Heavy Thoughts

Oh my God, I don’t know if I’m even good enough to be a parent…I went to check on the kids, and thank God I did. I looked at Tess and she had one of her blankets wrapped up over her mouth and nose, with the binky in her mouth. I was so scared that she was inhaling carbon monoxide, and given more time, she might have suffocated and died. I am so scared right now; I feel as if God was watching over her, because it’s obvious I can’t. I don’t know why I left her with the blanket up against her mouth, except that I didn’t want to disturb her since she had just fallen into sleep. Then I went downstairs to work out. I should have checked on her sooner…what was I thinking??

I am in such bad shape right now. I still have this dull pain just below my abdomen that comes intermittently, sometimes three or four times an hour, sometimes every four hours. I don’t know what it is, but it can’t be good. I keep trying to isolate what it could be, but I can’t.

And then, I called the pediatrician's office to ask about Owen’s blood tests, which they said the results would be there by Monday (today is Thursday) and they said they hadn’t received the results yet. I find that fishy. I think that because my doctor is on vacation, that something must be wrong and the other doesn’t want to be the one to tell me. I am so nervous that he has leukemia in his blood cells. I don’t know what else to think. Why wouldn’t they have gotten the results by now? It’s been three working days. I know there was a holiday, but still, they should be there by now. Or, if they are not there yet, then something is wrong with the blood and they are rechecking it to be sure. I suppose there is nothing I can do at this point except worry about it, which I shouldn’t do, but I will. I just wish I could stop feeling so ill-at-ease about everything. I wish I was more like Erik, his philosophy is “don’t worry about it until there is something concrete to worry about.” I just can’t help myself.

I am going to have some red wine. I can’t take this anymore. After two glasses of red wine, my mind is going haywire...here are my random thoughts:

So what if I just stopped trying to scientifically think things through? What if, for the next 7 days, I just decide to believe that God is handling my life, and that whatever happens is meant to be. Could I do that? Would I be happier? There was a time when I was younger, having spent years in Catholic school and church on Sundays, that I went about life quite happily because I believed that whatever happened was God’s will, and that everything would be alright. I don’t really know what happened to change that. I don’t know why I became such an unbeliever. It’s as if I started putting more faith in the media and the scientific data and the hearsay of others. I know that some people scoff at religion, but it gave me such a base of faith that I was happy. I knew that things were happening the way they were not because of my fallibility, but because of the way God chose for them to happen. I wonder when I stopped being such a fatalist and started questioning things so much.

One thing I do know is that nobody ever cautioned me that having kids would be such a heartache. That every breath, every cold, every fall, would cause me to rethink what I had gotten myself into. How naïve I was when there was nobody but myself to worry about! I could handle just me. But throw kids into the mix, these tiny, beautiful creatures who depend on you for everything, and as they grow, the worries get bigger and fiercer. I am afraid to drive to work some days, in case I get in a huge accident and don’t survive. Who will make sure that Tess gets breastmilk until she’s one year old? Who will make sure Owen has his blended fruit in the morning? Who will they call Mom? I am afraid every day, now that I have kids. And I wonder sometimes, would it have been better if I was younger when I had my kids? Would I have been less protective, less afraid because I know what the world is all about now? I have friends who had their kids when they were younger, and they see them as partly an annoyance, because they still have things to do, they still have dreams unfulfilled. I feel as if my kids fulfilled my dreams. They are the epitome of what my life is about. They are my essence, my reason for being. They complete me.