The Difficulty of Parental Empathy

This past week, we had our son circumcised.  Needless to say, it was a long week.  Most people get their sons circumcised at birth but they don't normally do that in Spain where we were when we had him.  It has been really hard on him and on us as his parents.  The good news is he won't remember this.  That softens the blow a little but it has still been really hard to watch our son in pain like he has been.

There's just this feeling of helplessness.  He has been waking up in the middle of the night after finally sleeping through the night once we settled in Louisville which has left everyone a bit off center.  The pain meds wear off and that's usually when he wakes up.  He did finally sleep through the night last night so we praise God for that.

As I understand it, that usually never goes away; watching your kid in pain never really gets easy.  You just learn to cope with it after some time.  I can handle pain on my own, but watching my son struggle with it, that's another thing altogether.  Please don't misunderstand me, I know it could always be worse and there are a lot of kids in way worse situations.  But we've been blessed to have a baby boy who hasn't even hardly been sick his first year of life so it's a new thing for us.

The first day especially was rough as one might imagine.  General anesthesia is something I'd prefer to not ever have to see my kid need again unless it's for wisdom teeth when he's a junior or senior like I was.  Plus the days leading up to it you just have this underlying stress and nervousness because you think of what might happen rather than what usually happens.  What if your kid is the anomaly?  What if something were to really go wrong with the procedure?  Irrational thoughts like that go through your head and I'm sure that's pretty common amongst new parents.

It does give you a new appreciation about your own parents and how they used to worry for you when you were a kid.  Pain and suffering are common to the human race.  Some have a lot and some very little.  Worrying doesn't help though.  I kept praying prior to the surgery to just help me leave it in His hands.  I'm sure that'll be a common prayer now that I'm a parent  :)