Baby Monitor

The house is quiet this morning. I ran to the window like a schoolgirl to check for the dusting of snow that I keep expecting, but it has yet to show itself. Gracie is curled up in her basket outside my office door, and I hear only the obnoxious hum of the computer. I didn't sleep in until 5 a.m., but I'm not complaining. Close enough. I have not taken something to sleep for a good week now. Brian set the coffee up last night to begin brewing at 6:00 a.m., as he is not conscious at this hour when he doesn't have to be, and the scent of it is drifting up the stairs. Our coffee maker is noisily sputtering out the last of Brian's caffeinated love note to me as I type.

This week I tried to get some work accomplished at my desk while Erik napped. I have a Fisher Price baby monitor next to my out box I keep one eye on when Erik is home and I am upstairs. It looks a lot like a cumbersome communication device on the old television show Lost in Space. There are four arched bars under a smoke-tinted plastic cover that light up when there is sound next to the receiver plugged in next to Erik's crib in his room. Over the past two years I have mastered reading the monitor by sight and generally don't turn the sound on unless I need to confirm what I think is happening in his room. Here's how I do it:

ONE BAR: The bottom bar always has a faint, flickering glow. If the stereo is playing in the living room, the light barely flickers along with the music like an equalizer. It sometimes picks up Erik breathing or the knock of the UPS man.

TWO BARS: Likely snoring. Watch for the proper cadence. If the first and second bars light up and then go dark in a rhythmic pattern, Erik is snoring like a freight train. There is no need to turn the knob to listen. Sometimes the light will bleed up into the third bar if he really gets going.

THREE BARS: If all three bars are flickering merrily, Erik is talking to himself. Go ahead and turn on the dial to eavesdrop, as there is no cuter sound. I now hear real words here and there, most of which he says just for the pleasure of saying them. Last week I turned the dial up and heard "HI HI HI HI HI!" There was a long, silent pause, and then I heard him say very clearly, "WHEELS."

FOUR BARS: If all four bars light up repeatedly, Erik is officially as mad as a wet hen. The madder he gets, the more likely all four bars will illuminate, stay lit as he empties his lungs, and cast a scarlet glow over my desk reminiscent of a busy night on the streets of Amsterdam. Something is wrong. He has likely fallen asleep and awakened in a foul humor. There is no need to turn the speaker up. Go!

I wonder if mothers ever cease feeling that fear deep in their gut that blossoms when their child sleeps in an extra hour. I'm not one to ask, but I doubt they do.

I remember sitting here with a very round belly just a few days away from delivering Erik. I had just set up the monitor, a new, electronic lifeline to the freshly painted, kiwi-colored room below me and found myself wondering how my baby would sound on it. I even turned it on and watched it glow, wishing he could somehow say something to me, but the bottom bar only flickered along with the noises in the empty house.

We received our newsletter from WSA yesterday. In it was the story of two children who had passed away this year. One was a 16-year-old girl who had a history of serious heart problems and died in gym class. The other child, a 9-month-old boy with WS, passed away this February. Like Erik, the problems with his cardiovascular system were minor. His first months were eerily similar to Erik's (constipation, colic, special formula). Like us, his parents threw themselves into learning about WS and cared for him the best they knew how. He began to thrive but passed away suddenly from cardiac complications that were "undetectable while he was alive."

Most kids with what Erik has seem to eventually thrive, although from my experience with this wonderful group of people affected by WS and my own child, I know too well that what sustains us in life and we take for granted is often a struggle for these kids in terms of nutrition and getting the brain to work in harmony with muscles and joints. Their bodies are missing elastin, a key component in connective tissue that when deleted can lead to cardiovascular problems. Even their brains are now known to have a different structure than what is typical. I am amazed that my child has survived such a brutal deletion of genetic material and that there aren't more problems as a result.

Erik is a miracle to me, but I will never be able to completely relax if he sleeps an extra hour, no matter how old he is. This Fisher-Price monitor will likely be one of the last of Erik's baby things I pack in a box and slide into the darkness of the attic. I have learned to feel those four bright red bars inside of me and will forever feel them flickering, whether I am separated from him by a couple of walls or a few hundred miles.

Two to three happily flickering bars. Time for me to go.