Warning: Objects Are Closer Than They Appear

I has been an emotional week.  It has been an emotional six months, to be more precise, but this month has seen a culmination of sorts, which flushed out this week.

It began with the news earlier this month that Hip Chick would need "the big surgery."  We have been flooded with sympathy and well wishes from loved ones.  At the same time, I personally have been on the receiving end of what were likely to have been well-intentioned "pep talks"... but ended up as confessionals for people to tell me about children in their lives who had something go terribly wrong or who died on the operating table.  Not the best stories for Mommy's mental disposition.  Admittedly, I have incurred random chest flutters and dizzy spells in the hours and days after these unexpected conversations.

My (most amazing) support group recently encouraged parents to proudly display photos of their child's osteotomy scars.  It was a beautiful display of sisterhood and solidarity to see the photos.  But they hit me... hard.  

Despite all our little hippie has experienced these past five months, there isn't much of a visible scar, if any, from her surgery last March.  But these osteotomy scars... well, they are pronounced and unmistakable.  Perhaps I was not quite ready to see them.  It made Hip Chick's upcoming surgery seem that much more real.  It's like peering into one of those mirrors which caution you that "objects may be closer than they appear."

What is there to say about these feelings?  I want to relay to anyone out there reading this, who is spending each waking moment thinking about their child's DDH... wondering when they will walk, whether they will run, wondering if the next check up will result in yet another surgery... that it is okay to feel this way.  And we will not feel this way forever.

It seems common for DDH parents- especially the mothers- to feel that "if I don't keep it together, no one will."  We need to know that it's permissible to crumble a bit once in a while.  That we can feel weak for a few moments out of our child's eyesight and earshot.  And perhaps we will grow stronger because of it.