I’ve always felt like I can’t be like the ostrich and hide my head in the sand. Things happen and you are better off knowing about them so you can be aware. Whether you decide to let it bother you and sacrifice your sanity, that’s up to you, but not wanting to know about it is like wanting to hide the sun with your hands.
A few weeks ago I posted an article about secondary drowning on a mother’s Facebook group. I had recently been reading a lot about it and with summer here, I thought it best to help other mothers be aware of the existence of secondary drowning and of its symptoms. The first comment on my post was a mother saying we should not read this kind of article, that all they do is scare us. Other mothers immediately started weighing in saying we need to be aware of this and it is serious stuff. I was confident in my belief that you are better off being informed and that I would not let knowledge drive me paranoid and so I went about my business. Until yesterday that is.
I took both my kids to the pool, like I typically do a few times a week. We all love it and by the time we get home, they have swam like fish, eaten like tigers and so they sleep like bears. What’s not to love? My son is 7 years old and has been swimming since he is 4 months old and although I do watch him, he really does not need much of my attention, unlike my 2 year old, whose daredevil personality will have her jump into the depths of the unknown at the first chance she gets. So there we are, in the shallow part of the pool, my daughter sitting on the steps and my son doing rolls in the water. He asked me for help doing a handstand, so taking my daughter off the steps and farther away from the edge of the pool, I proceeded to help my son hold his feet up as he dove into the bottom of the pool to stand on his hands. I grabbed both his ankles and he wiggled away, so I let go only to watch him come out of the pool coughing. I DROWNED MY OWN CHILD! I thought in horror. Having had read one too many articles about secondary drowning, I freaked out. Despite having swallowed water myself as a kid on more than one occasion, despite having played “let’s drown each other” with the cousins while growing up, images of my imminent trip to TEREM (emergency room) invaded my head. For the proceeding half hour or so, as my son continued to roll and dive to collect objects from the bottom of the pool, i kept alert to signs of vomiting, coughing, excessive tiredness. Every time my son coughed my heart skipped a beat. I asked him to tell me if he felt tired and after swimming to the other end of the pool and back, he came to me and said “mom, I’m tired, but I think it’s because I just swam a lot”. I meant tired as in sleepy god damn it! stop scaring me so much. As I looked at his purple lips, wondering if it was just the cold water or perhaps a symptom of secondary drowning not mentioned by the article I had read, I realized that “Jewish mother worry” had possessed me, and for that, unfortunately, there is no cure.
