On this day in Little Rock, I awake to two little girls, calling for their mommy. I rise, get them dressed, and we settle in our den to snuggle, me wrapped around a cup of coffee, them wrapped around me. Some of us need caffeine to start our days, others, cuddles.
On THAT day in Little Rock, I woke up in the UAMS ICU, shaking off heavy sedation, having pulled a breathing tube out of my own throat in a dreamlike state where I felt I could do nothing else but keep pulling something out of my mouth.
Was it really four years ago now, THAT day in Little Rock? It has become the marker of an era, not just of our entry into parenthood, but the day a different life began: life after “catastrophic” heart failure, life after being diagnosed with a congenital heart defect.
On that day, and in the days immediately afterward, this day seemed impossible. My heart was pumping well below the normal range. I hadn’t known it until twin pregnancy and a c-section delivery stressed it past its capacity, but my heart had been weak all my life because of a defect known as “left ventricle non-compaction syndrome.” The part of my heart that was supposed to pump blood out into my body was too weak to do so properly. I didn’t know if it would ever be able to do so again. I began a cocktail of medicines that my doctors warned me would make me feel worse before they made me feel better. I wondered if I would ever get to the “feeling better” part, if I would ever feel strong enough to care for my newborn twin girls.
On this day, I still take those pills, popping them into my mouth before we begin rounding up library books and wrestling small feet into socks and shoes, trying to make it to the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library for story time. This day, I do feel better. In fact, I feel stronger than I ever did before THAT day. My heart has been functioning in a normal range for the last three and a half years, and I have every hope that it will keep it up as long as I stay on my medications.
Heartbeats are something we all take for granted. I certainly did, until THAT day I couldn’t count on them anymore. That day when I lost my breath and couldn’t catch it, that day when I felt like I was drowning in my own body as my lungs filled with fluid, while my heart suddenly went into congestive failure. That day, it seemed no good ones would follow.
THAT day, three days after my children were born, I was born anew. Never again will I take for granted the heart beating in my chest. It keeps beating as we head home from story time and I help small hands make sandwiches. It keeps beating as heads rest just above it, listening to me read stories before naptime. It keeps beating as I carve out a little time for yoga while my kids sleep. It might skip a beat when I realize I have some time for writing, too, but keeps on beating. It keeps beating while I prepare my family a healthy dinner, while my husband and I bathe our kids, and it beats on as I lay in the dark with my children, between them in the big bed they share, snuggling our way to slumberland.
The rhythm of all the days that follow THAT day is the beat of a mother’s heart, a heart that has sustained three lives while on its last legs, a heart that has fought back from the brink of failure, a heart that has recovered, stronger than ever. It’s a heart I will be forever grateful for on this day, and for all my tomorrows.
SARAH SWEATT ORSBORN is a writer living in Little Rock with her husband and 3-year-old twin daughters. She is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post, and her writing can also be found on her website, ErnieBufflo.com, The Mighty, Faces of Spina Bifida, Yahoo.com and Parents.com.