My First Baby

An 11 week ultrasound (not mine.)

It's March.  Always, it's been a weird month to me. Vaguely springlike, vaguely warm or maybe not.  I do like St. Patrick's day with it's greenness and jolliness.  However, I give March credit for preceeding my favorite time of the year, Spring.  There is so much to love and be happy about with the approach of Spring.  It's like Hope becomes visible in the form of beautiful flowers, skies and warm days rolling by on the way to Summer's freedom (at least when you are eleven.)

Right now though, I have an uneasiness I can't explain.  Its been years since I have been through any kind of depression.  When I was younger I always let my emotions and my circumstances dictate whether or not my life was worth living, in my mind atleast.  I was always a victim to outside forces, everything was beyond my control.  Now, thankfully I have the gift of perspective that grows each year.  I have maturity to thank and a deeper faith to lean on.  Plus, I have a great life.  Really.  I can't complain - too much.

So its March and I am uneasy.  Then I remember.  March is the month I was due with my very first baby.  I was 29.  It took my husband and I a year to conceive  plus fertility medication.  I was cautiously optimistic.  We made it to 11 weeks I think.  Some of the details have become fuzzy.  I do however remember quite distinctly the pain and the change in who I was that took place when I lost that baby.  I have since lost three more but the happy ending is that I have 5  healthy kids too.  I never would have believed it if you told me I would end up with such a big family.

That first baby, it turns out, had a strange and rare condition called Tetraploidy.  It had four sets of chromosomes.  Learning that did bring a slight relief in knowing there wasn't a darn thing I could have done differently to help it along.  It was doomed from day one.  Isn't it weird?  That a body would go through the trouble of responding to a pregnancy test, feeling nauseous, getting a little rounder and all along the baby never even had a heartbeat.  Why did it take so long to let me know something wasn't right?

It really hurt - mentally and physically losing that baby.  I think it was a boy.  He would be turning 10 right about now.  Maybe even today.  I don't want to give the impression that I sit around trying to find things to be sad about or that I weep for those babies day in and day out because I don't.  I have perspective and joy and too much darn laundry to leave much time for that indulgence.  I do however, remember them often, look forward to meeting them and wonder if they know my sister and grandparents who are sharing eternity with them already.  I do wonder what they would have looked like, sounded like, how they would have made me smile and cry.  Of course then I remember, if they were here -

I know and love five sweet kids who would not be and my life would be so much different without them in it.  That takes away the sadness.  There really is a plan.

Just when everything is going wrong . . .

Image from The National Post

I don't do well with writing unless I have a flash of inspiration and lately they have been sparse.  Busy, sick, half crazy and irritated  these describe my current situation.  But I got one this morning and I would like to share it with you because it was simple and profound as inspirations should be. 

Let me set up the scene for you.  I have been sick for 9 days.  Really sick like WTH sick.  I have blown my nose till my brains came out which may explain the problems I am having.  My husband was sick for a month before me and as soon as he got better - wouldn't you know it . . .

MY kids are all sick.  ALL FIVE AT ONCE. On top of that my three year old may have fractured his big toe in a fall and wants to be carried everywhere.  You can imagine the wreck my house is in and the state of my fridge, laundry room and mind.  When I am not well, we just don't work, the house doesn't work.  It's all about survival of the fittest.  I have been the sickest for the past week but it looks like I am passing the torch to my oldest son today poor guy.  To him the only upside is UNLIMITED POPSICLES!!!!!!

I have been trying to breath and fight the fever and chills for days.  My solution is to take hot baths multiple times.  I can't stand the chills.  So let me get to the point.  It involves my daughter who you see pictured in the dryer below:

Yeah, she does this.  Its her new cool activity.  I especially love that she takes the time to throw all my clean clothes out on the dirty floor, sometimes she even waits until they are actually dry before she dives in.  Have you ever lost a kid in your own house?  Well after I found her here she succeeded in another recent endeavor which is climbing on top of laundry baskets trying to get the attic cord and pull down the ladder.  She got it open and tried to climb, it buckled and she fell and knocked her head on some doorway molding.  Never a dull moment here.

So all this is going on and I still feel like something you find in my backyard near my obnoxious Golden, Maggie.  I get Doodle downstairs crying (her not me, I think.) I proceed to treat the bumped head with an Elmo icepack and of course Doodle being who she is, refuses to cooperate, I stop mid-sentence when trying to explain to her that though what I am doing and what she is going through are uncomfortable and she doesn't understand it - I actually am trying to help her and it will feel better if she will cooperate!  Her brain works different than most, having autism that is. She often gets herself  into jams and dangers that a typical (Or neurotypical -NT) kid would not.  Or maybe they would? But either way, I can't explain it to her in so many words.  I just can't   So I quit talking and just yelled "TRUST ME!"  And then it hit me . . .

God does this to me all the time.

He just can't explain all of my pain or all of this world's pain in a way that my brain can comprehend.  Now by saying that I don't mean He is not capable of doing it, I mean I am not equipped to understand every situation in life especially the more complex and painful ones like why is He letting my 92 year old Granddaddy exit this world in such a slow, painful and sad way? 

Why does it seem like the world is going insane with natural disasters right now?

Why do teenagers who don't want babies seem to come by them so damn easy and others of us have to wait 3 years and endure painful tests procedures, medications and miscarriages before we get our babies? 

These are big unanswerable questions.  For now.  But I believe there is a reason. That is my Faith.  And every time I come across one of them I will have to remind myself that He is silently pleading with me.

 

              " TRUST ME!   I know what's best.  It will all work out with a purpose for the good in the end.  Even if I can't explain it to you right now in a way you can understand or even need to understand.  I love you. Chill out."

Or something to that effect :)  Spare prayers for my sick, sick family please!  Have a good day and use hand sanitizer!