To continue on the subject of mothers, I want to talk about our journey to parenthood.
Last night, Brooke & I were going through my book shelf. Our cable on the TV & internet is acting up and this gave us an ample opportunity to connect to something other than a screen. She grabbed an old journel of mine from when I was her age & started reading it. I, thumbed through the rows of books, and stumbled across a Pregnancy Journal. I stopped & wondered what it was doing in the bookshelf. Surely we had it stored with her precious & important belongings in her memory "box" (which actually isn't a box anymore, it's TWO Rubbermaid containers now haha). I picked it up & sat down. It was then, I was hit in the gut. This wasn't Brooke's book, it was for our angel baby that I miscarried in June 2005.
All of the raw emotions that I felt when it happened came rushing back to me. I haven't looked at it or even tried thinking about it since 2005. I neatly tucked all of the reminders & obviously my emotions away on that book shelf. When I got to the 1st page, I felt the tears falling down my cheek. There was all of the positive pregnancy tests in plastic bags & cards congratulating our happy news. Then, I found my hospital bracelet when I was admitted during the miscarriage, and the discharge paperwork & cards wishing us their deepest sympathy & condolences. I pushed them back in as far as I could but uncontrollably they rolled as well as the gasp of air that I was holding in my lungs. Reliving those very painful times hurt deep down in my soul. My poor husband & daughter both sitting there in front of me didn't know what was wrong with me. Looks of confusement & fear in their eyes. I hadn't planned on explaining to Brooke what happened until she was old enough to understand. She came & crawled into my lap and asked what was wrong with me. About that same time, she saw the ultrasound and asked me if I was looking at pictures of her in my tummy.
"Is it time to tell her now, Lord?"
I only had a few seconds to react & like verbial word vomit, it came. I explained that before we were so very blessed to have her, we also had another baby in mommy's tummy, but that God wasn't ready for 'it' to come to this life yet. I watched her reaction & the look on her face trying to determine how much more I would have to explain. Like a champ, she popped off my lap & said, "COOL! So I have an angel baby brother or sister in heaven watching me now?!" I nodded & off to her Grandpa's room she went to share the exciting news with him.
I have longed to be a mother for as long as I can remember. When I was 5,6,7, and older, I would go to the nusery at church and beg whoever was in there, to let me take care of the babies instead of going to class. Remember the Alana story in the Home? Mother instincts even then. If there was one thing I would proclaim to wanting to be growing up, it was always to be an awesome mother.
Jr & I started trying for our own children when shortly after we were married in 2001. I always assumed that it basically happens when you are ready for it to. Boy was I wrong!!! After trying on our own for a couple of years & with no luck, I went to my family physician who referred me to an OBGYN who was a fertility specialist. Growing appointments left & right, ultra sounds, bloodwork, tests from us both & then the analysis. I was infertile due to PCOS, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. Basically my ovaries were covered in cysts & my female reproductive system didn't operate like a normal woman's. With it comes being insulin resistant, weight gain & other mild nightmares you can Google. So what do we do now was the next question. Diets to help me lose some weight, fertility treatments including pills, charting my cycles (which were forced, not natural cycles) shots, monthly ultra sounds to watch my eggs grow or not grow in most cases. You can only take Clomid (if I remember correctly) 6 times within an 18 month span and this was number 5 for us! It increases your chances for ovarian & uterine cancer, so that is why they limit how long you can do it.Each day was a struggle but each month was a test of whether or not we would pass. Forever it seemed, we failed. Then one morning, I woke up feeling 'different'. I was convinced that with another pregnancy test, we would be wasting money & be faced with more heartache ... a negative. I waited a few days & took the test. Before I knew it, my eyes grew wide as I saw the positive. A POSITIVE?! This had to be wrong. I walked, well ran rather, straight to Jr. He was just as confused & skeptical as I was. To the drug store I went for more tests, of different brands & variaties, which all showed the same positive test result. If there was such a thing as Cloud 10, we were on it! Immediate planning & excitement of picking out clothes, names, nursery decor, baby books were in immediate accord. Our prayers were answered and there wasn't anything that could take away our happiness. It never crossed our minds that we would endure a loss. That was until the end of May, 1st of June when the worse thing possible happened. I woke up one Saturday morning, to blood. Lots & lots of blood in our