Compassion

Since this recent miscarriage, I have had random bleeding episodes after jogging. Only jogging. Ad not every time. So I went to my ob on Tuesday to have her take a look. Apparently, I have inside cervical cells hanging out on the outside part of my cervix. It's common for this to happen in women who have given birth, and she wasn't too concerned over it. She told me it could be irritating it while I jog, and wants me to go through another cycle and to see if it keeps happening. 

So, after that appointment, I noticed frequent urges to urinate. A lot. I drink a lot of water, so I normally go a lot, but this was getting excessive and then I would feel like I constantly had to go and not getting relief. I, of course, freaked out because the last time my bladder felt like this, I was in extreme pain with a stitch through it after my TVC surgery. It was like resurfacing that panic all over again. I thought to myself, oh it's probably a uti. I took some over the counter stuff and a cranberry supplement but it still didn't feel better by Thursday, and I called my doctor to make an appointment for today. Now I was worried that this was some kind of issue from my bladder injury a year ago. In sets the panic and the anxiety and my mind going to a million different places.

So I go in today. The receptionist now knows me by name. I make a joke about how much I love them and I just can't stay away. I sit in the chair, jiggling my leg with the constant need to pee. They run about thirty minutes over in the waiting room. I'm finally giving a sample and allowed back into an examining room and a total of an hour and fifteen minutes later, the ob comes in. My normal doctor had nothing available so I was a little nervous. But she was so gracious and right off the bat told me she was so sorry about the wait and what were my symptoms? I always hate seeing a new doctor because she won't know my crazy history so I ask her if she wants to know. She says of course! And so I start to explain it and I barely get through the sentence, "I have lost two babies due to incompetent cervix" before I start bawling. I am speechless with myself. Here I was having a break down. A real one. I usually can explain my history to doctors without getting emotional but for some reason, this doctor had this look in her eyes, one of complete and total sympathy, of compassion, of understanding and sorrow for what I had been through. She listened to me babble on about it all... I told her that I am so paranoid about every little thing with my body and that I was afraid something was wrong with my bladder again and that I honestly think I have PTSD. She agreed with me and told me she would help me get the help I needed to deal with it. She told me that it was meant to be that we met today and that she has a special prayer jar and she writes names of patients who need peace on a slip of paper and places them in the jar. She asked if she could do that for me. Now, I am not a religious person. I grew up catholic but haven't practiced in over ten years. And I'll be honest, I have been pretty angry with god lately. But I nodded and said yes and I was just honestly just so touched by her kind words and understanding. After all was said and done, she said that all I had was a uti and all I had to do was to take some medicine for five days. I wanted to literally hug her.

On my way in I had noticed little bowls of rocks on a few of the side tables in the waiting room. I didn't pay any attention to them then but noticed them again on my way out. I stopped to look at them. The sign by the rocks said, "wishing rocks" and there was a sharpie near by. I read a few of them. One said, "to be cancer free" and another said, "pass my exam." I read them until I found one with a blank side. The other side of this rock said, "I love cats". I knew this was my rock. On the other side, I wrote, "have a full term baby" and I placed it with the rest of the wishes.

One year.

Last Thursday, June 27th, marked one  year since I lost my son, Eli. I couldn't believe it had been a year. It felt so long and continuous, like it had to have been longer. But no, just a year, and I spent the day hurting - both emotionally and physically. My body literally ached. My arms ached to hold the son I never got to meet.

My husband and I have struggled on how to not exactly celebrate but to honor our babies births/passings. It is not your typical birthday. It is also the day that your child has died. How do you celebrate the life you created yet mourn what has been taken from you so unfairly? Last year, at Harper's one year, we bought a pink balloon and wrote messages on it and released it into the sky. So, we decided to do the same for Eli this year. We bought him a blue balloon. The woman who filled the balloon at the grocery store was so nosey about why we needed a balloon. She kept saying things like, "Who's it for?" "What's the occasion?" "Do you need a special message on the balloon?" I was like, holy crap, lady, mind your own business. I told her it was for someone special. And I left it at that. I didn't feel like getting into an awkward conversation because I'll most likely over explain and then it would be weird.

I wrote on the balloon and signed it, "Love, Mommy". I watched my husband write, "Love, Dad' and it broke my heart into a million pieces. I admit, I don't often think of my husband as a father because we have no living children. But he is, he is a father, and he is a wonderful one. He loves our son and daughter with the deepest love he could possibly have. We went outside and it was a beautiful evening. We held hands and we counted to three and we let the balloon go together. I watched the balloon float up and away and it is such a simple yet symbolic gesture that I cried. My husband held me and kept saying, "I can still see it, it's way up there now." And we kept looking out towards the sky, watching, straining our eyes for the symbol of our son's life, barely visible through the clouds.

What has been hurting me a lot lately is that people often forget that I am a mother. I was pregnant and I carried my babies inside of me for twenty weeks until my weak cervix gave out and failed us. But because my babies are not living on this earth, I am considered childless and I am not a mother to most. And it's the littlest things, the smallest comments that set me off. I had to fill out a survey at work for my boss and it asked about who lived in your home and how many kids you had or didn't have. He needed different types of living situations so he asked me to fill one out. But it was the way he said it. He said, "Here, you can fill one of these out for us. You don't have any kids. So it probably won't take you too long to fill it out." And I just say, "yeah, okay.." and my mind is screaming, "Yes, yes I do have children!" But I can't say that. I can't say anything. Because nobody knows what to say to that.

I sometimes wish if I'll ever feel normal, if I'll ever get to experience the things other mothers do. When I hear a woman complain about her kids, or how she can't wait to escape her house for the day to get away from the kids, I want to shake her and tell her how lucky she is, how she shouldn't take her life for granted. She is lucky her children got to be born alive, got to live, and that she has them in her life to hold, kiss and cuddle. She is lucky that she can celebrate birthdays, can tuck them in at night, and hold them tight. I want to scream at that woman and tell her to count her lucky stars that she is getting to experience that. Her babies are alive and can drive her crazy and I would give anything up to have that. Anything.