Not the cool kind of breakdown, like in a song where they say "break it down" and proceed to do a bunch of amazing licks. This was more of an emotional breakdown, and probably my first of many as a mother.
We live a pretty low-key life. I have a good job where I could easily get full-time hours, but we've chosen to live an economical life until Lilah is a year old and spend as much time with her as we can possibly squeeze in. This means a lot of lazy days just spent rolling around on the floor with her, taking walks, blueberry/apple picking, camping, and just general family time. When I work more than three days a week, I start to feel a little frazzled. Not because I can't handle it, but I literally feel the minutes ticking away - minutes with my family I will never get back. I do pick up extra days for bills, or to pay for something fun we want to do, but generally I try to keep it to a minimum.
Here's a time line for this past week. Saturday - work. Sunday - work. Monday - off and we did nothing. Tuesday - picked up a shift for end-of-the-month paperwork. Wednesday - Lilah's 6 month appointment (switched from 12:45 to 7:45 at the last minute!), grocery shopping, lunch with Ann, apple picking, visiting Ann at the new office, Target supply run, pharmacy run, autumn care package baking extravaganza, trying out a new dinner recipe. Thursday - appointment with an ophthalmology specialist, lunch at Tamaki and Tea, Dano's class, eye appointment for me, a couple pies to bake, and the Junoon concert at 7:30. Friday - work. Saturday - Blessing of the animals in the morning and Dano playing a can drive in the afternoon after his class. Sunday - church, pumpkin patch and corn maze trip.
Just a tad busy!
So the actual reason for my breakdown was mostly Lilah's appointments. It was early in the morning, but she was charming, as usual. She weighed 14lbs, 13 oz. She was 26in long. I was bothered by her weight gain. She had consistently gained 2lbs every 2 months, and all of the sudden she was just barely putting on a pound? I asked the doctor about it, who dismissed it completely. "Look at her. She's moving all over the place. She's actually burning calories now. The growth charts are put out by a formula company anyway. I don't apply it the same way to breastfed babies." I felt slightly better. I can't remember if I mentioned it before (and future 16 year old Lilah will be mortified), but when she was born, Lilah had a labial adhesion. The skin around her vaginal opening was, for lack of a better term, stuck together. It separates with growth, but we were watching it to make sure it was indeed separating instead of adhering more. At this appointment, Dr. Hatfield wanted to start an estrogen cream to the area to get the skin to release, since it wasn't shrinking and could start to interfere with her ability to urinate. That bothered me a bit, not because I was opposed to the treatment, but because (stupid, absolutely) it meant there was something wrong with her. Something minor and cosmetic, but something nonetheless.
At the appointment, I also brought up her pupils. They were both the same size, so I knew it wasn't a neurological disorder, and her vision was developmentally appropriate, but when they dilated in a dim room, one had a chunk missing! It was round, then all of the sudden at the top, it dipped down, like the moon when it's not quite full. It wasn't a coloboma, since those are near the bottom. Dano said he saw nothing and I was crazy, but it nagged at me. Pupil size and shape is very important. They should always be equal. I mentioned it to the doctor, who looked at it with her penlight and saw nothing. I said, "It only happens when her pupil dilates. If they're constricted, they're equal." I felt a "Let's indulge the worried mother" vibe emanate from her, and she turned out the light and shined the penlight at the wall.
"Oh! You're right. There it is." I felt a hundred percent better.
"My husband said I was crazy."
"You're not crazy. I can see it. I'm going to refer you to a specialist, since I don't know enough about eyes to be able to give you a good idea what it is."
Lilah finished up the appointment with 3 shots in the leg and a tasty lunch of Middle Eastern food. She had hummus and loved it, but mostly threw it up as a side effect from the shots.
Her appointment with the ophthalmologist was the very next morning. She flirted with the office staff and other patients in the waiting room. I saw our transporters from work with a resident after her appointment, so I chatted with them to quell the panicky feeling in my stomach. We were checked in by the assistant, who was very nice and found Lilah a stuffed purple fish to play with, since we had forgotten Ignatius (her plush pig and most favorite friend) at home. Even she noticed her pupil, since we were in a dim room.
We met with Dr. Ulrickson who made friends with Lilah and asked some questions. He noticed exactly what I was talking about and told me what I already knew - her pupils were equal and reactive, her vision appropriate, it wasn't a coloboma, and he had never seen anything like it. He also said, "Some babies will let me cover one eye while I look at the other, and some absolutely refuse to do it. The ones who refuse turn out to be very stubborn later, every time. Miss Lilah wants nothing to do with it." "Great," I thought. It was true enough. He would smile and talk to her, waving a toy around, and attempt to cover one eye up. She would skillfully weave to one side and avoid it, smiling as if to say, "I like you. You're nice. But I have no intentions of letting you cover my eye. Thank you, though." He asked us to hold her still while her he looked at her eye under a microscope. You would have thought we were beating her. We had no sooner gotten ahold of her when she started to stiffen her body, flail, and scream (clamping her eyes tightly shut, of course). I'm sure it was scary to have a stranger pull on her eyelid in a dark room with lights shining in your eye and being held down, but she could have spared the theatrics. He got a few quick glances before giving up. She buried her face in my chest and bawled pitifully. He said he'd just suggest looking again in 6 months, because he couldn't see enough, but didn't think it was a tumor or anything that could cause her to go blind. "If it was, I'd suggest putting her under general anesthesia so we could take a good look under a powerful microscope. Ugh! If only I could get another look at that eye! It's rare. I've never seen anything like it." As a mother, my ears heard only "tumor...blind...general anesthesia" and this fierce feeling reared its ugly head and I wanted to hide her away and not let him touch her again. In a rural area like this, rarities are, well, rare, and there have been a lot of "exploratory surgeries" performed at the teaching hospital with no solution found, just fishing around to show the students. "Not my daughter," I thought. Obviously, Dr. Ulrickson wasn't suggesting anything close to that, but I was still afraid. I was also afraid she would go blind or have cancer go into her brain from something they didn't catch. I suggested laying her in my lap with Dano and I talking to her quietly, and him examine her with a handheld magnifier. He took another look, then started laughing.
He saw tiny strands of her pupil that had adhered to the front of her cornea. When the pupil constricted, they weren't pulled taut, so they looked normal. When it dilated, they were tugged at and the top of the pupil appeared to dip down. He said he's seen it on a minuscule scale before - one or two strands - under a microscope, where the person wasn't even aware and had never noticed a vision change. He had never noticed it on such a large scale, and still wants to see her in 6 months, but it appears to be just a genetic abnormality. "I see in her history she has a labial adhesion. It's kind of like that. Just a small adhesion of the pupil and cornea, only not so easily fixed with a cream." Something happened in utero, causing small, random adhesions in her body. Undoubtedly it's something from my genes, but at least it's something that is, for all intents and purposes, cosmetic only.
Still, the good news didn't keep me from having a complete and utter breakdown later in the day. Too much activity, stress, and pent up emotion and fear from that appointment pushed me over the edge. I think I've been building up to it for 6 months. Maybe I can go another 6 before the next one. Here's to hoping. In other news, Dr. Hatfield had said Lilah is so busy and curious, love standing, has little interest in sitting up, and her leg muscles already so well developed, she expects the child to be walking by 9 months. Walking. If that isn't enough to get me working up to another freak-out, I don't know what it.
