Remembering (a letter to Ezra)

My Ezra,

Tonight as I was putting you to sleep, your little hand grabbed mine and moved it up to rest on your head. 

When you were even littler than you are now, and sometimes still, you often put your own hand on your head. Your little arms didn't even reach to the top of your head, but still, you would do your best as you relaxed into play or sleep.

And when you were in the NICU, this is how I so often held you:

Back in the NICU days, well-meaning people always told me to be thankful you wouldn't remember it. But I think that advice was wrong.

I suspected it at the time. I knew that things we experience when we are very young stay with us, shaping our brains, affecting our DNA. You may not remember your early childhood as an adult, but it is with you forever. 

When you were an infant, you sometimes cried out in pain in your sleep. A few times, you half-awakened, inconsolable - a night terror. These things broke Daddy's and my hearts. What pain could a little baby dream of? You could not imagine yet. But you had been through real pain. I think you remembered. 

And an article I read recently supports this - small children remember lots of things, but especially physical trauma, before it disappears into the darkness of "childhood amnesia" as we grow up.

Small buddy, these early experiences are a big part of why we parent you the way we do. Maybe it would have been the same if you hadn't been early - maybe that's just the type of parents we would have been anyway - but we also believe that love heals. This is why we have never left you alone to cry since we brought you home, why we sleep with you nearby, in part why I am still nursing you at almost two. This is why we do not and will never hit you when you misbehave, why we respect your big feelings even when they seem silly to us. You are the reason we push ourselves to be more patient, more understanding, more kind.

Being hospitalized for your first 66 days was not what we wanted for you, little one. It was not easy on your body or your brain or your soul. It was a lot of pain and loneliness, but it kept you alive, and we did our best to give you the love that only we could during that time. As you grow up, you will forget your memories, but the experience will still be there - the pain and the love. 

So Ezra, it makes me so, so happy when you put my hand on your head, or when a song I sang to you in the NICU calms you again many months later.

Because I already know you remember the pain.

But when you do these things, you show me that you remember the love, too. 

Love, 

Mama