A Child In Pain

Every parent knows one thing for sure… that before their child was born, they imagined the love they would feel for their baby. But you never even come close to the real thing. Because it feels like more love than your heart can hold. And until you have a child, it is an impossible concept. Before motherhood, I thought I loved my cat.

Most pregnant women say they don’t care what sex their baby is, as long as it is healthy. That is all we really want for our children, when it comes down to it. It is more than wanting a perfect baby. Before they are even born, we want our kids to have a fighting chance, to live without any pain or added difficulties. This is the first phase of selflessness.

They say that a parent’s worse nightmare is losing their child. Because you are losing the purpose of your life, which is to be a mom or dad. The child doesn’t die alone — so do the dreams, the shared joy, and innocent laughter of those who are left behind. Without their child, the light in their life dims, if not darkens altogether.

In between a parent’s worst nightmare and the best case scenario, lies an almost silent epidemic, seldom mentioned, but often suffered: a child who is sick and/or in pain. A child with a serious diagnosis… and then a prognosis, worse for some than others.

No one ever prepares themselves for the news that their child is ill. Suddenly nothing is the same. The focus of everything is to make the suffering stop. To try and recapture a life before the sickness or stop wondering what could have been.

As a mom, you want to fix everything for your children. But a chronic illness cannot be fixed. It is in control, not you. And that is both terrifying and frustrating. All you can do is listen to the doctor, educate yourself, pay for the prescriptions and hope they work. You buy books and research the internet at 2 a.m., hoping to find something, anything that will give you answers. A treatment. A cure.

You get angry at the disease. You wonder if you did or didn’t do something wrong to cause this. You lash out. You throw blame at everyone who doesn’t deserve it. You cry… but not in front of your child. You hold it in, until you are alone. You roll your eyes at people who don’t understand but probably mean well. You can’t laugh because nothing is funny in a world where your child is hurting. You look around at people with healthy children and just know they take it for granted.

If you pray, you bargain. You offer your health, your money, your life, anything —  in exchange for their healing. But it never works. No matter what you would trade, your prayers are answered with apathetic silence. You wonder why children get sick in the first place, and why is your child one of them.  You scream at God.

But you never stop trying to make it better. That is the love of a parent.