Unexpected Pride

When we first learned that Brooke had hearing loss it was devastating. You never want your child to get a paper cut, so a permanent disability is horrifying. I could only focus on the things I was sure she would never do: sing in a choir, dance in a ballet recital, speak without drawing attention, or tell me stories of her day in school.

But, when we got the official diagnosis I took to the internet like I do morning, noon, and night and set out to find a solution. I often think that I should have been born in another place and time – somewhere with corsets, or where women still cook in beautiful frilly aprons, or when men stood up when you left the table and carried hankerchiefs to blot your tears – but without google I would be lost, or at least own millions of dollars worth of encyclopedias.

After putting in what seemed like endless hours in the middle of the night I came to a profound conclusion: we don’t need a solution.

Brooke can’t hear as well as other kids. There is no shame in it and no reason to be embarassed. I blanch when people tell me not to worry because she can cover her hearing aids with her hair. Why should she have to hide them? She did nothing wrong and it isn’t a punishment for bad behavior. In the scheme of her life her hearing loss will be but a minor setback.

This idea did come partially from my reaching the acceptance level of the grief scale, but it mostly came about when I learned that hearing impaired children do every one of the things I mentioned above, and more.

She will be able to sing and dance her little heart out – all the way to professional ballet companies or to record labels as others with her impairment have done. She can play any sport, tell any story without missing a beat, and hear every single word that I mutter to her under my breath in her tween-age years. I am certain that there will be days that she will cry and not want to wear her hearing aids. I’m sure that some kid, somewhere, will pick on her. And I’m also quite convinced that my most important job as a parent is to teach her to handle herself with grace and confidence in those situations and to understand that we all have our crosses to bear.

So, here in the Park house we are embracing her hearing aids, not hiding them. In fact, I’m honestly a little sad that she needs a pilot cap or headband to keep the things on until her ears get bigger than the pixie lobes she currently sports. In my ideal world we would go out everywhere proudly displaying her thousands of dollars of hearing helpers and we would educate people all over.

Hearing loss is the most common birth defect in the world. Did you know that? I had no idea, but it’s true. Maybe if we weren’t all so preoccupied with hiding things behind hair then kids would be more willing to embrace differences like that. So, we ordered them in bright metallic pink, with hot pink ear molds. 99% of her wardrobe is pink right now anyway, so it is a perfect match. And yes, in the time of neutral being trendy we are rallying against the baby fashion movement and proudly dressing her like the girl she is, partially because I like being feminine, and partially so I don’t have to smile and roll my eyes when the little old ladies in Target tell me how handsome my chubby baby boy is.

I now look forward to every morning when I pop her hearing aids in and tell her how much I love her because I get to watch her eyes light up and her mouth curl into the biggest smile you’ve ever seen, and I dread every bedtime because I have to take them out and turn the volume down on the world again.

My daughter may not be perfect, but I guess that beautiful, smart, funny, and kind will just have to be good enough.

Month Three

I'm a few days late at this, but it's amazing how time gets away from you with a little one!

This month showed signs of promise and hope - hope that I will survive, hope that Brooke will be able to cast out the demons, and hope that I won't have a voluntary hysterectomy to avoid any possibility of doing this again.

The past few days have given me glimpses of why people do this more than once as Brooke has made it through the majority of the day without having a single meltdown. We still have our bad days where I want to walk out into traffic, but as a whole I am starting to enjoy being a mother.

Yes, that sounds horrible, especially for someone who longed for so many months to do just this, but I'm afraid that infertility actually made it harder for me to cope with the difficult times. While we were infertile I had dreams of dressing my tiny little baby doll up while she gazed at me with loving eyes. I envisioned her cooing up at me in adoration, and squealing in delight at that thousands of dollars of toys we've purchased for her. The reality is so far from that and I suffered from a bitch slap of true life when we were a full 180 degrees from those fantasies.

As far as development goes she is doing just fine. She has rolled over on several occasions, although she has yet to do so with full intent. She loves to munch on her fingers, and grab her toes. She chatters for hours at a time, and now has clear favorites when it comes to toys - a red monkey in a hula skirt, a giraffe with blue feet, and a yellow worm with antenna. Infant toy designers are not very zoologically intelligent.

