This is a picture of my daughter not long after she was born and that is the first time we touched. It was pretty awesome. My wife was in the other room with a team of doctors and nurses working on her as lets just say, it wasn't an easy delivery.

Less than 10 hours later my daughter was rushed to the ICU as her blood sugar dropped extremely low and she was barely conscious. She spent the next 12 days there having blood tests every 2 hours and with canulas replaced as they weren't holding in her tiny little veins. This is a picture from when she was about 2 days old.

Around this time last year and under 2 years of age, my daughter started having seizures and while they stopped after a couple of weeks, they are still unexplained.

This is my daughter last weekend as I took some pictures of her showing off her new summer hat, even though it was raining outside. She turns three in August.

Three years

 
From inside these three years it has been a very long experience. Hundreds of sleepless nights, hundreds of work days performed on no sleep, dozens of doctors appointments, thousands upon thousands in expenses, many thousands of meals put into single serve bags and frozen and a hundred thousand other tasks that have been required for the three of us to survive. From inside it has been a long journey.

From outside however, it has gone in the blink of an eye and when I look back at the top images it seems like just yesterday, I can smell the hospital and picture the other newborns laying in their plastic cribs, crying. I can remember holding my daughter with her screaming through the night and I can feel the weight of her on my chest as I tried to rock her to sleep just as clearly as I can remember her running to give me kisses before I left to work this morning. It is strange to have such conflict between points yet still maintain the consistency of the near three year experience.

She is the same person she was born as yet, altogether different. And while she will continue to evolve as a person, she will also always be that little baby, the one who held my finger and stopped crying as she was weighed for the first time.

It is easy to look at the current situation and get lost in the moment, easy to feel the fear and uncertainty of life weighing on the shoulders, responsibilities to manage and the feeling of threat and risk to our well-being and forget, all things change. The worst experiences we can survive can shift into a life that is ultimately rewarding and valuable in our own eyes. A life that was worth the suffering that it was born from. It is easy to forget good times in the turmoil of bad, but the bad take on new meaning when the good arrives.

A lot of us get emotionally overwhelmed when we do not have a sense of control over our life and I know that for me, the last three years have been difficult to manage in numerous ways, yet they were all connected to the birth of my daughter and her ongoing health. the hardest times have also been the creator of the best of times, and the experience of them has brought enough gratitude to be thankful for the opportunities that arise and not let them slide on by.

My family is not out of the woods yet but I am confident that in time, we will manage and perhaps if we are lucky, even thrive. It isn't about waiting for the future though, it is about taking control of the little tasks we can affect and building the processes and skills to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. The opportunity might just be a sunny day where my daughter can wear her new straw hat, though I am sure there are going to be challenges that will make that sunny day seem far, far away.

It is easy to lose sight of the big picture when lost in momentary suffering and if not careful, it can become a self-defeating cycle of behavior. The first thing in order to have a sense of control, is to take control of our emotional states. It is easier under some conditions than others.Time is a funny thing as what drags today will appear to have passed in a blink of an eye when looking back.

3 years, 3 weeks, 3 days, 3 hours, 3 seconds.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]