Words and Feelings

There are pictures of Sawyer that are difficult for me to look at now. He looks so skinny. So tiny. It hurts to see them. I think to myself, how did I not know? How did I miss this? How?

I remember the first time someone mentioned to me that he looked small. It was my dear 75-year-old friend from the school I taught at. She picked him up and said, "He's small for his age, isn't it?"

"No." I immediately responded. "He's long and lean according to his pediatrician."

But her words echoed inside my mind for days. weeks. She was, afterall, mother to 8 kids and grandmother to many more. Wouldn't she know? It struck a nerve. Maybe I did know there was something off with his growth then and I just wasn't ready to admit it. I don't know.

I do know that the words people have used to describe him since the hospital have often been stabs straight to the heart. "Oh. What a little PEANUT!" someone once said. 

"He looks just like Michael when he was a baby," explained Mike's sister to her husband. "Except Michael was much chubbier. Imagine a chubby Sawyer and that was Michael."

These comments struck me right to the core. They meant nothing by them. They couldn't possibly have known how sensitive I was and how carefully they needed to tread so as not to hurt my feelings.

So when we took Sawyer in for his endocrinology appointment and the doctor walked in and immeidately proclaimed him to look just fine AND the lab tech drawing his blood went on and on and ON about his chubby thighs, I sang on the inside.

When we introduced him to our new neighbor, she exclaimed, "What a big boy!"

Mike and I exchanged a look of stunned silence. "We don't hear that very often," Mike responded.

"Really?" she said. "My kids were all tiny, skinny little things. Look at those legs!"

I could have hugged her.

.......................................................
But it isn't over yet. Maybe this will be an ongoing, forever struggle with my little man. He doesn't eat enough formula. Often he makes up for that by eating a lot of "solids", but not always. I still panic and fret and mentally bang my head against a wall.

Sure he's doing fine now, but he could easily get back to that place. That unhealthy place of low percentiles and frightening statistics. He comes back anemic in every blood test he's ever had, and I know. I know it's because he doesn't eat enough of what he needs to eat and that's the nutrition-packed-formula. I feel helpless and afraid. I feel alone in this battle. No one can help. Of all the doctors we have seen, no one has been able to give me the magic answer. Sometimes Sawyer just refuses, and there's nothing anyone can do.

I always knew that motherhood would be heartbreaking and challenging, but I never fathomed the extent of it.

It's tough.
It's the love that makes it so difficult, though. It's because he is my world that I struggle so much with his eating and growing problems. I so desperately just want him to be healthy.

He is happy, though. Always has been. And for as often as I fret and want to bang my head up against a wall with frustration I laugh and smile 50 times more. It's an interesting business - this parenting stuff. Interesting indeed.