twenty days after that

It's strange, the passage of days like river water over rocks: how time flowing over and around me softens the edges until the hours and minutes are something I can watch from a dream.  I'm in the moments but not of them.  And then there's Max.  His expectant face, so serious and intent.  Eyes that search vague shapes for faces that he knows: me, Chip, and Alice.  We orbit around this small, so new son.

Which is why the clock stopped spinning Thursday night.  I had been ordered to escape the house for a few hours with Linda.  We saw The Hunger Games.  And while we were busy consuming popcorn and discussing blue hair, Chip laid down next to a slumbering Max.  Chip had been asleep about 20 minutes when he woke up to Max choking and flailing his arms wildly in the air.  In the time it took him to pick Max up, the baby had stopped breathing altogether: white bits of foam on his lips.  Max's body was rigid, arched back like a sidways parenthesis.  Chip says it felt like an eternity of patting Max's back and watching his face go a dusky purple before he breathed again (we estimate it was between 15 to 30 seconds).

When I got home, Chip filled me in and then explained that after Max settled down again he drifted right back to sleep.  We didn't so much follow suit that night, laying in restless worry.  In the morning we took him to the doctor.  We anticipated that it was reflux: milk backing up into his esophogus and getting into his airways.  But his doctor worried about other monsters: a seizure, heart trouble, something with his lungs or airways.  Instead of heading home for ice cream and a long nap, we left the doctor's office with orders to take the baby to Seattle Children's Hospital.

And so it goes: gurgling waters suddenly come rushing in a white torrent that overwhelms the senses, pushing debris and muck into a tumbling mess of cutting pain.

We dropped Alice off with Linda and Mark, our two-person rescue party, and drove down to Seattle with a hastily-packed bag for me to stay overnight with the baby.

They were wonderful at the hospital, the best place to be when you are worried and unsure - when you cradle your very new baby and wonder what could possibly warrant a five-week-old to stop breathing.  There is so much more to the story: the nurses who danced for a young dialysis patient across the hall, the sound of Max sleeping so quiet in a hospital crib much too big for him, the long night spent on the couch in his hospital room, and the beeping monitors recording Max's breathing.

We are so lucky.  Nothing more serious was found except for a raging case of reflux (who knew?).  He isn't a spit-uppy baby, but there are other signs that we'd missed (again: who knew?).  Max was fit for a ginormous foam wedge thing for sleeping on (I'm calling it the space shuttle because it has a SEAT and SEAT BELT and all he's missing is a space suit).  We were given a lot of marching orders about how to feed him and when to feed him and ways to hold him.  But ultimately, my favorite order came from one of his nurses: Max, we hope to not see you here ever again.

Amen to that.

the mix

Chip made a list of songs for me.  Songs for the hospital, for those grueling hours of hoped-for labor and a starburst moment when Max would join us in the here and now--- changing our lives in the irrevocable way children do.

The plans we made and the things that happened are tied together in my mind in a cloudy mix of memory and wishes.

I listened to that mix in the hospital, but not in the way I envisioned.  In the hazy blue-gray of predawn I talked quietly to a tiny baby laying in solid weight on my chest.  The sounds of Chip's music filling our dark room.

And now in the weeks since his entrance, I've listened to that mix thinking about the way we plan to have our lives unfold versus the way the days fling forward in a carpet before us: messy, unkempt, sometimes painful, sometimes so sweet my teeth ache--- but always always always surprising.

the first eighteen days

He's going to ask me about those first eighteen days.  I'm not sure I'll know what to say--- a kaleidoscope of activity, his crying mixed with his sister's kisses, my face nuzzled into his, watching him change minute by minute.

And then there was the feeling of pieces tumbling down around us: Max just four days old and a phone call from mom--- dear Winston had fallen and broken his hip.  I felt arrested in time, helpless and wondering about my dad.  Then we started to breathe again.  Winston's prognosis was good, he was sent home and happy to be there.  Mom would still be making a trip out to meet tiny Max and help me recover from surgery.

But plans are wispy things, caught up in the turmoil of life's events.  Max now just eight days old and another phone call from mom--- this one she directed straight to Chip, saying that she needed to speak with him directly.  I knew it wouldn't be good, and it wasn't: Winston had a stroke.

I've been unsure how to address it here, what to say and how to say it.  I've huddled underneath the canvas of the little tent I erected when Max was born.  I've shed too many tears, salted Max's head until his hair was slick with them.  I've worried and prayed and wondered over my dad.  The family rushed to his side while I listened from a thousand miles away.

Their attention and focus gave him strength.  Their love and prayers gave him hope.

I walked the floor with my boy at 3am, making quiet promises for a future with Winston. 

And in the days that followed, he has begun the long process of recovery.  When I spoke with him on the phone a few days ago, he sounded wonderful.  My most feisty and wonderful Winston.  That night I told Max about one of his namesakes--- how there was another Boyd so anxious to meet him, his last remaining grandfather with so much to teach him about strength and grace and courage.

I think that this is what I'll tell Max about his first eighteen days: my world was shattered and built up again.  I'll tell him that when everything else is stripped away by exhaustion and worry and sadness and loss, there is a long and enduring love.

And yet one more funny thing happened on the way back to regular blog activity

Meet Boyd Daniel Maxwell Romero. We are calling him Max, and he does not dissapoint- arriving in surprising fashion 2 weeks early.

More soon.

a funny thing happened on the way to returning to full blog activity

...okay, more than one funny thing.

There was this,

a tried-and-true FOUR-YEAR-OLD (Saturday was her birthday and she is so grown up).



And this:

Chip got a new job.  A good job that makes him HAPPY, which is such a good thing because it makes me happy.  But the downside is that it has him traveling again (cue universal laughter).  So to recap: I am happy.  And also very nervous (as you can imagine).


And this,

this belly - this baby - this this this HUGENESS, which is still a round reminder (no baby yet).  And I'm perfectly happy about that, if you believe it.  I'd like him to hold on for a couple of weeks, actually.  Just give me a couple of weeks to finish putting his room together, to finish washing his clothes, to paint a couple of shelves, to actually sew him some swaddle blankets (cut out but as of yet, not a single stitch), and to pack a darn bag for the hospital.


And this, which is hard to explain without putting it into context.  For the last two and a half years I've been working in the children's organization at our church (it's called Primary).  I've been the secretary and the first counselor, always behind the scenes, happily in the supporting role.  I've let someone else make the big decisions and call the shots (LOVE YOU AMANDA).  And then, about five weeks ago, my Bishop asked me to be president (cue even more universal laughter).  That was my first reaction, actually: I laughed.  Then I looked at Chip.  And I looked at Alice.  And I looked at the growing belly.  Then I said yes.

It's been a busy month.

But I'm excited to be here with you, and I promise I'm hanging in for the long term, come what may.  Tune in the rest of the week for pictures of some of the things that I have actually been able to get done (fun and crafty and cute things).