A melancholy morning.

As some of you are aware, my precious husband cracked both a vertebrae and a rib recently, and he is in awful, awful pain :( Poor thing. He has been in a veritable coma from the pain medication.

So, alone this morning...I started thinking...about Molly, the baby we lost at the half-way point of the pregnancy last year. For those who were not aware, we also lost the twins we only recently found out we were expecting. There was a thirty-one inch tumor completely encroached upon my uterus...it cut off the placenta, the babies' lifeline. I feel so angry sometimes! How...how...HOW could my OWN body have betrayed me in such a way??? My body is meant to nurture and sustain our babies, not cut off the very lifeline through which all of their nutrients and life-preserving entities are transmitted.

On Oct. 20th I had the tumor removed. By then, the doctor said the babies had been "reabsorbed by my body". What a horrible, clinical way to explain it.
I now have a large incision from the surgery...for the first few days in the hospital, it was so very awful I wished for death. Nothing they gave me for pain worked, and the pain was so incredibly intense. I stayed in South Austin Hospital for about a week...and my loving husband, bless his soul- he did not leave one single time. Even when I insisted he go around the corner to 7-11 to get himself a magazine or book, he refused. I seriously could NOT have done it without him. I mean it...I just could not have handled it. The experience made me so very grateful to have him there-- I know people have surgery all the time and have no one with them in the hospital. How do they manage? Bless their souls...

Somehow Molly's loss still feels more raw, more painful...even though it happened in mid 2005 and the loss of the twins JUST happened. I guess it's because with Molly, we just KNEW we were well past the point of "danger", that oft-dangerous first trimester...even when the first trimester ended, I kept saying "in a few more weeks...THEN I'll be comfortable!"

And I was...around 14-15 weeks, I just felt wonderful. Even strolling through the grocery store gave me SUCH a sense of purpose! "I am choosing the foods to best nourish my body, a complex machine of God's design that is actually growing another human being at this very second! I am AMAZING!"

I looked "really" pregnant...Molly had always measured big for her gestational age. In fact, at my first ultrasound, they insisted I was lying about my last period and the details of the conception date! Finally, with PROOF that my husband was out of town during the time THEY said I "must" have conceived, I got them to believe me. My mom said that the same thing happened when SHE was pregnant with ME...at 4 months, people were telling her how lucky she was to have a baby that would be born near Christmas! (I was due, and born, in mid-May!)

Anyway, I just loved walking around with my hand protectively covering my "Mol-Ball", as we called it.

It was so...stunning...to lose her. It was just out of nowhere. We tell ourselves, "She is our special guardian...at the right hand of God, waiting for us...and waiting for just the right time to bless us with her sibling(s)..."
But the truth is, sometimes we're terrified that we will never know that certain joy of parenthood. We know it's not a rational fear...we know that God will grant us our true heart's desires if we are sincere and deserving. But still, there is an occasional wide-eyed stare; a raspily-spoken, tear-choked "what if...what if we never..."
And whichever of us is having the "down" day will be comforted by the other one, one of us will say "We WILL have children...you KNOW we will...even if they are not borne of our bodies they will be borne of our hearts and that is ALL that matters". And we know it's true, but sometimes one or both of us just needs to voice the fears all the same.

Ah, melancholy morning.

We miss you, babies. We love you.




A time more innocent... ^