The Most Important Things

This week has been an important week. Earth-shattering, life-changing, monumental in importance.

My son was born.

There was also a presidential election that seemed to shake the country and the world. Since that election both sides have still been battling. Attempts have been made to do everything from abolish the electoral college to ask the electors to vote contrary to their original commitments. There have been peaceful protests and full-out riots by both the disappointed Democrats and the celebrating Republicans. The news actually has something new and interesting every time you turn it on or log into Yahoo.

But that's small potatoes next to my baby.

We were not expecting baby Hyrum until the end of the month, but I went into because he didn't seem to be kicking as much as usual. A fetal nonstress test showed the baby inside me was less reactive than usual, and taking in other health factors they decided he needed to come today. I was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Salt Lake City, where it didn't take too long to get me prepped and into the O.R. for an emergency C-section.

I was awake for the operation, though completely numbed from the chest down. My husband was able to watch them pull our son from my abdomen, but the curtain he was looking over blocked my view of the baby (though I know it was overall a good thing, because Hunter says there was a lot of blood). After they stitched and stapled me up I was brought to a private room to recover. Our mothers stayed for an hour or so, but by then it was past midnight and the baby was still being treated in the Newborn ICU so we couldn't go see him. Hunter and I waited in the recovery room, til finally at 2 am we got word that the NICU was reopened and we could see our son on our way to my postpartum recovery room where I would spend the next four days.

The NICU is not that large, but the wonderful nurses wheeled my hospital bed in between the incubators until we reached where my little Hyrum lay. He was all wrapped up in a blanket, oxygen in his nose, a feeding tube down his throat and an I.V. in his scalp. It broke my heart to not be able to hold him, but reached out and touched his hand as Hunter placed a hand on his chest and whispered our love in his ears. It was only a few minutes, then I was whisked away to be seen by a nurse and given pain pills before we both tried to sleep. 

Once I got feeling back to my legs I was able to get in a wheelchair and make a trip to the NICU again. Hunter had already spent multiple hours watching over our son, but I wasn't able to move fully until the next afternoon. My wheelchair sat lower than his incubator, so I reached my hand up and grabbed his hand again, or gently stroked his dark hair. I was able to stay about half an hour before my pain and exhaustion brought me back to my room and into bed.

The next three days were the same, but with increasing strength and less wheelchair use. There was a taller chair the nurse would pull up by Hyrum so I could see him and place my hand on his chest. We couldn't hold him until the evening of the second day because of a central line in his umbilical cord that they were worried about. After that first time holding him, we held him as much as we could.

Finally, on the day I was discharged from the hospital, they moved Hyrum from the first high-intensity room to a quieter room. His lungs and pancreas were improving, and as they did more and more tests it looked less and less like there was actually an issue with his heart. They told us that he should be in the NICU only between one and two weeks, and every single nurse told us how cute our son is.

This week has seemed like the end of the world. Trump was elected president, Hillary Clinton supporters took to the streets, and the entire country seemed in uproar. In the midst of all that, my husband and I sat in a hospital room, having just left our baby in the NICU so I could sleep because i was still recovering from major surgery. He held me as I cried, mourning the fact that I could only hold my baby when the nurses let me, and when he cried it was a nurse who made him feel better and not me, his mommy. We have watched our four-day-old son have his heel pricked every six hours, have had to stop him as he found his oxygen tube and tried to pull it away from his face with his tiny hands, and have left the room as they replaced yet another tube or took another test.

The future of our country is important. Who is president is important and will affect me. The relationship between the Democrats and Republicans is also important. But what is most important is not in Washington, D.C. for me. I could care less who was elected and whether the rioters tear each other apart right now because I have a family to care for. I have a son who, while he is not fighting for his life, he is working harder than most babies to learn how to live and breathe on his own. I am learning how to be a mother at my sons bedside instead of with him in my arms. I am pumping instead of breastfeeding. My husband is working from the hospital, supporting me and our son while still trying to make money to pay for our NICU bills. These are my realities, much more real and much more important than any election. This is the beginning of my family, and while it is hard I can see the amazing blessings that come every single day. And more than anything, I have discovered that family is indeed the most important thing in life. My son, being here for him even though he cannot even focus his eyes on my face yet, that is the most important thing.

I hope we all can see that there are more important things than this election. I hope it is smaller than a baby in the NICU, but I also pray you see it. Date night with your spouse, a pizza party with your friends, a sibling who is having a really hard day--all those things trump Trump and Hillary and politics and riots and anything else. Our relationships are the things that will bring us joy forever, and they are the things that mean the most today, if we are willing to give them the proper amount of attention.