Just Breathe. Honey Perkel
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moments I was up, racing across the hall. Before I reached the nursery, I could hear a deep, raspy sound. An inhuman, rhythmic noise. Like a seal, perhaps, or an injured dog. Certainly, not a sound I’d ever heard before.
Fear gripped me as I flipped on the light and looked down at my baby. His eyes were large, helpless, staring at me. I picked him up and hugged him closely. Bob stood beside me, feeling as helpless as I.
“Call the clinic,” I ordered, my heart pounding. “They’ll tell us what to do.”
Brian was limp in my arms. He struggled with every breath, trying to force the air in and out of his lungs. I could feel the effort.
“Breathe,” I begged him. “Just keep breathing, baby.” I forced my voice to stay calm for both of us.
Bob hurried back to Brian’s bedroom. “The doctor on duty said to take him to the hospital.” His voice didn’t sound like it belonged to him.
I threw on a pair of jeans and a sweater and grabbed a blanket. In just minutes we were running out of the house. The streets were icy. Bob took the route to Emanuel Hospital carefully, and I prayed all the way. Breathe, baby, breathe, I repeated again and again inside my head. I wasn’t sure whether I was saying the words for Brian or instructing myself.
“Don’t mind the speed limit,” I told Bob. “If we get stopped, maybe the police’ll give us an escort.” No cop in his right mind would give us a ticket, I decided.
Suddenly I was aware of how quiet it had grown in the car. All I could hear were the car’s tires grinding into the chards of ice on the roadway. The windshield wipers thudded back and forth as they worked clearing the snow flakes from the glass. I could no longer hear Brian gasping for air. With growing fear I turned to look at him in the back where he sat in his carseat. In the dim light projected from the moon and street lights, he sat looking at me, his tiny hands reaching out, grasping. His small puckered mouth, forming a grin.
“Look! I think he feels better!” I exclaimed.
“We’re almost at the emergency entrance,” Bob said, swinging into the hospital lot and parking near the entry door.
I climbed out of the car and unbuckled Brian from his carseat. “How’re we going to convince them that he couldn’t breathe? He’s just fine now.” I laughed with relief.
“Maybe the doctors can tell us what happened. How we can prevent it next time.”
I couldn’t imagine a next time.
I wrapped the thick baby blanket around Brian to protect him from the cold night air. Then we entered the hospital, inquiring where Pediatric Emergency was.
Chapter 11
Brian had the croup several more times. Bob and I became experts after that first episode. We ran the shower, keeping the bathroom door closed and the window slightly opened as thick steam filled the space. I paced the room holding Brian, singing to him, cooing to him, telling him to relax and breathe.
Or if that didn’t work, I sat with him on the front porch huddled under thick blankets, attempting to get him to breathe the brisk, icy air. Sometimes the cold air helped. Sometimes the steam. We never knew which. And the Tempra every six hours, the Pediazole, the Accurbron helped, too.
Even with these attacks Brian continued to thrive. Our little family was wonderful for the time being. We were certain, however, that another baby would eventually come our way.
Brian began to crawl. His first word was “Baba”, his name for my mother, followed by “Da-Da”, “Ma-ma”, “tickle”, and “dog”. He cut his first tooth in January and sat up in his high chair to eat. I now added an egg yolk to his diet twice a week, yellow and green vegetables, and crackers at snack time.
He loved playing with Punim, who seemed very protective of her two-legged brother. They followed each other everywhere.
Brian wrestled with his dad and enjoyed quiet times with me. He loved to cuddle. He loved to be held, read to, and sung to. I played my childhood records for him while he bounced on his chubby, solid little legs holding onto the railing of his playpen.
Did every mother believe their baby was the most beautiful? Even from the beginning, I thought so. With a cherub face, long eyelashes, and curly light brown hair, Brian was the most beautiful child. People were always mistaking him for a girl. I would dress him in a little blue knit sweater and pants with a football embroidered on the front or in a baseball suit and matching cap and someone would stop me to express what a beautiful little girl she was.
And once in a market when I explained she was actually a he, the woman exclaimed that having such eyelashes were so wasted on a boy. I laughed. I didn’t agree. I knew one day a young girl would come along and fall in love with those lashes.
At nine months old Brian weighed 20 pounds, 5 ounces and was 29 1/4 inches tall. In the ninety percentile for his age, the doctor told me. I started him on 2 percent milk. At his nine month check-up, the pediatrician found a heart murmur. Three months later, it was gone.
Chapter 12
Brian’s adoption became final just days before his first birthday. The waiting was over. Even though he’d been placed in our home months before and we had raised him thus far as our own, there’d been the uncertainty that until the adoption was final his birth mother or father could claim him. It was legal for them to do that. We’d known it to happen twice. Though it was something we’d never dwelled on, Bob and I always knew it was a possibility.
So on that big day I dressed him in a new emerald green Izod pants and shirt and we drove downtown to stand before the judge.
We chose Brian’s birthday, June 24, 1981 as the day to celebrate the finality of his adoption as well as the day of his birth. Our home was packed with family and friends to help us celebrate.
Brian had already been circumcised at the hospital in Roseburg; however, according to Jewish law, the drawing of blood at the site and offering his Jewish name would signify that the baby was officially Jewish. Wanting to raise our son in the religion we had been raised, Bob and I made the necessary arrangements with our Rabbi. Now Brian was ours. Forever.
Chapter 13
It began with the tantrums. At fifteen months, Brian began to have a terrible time accepting the word “no”. He tightened up his little body, turned red-faced, and lay on the floor screaming. With tears streaming down his face, choking, convulsing nearly to the point of throwing up, he screamed for what seemed forever. We thought he was going through what everyone knows as the terrible twos, a phase, only in this case he was starting earlier. We hoped with any luck, he’d out grow it earlier. But that didn’t happen. He was getting bigger and stronger. There was no consoling him unless we gave in, which was not an option. So he lay there and yelled. Bob and I were amazed at the boy’s stamina.
“Let him scream it out,” advised well meaning friends and family. Sure, I thought, they didn’t have to listen to him. It was always easy to tell others what to do.
Of course, seeing Brian so distressed was difficult for Bob and me. And it went on nearly every day. At nap time. At bedtime. When play time was over. Dragging him away from a birthday party was torture. He loved playing with other kids. Any time his routine was interrupted for another activity, he’d grow so angry.
What was wrong? Was this behavior normal? I thought we were doing the right thing by taking a firm hand. Maybe it wasn’t. It was hard to know.
One day, I had a dentist appointment. It had been arranged that my friend, Jo, would watch Brian while I was gone. We often planned play dates for our babies. Times when Jo and I would sit and visit. Occasionally, we babysat for one another.
When I arrived at her house she hadn’t yet returned from a morning shopping trip; her sister was there watching Andy. I had a few minutes to spare so I sat down to visit with Ann.
I