Contemplation

Since learning of my friend Aimee's death, I've been doing a lot of thinking about life. I have such a great life. It's hard to believe how blessed I am. I have an amazing husband, two wonderful children, a great job, and now a mini-van! Woo-hoo! I'll post about that later.

Noah is about to turn 1. It's been such a fast year! He turns 1 on Wednesday. I can't believe that one year ago, I was miserably pregnant, overdue and thinking he'd never come out. And now Noah is starting to walk, talking up a storm, getting into everything and just being a boy. I still remember when Hannah turned 1. It was a really tough time then. The week before her 1st birthday, I was having some pain in my side and figured I had an ovarian cyst. I'd had several before and they're no big deal to me. But being an ultrasound tech, I had to take a look. I remember it was a Friday at the end of the day. My co-worker had already left and I was there by myself. I went into the exam room, shut the door and lay down on the table. As I moved the camera over my belly, it took me a minute to comprehend what I was seeing. I was convinced I was scanning someone else (even though I was by myself and clearly had goo all over my skin). There was a baby in there! Yep, I was pregnant. In all the years it took for me to get pregnant with Hannah, I remember the doctor's saying it would be so difficult for me to get pregnant without medical help. Well, it happened.

Then the medical side of me kicked in and I noticed there was something very important missing from my baby...a heartbeat.

It looked perfect in every other way. It was like looking at a still picture. I would pick out the little arm and leg buds, the head and body. But instead of a heart beating very quickly, it was eerily silent and still. My baby was dead. I remember being so torn between elation that I was pregnant at all and devastation that the baby was dead. I immediately called my husband but he didn't answer his phone so then I called the next best thing...my mom. Mom's are great. I can't imagine going through life without mine. Crying, I told her I was pregnant. Her response "well, honey. That's wonderful!". Then I told her there was no heartbeat. She switched over to "nurse-mode" and made me call my OB doctor. The OB doctor simply said that it was a Friday so there was nothing they were going to do about it until Monday. Go home and rest and call the office on Monday. If I started hemorrhaging, go to the ER. The medical side of me completely understood that they were letting my body "take care of it" on it's own. The maternal side of me was screaming for them to do something to save my child.

The next few days were a blur. It wasn't just Hannah's birthday weekend; it was also Mother's Day weekend. I had to host Hannah's birthday party on Saturday with lots of family and friends at my house. Then Mother's day was Sunday. It was awful. I got through it only because I would look in my baby daughter's eyes and know that she was mine. No matter the reason that God chose to take my 2nd child away, I had a beautiful daughter with me on Earth.

The next week I had blood tests followed by an "official" ultrasound which proved that yes, I was pregnant but no, there wasn't a heartbeat. My body wasn't taking care of it on it's own so I had to have a D&C. I was a wreck. I seriously don't know how I got through all that. I remember thinking that I wasn't protecting my baby since they were going to take it out of me. Even though I knew it was already gone, I still felt like I was doing something wrong by having that procedure. So many people told me that I'd understand someday why God chose to take the baby away. I never thought I would.

A year later, someone very close to me suffered a miscarriage. I was able to talk her through what was happening to her body and what the doctors were going to do about it. She later told me that she couldn't have gotten through that time without me. There was the reason. My baby is in Heaven playing with all the other babies taken from their parents far too soon. If he/she's anything like Noah, he/she's being put in "time out" quite a bit. :)

Noah will turn 1 on Wednesday. This 1st birthday is looking quite a bit different than Hannah's. And that's not a bad thing.