A few days ago, I was remarking to Brian, “Gosh this little kid has had a rough nearly 10 months.”
- February-August: Pain for hours a day from extreme reflux due to food intolerances
- September: Mostly pain-free!
- October: Pain from teething
- November: Pain from teething, seizures, and the norovirus
I’d been hopeful that maybe Eloise’s seizures would just come when she got in a new tooth, or got a virus. Or that, maybe, just maybe, her new medicine would control her seizures so well she wouldn’t get any more at all.
But today Eloise had not one, but two seizures already. Short, and over in seconds, thankfully. But. There are no new teeth or viruses in sight — at least none I’ve been able to detect.
Having to watch your kid have seizures with any sort of frequency isn’t the sort of life any mom hopes for. And the irony is that today has been the happiest and most pain-free day Eloise has had in weeks.
Life can be strange.
I’ve noticed that, as a parent, when your kid is in pain your instinct is to rush in and take it away somehow — to wave a magic wand that stops your baby’s hurt.
If I’m not mistaken, though, that’s not possible.
That first night we were in the hospital a few weeks ago, I was kneeling next to my hospital bed, staring in almost disbelief as our precious little 9-month-old had her fourth seizure of the day. Medical staff had strapped an oxygen mask over her face and I watched as her heartrate climbed dangerously high. Two nurses and a doctor hovered around, adjusting medicines, and consulted with someone on the phone.
By 10 minutes in, Eloise’s eyes had a glassy stare and her body was clearly seizing over and over again. The weird thing is that suddenly she’d be back and I’d have hope. She’d breathe in deeply, her eyes would have life in them again, she’d look around and relax — and then, within a second or less, she’d be back to having a seizure. Blood even began dribbling out of her nose. The whole thing went on for 40 minutes.
As I kneeled there, staring at her tiny body, I felt helpless — there was nothing I could do to make the seizure stop, to make her pain stop. So, eventually, I started to sing and stroke her little head. Even though I knew she couldn’t hear me and wouldn’t remember a thing, it felt comforting.
And it was in that moment I realized something.
Most of the time in life, there will be nothing we can do to take away the pain of our kids. But what we can do — which might actually be even better — is be with our kids as they go through that pain.
A therapist to the super-rich, Clay Cockrell, writes:
Too many of my clients want to indulge their children so “they never have to suffer what I had to suffer” while growing up. But the result is that they prevent their children from experiencing the very things that made them successful: sacrifice, hard work, overcoming failure and developing resilience. An over-indulged child develops into an entitled adult who has low self-confidence, low self-esteem, and a complete lack of grit. “I’m a therapist to the super rich: they are as miserable as Succession makes out”
I don’t know what a pain-free life would have meant for a kid like Eloise who may never even reach the mental age of a 12-month-old, but I’m guessing that going through pain over and over again — yet learning you’re never alone — has to be worth something.
Interestingly, if I think back to some of the hardest times of my life, then I realize that the trauma normally didn’t come from the event itself but, rather, from the feeling I was alone in my suffering.
Many times, if I learned through therapy or a reframe that I wasn’t actually alone, then the trauma faded away.
As parents, we’re realizing there’s a very strong possibility, despite all our best efforts, we’ll never be able to stop Eloise’s seizures — to stop her pain.
But what we can do is be with her. And make sure that, as best we can manage, she’ll come to expect that she’ll never be alone even in the midst of her suffering.
If we can’t take away her pain, we can at least make sure she never feels alone in it.
That’s, I think, the best we can do for Eloise.
Hugs from us to you,
Mallory, Eloise, and Brian
(Cover photo from the incredible @hannaodras photography on a day when Eloise was miserable from what we later found out was norovirus)
Eloise The Tiny Fighter 
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
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