Tonight, I am going to continue my theme of writing about my time on bed rest to share how I think it affected my two older children, Annabelle (5) and Graham (2), and to share some things that my family and I did that (hopefully) made this experience a bit easier on them. Graham turned two a few days before Nick was born, and I think he was too young for this experience to really impact him, so I will be focusing totally on Annabelle.
My husband and I told Annabelle and Graham that we were expecting baby #3 as soon as we had a positive home pregnancy test, when I was still only 6 weeks pregnant. I know it's risky to tell little kiddos about a pregnancy in the first trimester, especially before the pregnancy has been confirmed by a doctor, but we/I was dying to share the news with our family and knew there would be no way to let our extended family know that a baby was coming without Annabelle catching on. After experiencing the very real and very scary side of pregnancy, I think, in the future, I would wait much longer to tell my kids, but, since I had two easy, drama free pregnancies under my belt, I thought I was immune to any type of significant complications or a miscarriage. Immediately, before I had even heard the heartbeat, baby #3 was very real to Annabelle. She started a nighttime ritual of blowing a kiss to my belly to say goodnight to the baby, and sometimes nestling up to my stomach and then telling me that she felt the baby kick. Back in the early fall, it didn't occur to me not to encourage the bond that was already forming between the two of them, and it gives me anxiety in hindsight when I think about my pregnancy and how devastating it could have been for Annabelle (see my first published article for all my emotional thoughts about that.)
Instead of going through each of my bleeding episodes and sharing how we, as a family, reacted to each hospitalization, I want to make it more cohesive and summarize the major themes/my advise for you:
1. Let your child know what is happening, to a certain extent.
We didn't tell Annabelle about the first bleed that happened in October (because I don't know how you could explain sudden vaginal bleeding to a then four year old without major questions being asked.) In November, when I was kept overnight in the hospital and prescribed my first two weeks of bed rest, we told Annabelle that "Mommy had to go to the hospital so the doctors could take care of the baby." It was during this hospital stay that we learned we were expecting a boy, so finding out that she was going to have a brother did a lot to help Annabelle forget that I was in the hospital. In December, when I was hospitalized again, we simply said that the doctors needed to take care Nick again. Annabelle didn't really question this, even though I could tell parts of her never totally believed that that was the whole story. When I Facetimed with Annabelle in the hospital or talked to her on the phone, she would always ask when I was coming home, and I would just say whenever the doctors were done taking care of Nick, but we wouldn't know when that would be.
Cory and I never felt the need to tell Annabelle more about my condition than that. It took multiple doctors and labor and delivery nurses to explain a Subchorionic Hematoma to me before I sort of understood what was happening, so I couldn't even begin to explain it in a way a four year old would understand. Annabelle is the type of kid who could get an itty bitty scratch on her leg and become hysterical if there was a tiny drop of blood, so telling her I was bleeding would have been a disaster.
On the day Nick was born, after my dad picked her up from school, I was waiting in a postpartum room, and I called her to tell her Nick was born. Since she isn't old enough to really understand why he was born in February instead of April, we didn't explain the details as to why he was suddenly here. Immediately, she wanted to know when she could hold him, so I told her that Nick was born really small, so he would need to grow for a while in the hospital. The NICU is something Annabelle never understood, really. She wanted to know why Nick was still in the hospital and when he was coming home, and she asked daily. We would just tell her, again, that Nick was still too small to come home, and he needed to stay with the doctors until he was bigger (since Nick never had any major setbacks in the NICU, that was the gist of his stay anyway.) I don't know what we would have done in terms of telling Annabelle if Nick did have serious health issues while he was in the NICU, but I think we would have kept it vague. Annabelle is a worrier, and since there is only so much she would be able to understand anyways, I think we would not have shared many details for her sake.
2. Stay Involved!
One of the hardest parts of being on bed rest is there is so little you can do to care for children who are at an age when they are still so needy. My husband had to give all the baths, buy all the groceries, and do all the school drop offs. Even though I couldn't do those big things anymore, I tried to find little ways to help my husband manage all the chaos. For instance, I would have him bring me a load of laundry and I would fold it while sitting on the couch, or he would bring all the ingredients to the table and I would make dinner while sitting at the table. When it came to our kids, I would always sit on the couch and watch them play when they were home from school. Graham and Annabelle never understood why I couldn't run around and play like I used to, and I would say that "I had to sit down so that Nick could stay healthy." That seemed to be enough of an explanation for them. Hospital bed rest was trickier, because I couldn't do the usual things, like reading them a story at night or watching tv with them. Cory would call me so I could say hi to them on the way to school and when they were coming home at the end of the day, but I hated not being able to see them in person. When they did visit me in the hospital, I tried to make it sound fun-I wore these big sleeves on my legs 24/7 that would tighten and release to help prevent blood clots, and I told Annabelle they were there to give my legs massages. I tried to make the hospital seem normal and not as scary as it might have seemed for her.
3. Keep them involved in the NICU!
I can definitely see how having a sibling in the NICU would be a hard thing for a five year old to understand: they have all the anticipation throughout the pregnancy of getting to have a new sibling, and then the baby is born, but they can't see the baby and he can't come home. I found a link on Pinterest that suggested having siblings design onesies for a baby to wear in the NICU as a way to keep them excited about the baby, so I bought a pack of plain white onesies and the kids decorated them with permanent markers. Annabelle loved the thought of making something for Nick, and I took pictures of Nick wearing them to show her later. I would always have Annabelle pick out books for me to bring to the NICU to read to Nick, and, since he was born on Valentine's Day, Annabelle gave me one of her leftover school Valentine's to bring to him. It sat on his nightstand throughout his entire stay in the NICU and is in the shadow box I made of all my favorite NICU keepsakes.
4. Be consistent, when you can.
Teaching 101 tells you when a child comes from an unstable home, the inconsistency and chaos they experience at home is reflected in their behavior at school. You don't have to be a teacher to see the obvious correlation between stress at home an acting out in the classroom. Annabelle went to full time pre-k, five days a week, at the school that I taught at before bed rest began. From the beginning of the year in August to around the time I was first hospitalized in November, Annabelle never had a single behavior problem. Around mid November, Annabelle started to get in trouble more consistently, and, by the time Nick was born, we were constantly getting bad behavior reports. I was hoping that since she started acting out when my hospitalizations began (and by that I mean being too loud, not sitting still, ignoring directions, and occasionally talking back to teachers. So, nothing major, but enough to drive a teacher crazy) that once Nick came home that things would get back to "normal," and her good behavior would return. It didn't. Annabelle is a smart, sensitive, and VERY high energy little girl who, like most children, thrive on consistency and routine. Unfortunately, her school year saw her mommy being in and out of the hospital, mommy leaving the school that we used to go to together every day, her brother being in the hospital for 8 weeks, and then, after all of that stress, she had to adjust to having a new baby brother at home, which is one of those major life events that can wreak havoc on classroom behavior. Cory and I couldn't help any of those situations, but a side effect of this whole high risk pregnancy/NICU experience is Annabelle felt all of this stress, and it affected her behavior in school.
Since bed rest and the NICU are almost always unavoidable, I think the best thing you can do is try to keep things as consistent as possible when you can. For example, if bedtime is at 8:00, bedtime is at 8:00. Even if you can't physically climb stairs and tuck them in, or if grandparents or someone else are watching the kids while you're at the NICU, bedtime can still be at 8:00. Kids are big on routine and structure, so I think holding kids accountable for things like doing their chores or using their manners (things that are easy to ignore when you're exhausted) are little things that can make a big difference when forces beyond your control are turning your child's life upside down.
I hope this helps! Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment