This year's Thanksgiving missive was delayed to accommodate Bo's 18 month birthday. I know it sounds superstitious coming from a highly trained scientist, but I didn't want to get all thankful for something that had not yet happened. While Bo continues to grow and develop despite his condition, I gladly swim in the River of Denial.
Although I've gone so far as to forget to hook him up to his artificial nutrition. No, seriously. That is serious denial. I'm too superstitious to jinx his 18 month milestone by celebrating it without at least a week between it and posting about it.
I just remember asking Anna about the other MID babies she knew or knew of and she wistfully recounted that the only 2 she knew outside of the CA boys were both from Maine, and both passed away by 18 months. So after Bo was born, I had this mantra of birthday milestones: 100 days, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, 18 months, 2 years, and 3 years (the longest amount of time UMich would acknowledge as a realistic lifespan). And while I am amazed and grateful and happy and my mouth is full of honey, my heart has a bitter root knotted around it. Five milestones down and 2 to go. So much can happen in that time. And maybe after those last 2 we are home free? Free from what? Not from TPN. Not free to get pregnant without a lot of thought and scientific intervention.
In the last 2 years, I lived through an enormous pregnancy, an intense labor and delivery, a devastating neonatal period, and a schitzophrenic infancy. I don't want Bo's toddlerhood to be marked by his mother's melancholy, but how do if face these celebrations with what may seem exaggerated festive emotions when their Janus face is one of escaping death or other unknown tortures?
And the darkest torture that I have endured may have been at the hands of my own hormones. Those first months after Bo's birth, all I wanted to do was get pregnant again. It was so biological and so counter-intuitive. And the thought of never ever being pregnant again. Of having and losing Bo so soon. Of being some crazy old lady who once had a baby. It made me so delirious with grief. It made other pregnancies and babies and family planning sting my heart with the cruelty of sunshine on a sunburn. Too much life. Too much emotion. Too much loss.
Some days I feel more sane, like I can talk sense to myself and come to terms with our situation. Other days, I just want to believe that everything will turn out fine. If I just believe blindly, Bo will miraculously fix that broken gene and we will have more babies who are healthy and unaffected. But that's not faith, it's just wading in the River of Denial. And I have prepared my heart well for the Thanksgiving of this bittersweet. Without Bo there is nothing to be thankful for. With Bo everything for which I give thanks reminds me of the bittersweetness that springs from this River. The River that I now live. The River of Preciousness and Treasure. Bo Tsuen.