She does suffer from torticollis, which you can see from the pictures. Her head leans to the right because the ligaments are tighter on that side - probably from being crammed up in the womb that direction. We are doing daily stretches with her, and if it is not better by month four we will start physical therapy. Her doctor assures me (and my research confirms) that not only is that pretty common, but she also doesn't have a horrible case of it.

We also have the added excitement of getting her hearing aids today! I cannot wait to see her face when we turn them on as her hearing loss is something I have mostly made peace with. As a women with a hearing impaired child told me recently, "All children get picked on at some point for some thing and I know that his thing will be hearing aids." All we can do now is raise a strong and confident girl who looks at them (anyone who would dare to tease her) sweetly and tells them to shove it.

Oh, and in the information that only a grandma could care about she weighs 13 pounds and six ounces (a full two pounds heavier than one month ago) and is approx 24.5 inches long. She's a big one for sure, probably because she likes to eat ALL THE TIME. She naps four times during the day for 30 minutes at a time, but only in my arms so I don't get much done during nap time. She also goes to bed at 7pm and wakes at 7am, with four or five rousing fits along the way. I do wish she slept better, but I suppose we will get there in time. The fits can't be too bad anyway because Corey manages to sleep through the vast majority of them.

And speaking of the rest of the family, Corey managed to convince me he needed new golf clubs this month, so here is a picture of his new Cleveland's. I have no idea if they are diamond encrusted, which only seems likely given the price, but they supposedly make him hit like a pro so I succumbed.




And Sprocket has managed to find a way to meditate through Brooke's screams. You can almost hear him thinking, "I'm still an only child. I'm still an only child..."

I thought these things were made of Sugar and Spice?

The last month has absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, been the hardest month of my life.

When you leave the hospital with a baby you have already heard at least a dozen warnings about shaken baby syndrome. You dutifully nod your head, roll your eyes at your significant other, and tell the nurses that you have many people to call if you feel that you're in danger of shaking your baby. And then they leave the room and you talk about what kind of awful people want to shake their precious bundles of joy.

And then two weeks later you realize that it's normal people just like you who are treating their babies like Polaroid pictures just to get them to shut their pie-holes for long enough for you to brush your teeth for the first time in a day and a half.

Brooke has colic. And some of you are thinking, "Don't be dramatic. Babies cry. It's what they do." When I say Brooke has colic I don't mean that Brooke cries. Brooke screams.

If you want to know what Brooke sounds like here's what you do: Go to your stove and turn the front burner on high. Wait four minutes for either the coils to get nice and orange, or for the flame to burn bright blue. Then, dip your left hand in whiskey and hold it over the flame or press it to the burner and keep it there for a full minute.

That noise you just made is about half of the decibel level of what Brooke can manage, even though she's less than twelve pounds. She does this for around six hours every day, give or take a few seconds.

Brooke screams when she has a dirty diaper, and when she has a clean diaper. She screams when she's hungry and when she's full. The only time she doesn't scream is when other people who have heard the stories of terror come to visit. Then she pretends to be the sweetest baby on the face of the planet.

We have been to multiple doctors for her screaming, and she always sits on their papered table, drooling and smiling her gummy smile, and they tell us that she will grow out of it.

We don't know whether or not her hearing situation has any effect on her disposition, but last Friday we took her to one of the top pediatric hospitals in the country, which thankfully is only forty miles from us (Phoenix metro is huge), and they were able to run a barrage of tests on her which told us that she does have hearing loss. In her right ear it is mild to moderate and in her left ear it is moderate. We also found out that it is sensorineural which means that it is not fixable and it is permanent.

This doesn't sound too bad, and I am well aware of the fact that it could be much worse, but unfortunately voices are on the very low end of the sound spectrum, and without intervention her speech would be hugely effected.

Of course, we are getting her hearing aids as soon as possible (hopefully in the next two weeks) and we will be starting with the Arizona Early Intervention program to make sure that speech therapists, social patient coordinators, and audiologists are all at our disposal.

Until then, Corey and I are doing our best to come to grips with the fact that life will be a little harder for our little girl, and if she doesn't learn to stop screaming she's never going to have a boyfriend.

