What a long several
months it’s been! We bought our first home in January, but didn’t move in until
March. March-April 2014: Oh, what a start to what seemed like never-ending
madness! I got sick at the beginning of
March but never seemed to bounce back. A few weeks later and a few days before
we planned on painting some of the walls in our new house, I got the idea that
maybe I should take a test to see if we were expecting again. Sure enough, that
little test told no lie. So, I didn’t help paint. Instead I packed. And packed.
And packed some more. Then moving week arrived. I felt worthless with moving
things and cleaning anything. And I felt horrid. I just wanted to sit down and
cry at the amount of house work piling up in front of me before we were even
settled in our new home – the home we had been pining over for 2 + years.
Finally, we got most of our stuff put away. April came and then our oldest got
sick for an entire week. A couple weeks later, our youngest got sick, and then I
got sick. The sickness just would not go
away! And then our oldest got sick again. When in the trenches of non-stop
sickness and trying to clean germs for over two weeks, it’s so easy for
perspective to fly out your new home’s windows. I was not in a good frame of
mind to say the least. I missed too many hours of work and was rapidly depleting
my already too-small bank of time for time off from work. I couldn’t see the
here and now – all I kept thinking about was prenatal appointments, doctor
appointments for the girls, and the impending maternity leave at the end of the
year. The leave that I’d be lucky to have 2 weeks of time saved up for. I was
freaking out and ticked off and sick and…I could go on. I was not in a good way
at all.
On top of dealing with
the sickness, wouldn’t you know it? One thing after the other seemed to go
wrong or need fixed RIGHT NOW with the house. I started to think we made a
mistake. Maybe we should have just stayed crammed tight in a two bedroom
apartment for the rest of our lives. That way maintenance would take care of
everything and blah blah blah blah.
During this time, we found our youngest has a developmental delay. So she’ll be
getting therapy and I have no clue where to find the time from work to get her
to those sessions. Thank goodness they can be held at daycare. But TIME,
friends; precious time seems to be slipping faster and faster away from us.
All of this may seem
like the typical stresses of being a parent of two kids under 3 years old and
moving. But then there was real darkness on my heart and in my mind. Two years
ago we were expecting our second child but she/he left us. The days leading up
to the loss and after were a nightmare. I still feel deep sadness and pain from
it. Last year at this time I was just days away from delivering so I was much
more at ease. But this year, we were still so early on in our pregnancy that I just
knew that all the stupid and annoying stresses of late surely have made our babe
leave, too. My hair started to shed – a LOT, like as in post-partum (or as it
did after we lost our babe two years ago). I had bad cramps, but not too bad. But
those cramps were still there, beckoning me to succumb to the old emotions from
two years ago. Besides, all of my symptoms just stopped. It was like a switch
was flipped: no more extreme exhaustion, no more or very little nausea, no more
food aversions. You may be thinking: isn’t that a GOOD thing? Doesn’t that happen
in the second trimester?? It hadn’t happened to me in our past pregnancies. So I
didn’t think of anything good – I just thought, “Oh, great. Here we go again.” Every
day I was waiting for the axe to drop. I just knew I was destined to lose this
babe, too. A friend lost her baby
at 12 weeks. I bawled - hard. I knew the emotions I felt and was sharply
reminded of how scared I was to relive May of 2012.
Then we had our 14 week
regular checkup. I was of course so nervous about hearing no heartbeat. I could
have thrown up from being so nervous.
Thank God that Matt was
able to take some time to come with me. I just couldn’t lie there on the table,
not hearing a heartbeat by myself.
Alas! Two seconds after
the wand was on my tummy that glorious little heartbeat was heard. I didn’t cry
tears of joy, but burst out in laughter. JOY!! Oh loveliness of life!
I hadn’t honestly
laughed in weeks. It felt amazing to have pressure and stress lifted off my
shoulders. I had tried to let things go. I truly did try. But my heart was
heavy and I couldn’t lift it up on my own.
Sure there are going to
be other stresses and burdens the rest of this pregnancy and after, but I feel
so much better knowing that this little girl or boy is going to be with us.
Too often I have
expectations – mostly of myself and how my life should be. I then expect things
to go so badly once they don’t go as I expect. I need to learn to stop
expecting so much. I must learn to let it go. After all, I don’t really have
control of many things, right? But I can embrace and adore my life as much as I
want. And I suspect that if I let it go and stop expecting “this” or “that”,
then I will be able to take time to smell the roses. And roses are so sweet and
such a special gift from a very special Mother.
Happy Mother’s Day to all moms and dads: I know I
couldn’t be half the mother I am without my best friend and husband!
