November 22nd, 2010
Sometimes I forget. I admit it. It’s hard to admit but it’s true. But I admit it — I have been through the ringer. I have been through the ringer but people go through ringers all the time. I don’t want pity or sympathy — support and love and the occasional “way to go” will work.
I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten in the attempt to pretend like I’m not always stuck in the proverbial ringer until a minute ago when I remembered what day it is…
November 22nd was when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Not that, that has anything to do with me. He was a great president and the U.S. lost a great leader but I wasn’t born yet. November 22nd was also Cooper’s due date. Cooper was, conveniently, 8 days early (as was Aiden — this is how I know without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus loves me….). November 22nd marks something even greater though….
The year before Cooper was born, Craig and I (newlyweds at the time) went through something pretty terrible. We went through a ringer that I’d never wish on any woman (well, or family). We lost a baby. We didn’t lose a baby through miscarriage. I sympathize greatly with women who lose a baby that way. I imagine that it’s incredibly traumatic. I sympathize even more with woman who lost a baby the way I did.
We found out right before Halloween that Baby T was on the way. This baby was very much planned. Craig had come home late one night from an emergency visit to LeBonheur and declared, “Well, I totally think I could do that” — ‘that’ being parenthood and thus the “planning.” Baby T was on the way.
A few weeks later, things seemed to go terribly wrong but slowly — almost torturously.
The loss was first miss-diagnosed a miscarriage. All signs initially pointed in that direction. There were lots of tears. I prepared for what would be next. Then some blood tests came back. Hope! But ultrasounds showed nothing. Despair. More blood tests. Hope! Another ultrasound. Despair. This went on for a while before they administered a cancer-fighting drug called Methotrexate which essentially terminated the dividing cells (the pregnancy) wherever it was trying to reside in my body (other than where it was supposed to reside). It’s called ectopic. Usually the fertilized egg implants in the tube but that’s not where my baby was. We never found out where my baby was.
To hear things like, “What’s there will never be viable,” and, “Because it’s not where it’s supposed to be, it can kill you,” are not words a possible first-time mother wants to hear and then to feel like the little being you have already fallen in love with has to, well, go……
It took two months for everything to, well, dissipate and then life…it went on. I cried a lot. I rested a bit. They ran tests to make sure nothing was wrong with me. We went on. Now there’s Cooper. Then there’s Aiden. But that first baby…..
I still mourn that life — the first creation I fell in love with. I wonder who’d they be today. Sometimes I imagine their face — the life not viable that took a piece of my heart.
I feel like I owe it to them to still say, “I love you. I miss you. You are never forgotten.”
November 22nd, 2010.
