I was asked, about a month ago, to write about my journey becoming a First Time Mom. My journey, wasn't simple, and writing it out now brings out emotions that I have tried to forget, but in doing so, has given me a tiny bit of insight, and closure, and hopefully helps others.
Our Journey
The third time was the charm for us.
Something that we thought would never happen, happened on the third time and it made our life happier than we ever imagined. In fact happy seems to diminish it a little, but no word in any language can describe our feelings for this little bundle of joy that is now part of our family.
Our beautiful daughter finally came to us.
The journey to get her though, to hold her in our arms, wasn't simple, or pain-free, and only a select few in our lives know what happened on our journey.
By now, I'm sure you've created your own theories in your head of what happened, and the majority of you are probably right.
We went through miscarriages.
Yes, miscarriages.
Something that isn't talked about in our society (hell, my husband refused to mention it to his family, for reasons I wot get into), but from this journey, I find happens more than we realize.
It Begins
When my husband and I dated, we talked about the kind of life we wanted, what we wanted to achieve in our lives together, when we wanted to start our family. While we knew we wanted children, we agreed to stick to a five year plan, when we had been married for five years, we would start to try to add to our family.
Why five years?
My husband felt that this was enough time for us to live our lives, and make sure our relationship was even more loving and solid then when it had started before adding a life to our family, he also felt that those who had children to soon put their relationship in jeopardy as he had seen quite a few of his friends relationships fail because of this (what can I say, I married a great man, and thank God so because he is my rock). We assumed, naturally, as 99% of people do, that we would try for a child, and boom, pregnant. Boy, were we wrong.
About two years ago, I went to my Dr. for pain in my sides, he immediately sent me to an OB/GYN, who then immediately sent me to get some tests done. This is how, at 23 years old, I was told that it would be extremely difficult for me to get pregnant.
I don't really remember what went through my head that day, I remember leaving work early because I couldn't stop breaking into tears, I remember thinking "What if my husband leaves me because I can't provide his family?. I remember a lot of pain.
This is how, we ended up breaking our five year plan early, to start on our family, before the issue possibly grew worse.
They were about to put me on fertility medication, when we became pregnant.
We were ecstatic, then about a month later, we lost it (I found out now that my Dr. had been watching levels of something, and they were low and dropping, but she never told me because she didn't want me to stress and make it worse on the baby).
I had never felt a pain like it before, not a physical pain, but an emotional pain, and it still hurts me to this day, even though I have my daughter, I know this pain will stay in me, and my husband, to some degree my whole life. I think it hurt my husband more though, he never cried in front of me, I found out much later this was because he was trying to stay strong for me, and not have me become worse in my depression, but I did come home early one day and heard him sobbing, something that I'll never forget.
So when we got pregnant again, we were happy, but cautious. I didn't go to the Dr. this time, I thought the stress of the visits might have not helped the first time, but it didn't matter, it happened. Again. Five days after my birthday, two days before my husbands birthday.
Miscarriage.
It's not something that's talked about in our society, hell, it's not discussed in either of our families, and once it is, the person you have told, whether they realize it or not, usually makes you feel worse about what happened (mind you this is through no fault of their own, but since no one talks about this topic, no one knows how to act when its brought up. The majority just sort of flail uselessly, like a fish out of water, trying to figure out what to do, to no avail).
So when it happened to us, twice, we didn't know what to do, what to tell the few that did know, and what to tell the many who didn't. We didn't know how to explain my sudden depression. My husband's best friend still doesn't know why we didn't go to his baby shower (his girlfriend was pregnant two weeks after me, so as you can imagine, it hurt way to much), my husband's siblings still don't know why I snapped one day when they proceeded to ask when we were ever going to have children, my old next door neighbor still doesn't know why when I saw she was pregnant I started to cry and ran inside my house, my sister-in-law doesn't know why when we went to visit her in the hospital after she gave birth why I was so cold and distant.
Light
But, there was a light at the end, and even though I couldn't see it, our prayers worked and God gave us miracle. We found out we were pregnant a third time in May, 2013. And while we were happy, especially when we passed the time frame when we had lost the other two, we were still worried. I mean, could you blame us?
My Dr., and I'm so glad I was sent to her, she was an angel, would have me checked on average about once a month, to make sure that everything was going okay, and to appease my worry. Ultrasound after ultrasound, we saw our baby, till the day we found out it was a girl. (I had already known, and was 99% sure it was a girl, because I had been having dreams of a girl since before I knew I was pregnant, which for me was a little odd considering I had wanted the first born to be a boy to take care of the younger siblings later). Then we didn't have the ultrasounds as often, since my Dr. had said we were pretty much in the clear, but when we did, they were even more special, since we knew what our baby was.
After that, we were pretty much on cloud nine, feeling her first kick, her first roll, her dancing to music that I listened to in the car, kicking when hearing her Daddy.
Delivery
About a week before my due date, we were informed that my fluid was running low, a follow up appointment was made for three days later (after the weekend). After some questions about her movement, "no, she wasn't as active anymore, only during the random contractions at night that I was having", I was scheduled to be induced, she had to come out for her safety.
We arrived at the hospital, my husband carrying his snack bag I made for him (which also included some clothes), and me clutching to my diaper bag, trying not to look nervous so I wouldn't scare my husband, but that didn't work, he noticed me shaking as we got out of the hospital parking lot. Checking into the hospital, I was better, the nurses we had were sweet and made me laugh.
After a couple of hours of contractions, I ended up asking for, and getting, an epidural. Something, in retrospect, I should have gotten sooner (and yes, should have listened to my husband, who said from the beginning that I should have had one). I still laugh when thinking of my tiny nurses trying to flip me from side to side (they had to have been no taller than my mother, five feet, making me about 8 inches taller than them). No more than two hours after my epidural, when the nurse came to check my dilation did we find out my water had broken and I could see panic on the nurses face. My babies head was crowned already.
When had my water broken?
I didn't know, maybe an hour or so ago?
I couldn't feel my bottom half, but I did feel some coldness about an hour ago that I had figured to be me peeing (I had forgotten I was hooked up to a catheter so thus I shouldn't be feeling any "pee").
I was then told to push, which is hard when you can't feel your bottom half. I had no idea if I was pushing, or what I was pushing. The nurse told me to act like I needed to "poop", but again, sort of hard when you can't tell if you are pushing or not.
Thirty minutes later, I gave birth to our daughter. My husband got to cut the cord.
Two nights in the hospital followed and then we went home.
I gave birth to my little miracle, less than three weeks ago, and she is sleeping next to me as I type, and while my journey, or my husband's, wasn't easy, nor pain free, I know we wouldn't change it for anything, because then we wouldn't have our daughter, our piece of our heart and soul, breathing in front of us.
You can follow more of Christina's journey on Twitter and Facebook.
You can follow more of Christina's journey on Twitter and Facebook.
I miscarried before my oldest son and it was one of the hardest things I went through. I'm so happy to see that you and your husband didn't give up and were able to bring your little girl into the world.
ReplyDelete