Since we have no known history of hearing loss in our families, we also have to undergo genetic testing as well as EKGs, thyroid testing, and kidney testing to make sure that her condition isn't a part of something much bigger and more dangerous, so please cross your fingers that hearing loss is the only problem she has! We also hope to find out if it is progressive, although we probably won't know that until we do hearing tests every few months and see if it is getting worse.

On much happier notes, her two month visit with the pediatrician went swimmingly. We had to switch from our much-beloved off-base doctor to one on-base and we were terrified due to some bad visits I've had. However, her new doctor is amazing and really took the time to listen to our questions (I always have many) and concerns (yeah, I have those too).

She was 11 lb 6 oz which is the 84th percentile, and 22 and 3/4 inches long which is the 85th percentile. She does like to eat!! We are hopeful that her height comes from my side of the family, but we know that little else does because she is an exact replica of her Daddy right down to the beautiful baby blues that she has kept so far.

She did get her shots, which after hours upon hours of research we decided to do on the normal schedule, and she hated them very much (but not as much as Corey hated seeing her get them).

Her neck strength is a little behind due to the fact that she doesn't do much during tummy time other than scream (see a pattern?), but he doesn't see anything developmentally wrong which is a good thing when we're keeping our eyes open for any other problems which could indicate a systemic syndrome.

I'm struggling to think of anything else to post because I know that her Grandmas will read this and everyone knows that Grandmas find everything their grandchildren do incredibly entertaining, but the reality is that she's two months old and two month olds don't do a whole lot.

Hopefully my three month update will be filled with happy tales of playtime, hours in the Bumbo, and sweet, sweet, silent serenity. Or at least a story of me changing out of pajamas before 3pm.

The cone of silence

If I said that I haven't blogged often because I have a newborn, most of you would understand. If I mentioned that said newborn has colic, all of you would understand. And although I am busy tending to her needs 99% of the time, I have also been avoiding blogging because there is one particular thing on my mind and I want to be very careful how I write about it, because as we all know: once something is on the Internet, it is always there.

Brooke is hearing impaired.

At this point we don't know if she's profoundly deaf or if she just has moderate hearing loss. We don't know if it is conductive or sensorineural, neither of which mean a whole lot to people who don't have hearing problems. But, the fact remains that we have taken seven hearing tests and she has failed all seven. She has been seen by an audiology tech, a pediatrician, a otolaryngologist, and finally an audiologist, and all of them gently place probes in her tiny ears, press some buttons, and look at us with a soft smile and shake of their heads.

When she first failed her newborn screening in the hospital we were sure it was just residual fluid in her ears due to the fact that I was only pushing for a few minutes. When she failed again the next day we were a touch more concerned, but thought that the fluid must just need a little more time to dry up. By the time she failed numbers three through seven we progressed to somewhere between horrified and quiet acceptance, and that is where I remain.

The pediatrician says that she is healthy. She was never jaundiced despite exclusive breastfeeding, she is gaining weight like a champ, and there is absolutely no way that anything is wrong with her very powerful lungs. But the fact remains that my little girl may never hear me tell her that I love her and that breaks my heart.

We are hopeful that no matter what the extent of her hearing damage that there will be at least something to work with - even if she has as little as ten percent hearing capabilities they can amplify it with hearing aids and she may be a candidate for cochlear implants later in life. And hearing aids have progressed far beyond the huge, tan-colored appendages that we all used to see on our grandpas. They can even fit them on a child as young as one month old.

But despite the hope that I have been given through my late-night research, I still can't help but cry thinking about the possible hardships my baby will have to go through. Will she learn to speak the same time as other babies? Will she learn to speak at all? Will she get teased in school, or will she have to go to a special school for deaf children? Will she ever hear the lullabies I sing softly to her despite knowing that she probably can't hear me? And will she be able to dance to the first song at her wedding?

I wonder what I may have done (or not done) during my pregnancy to result in her hearing loss. We have no family history, and I had no infections during her incubation time, so did I forget to take my prenatal vitamin on the day her ear canals were forming? Did I listen to music too loudly in the car on the way to obstetrical appointments? Did I not pray enough? And why are the babies born to the idiots on "Sixteen and Pregnant" just fine and my poor baby has to suffer? It is easy to tell other people that God isn't vengeful and He does not punish until you are in a situation where you feel that He is punishing someone you love for something that you did. Or maybe He just doesn't care.

