Catawampus

Last Sunday evening I was settling down for what I thought was going to be a much-needed quiet evening at home. I was on my own with the babies, who were both sleeping. Dane was about to get on a plane back to San Jose from a weekend in Boulder. Caleb and Samantha, who were visiting over the weekend, had headed back to Lake Tahoe. It had been a rough several days, with both babies teething intermittantly, and Duncan barely sleeping for three nights. All weekend I had been particularly worried about Duncan, who had been either fretting or inconsolable whenever he was awake. I had debated about whether or not I should take him to the doctor, but he was only running a mild temperature and he was working hard on two teeth. Sunday afternoon he finally settled down, smiled and coo-ed some, and went down for a seemingly peaceful nap. I thanked Caleb and Sam for all their help, and told them to go home and get some rest. I put the house in order, ate some dinner, and even read a few pages of a novel.

At 5 o'clock both babies woke up hungry, but Duncan was frantic. Trying to calm him down, I changed his diaper. And that's when I saw his foot. The ankle was purplish and puffy; the foot was red; the toes were slightly pushed apart by swelling. Suddenly several images clicked together in my head: Duncan fretting while being held by Samantha in his bjorn, his right leg tucked up at a funny angle. Duncan crying harder in the night when I adjusted his position on my chest and touched his leg. Duncan lying on the floor next to his brother and three legs kicking around in the air.

Half an hour later I was in our pediatrician's urgent care clinic with both babies, trying to stay calm and tell the doctor that somehow I must have broken Duncan's foot. The doctor wasn't listening to me at all. She wanted to know about his fever, which had jumped suddenly to 101.5 F. What was his temperature at different times, when had I last given him Tylenol? I heard myself conveying data -- temperatures, times, doses, Duncan's behavior, no cold symptoms. Then the doctor told me that I hadn't broken his foot. I didn't have time to be relieved, because she was busy telling me about all of the tests that needed to be done. Blood work, urine analysis, x-rays. She was calling doctors at Stanford Medical Center. If there was time, I would need to go home and pack bags to be in the hospital over night. Wait here, we'll be back in a few minutes and tell you what to do.

Duncan cried through most of this, while I held him. Tristan joined him occasionally -- to show solidarity, I guess.

After an hour or so at the urgent care clinic, I was given directions to the Stanford ER and the nurses helped me load up both babies into my car. Dane was on the plane by this time, probably trying to make it fly faster by flapping his arms.

The rest of the night was a long blur of waiting, punctuated by episodes of holding Duncan (while he was tortured in various ways), rounds of nursing Tristan (who was happy to be up past bedtime) and by feats of heavy lifting (two babies, two cars seats, plus the diaper bag weigh more than 50 lbs). Duncan's foot got worse as time went by. When Dane arrived in the ER at 1 am, we had a preliminary diagnosis (bacterial infection of the skin and possibly the bone) and Duncan was on his first round of broad-spectrum antibiotics. Duncan was admitted to the children's hospital around 2 o'clock. Conveniently, Dane had a packed bag with him and opted to stay the night so that I could take a sleepy Tristan home.

That was four days ago. Duncan has improved rapidly with treatment, but he and Dane haven't come home yet. Tristan and I have gone back and forth, while the doctors have done tests to customize Duncan's treatment. The news has been mostly good, but I'm finding that motherhood has activated dangerously imaginative parts of my brain that are impervious to even the best news. I behave calmly and rationally. But my sleep-deprived mind invented bizarre scenarios that lead to one or both babies dying before any of this happened. The drugs and the monitors and the needles have provided my already-addled brain with even more scope for paranoid imagining. It's not so bad in the hospital -- medical professionals are a lot like scientists, and they keep me grounded is solid (and reassuring) facts. We share data; we discuss options; everything's cool. But at home it's a little harder.

Tristan and I are staying home today, because in the midst of all this we both got gross head colds. I'm feeling guilty for leaving Duncan, but it is nice to have some rest. Also, it's good to be home to calm down the cats. They were really stressed out by the nights that Duncan was sick at home -- their fur stood on end for two days. Since then, while we've been away, they've been running rough-shod all over the apartment. They've napped on the changing table, in both cribs, on the hood of stove and in the kitchen sink. They've also destroyed part of the babies' mobile. While I'm writing this, Tristan and I are snuggling with them in bed. When the cats and the baby are calm, I can start putting everything right in the house.

Dane is posting regular updates about Duncan's progress on Facebook, so I won't go into that here. Suffice it to say that we're hoping to get him home in days, not weeks. We'll post again soon, when things are less catawampus.