Dear Mama,
Your screams still haunt me. You and your daughter tumbled into the ER moments after me and my son did, your daughter limp against your shoulder.
It was nearly 1 in the morning. The lady at the front desk was taking her time checking my son in. He’d awoken from sleep with a barking cough and terrifying, wheezy breathing.
Now she was asking me his birthday, over and over and over again. I practically yelled it at her the third time, not just impatient for my son but also for you.
Later, after a breathing treatment and steroid shot, my son popped off the hospital bed in the bedraggled, shared ER room, wide-awake and cheerful.
My mama heart filled with relief that my son was going to be OK
We settled in for the two-hour monitoring period — and that’s when we heard your voice.
It rose urgently in the hallway. “Baby, look at mama. Oh my God, baby, look at me!”
I peeked out the window to see your tiny daughter rigid, eyes rolling back in her head.
“Help!” you screamed. “What the f—! Where is the doctor?”
Nurses jogged up to you. “Everything’s OK,” they said. “Has this happened before?”
“No!” you shouted. “What do you mean, 'OK'? Everything’s not OK.”
The nurses continued in soothing tones
“Everything is OK.”
You screamed back that it was not. Not at all. Not with your baby rigid and unresponsive in your arms.
Your screams faded as you, your daughter, and the doctors and nurses pushed through a set of double doors and deeper into the belly of the hospital.
I couldn’t help feeling angry. I know the nurses were trying to calm you, and I know they work hard.
But the last thing a mother wants to hear when her baby is seizing up like that is: “Everything’s OK.”
Because you knew that it wasn’t. Even if your daughter was having a relatively harmless febrile seizure, she wasn’t, in the moment, OK.
What if she was having something worse? (I hope so much that she was not.) Mamas don’t want false hope.
We want the truth. We want people in the medical world to fix our children and make them OK.
This moment between us happened back in February. A lifetime ago.
Now the world has changed
Mamas are in emergency rooms without their babies. Babies, children, and teenagers are in hospitals being treated for this wretched virus that we all hate with our whole hearts.
We know now, more than ever, that everything is not always OK.
I wish that I could’ve held your hand that day and said, “They’re helping. They’re doing everything they can.”
Because that’s what we mamas want to hear when our babies are in trouble.
Not “Everything’s OK” but “We’re doing everything we can.”
My hope and prayer during this rocky time is that more mamas hear words of hope, but not false hope.
Words of courage that keep us calm and able to help the nurses and doctors help our kids.
We need them more than ever
I hope you and your little girl are doing all right now. That night in the ER, I saw you an hour after the seizure. Your girl lay resting on a bed, being wheeled back through the ER.
All looked calm and well.
And for that, I’m more thankful than you will ever know.
Sincerely,
Another mama in the ER
