On Terror
The following essay is one of Amanda's favorites from the archives of her blog, Mandajuice.
We spent most of yesterday romping around the Discovery Museum with Alex's favorite playmate, his "Regular Grandma." Unlike me (or anyone else I know for that matter), my mom seems to have an endless supply of energy. As long as she gets enough sleep, she's like a pack of wolves on a Starbucks bender. After chasing the boy all over the museum, we went back to her house and Alex entertained himself with a hose and a box of water on the deck. He even skipped his nap to go swimming with my brother Tom while my mom whipped my ass at Scrabble.
When we get home from my mom's, I rush us inside so I can throw the mandajuice that I'd left at her house after Blogher into the freezer before it starts to thaw. That shit is like liquid gold, so it's the number one thing on my mind. Somehow I manage to carry everything inside in one trip - the diaper bag, the milk bag, the new Superman costume mom bought Alex at Costco, my camera bag, the dirty clothes, the Scrabble game I'm borrowing so I can whip Dave's ass, and the baby fast asleep in her car seat.
I set Alex up to watch some TV and he falls asleep flat on his back within minutes. Genoa never woke up when we came in, so I leave her strapped into her car seat and put her next the couch and open the back door for fresh air and freeway noise. I check my e-mail, call Expedia, surf Bloglines (I've been gone all day, so everything is bold, bold, bold!), the usual stuff I do when both kids are asleep and I have the house to myself.
After twenty minutes, my annoying parent instinct kicks in and I decide to do a sleep check on the baby. Genoa is both healthy and also a second child, so I'm pretty good about limiting the sleep checks. But I still occasionally feel the need to bug her just enough to check that she's alive, but not enough to wake her up.
So I walk up behind the car seat, pull the sunshade back and gently brush her hair with the back of my hand. She doesn't move. No big deal, I figure she's really tired, so I gently lift her slumped head and carefully slouch it to the other side. This is a big risk; Dave does it all the time and he usually wakes her up. Her skin is cool to the touch.
She does not move.
My heart starts to beat a little faster and I dart around to the front of the car seat. I sit on my knees facing her and rub her chest a little.
She does not move.
I go from gently rubbing her chest to shaking her entire body with my hand.
She does not move.
I unbuckle her car seat straps faster than car seat straps have ever been unbuckled in the history of car seats. I lift her limp body over to the carpet.
She does. not. move. Her startle reflex is missing; her eyes don't even flutter. I can't breathe and I'm not sure which is racing faster, my heart or my brain. I don't know what to do, so I just keep trying to wake her up. I start yelling, "GENOA, WAKE UP!"
She does not move.
"WAKE UP BABY GIRL!" Now I'm screaming right in her face while shaking her.
She does not move.
I start to take off her clothes because that seems like the next thing to do.
Her eyes flicker and roll back into her head, but she falls back asleep immediately. She's alive! I suck in a tiny, shallow breath of relief, but something is not right. It's never this hard to wake her up.
I keep yelling at her. "WAKE UP GENOA!" I'm surprised that Alex doesn't stir. He's only three feet away, but misses the whole commotion.
At last she starts to come around. Her eyes flutter, then slowly open and now she is staring at me and I can see the gray-blue of her irises and the black of her pupils. And she is MAD. She scrunches up her face and starts to scream bloody murder. I'm certain this sounds better than anything I've ever heard, even better than those first spine-chilling screams the second after she was born.
In hindsight, I realize that she was breathing the whole time. I still don't know why it was so hard to wake her up. Whatever it was, I have a renewed understanding for the phrase "sleeping like the dead." She is fine.
I, on the other hand, am not. It took HOURS for my heart to stop racing. And now, the next day, I still can't even THINK about it without an instant reminder of the contents of my stomach. For the longest sixty seconds of my life, I was forced to consider that my baby might not be alive anymore. And the burning, white-hot sting of that realization was the most terrifying moment of my life.
For more of Amanda's great writing, visit her at her personal blog, Mandajuice.
Comments
Gasp! I totally felt your terror - cripes, you gave me the chills!
Quite a few years ago, I had just come home with my monkeys. My husband was home, painting the house, and my kids (almost 2 and four, at the time) decided to climb into the truck to play, something I would NEVER allow without one of us being right there. Mind you, the truck was not running nor were there keys in the ignition. As I was bending down to retrieve something out of my own car, out of the corner of my eye I could see the truck start to roll backwards down the drive. We live off a very busy highway with a lot of fast-moving traffic, and I was frozen with terror. I screamed like I have never screamed before, and my husband, cool and collected, quickly ran to the side of the truck, opened the door, and pulled the emergancy brake. Somehow my son (who was 2) managed to put the truck into neutral without it being turned on. We promptly called the dealer and told them what had happened. I have never been so scared, and I can still recall the look of horror on those tiny little faces. Even 4+ years later, I still have nightmares about that incident. Oh, and the truck was kept locked and barred after that.
My heart goes out to you, and I am SO glad your little Genoa is okay.
Posted by: Melissa R. Garrett | February 16, 2007 8:53 AM
What an awful scare. I'm glad everything's ok.
Cas
Posted by: cassie-b | February 16, 2007 10:34 AM
My god, you had me all shaky.
I live in terror of the moment I have to go through something like this.
It seems like every mom has at least one good scare where she thinks her kid is about to be killed or seriously injured.
Glad she was OK!
Posted by: rookiemom | February 22, 2007 7:29 AM