. Just soak up my little baby boy for exactly who and what he was. Dream in his smile and love up his little toes.
And I did.
And I do.
Anytime this world starts to feel too heavy or too much and the noise starts getting too loud, I remind myself that all of the business side of this can wait, just for now, and it’s ok if I just love him. It’s ok if I just enjoy him right now.
If you’re new to a diagnosis or even if you’ve been here a while and the noise is loud and the weight feels heavy and you’re busy with all of the labels and paperwork and learning, don’t forget to just enjoy your child. Soak them up. Breathe slower. Take in those eyes and those darn squishy cheeks way more than you take in what’s written on those papers because it’s okay.
It’s ok to block out the noise for a little while and just enjoy your little one, mama.
At any point in this journey.
You won’t lose any ground. And you’ll probably learn a whole lot more about them.
Enjoy them.
And keep going.
