Generation Zii

This is the first time I got to hold him in a month after his brain surgeries. -Deana Watson

When I learned I was pregnant, I wanted to do everything by the book.

I had just gotten a first generation iPod, and it was loaded with all genres of music. Every day at work, I would attach headphones around my growing baby bump, and crank up Queen – We Will Rock You, Aretha Franklin- Baby I Love You, and other upbeat songs. My little baby would bounce around and kick along to the beat. This was the beginning of his connection with music.

That same ipod was used to play him music through his late night feedings, every other hour through the night (really, coming to think of it I played music to keep myself awake) because he was not gaining weight as a healthy baby should, and he had to eat every hour. My ipod played upbeat Baby Einstein music throughout the day, I thought maybe he would like Mozart, but he very rarely woke up for more than a few minutes at a time. I knew deep inside there was something very different about him. I knew he was not a healthy baby.

We eventually ended up at multiple hour long visits at our local Children’s Hospital, to see why our baby had no interest in eating, or staying awake, or meeting any milestones a baby should.

He was quickly diagnosed with a rare metabolic disease, and severe epilepsy. He was admitted to the Pediatric ICU, and put into a medically induced coma to stop his 200 plus seizures a day, and prepare his body for brain surgery. This room brought an eery silence, only cut up by the intermittent alarms, and whoosh of the ventilator that was providing life for our tiny baby. We had a cd player and tv in the room, but they were far across the room, and it seemed insensitive to the other patients and families in intensive care to be blasting Queen to pump our little guy up to fight for his little life. Instead, we hooked up our iPod to a pillow speaker and had his already familiar music with him at all times. After his two brain surgeries to stop the seizures, we played him foreign language lessons, classical music, and foreign music, and even rocked him out with We Will Rock You. We tried everything to get him to respond…to wake up. And after a couple of weeks, he did respond, and we got to take our baby home again.

Our ipod went home with us, and carried us through the highs and lows of his first year of life. There are still a few songs, from that first playlist, his playlist, that will bring me to tears upon hearing the first few notes. His fight songs. The songs that got us all through that first year of life.

It was just a little gadget. Something that many thought would go away with the “next big thing”. But that little gadget was an integral part of our lives. It gave us a soundtrack, the beginning
credits, to a wonderful story. The incredible life of our son.