It is no surprise that I have been thinking a lot about last year at this time. I've been wanting to sit down and blog for the past two+ weeks, but I also have a hard time sitting down and acknowledging my feelings. I don't want to feel all that again. I just want to push those feelings away and not necessarily forget, but push them away because I have a hard time processing and verbalizing all I feel and I have very few friends who care to ask or listen.
But tonight I think about all the sleepless nights I spent crying out to God while on bed rest at the hospital, tears streaming down my cheeks, asking Him for strength for me and for the baby. Trying to listen to encouraging christian music to calm my fears and settle my emotions in order to get a little bit of rest. It was the first time in my life that I felt like nothing was in my control. I had to relinquish everything to our Creator. I was scared to death! The song...LORD I need you, oh I need you...every hour I need you! My one defense, my Righteousness, oh God how I need you...became a constant prayer in my head and on my lips.
I think about my doctor coming in to talk with me about the safest way to deliver the baby. If the baby stays breach...if the baby is transverse...if the baby is head down...if I develop an infection...if I start to hemorrhage...if the baby is delivered today...if the baby is delivered a week from now or a month from now...many of these scenarios end in C-section. I an NOT a c-section mom! I gave birth to three babies vaginally (and had David with no pain meds.) I've also watched The Business of Being Born, I've read Your Best Birth, read the Bradley method and the hypnobirthing method, I have it in my head that one intervention leads to another and another and finally a c-section and I am NOT that person...but yet it was out of my control. I had to relinquish the fact that even though my cousin delivers breech babies as a medical missionary and one of my friend's 4lb triplets was delivered breech, that that was not the safest way to get a 1 lb baby out and it could cause a lot more trauma than a c-section. I'd never had any kind of surgery though and I was scared to death of surgery! And the type of c-section needed for a mom at 24 weeks is not just your normal c-section but a classical incision that means that I will forevermore have to have c-sections. No VBACs. I have to come to terms with the fact that I AM that c-section mom. I still don't want to be!
I have flashbacks of the neonatologist coming in and explaining all that would happen once I needed to deliver. Joe and I would need to talk about to what degree of resuscitation we would want. The longer the resuscitation the greater chance of long term disabilities. The chances of a baby's survival at that point was about 25% and survival without long term disabilities was about 11%. The prognosis was grim. And naive me, when she asked if I had any questions said, "Do we have to buy a special kind of car seat?" HA! I was just in denial about what was ahead! I did not want to be forced to make life and death decisions! I did not sign up for this!
I count this pregnancy as lasting about 3 enjoyable weeks. It took me until 19 weeks to announce it to the world on Facebook because of miscarriage scares and also because of how sick I felt. At 20 weeks I started feeling better and finally felt him move, but by 22 weeks my water had broken, I barely had a belly and now was stuck in the hospital. I remember looking down at my belly at Riverside and crying because it was SO SMALL! How in the world could the baby that was so small in there survive?! At that point a stranger would have had no idea I was pregnant. My fluid was gone and so were a few inches from my waistline.
I mourn the kicks in the ribs that I never felt, the belly I never got to show off, the rolling misshapen-ness of a large pregnant belly when the baby sticks his bottom up in the air. One year later I can say that I'm happy I got to experience it three times while all of my NICU friends have never experienced that since it was their first babies, but I still long for those things that were stolen from me. I even mourn the fact that I will never experience labor pains again. My body will never again birth the way it was created to birth. I also mourn the fact that I was only on hospital bedrest for 2.5 weeks. Yes, I am thankful because if it would have been any less, Joshua would not have survived, but oh how I wished and hoped and planned for more. If I had only _______... maybe I would not have gotten the infection! Oh how I despise those residents at Riverside!!! I would gladly have traded my hospital stay for Joshua's. My OB said that one day in the womb is worth 2 days in the NICU. (Let's see...Joshua's birth was cut short by 107 days and he was in the hospital 149...close - 1.5 day day multiplier.)
Then there are days I cry as if my baby had died. I literally feel that deep of grief and have to physically remind myself that Joshua is HERE, he is thriving just as we prayed! But my pregnancy died and so many hopes and dreams and plans died too. A piece of my heart and a piece of our family got fatally injured through this journey and it is taking a long time to recover.
So I will try to leave these feelings of fear, mourning, and sadness at the keyboard tonight because tomorrow is a day to celebrate! It is a day I NEVER dreamed would be such a celebration! Thank you Lord! HAPPY Birthday my son, my strong fighter, Joshua! Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
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