bed. Immediately, I knew that our precious baby was gone. Again, I felt an immediate difference in my body. Jr rushed me to the hospital, the whole process of being checked in, getting a room, the doctors & nurses seem like a blur to me. I don't remember much because the entire time I was in prayer begging God not to take away our baby. Reminding Him that we had wanted this child for so long and promises that we were going to be great parents, nothing like mine. All of this, resulted in me taking another pregnancy test in the hospital bathroom, blood tests, and the doctor not so gently breaking the news to us: "You're no longer pregnant. You've lost the baby because ..." That's when I checked out. I didn't want to hear why my body couldn't be a home to our child for 9 months. I fell into my husband's arms in tears. After about a day, I was discharged and that's when my demons started visiting me. Demons being depression, self doubt, guilt, hurt and anger. I barely spoke to Jr, when I did it was in the midst of crying. I shut down, he shut down. We pushed everyone away. I started reading about miscarriages & how it affected couples. That night I had a long talk with Jr about my fears of what I read. It said that the couples go through immense grief and that it could lead to divorce, pushing each other away and other things. He assured me that we were going to be fine and that if anything it would pull us closer together. False promise, untentional, but still not true nonetheless. We tried to stay pulled together. I returned to work after a week of cooperating from the D&C. Each day, we were in survival mode. Get up, go to work, come home, sleep, & repeat. The doctor told us that we could start trying again after about a month, we declined. It was too risky for our emotions. After about a month, what we said wouldn't happen (us pushing each other away), happened. We rarely spoke to each other and then we rarely saw each other. That was a huge red flag because we were always together when we weren't working. He spent ALLLLLL of his free time playing softball, every tournament, every team he could fill in for, hanging with his friends, all during the week, all weekend long. He didn't care if I was even there or not. Prior to the miscarriage, he always wanted me there. He quit telling me when he was playing, where he was going, how late he would be and I was crushed. I'm not really a traditional person persay, so I didn't sit at home crying about it. I went & did my own thing. I made friends with a girl from Cochran and she knew the pain of going through a miscarriage, so she invited me down to her home all the time. Her & her husband were big drinkers, so that kept my emotions occupied. I would forget how much I was hurting to have lost my baby & what looked to be, my husband too. He didn't even really care either that I was gone all the time. I left work, made the drive down 16, stayed until 10-11PM & came home to crawl in bed and go to sleep. He was already in bed most nights. The weekends came, he stayed at the ballpark, I stayed in Cochran. We were existing. That was about it. One day, I had a huge melt down & my friend (who I know now wasn't a true friend), encouraged me to do what she thought was best for me and my problems at home. She told me I needed to respect myself, get out while I had the opportunity, that the miscarriage was God's way of showing me an out before we had children involved & mixed up into a bad marriage. Jr & I have had our problems, lots of them prior to this, trust me. Never once did I ever seriously think about leaving him. We always fought through them & were fine. This time, however, things were so different. Everything seemed foreign to me. I felt doomed and that we would never get through the pain of losing something we tried so hard for. That night, I came straight home from work. I sat on the bed and with the most serious, calm voice, I could muster I said, "I can't do this anymore. I want out. I'm leaving you. I don't know where I'm going to go, I'm sure I can stay on my mom's couch until I figure it all out. Renate (my adopted mom who was an attorney), will take care of the divorce I'm sure." That was it. In my mind, out of my mouth. I never once looked up from the bed after that. It was quiet. He said nothing.
"Maybe, he wanted this too? Maybe he was scared to make the 1st move." I thought.
Prior to the miscarriage, I had never seen Jr cry. This was the 2nd time. He sat there and sobbed. He didn't say no, he didn't ask me to stay. He just let the tears flow. I felt myself caving, and I told myself before all of this that I had to stay strong & firm. It was my decision, I would be happier, right? I went to get off the bed and the leave the situation, to start packing and making arrangements. He grabbed my arm & pulled me close. He just held me and cried. We had let this obstacle almost kill our whole marriage within a matter of months. Everything we had been through with each other, our promise to each other in God's name, everything was about to end because I wanted to give up. I was done & I thought because of his actions as well, that he was done too. That couldn't of been further from the truth.
