Parenting = Scary. Shit.

Yesterday we had our first doctors appointment. Well, Ella’s first doctors appointment. Ok so we’ve been one other time but that doesn’t count cos we only went to the GP and it was only because her daddy was so paranoid he wanted me to ‘check’ that what I told him were just teething symptoms, were. They were.

ANYway. So yesterday we had our first appointment with a doctor specialising in natural therapies, with whom it took me two months to get us an appointment. Natural therapies are important to me – I believe in raising my daughter as naturally as possible. I don’t always have evidence or facts to back up my beliefs, but screw you, I believe in it anyway.

The purpose of this visit was mainly to discuss immunisations, as well as her general health of course. I won’t go into the vaccination debate just now, but for those of you looking for some information to complement that given by the Department of Health, check out www.visainfo.org.au.

In preparation for our appointment I decided it was prudent to have a read over all Ella’s hospital/doctor notes in case the doc asked me any questions about her history. I must have either ignored the notes or purposefully blocked them out when we came home from the hospital, because I was shocked at what I read.

Ella suffered from Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy. It can also be known as perinatal asphyxia and is characterised by acute or subacute brain injury, and causes significant infant mortality. In other words, it’s a serious brain injury which kills lots of babies, and leaves even more with significant brain damage.

I’m kinda glad that I didn’t realise at the time how serious her condition was, and how badly it could have turned out. If I HAD known – I don’t think I would have coped nearly as well as I did. Or at all. Luckily for me (ha), I was so exhausted and drug riddled after her birth that I didn’t really absorb most of the information that was presented to us, and I definitely wasn’t able to function at a high intellectual level. I don’t know if Stephen was quite as lucky.

Something I’ve come to realise over the past few months, is that parenting is Really. Scary. Shit. And it’s not going to get any better either – no matter how old, how well, or how happy your child is – there is always the possibility of them getting sick, being hurt, or worse. Anything could happen, and when it was just happening to me that was ok – I’m not even really scared of dying. Or I wasn’t. But now that Ella is in the picture, the world is a bloody terrifying place! And I’m terrified of dying and leaving her to face it alone.

Kids, eh? Who’d have ‘em!