Other Good Things

(1) David had a follow-up hearing test this week, in the Speech & Language program/center of the university I attended for my undergraduate degree, which is about ½ hour away from our town. David screamed so loudly when they put the probe-thing in his ear that I really don’t know how the examiner was able to get any results, but she was satisfied and said there are no major changes since his last test. David appears to have a very mild (but permanent) hearing loss, but there have been no recommendations for hearing aids or any other intervention, just the recommendation that we speak clearly/a little loudly and keep background noise to a minimum. That’s probably good advice for most kids, right? She wants to test him again in another 6 – 8 months, but she really didn’t seem too concerned about anything. It was also nice to visit the building where all my social work classes were held - I changed David's diaper in the same bathroom I visited often as a student - it was a nice life check-in moment, to consider how different life is now, from the way it was then.


(2) David’s speech therapist visited today, I usually enjoy talking with her and today I shared with her about my recent pregnancy loss (see “Pajamas” below). Her response was really about as perfect as it could have been – gentle and empathic and sweet. She talked a little about grief/loss/life challenges in general, and having faith things will get better. Her specific metaphor was believing that morning will come, but realizing you have to sit through a lot of darkness first. She also talked about thinking about challenging times in her life as “Saturdays,” and explained she meant Holy Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter. She talked about Jesus’ disciples, and how although Jesus had told them a million times that he would rise from the dead, they still didn’t believe it or understand it. And how could you understand it, really? When you’ve never known anything like it, it’d be hard to comprehend the amazing thing that was coming. So on Holy Saturday, they were just sitting around, sad and afraid and shocked … so, not to over-analyze here, but each time I think about this, I come up with a different little layer of meaning. A good metaphor. … it occurred to me later that this might be her standard “don’t give up" speech (goodness knows that in my work [clinical social work] I have a number of prepared responses for various situations) that she may’ve given to 50 other clients, but even if that’s the case, I still liked it and was glad for the mutual sharing.

(I'm sure the therapist is mindful of the church-state separation issue, which is also very important to me, but she knows Matt is a pastor so she probably feels a little freer (is that right? free-er?) to discuss).

(3) Good and bad: David has been sleeping in Simon’s old toddler bed for about two weeks now. It has actually gone really well; he’s only fallen out a few times and he seems to get a good night’s rest. That’s the good. The bad: thinking about this reminds me of another not-pregnant item: one other thing I can cross off my list is that I no longer have to check the bulletin board at the grocery store, where there was an ad (with little tear-off phone number tabs) for a fixed-side crib. Simon had a 2nd-hand drop-side crib but since he used it they’ve stopped manufacturing them and strongly recommend against using them, so I was hoping to score a good deal on the safer version.