Strength of a Heartbeat

It's never easy to be able to go through a tragedy, especially when your tragedy was supposed to be your biggest achievement.  I have gone through college and made through it with my head up.  I found my fairytale knight in shining armor and I married him.  I now know why those fairytale princesses never have children at the end of the story.  It's because their story life was not perfect.  I was so excited Christmas day to read my pregnancy test to find out, and then going to all of the doctors appointments to hear her heart beat to know that she was there and healthy.  I thought that my fairytale was going to be complete.

I was wrong.  I had the perfect husband, who in reality is not perfect but I love him even more for it; and now waiting on my little one to come I did not know anything could happen so horribly.  Her tiny life coming out to see me four months early was overwhelming.  I spent a week in the hospital eight hours away from my home crying.  I stayed in bed for 3 days hoping and wishing she would stay on the inside for just a bit longer.

I cannot believe how much strength I was empowered with each time I had heard her little heartbeat, first on the Doppler and then later on the monitor.  It was my daughters gift to me. She tried her hardest to not come out, but my body worked against her.  Even with the Magnesium that I was put on as soon as the doctors realized what was happening, my cervix still continued to open and force my little girl to come out.  I requested that the sound of her heartbeat be left on so that I could know, even in my sleep that she was doing okay.

When she was born, on Mother's day, She was sent to the NICU to be put on monitors and breathing machines.  I did not know if I could go see her because I was afraid.  I was afraid of what I was going to see, after all she was tiny and frail and I knew the odds were against her. The only thing on this planet that gave me the tiniest shred of strength was hearing that heart beat. It was so strong.  She was happy and content being with me.  I kept hoping that everything was a very bad night mare.  There was nothing that made sense to me.  Why would I be in the hospital if everything was normal for the first six months.  That little sound on the monitor kept me thinking about how she could have a future.  How even if she decided to come too soon we could still have her with us.

Jealousy

It's not that I am not super happy that you are expecting your third baby, who the father doesn't want, but I am still healing.  I am angry that I have not been given a second chance at having a baby.  It is so hard for me to listen to her talk about being six weeks pregnant and not really wanting the child.  Here I am fearing that with my emotional state, I won't get pregnant for a while. 

Moving on to figuring out my new self, I know that I will never be fully okay with pregnancies, whether my own or that of other women.

I don't want to be that sour puss in the back of a room trying my hardest not to cry, or that girl who tries so hard to find a believable excuse for not attending a baby shower.  I want to be that woman who is proud of her friends.  Who is the first person to go shopping in the baby section and isn't afraid of seeing tiny toes sticking out of car seats in stores. I want to be able to hold my head up high when I go into a gynecologist's office without crying because I know there is something wrong with me that they can't fix.

For now, I will work on my jealousy of pregnant women and hope that I can move on.  I know it's a lot to ask of my self, but maybe one day it will be to my advantage.  I will understand more clearly as to why sometimes destiny and fate suck.  I really wish that my little girl would not have left the world so soon, but she was a gift to me.

If sometimes referring to her as a gift seems weird, I don't know what else to say to her. I was telling her goodbye from the first moment I laid eyes on her.  She came to my life to give me some kind of truth, but I am not sure what that was, but one day I hope I will. For now, she will remain my guardian angel.  That is what I told her she is, and that I was just one of the very luck mommies to meet their guardian angel.  If you have not sat across from your one pound baby in a NICU waiting for more bad news, than you will never understand how it feels to force yourself into KNOWING that your little one is going to be a memory.  She is going to be those tears that you cry everytime you think of her. She is going to be those happy thoughts every time you hold your partner.  And when the time comes, she will be the reason that the future children exist. It sucks that her tiny little life left me in such misery.  I feel like I should go out in the world and raise awareness, but at the same time I don't have enough energy to go to work some days so how am I supposed to raise awareness of a flaw inside of my body.

Things that should never be said to a parent on the maternity ward too soon.

There was so much said to me on the maternity floor when I was in the hospital trying my hardest to keep my daughter in my uterus as long as I could.

Things that should never be said to a parent:

1. On your next pregnacy....

OMG, I am still pregnant, you hear that heartbeat on the monitor?? Well that's my baby who is trying so hard to stay inside as long as she can so thank you for saying she isn't important because she has the odds against her.

2. Well, at least we know what happened and we can fix it...
Kind of goes with the same as the "on your next pregnancy,"  really because when it was said, and it was said a lot because it was assumed that it would make me stop crying, all I can do was start crying harder.  If it wa so simple to know what was wrong with me cause I was inevitably going to lose my little girl, then why didn't they help me in the first place.

3.  I hope you had the best experience here during your visit...

Okay, now this one is hard because the person who said it was a social worker who was trying her hardest to not have me slap her.  She was also the lady who had to explain what was going to happen after my loss. 

There are many more, but for now here is an insight into my torment for a week.