just breathe

It was a day when he’d napped for two whole hours. Waking around 12:30 p.m. in dare-I-say? a delightful mood.

Diaper change, sit in the living room. What will we do next? Oh, lunch probably.

And then it starts. Like a hiccup, but no hic. -cup, -cup, -cup. His little body rhythmically convulsing, a slightly startled look on his face.

Is he breathing? I don’t think he’s breathing.

-cup, -cup, -cup

What am I supposed to do? I run to the bathroom, hold him horizontally over the sink, stick my finger in his mouth, checking his face in the mirror at the same time. Is he breathing? Is he turning blue?

-cup, cup

Do I call 911? Holy F*@K!

My panic, my finger in his mouth, something, he starts to cry a little.

-cup,-cup, -cup.

I run to the phone, not sure what to do.

Run back to the bathroom. Like chicken without head.

And then. It stops.

I call the pediatrician’s office. Everyone’s at lunch, the person on the phone tells me. I explain that I think my baby wasn’t breathing, and that it was terrifying.

She says she can get me in with a different doctor than mine, at 5 p.m.

I say okay. Hang up phone. Sitting with boy in living room again.

Ummmm… no. Not okay.

I call back. Different nurse answers. I explain the situation, and that I’d already called a moment ago.

“Is there someone there who could just talk to me NOW, by any chance?”

This woman is more understanding of the SITUATION.

She says my pediatrician is there. Come in now.

Thank you.

(I’m learning that there is a whack-a-mole aspect to the calling of the pediatrician. If I don’t like the initial response I get when I call, I should take another whack. It’s not a totally logical metaphor, but it fits how I feel about the first nurse.)

The non-hics have still stopped, and I’m the one trying to breathe. Put him in the car. Turn the radio on so he can’t hear me. Cry and drive. Glad the office is close to my house. Calm self. Must pull it together.

Arrive at office. We’re walked right into a room. The nurse checking us in asks a lot of questions and takes his blood-ox with a device on his finger. Their go-to diagnosis is asthma. I don’t think so, I tell her.

His oxygen levels are normal. She wants to weigh him but he wants to nurse more. He wins.

Our pediatrician comes in. I tell her the story. Tell her it felt digestive to me. A muscular reflex stuck in a loop. Tell her it scared me to death.

She’s very understanding. And she informs me that it’s basically his reflux. It doesn’t just go away all at once one day, you know. (He was diagnosed with it when he was practically new, that which caused his copious spitting up — not to mention these weird screechy air-suck hiccups he’d wake himself with or us in the middle of the night — and my insane efforts, including consulting a psychic nutritionist on what I should be eating in order to clean up my breastmilk for him, to stop it.)

She says that what I did, by turning him over on his belly, and causing him to cry, was what stopped the episode. And that’s what to do if it happens again. Not over the sink, but in my lap, put him over my leg, support his upper body, thump him on the back until he cries, or until it stops, or both.

It was about 1:30 or so when we finished there. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to feed him solid food ever again, although I’d brought some with me — in case I needed to feed him in front of the doctor or he got hungry or something.

Drove to the retail strip by our favorite park. Put him in the stroller and started walking. And walking. In and out of stores, up and down street. Breathe. Walk to park. Put his bib on and feed him in the stroller.

This is the first time I’ve fed him in the stroller. Just like the high chair, but lower. He’s eating like nothing ever happened.

He sees the swings. He wants to go on the swings. That can’t be good. Swings right after eating? Especially today?

He wins.

I put him in the swing, tell him he has to keep his hat on. See, I tell him, we’re all wearing our hats. I gesture around grandly, taking in myself, the other mother, the girl in the other swing.

He grabs his hat by the brim pulls it down hard over his eyes. Like mush-mouth from Fat Albert. Laughs hysterically. Kicks his feet as he flies up and back.

After a while, when it seems like the pleasure is waning, I take him out. Put him in the stroller. Start walking around the lake.

There’s lots of geese at our neighborhood lake. More of a big pond and bird sanctuary. They’re right on the path, unafraid of humans. I push the stroller through the gaggle, thinking how much he must be enjoying being among the geese, but when I check under the hood, he’s sleeping.

* * *

So, I figure, this is a milestone. Baby’s first emergency pediatrician visit? Only one week since baby’s first Urgent Care visit. He’s breaking me in.