I didn't leave that night & I thank God for giving me the patience & hope in my marriage that I didn't see He was giving me at that time. We agreed to work on us and to do whatever it took to save our beautiful union. What had been a rocky first five years, was slowly turning for the better. A couple of months passed and one October night I started my cycle on my own! This was beyond a miracle, because I only did that once a year on my own without the Prometrium helping me jumpstart it. We only had a day or so to make a decision. Did we want to try the very last round of Clomid (fertility meds) and see what happened? Were we ready for the emotional roller coaster all over again? We agreed that we were going to take the chance. This time, however, I did things a bit differently. I didn't schedule a midcycle ultrasound, I didn't even call the dr to start the whole process. I decided to take the meds in blind faith that it would happen for us. About a month passed & I woke up feeling odd. The familarness that came with the 1st pregnancy. I didn't say a word to Jr, I got up & went to work. I remember saying something to a coworker about it & her coldhearted response was that I didn't need to get my hopes up because I knew what happened last time. (OUCH!) Irregardless, I went home excited. Jr was laying down wood flooring in the hallway that evening and I told him that I thought maybe I was. He literally had to push me out of the door to go get a test. I was so anxious & nervous. I didn't think I could bear the heartache not this time. I got home & sat around for about an hour before I finally made that trip to the bathroom. Five minutes passed & I almost fainted. Another positive! Dejavu! Back to the drugstore for tests & the rest is history.
I struggled during my pregnancy but it could of been way worse. We were both paranoid even more so during the 1st trimester. When the 2nd trimester came, we sighed relief. A day before my birthday we went for the gender reveal ultrasound. On the way to the appoinment, I said a prayer to God, "I know it's a little late to be asking for this favor, but if you could let us have a babygirl, I would appreciate it!" My prayer was answered quickly & we found out that we were having a sweet baby girl!!!! :) A day after my birthday, we had a scare that rocked us. All day at work I started mildly cramping & was in a lot of pain. I barely made it home before the pain intensified so bad that I couldn't walk. Fear & panic were creeping into our lives again. Not again. Lord, please, not again! I called my OBGYN and he instructed me to go to the ER immediately. Jr drove like a bat out of heck the entire way. I was admitted right away, several tests, ultrasound, nurses calming me down and then the answer. The baby was fine, I had a cyst rupture & everything was going to be ok. I was more than relieved. Shortly after that, I found out I also had gestational diabetes. I tried controlling it with diet, I was more strict than I should of been. Didn't work. I ended up having to control it with 2 lovely shots per day of insulin. We made it though, through 9 months. The big morning had arrived and off to the hospital we went. More drama though, we got there & they stuck the heart rate monitor thing on my stomach and the nurse couldn't find Brooke's heart rate. She left me in there by myself (without Jr) for about 30 minutes. I was hooked up to all kinds of stuff & there I laid panicking that I would be delivering a stillborn. Another nurse came in & saw me in tears. She asked me if I was ok & I explained that the other nurse couldn't find Brooke's rate. She was very patient & found it within a few minutes. My sweet baby was ok. Onto the labor part, I went! 12 hours in & after finally convincing myself that I was about to have to actually push this baby out, the dr told me that he was going to do a C Section because I had quit progressing at a 7 and was there for several hours. Brooke's heart rate was dropping quickly & they needed to get her out. PLEASE LORD DO NOT TAKE HER FROM ME! This had been so much work to get pregnant & then experience all the problems, I wasn't going to be able to wrap my head around it if she was taken from me. In a blink of an eye, I was rolled in and at 0525PM July 13th, 2006 the most beautiful 7lb 15 oz baby I had ever laid eyes on, was brought into this world. Healthy & screaming with cries! A blessing to my ears.
God brought me through some pretty big obstacles. Isn't it ironic that the one thing I wanted more than anything, a child to love & raise in normalcy & happiness was such a big job? I will tell you this, I appreciate the experience of being Brooke's mother than much more & have not for one second taken it for granted. I savor each & every moment that I possibly can even now, seven years later. She is my miracle baby, my hero, and forever I will admire her bubbly, sweet, & smart spirit. Thank you Lord for making me her mom, for allowing me to endure the hard times to appreciate the good times, for Your never ending love!!!
We have since tried for a 2nd child. We went through all the fertility treatments that we possibly could & 4 years later, I'm not pregnant. I stopped actively trying about 3 years ago. God knows what He is doing. I'm trusting His plan. Our next step was either Folistim shots or IVF. We talked about it and I prayed about it. We decided that we wouln't take that next route & instead enjoy each waking second with Brooke. I did keep another blog of that journey & you are more than welcome to check it out if interested: http://ourcolemanfamilyblog.blogspot.com
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