At a recent physical therapy
appointment, another mom in the waiting room remarked, “Aww, she’s so
cute. What is she, 4 months old?” Lily was busy playing on my lap, planting her
legs, standing up, smiling, laughing, trying to crawl over the armrest of the
chair and kissing me. “No, she’s 10
months old, but she was early so she’s a little thing.” She’s not so little anymore, either. She’s in either 6/9 or 6/12 clothes,
depending on the brand.
I’m pretty used to these kinds
of questions from non-NICU adults, but this was a little unexpected in the
physical therapist’s waiting room. If
you’re in this room, then your child is getting help for something. It could be a small something; it could be a
large something; it could be a devastating something-but that’s not the
point. There’s something, some reason
that you’re here, so I would think (hope?) that you would be more sensitive
with the other moms. I would certainly never turn to a stranger and comment on her
child’s age and/or ability level. We
often run into other NICU moms at PT, and of course we catch up and ask
questions, but we are kindred. We’ve been
in the trenches together, dug down deep into the thick mud and made it through
the Somme to dry land and shelter. We
survived. Most of us had terrible shell
shock, but we made it and only we can understand each other.
Waiting room lady followed up with,
“I was wondering, because she can do a lot of things.” I guess she thought I had a very advanced 4
month old? And then her daughter came
out of the office. Her daughter has a
devastating something. My heart dropped
and I wanted to hug waiting room woman so hard-I could forgive her presumption
and her, well, I guess it’s not callousness, but something akin to
callousness…I could forgive it. I am
lucky. We are lucky. Lily is crawling,
actually crawling, and she can go from a crawl back into a sitting position all
on her own, every time, and we are lucky, so, so lucky.
