I have a pit that lies deep down at the bottom of my stomach. I am convinced it’s there. It remains dormant until I get that “feeling.” I also know that you Theta Moms have the same pit in your stomach…somewhere.
This “pit” is sometimes referred to as a ‘motherly instinct.’ I am positive that it’s really just innate intuition. We are all born with this, but when you give birth to a child, that pit begins to grow and it never goes away. In fact, the older your child gets, the larger your pit becomes.
It’s the feeling you get when something just isn’t right. It’s when you know there may be danger or that there has got to be something more, for which I feel compelled to write today.
Fellow blogger, Karie from The Five Fish, recently shared a website on her blog. The site is written by leading pediatricians in the country from CHOP (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia). Her post struck a chord with me because my son was a very sick baby. Beginning at nine-months old, we saw every specialist over the course of a year and not one doctor could tell us what was wrong with our child. At one point, after test upon test, I was supposed to just sit back and wait…because they couldn’t give us a definitive answer.
Wait? For what? For my baby to be in the hospital fighting for his life, or wait for a disease to go undiagnosed and find out that it’s too late? This is when my pit began to grow to the size of a cantaloupe…no, make that a watermelon.
When each doctor assessed my child and provided me with information, I felt like something was missing. I knew there had to be something more, and even if there wasn’t, I needed to hear it from the leading doctors in the country. I wanted to be sure that we didn’t leave any stone unturned, that we exhausted every possible resource available. If I wasn’t an advocate for my child, then who would be?
The bottom line is that we need to ask the right questions. We need to get the proper information and we need to seek out the help we are requesting and fight for our children until we are satisfied because if we don’t, nobody else will. You deserve it, your family deserves it, and your child sure as hell deserves it.
After many sleepless nights and countless phone calls, we finally made our trip to CHOP, and after a complete evaluation and diagnosis, my son is now a healthy, thriving three year old boy…due in part to following my intuition.
This is a photo taken right around the time he was becoming ill. This was such a difficult time in my life, especially since my husband and I were first-time parents. My pit, though, is still there and remains at the bottom of my stomach. It’s dormant for now but not for long. Because I am a mother, and always will be.