I am so thankful that my husband is here with me to go through the same thing I am and although our emotional journey isn't exactly the same he is the only person that knows exactly what I am feeling when I look at our little miracle. He reassures me when I need it, and holds me at three in the morning when I am crying even though he has to get up for work in two hours and she has already kept us up half the night.

I would gladly give my eyes, ears, hands and legs to save Brooke from suffering for one minute from this condition but unfortunately there is no bartering system for God or the senses. All I can do at this point is wait, research, and continue to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at night in her glider while the optimist inside me defies her not to hear it.

Month One

Month one is hard! People don't tell you it's hard because they want to seem tough, or they don't want to complain, or maybe just because their babies are sweet and quiet. I'm not sure the reason, but we spent so much time and energy focusing on getting pregnant and staying pregnant that we thought the easy part would come when she actually got here safely. How wrong we were!

Brooke was an angel for the first two weeks. She rarely cried, and only then when she needed to be changed or held for a minute. At two weeks she started showing us how impressive her lung functions are and began screaming for hours at a time. I had no idea that babies did this, and I thought something was horribly wrong with her. After some convincing from Corey, my mom, nurses we know, and the pediatrician I resigned myself to the fact that we were the lucky 1 in 5 who gets experience with Colic.

The past few days have been a little better due to some changes in breastfeeding tactics (I make more milk than the little thing can handle, which makes me feel like an upright dairy cow) and the fact that gripe water helps her tiny belly get rid of some gas, but the past few weeks have been rough. So rough, in fact, that her daddy has declared her to be an only child already.

She has started making new noises to add to her collection of barnyard sounds, and I swear that every now and then her smile is more than gas. She still hates baths, but she loves being wrapped up in her hooded towel afterwards. She doesn't like bottles or pacifiers, which means that I am on duty 24-7, but since we are absolutely dedicated to breastfeeding that is better than the alternative. By her two week appointment she had gained one full pound and nine ounces from her going-home weight, and she's now around ten pounds according to our home scale. I still have ten pounds to go to get back to pre-baby weight, but unfortunately it is easier to put weight on a baby than it is to take weight off a mom.

She is a good sleeper at night and comes down from her evening colic episode around 7pm and sleeps the rest of the evening with breaks to eat. Like clockwork every morning between 5 and 6 she starts making horrible grunting noises that sound as if she's perfecting a sea lioness mating call so we are awake from then on, but I am still thankful for the 2.5 hours of sleep at a time.

She lives in the Ergo carrier, which is my favorite thing on earth right now when I can't get her to calm down, and naps in her Rock N Play sleeper downstairs. She loves her daddy and his voice and she hates her carseat and cloth diapers. We are still committed to the cloth diaper cause, but it has not been as easy as we'd hoped due to the fact that she eats a billion times a day and therefore pees and poops more than a normal baby. At one point we went through six cloth diapers in a four hour span, so we're still experimenting with them.

I wish there was more to write, but honestly she's just a big lump right now. Albeit an adorable, blue-eyed, angel faced lump, but a lump nonetheless. Although we have been warned against it, we are looking forward to the time where she can tell us what is wrong with her.

And, just so no one accuses me of being one of those people that can't talk about anything but her baby we did do something else exciting this week: we booked a cruise. During one of Brooke's freak-outs Corey happened to get an email about cruise deals. He generally asks me about twice a week if we can go on another cruise, but he must have been determined this time because he actually started asking me with dates in mind. I didn't have the heart to tell him no because I honestly thought he might jump off of a bridge at that point in time, so I relented. We are now going on a belated anniversary cruise in May of 2012 to Nassau, Bahamas, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten. Our great friends Brandon and Kim are going with us for their first trip away from their son so I know that we are all going to have a blast. And this way we have something to look forward to on nights where the girl gets all situated for bed and then craps all over us while we're singing her a nighttime lullaby (just a little anecdote about last night).

And finally, some pictures. As soon as she is in better spirits we will have some professional ones done.

Brooke's birth story

Brooke, Daddy and Sprocket are all napping so I finally have a minute to put our birth story down in writing [typing].

We went in to the doctor on the 30th, which was right at 40 weeks, and there was no further progress so our fabulous doc set us up with an induction date of the 3rd. When I heard that my heart immediately stopped beating and I thought to myself, "What have we done? I know nothing about babies. Let's keep her in there!!"

