Beauty Mark

The love a parent has for their child is immeasurable.  You may think you know love before you've had a child, and most of us do know true love before children, but there is something about being the protector of a fragile, vulnerable little being that makes your heart feel like it's not possible for you to love anything more.  When Jakub was born, my universe suddenly had a new center.  I just couldn't imagine anything more beautiful than him.  I know, mothers are programmed to feel that way, and it's a good thing, too, because along with all the beautiful things about being a mother and a parent, children will test you in ways you have never been tested before.  But no matter what kind of day I had or how frustrated I got with the challenges, if asked whether or not I would want my child to be different, I'd unequivocally say, "No."  Of course, when Jakub is sitting in time-out number five, laughing at me just to push my buttons, and it's only 9:00 a.m., I wish he would be a little more cooperative, but, when you get right down to the heart of things, I wouldn't want to change his spirit in any way.  In my eyes, he is simply perfect in his imperfection.  I absolutely love his Czech accent in English (and secretly never want it to fade).  I absolutely love that he still sometimes uses the feminine tense when referring to himself in Czech because that's what he hears from me.  I absolutely love that he is inquisitive, questioning, and imaginitive.  And to me, he was the most beautiful person on the planet. 

When I was pregnant with Matěj, I was worried about so many things.  I was worried that Jakub wouldn't love his brother.  I was worried that he would feel displaced by him.  Thankfully, these worries were baseless, because from the very first moment, Jakub adored his little brother.  This is not to say that they don't occasionally act like a pack of wild dogs fighting for alpha status--and let me add that Matěj can dish it out just as well as his big brother--but when push comes to shove, or should I say after push comes to shove and they make up, they do actually enjoy being together and are always happy to see one another. 

However, another thing I worried about even more than sibling rivalry was if there was enough room in my heart for another child.  It was already exploding with love for one child, and it seemed like it wasn't possible for me to love another as much as I loved our first.  I worried about this until November 8, 2009, 8:14 p.m., which is, not coincidentally, the moment Matěj was born.  You would think that an organ swelling to twice its original size would be painful, but in the case of the heart, it is euphoric.  I suddenly realized that my love for my children is truly infinite, and felt a little silly for worrying so much about it.  He was, just like his brother, perfect in every single way.  Another sun had entered my universe, and this one just as bright as the first. 

Then, a couple of weeks after he was born, we noticed a small red mark on his right cheek, directly under his eye.  For a while, we thought Jakub had accidentally poked him--he was always bringing him toys, many of which had various sharp protuberances--and because we were at that time also consumed with Matěj's emergency surgery to repair a double inguinal hernia, we didn't think much about it, until his two-month checkup, when the doctor told us it was a birthmark called a strawberry hemangioma.  At first, I thought it looked cute, like a little bird, which was fitting since I had been calling Matěj my "little quail" because he was born almost bald, except for a little tuft of hair resembling the topknot of the Gambel's Quail that roam our desert.  And then I started researching strawberry hemangiomas.  The doctor had warned us that it could get quite large, but I thought he must surely be exaggerating, until I googled the pictures.  Some of these birthmarks can grow so large, they cover most of the face and can even prove to be health risks if the growth threatens the eyes, nose, or mouth.  I won't post any of the pictures here, because it breaks my heart to see them.  It completely devastated me that this could be the fate of my little boy.  Not because I would love him any less, or that he would be any less beautiful to me, but because I know that the rest of the world is not so kind.  This point was driven home when my mother-in-law said to me, "He would be so cute except, well, you know, it's a shame about the birth mark...."  I cried for days, visions of those worst-case-scenario pictures I had found on the internet burning a hole through my brain, thinking about how cruel other children will be to him if his were to get so large.  The fact that most hemangiomas disappear by the time the child begins school was little comfort in light of the fact that if it were to grow unusually large, it would leave an area of saggy skin in its wake.

With Jakub, I enjoyed sending his picture in to photo contests for children's clothing lines, just for kicks, thinking if he actually won, it would be nice to show off how cute my child is to the rest of the world, and get free clothes to boot, but now, every time I saw notices on websites for children's photos, it just made me sad that no matter how beautiful I thought he was, Matěj would never win, because of the blazing red mark on his cheek.  Which is why one particular meeting of our book club will forever stand out in my mind.  I had taken Matěj as a baby along, simply because it was easier to have him with me if he should get hungry.  One of the members of the club is a really wonderful woman who is known to be very outspoken, "this-is-what-I-think-and-you-can-take-it-or-leave-it" personality type.  She always has interesting things to say, and is pretty funny too, but on this occasion, she almost made me cry.  As most people do with newborns, she was looking at Matěj and said, "Wow, he is so beautiful!" but it wasn't one of those generic "Oh, your baby is cute" statements.  She went on, "He's just has the most perfect features, so perfectly proportioned.  He's just so incredibly beautiful!"  At that moment I realized how much the birthmark was weighing on my mind, because I started to tear up (and later cried in my car), that someone else saw what I saw in my perfect little boy. 

It is almost sixteen months after the discovery of what I feared would become a major issue in Matěj's life, and I am happy to say that things couldn't have turned out better.  I am incredibly thankful that our doctor referred us to an excellent pediatric dermatologist, whose philosophy was to be proactive about the management of strawberry hemangiomas, so he prescribed a series of cortisone injection and laser treatments which essentially stopped the growth, and brought down the swelling of the area underneath completely.  When out an about, people still often ask, "Oh, no, what happened to him?" to which I politely reply that it's a birthmark, and I find that it doesn't bother me at all.  Occasionally, I'll also encounter someone who will relay a story about their child's (or their own, in one case) hemangioma, which I found especially encouraging at the beginning, when we weren't sure which way it was going to go.  Lately, I've noticed that the color has faded considerably as well, and now that it's clear that we are out of the woods, I find myself getting a little sentimental.  I have grown used to seeing the little bird like a rosy glow on his cheek when he smiles, and I know one day, when it's gone, I will miss it.  It is a part of him, a part of his charm, and part of what makes him so beautiful to me.