Fatherhood: Part One
Part I
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward,
some are strong at the broken places.” —Ernest Hemmingway
Being a father means protecting your family—fixing the problems they face—being Superman. Or at least that’s what I thought until the spring of 2011.
Sooner or later, all parents find out we can’t fix everything that happens to our children—for most of us , the realization that we aren’t Superman, comes slowly and over time: an illness here, a broken heart there, next thing you know your child is asking questions or dealing with hurts for which you have no answer. In that moment, when your face to face with the fact that, no matter how much you want to take the hurt away, to make your baby better, you realize, I am powerless to help, that’s when you really begin to love.
In March of 2011, my wife Ashley and I were expecting our son, Jack. Ashley was born with Crouzon’s syndrome—as a result we knew there was a fifty-fifty chance Jack would have it. In order to give him the best care possible, we decided to have amniocenteses done. The test would tell us if Jack had Crouzon’s, which would determine where Jack needed to be born; our local hospital has limited Neonatal Intensive Care Unit services. It was against this background that my world, my control, my belief that I could handle it all, began to crumble.
The results of the amino had come back. Jack had tested positive for Crouzon’s syndrome.
Our fears had come true. You see we feared having a child with Crouzon’s. In fact, we feared the syndrome so much we were planning to adopt when we found out Ashley was pregnant. This should have been my first clue that all my efforts to control the world, to make sure my family was safe, would be in vain.
But, I am a slow learner. After hearing the news that Jack had Crouzon’s, I remember a sense of rage welling up inside me; rage that I had to see my wife in such pain, (Ashley had a tremendous sense of guilt over passing the syndrome on to Jack), rage that I was helpless to take away her pain, rage that Jack would have to endure surgeries, and that his childhood would be marred by illness. Thought most of all, I felt rage at my powerlessness: me the father, the provider, the protector could do nothing to end my families’ pain—everything was out of my hands. Months went by and as Ashley’s belly and my son grew; so too did my anger and frustration. Sure, there were some happy moments, the first time I felt Jack kick for example, but, mostly I remember being scared and afraid. We did all the normal things: had baby showers, went to OBGYN appointments, picked out Jack’s nursery decorations, read What to Expect When You’re Expecting, and spent time thinking about what our son would be like and in some small ways my anger abated.
And as, time went by I again tried with supreme futility to reassert my control.
On Saturday morning July 23rd 2011, Jack was born. I took one look at him and fell hopelessly and deeply in love with my son.
Immediately the doctors took him from Ashley and me, he had to go to the NICU. The rage began to well. In that moment all of my control was gone. I realized how completely and totally powerless I was to help Jack. Outwardly I was calm, but my soul screamed with rage, anger, resentment, frustration and pain! My son less than an hour old was not dependent on me for life, but he was reliant on doctors and nurses and machines; me the father, the protector, had been replaced already. In Psalm 23 David writes “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” I don’t know what David’s valley of death looked like, but for me this part of the 23rd Psalm will always and forever make me think of the NICU at MUSC. My anger started morphing into fear.
For the first time, I realized we might not bring our baby home. If I had started out my journey into fatherhood as Superman, a hero who could do it all, I was now the Incredible Hulk, a giant green rage monster. One of our greatest fears going into Jack’s birth was that he would require a tracheostomy, Ashley prayed and prayed that we could bring our baby home without a trach. Jack’s airways were too small for him to breathe on his own. He would need a trach to come home.
Knowing then, that we had no choice, that I had no power, and that I had no control, I turned my child over to a surgeon for the first time. He wasn’t even a month old yet and he was having surgery. I mourned for him, not a mourning for the loss of life, but instead, I grieved for his loss of normality. From this moment on, Jack would be that kid, the different one, the one that stood out, the one that didn’t quite fit the mold. I was beginning to become an expert at anger. For the most part, I turned it inside. However when an occasion arose where I could release it on the doctors, I never hesitated. The anger was going away but a type of numbness was replacing it. It was becoming hard for me to truly feel anything.
On top of dealing with all the emotions that come flooding at you in a situation like this, I was trying to figure out how to be father to child with a trach, who needed more medical care than I knew how to give. At this moment, I was more confused, more lost than I have ever been before, or since. All I could do was just live one second, one minute, one hour, one day, and one week at a time. Pretty soon the seconds, minutes, hours and days added up to six weeks and we took our baby home to face the world. Still scared and angry we drove home with Jack. Neither of us knew what to expect. We would take him home, love him, watch him grow, and hope that when the sun came up the next morning, our son was still alive. I was still angry; still confused; still helpless but, at least we were home, and could hold Jack and rock him in our chair in our living room. While I had stopped praying (I saw little utility in it; after all God hadn’t answered any of our prayers yet I thought), I still spoke with Him.
Mostly in quiet rage and unspoken anger I questioned Him: why had He done this to my family. Why could we be the perfect normal family? Why had he broken us so completely?
Read the continuation next week.
