• Home
  • About
  • Being a TCK
  • Crafting
  • Food
  • Step Outside
  • Intro

Hortus Deliciarum

Heidi's Hideaway (now with added class!)

Feed on
Posts
Comments
« Poopfest – Spring 2008
A Wee Bit Broken »

Bleeding heart

Mar 13th, 2008 by heidi

That term, “bleeding heart,” isn’t generally used as a compliment. These days it generally means someone who thinks about the rights of an individual over the rights of society as a whole.

At the moment, my heart is bleeding a little and it’s not about society, or promoting the welfare of an oppressed group. It’s over a website that someone linked to from one of the Livejournal parenting communities. It’s a blog kept by the mother of a little boy named Joshua, a little boy only 66 days old who suffers from one of the rarest forms of neural tube defect. A little boy who may be dying or dead right now, based on her last entry, as he suffers through the effects of his condition.

I worry about my son. I’ve worried about him since that first moment that I discovered that I was pregnant, fearing that this pregnancy, like my last, would end in miscarriage. I never knew my first baby. I named her Hope and grieved (and still grieve) for her but she never had a heartbeat, never had a face. Eight weeks after she was conceived she was gone again; I never knew the feel of her kicks inside me, never heard her cry or kissed her head. I was terrified the same would happen with Ciaran, that I would never know what it was like to hold a baby in my arms.

Ciaran survived. He thrives. This morning, for the very first time, he showed a reaction when I called down the hall “Ciaran, I love you!” The sweetest smile in the world crossed his face and, a minute later with Daddy, he said “Ov oo!” I don’t know what he thinks when I say those words but I think that he knows that they mean love. As I sent him off to nursery, I couldn’t help but think of his trip to Gran’s this afternoon. Last weekend seven victims were killed in a car crash – two kids are still in the hospital but their grandfather, who was driving the car, died. When you send a child off with their grandparents they’re supposed to be safe, but even then they are at risk.

My fears are hypothetical. Joshua’s parents know that they will lose him, that their son will almost certainly not live to his first birthday, much less to adulthood. Reading his story, remembering how it felt to have a healthy newborn, I cannot imagine what it is like to know that your newborn is going to be taken from you and know with equal certainty that there is nothing that you can do. I cried reading that website and it takes a lot for me to cry.

I have no words for Joshua’s parents. Nothing that I can say can change anything that is happening to them or to their little boy. But my heart bleeds anyway, a slow wound that remembers my own loss and recognises how much greater theirs must be.

Bleeding hearts

Tags: Worrying

Posted in Uncategorized

Comments are closed.

  • Tags

    A&E allergies birthday Burkina Faso childhood Christmas Ciaran clothes dreams fantasy fat fiction friendship good intentions grad school HAES hating exercise heidi is angry heidi is ill heidi is mean heidi is weird hot as hell immigration misery Issues in the Fatosphere Mad Mummies Mamuciam/Mancunia memes memories More About Me mosaic Moving once upon a time ii photos prizes rants rants reading Scales are for fish shopping taciturn tuesdays TCK therapy Third-Culture Kids Worrying yay consumerism!
  • RSS Notes from the Fatosphere

  • Archives

    • Authors

      • Dear Author…
      • Neil Gaiman
      • Patrick Rothfuss
      • Robin McKinley
      • Stephen Fry
      • Writer Unboxed
    • Blogroll

      • A Fat Girl, A Fat Horse
      • Ad Imaginem Dei
      • apples for fife
      • Beth in France
      • CTJen
      • Daisybones
      • Dooce
      • Flea Market Trixie
      • Immunosuppressed Knitter
      • Julia
      • Love Nordic Design Blog
      • Moodswings
      • My Improvisational Life
      • Native Appropriations
      • No Celery Please
      • Random Ramblings
      • Spilt Milk
      • Stainless Steel Droppings
      • Sugar City
    • Crafting Blogs

      • A Spoonful of Sugar
      • always expect moore
      • Bloesem Kids
      • Bloom
      • Blue Velvet Chair
      • Bolt Neighborhood
      • Carolyn's Homework
      • Craftberry Bush
      • Craftgossip – Needlework
      • Crafts by Amanda
      • Crafty Storage
      • Craftynest
      • Craftzine
      • Creative Jewish Mom
      • Crow Roosters Crow
      • curbly
      • Daisy Yellow
      • Deep Space Sparkle
      • fellow fellow
      • Filth Wizardry
      • Five Days, Five Ways
      • Folding Trees
      • Garden Mama
      • Geninne's Art Blog
      • Home Sweet Homemade
      • Honest to Nod
      • How About Orange
      • Just Something I Made
      • Kanelstrand
      • Kinderpendent
      • Kleas
      • Lauren Elise Crafted
      • made
      • Make and Takes
      • maya*made
      • Meet the Dubiens
      • mini-eco
      • Mod Podge Rocks
      • Modern Parents Messy Kids
      • Mousehouse
      • Natural Suburbia
      • Nifty Thrifty
      • One Pretty Thing
      • persia lou
      • Red Bird Crafts
      • Rhythm of the Home
      • Salvage Savvy
      • sweet paul
      • The Artful Parent
      • The Chocolate Muffin Tree
      • The Crafty Crow
      • The Floss Box
      • The Graphics Fairy
      • The Long Thread
      • The Magic Onions
      • The Pleated Poppy
      • The Purl Bee
      • The Trendy Treehouse
      • Wabi-Sabi Wanderings
      • Wise Craft
      • You Go Girl
      • You had me at bonjour
      • Zach Aboard
    • Foodie Blogs

      • Bakerella
      • Chef’s Muse
      • Chez Pim
      • Crockpot 365
      • How To Eat A Cupcake
      • Joy the Baker
      • Mennonite Girls Can Cook
      • Nourishing Gourmet
      • Smitten Kitchen
      • Soy and Pepper
      • TasteSpotting
      • The Thrifty Gourmet
      • The Wednesday Chef
    • Garden Blogs

      • Aiken House & Gardens
      • Plant Talk
    • LIS

      • Cataloging Futures
  • Meta

    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org

Hortus Deliciarum © 2022 All Rights Reserved.

Free WordPress Themes | Fresh WordPress Themes