Early in the morning of the 3rd I lost my mucous plug and contractions started, so I was hopeful that we wouldn't have to do an induction at all and she would be coming naturally. I labored at home all day and although the contractions got to ten minutes apart they never got stronger or closer, so at 11pm we headed to the hospital.

By the time we got there my contractions were stronger and three minutes apart, so they didn't give me the pitocin as originally planned. I labored throughout the night, but by early morning I still wasn't progressing so they hooked me up and away we went!!

From 7am to noon I had strong contractions but they kept checking me and I hadn't progressed past 1cm dilated. They concluded that the scarring was preventing me from dilating so they upped the pitocin hoping that the stronger contractions would break things loose. Unfortunately, the contractions got much stronger but the only result was that no one could 'find' my cervix. Each nurse called someone else in to check, but after a parade of medical professionals they said that my water was bulging and my cervix was just too thin to measure. They called my doctor in and he broke my water and announced, "There - now she's 5 centimeters!"

By then I was exhausted and in extreme amounts of pain so I was beyond thrilled that the anesthesiologist was there waiting to give me an epidural. I didn't necessarily plan to have drugs, but after 24 hours of contractions I was ready for some relief! Corey was absolutely amazing during this time - he held my hand, talked to me during each contraction, and fed me ice chips. I wouldn't have been able to do it without him there.

My parents had arrived during this time and the nurse announced that I was 9cm so we were getting close to showtime. I was so relieved that it was tangible! Right away my doctor came in and explained that we were going to be pushing. While I was excited to get her out I had a small problem - not only did the epidural give me pain relief, I also could not feel ANYTHING. I couldn't feel my legs, move my toes, or even imagine how I was going to push. But, no one seemed to care.

They gave Corey one leg and my mother the other one and told me to push. All I could do was pretend I was doing pilates and apparently that is the same group of muscles because everyone announced that I was doing fabulously! The pushing phase didn't last long at all - maybe twenty minutes, and then my doc announced that it was time to get the baby out. I wasn't sure if something was wrong with her or if she was just that close, but either way I knew I had to push harder than I had before.

To Corey's horror the doctor started putting on galoshes, laying down paint plastic, and donning some kind of crazy parka. We thought he was joking around until he said, "It's going to look like a crime scene in here!"

Before I knew it I was pushing, and there was this enormous feeling of relief. Out she came!!

The rest was really a whirlwind - Corey cut the cord and they placed her on my chest. I remember thinking she was huge before they tore her away from me and the doctor started the stitching - and stitch he did. I had a third degree tear - and yes that hurts as bad as it sounds - and the sewing took much longer than the pushing part of labor. I felt like he was going to be down there forever and I was incredibly relieved that I'd had the epidural because I couldn't bear the thought of feeling the needle at that point.

She was wonderful and healthy with 9s on her Apgar, and Corey didn't leave her side from the second that she came out.

When they handed her back to me to breastfeed she looked right at me with huge dark blue eyes and my head spun. Had this little person really come out of me? Is she really part of me? These thoughts still haven't stopped flying through my head a week later.

Recovery has been a lot more painful than I expected, probably because of the tear, but also because Friday night I had to return to the hospital because of an infection and a bowel obstruction.

Honestly, my hormones have been running like crazy and I love kissing her and holding her, but I also alternate between those and moments where I am completely overwhelmed and scared about being completely in charge of this little life. She is so beautiful and trusting and I want nothing more than to make her life perfect in every way.

Corey is the most amazing dad I could ever imagine - watching him watching her sets my heart on fire every day.

This is such a poor version of the events, but it really is impossible to even put into words everything that happened a week ago. It feels like it has flown by, but each hour also has its own challenges and learning opportunities. Sometimes she eats well and sleeps well, and sometimes I have no idea why her head is spinning around in circles.

The exhaustion isn't really anything new for me, but Corey is having a bit of an adjustment period. Luckily, she does nap a lot so I can park it on the couch and try to recover if he needs to nap or sleep in.

Speaking of which, Daddy is napping and Brooke is hungry so motherhood calls. Wish me luck!

Brooke Marie

She arrived in dramatic fashion on Jan. 4th. 7 pounds, 11 ounces and 20 inches long.

Will give the whole story soon!