Why I'm the World's Worst Mother and Other Thoughts

This has been a tough week here in the Bailey-Dumas household.  Perhaps it was tough in my own head more than anywhere else.

Those who know Anna know that there's something a little off with the girl.  The more we play around with the idea, the more we think it could be any number of things.  We're fairly certain that she is not autistic, but we've come up with a whole book full of possible issues.  Right now we're leaning toward an anxiety issue.  A severe anxiety issue.  We're starting the screening process next week.

This breaks my heart in so many ways.  First of all, I have a lot of great qualities.  I'm smart.  I'm funny.  I'm a hell of a writer.  I am also one big ball of anxiety.  It's the latter she got from me.  It pains me to think that my little girl is paralyzed by the things that make me pause.  I have lost my patience with her, thinking she was being stubborn or bratty, when she was really being afraid.  Fantastic mother.

On Tuesday, I brought her to the eye doctor.  She's got an eye--the right one--that turns in.  For a while, almost a year, I wasn't really sure if it was turning it in.  So I was delayed in getting her to the eye doctor.  We went in March, and the doctor prescribed her glasses.  I wasn't good at forcing her to wear her glasses.  We misplaced them a bunch of times.  When we went back to the doctor in August, he was frustrated with us because she wasn't wearing the glasses.  He wanted her to wear an eye patch for an hour a day.

Seems like a reasonable request.  And at first it wasn't so bad.  We called it her "Princess Pirate Patch," drew pictures on it, and ran around saying "argh!!" a lot.  We would put it on at dinner time and would give her dessert if she kept it on for the whole hour.  That lasted maybe a month, tops.  Then it turned into a fight.  When it got to the point that I was tackling her and pinning her down to put the patch on only to have her pull it off three seconds later and have to start the whole thing over again.  I gave up on it, but I was able to get her to wear her glasses more often.  And it seemed, really seemed, as if that was working.  The eye was not turning in like it had been.

So Tuesday, I took her to the eye doctor.  She freaked out.  The tech asked her to tell her how many little red lights she saw.  Anna said, "No."  The tech next asked me, "Is she speech delayed?"  Yes.  Thanks for reminding me.  Anna was bouncing around and off the walls.  The tech was out of her element.  So she called in the doctor.  The doctor did a really good job with Anna and was able to get a lot checked out.  He was very disturbed by the fact that her right eye just wasn't working.  He couldn't get her to focus on anything.  He said that if we couldn't get her to use it soon, she could lose the use of it forever.

After delivering that happy news, we decided to dilate her eyes so that he could measure them for a new glasses prescription.  That was a fight and a half.  I was holding her body.  This other doctor/helper lady was holding her arms.  The doctor had her legs and she was screaming and fighting.  So I started crying.  No seriously.  I started sobbing.  I just felt so sorry for her, for letting her down so badly.  She stopped crying, and asked, "Mama, what's the matter?"  So I started sobbing more.  She had run away from me, from all the adults, but then saw that I was crying and came running back to me.  She threw herself at me and said, "Aw!  Mama!"  So I sobbed all the more.

Then the doctor told me that she had, indeed, improved her eyesight.  It doesn't make sense to me, but it really perked the doctor up.  Then he left the room before I could start crying again.  That happy news and the fact that the eye drops that he prescribed in place of attempting the patch again is would be deadly if swallowed.  Thanks, dude.

So not only is my daughter one big ball of anxiety, she is not using her right eye and could quite possibly lose the vision it.  All because of me. 

The rational side of me understands that this is not totally my fault.  I can't fix everything.  I can't stop everything from happening.

The irrational part of me just wishes I could make it all better, because it seems like this little girl has so much going on.  It's amazing to think that her sweetness and her sense of humor is as intact as it is.