Sleeping Baby

It's way past the midnight hour and I can't sleep. I just tiptoed down the hall, held the door handle and opened with silence. She's sleeping on her side, one leg pulled up, jammies askew. I'm supposed to watch for sunken eyes, cracked lips, rapid heartbeat. I don't know how to do that in the dark so I've been staring at the ceiling, repeating the mantra so that my thoughts don't wake her, wiping the tears that head for my ears.

My girl has had chronic diarrhea for four months. And all I can think is that I'm tired of restraining her every time we go to the doctor, and now, every time I change a diaper. I'm tired of holding her down as she screams and beats out eye contact through fight. And I'm tired of taking her in my arms and holding her long enough for her to remember that I am her mother, the one who is supposed to protect her.

She still has a little bruise, purple plum spot in the center fold of her arm, from a blood draw. It doesn't look right on a two year old. I changed a diaper every hour from morning til evening today, it's getting progressively worse, and aside from taking stupid phone surveys required by the advice nurse (so that she could offer generic and silly advice), I have to wait for a referral to a GI specialist. How long will that take?

Every day her tummy hurts, every day she stops playing and looks over at me to give me the unspoken que - I'm falling, Mama. And I say - I'm so sorry, River. We wait until it passes and she rejoins the current of playfulness. I never do.

I try to catch a ride on my husband's sleep tonight, reaching out for his arm. "I can't stop my mind," I whisper, wrestling with images that can haunt a mother. I want to ask him to pray because that's what he does, but he's off in another place and I can't find my place beside him. I go downstairs for cereal instead, organic raisin bran.

She's calling out, in a dream, in a story that's her own. I'm down here, in the din of a street light, holding onto this train of words like I always do when confronted with the hubris of control. Just looked out the window to find my neighbor's living room light on - someone else is awake, someone else is sitting with whatever they think they cannot bear, whatever they think they know or don't know. Comforting somehow. Daylight makes us look so together. But the night allows for all the tender questions.