One Small Conference Thought

This weekend was General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's a weekend filled with counsel given by the prophet and apostles of the church. During one talk (sermon), the topic was motherhood. The following meme was created:

It is a beautiful thought, one that I have felt and seen in action with mothers I know. When I heard it again this weekend, an experience came to mind from last year. I spent hours crying after we lost our son, even while pregnant several months later with our daughter. At one point, as I was sobbing so hard I had run to the bathroom in hear of vomiting, I mentally screamed to my Heavenly Father that nobody understood what I was going through. I was alone and in pain. I had lost my only son and although I was pregnant again, why did Jackson have to sacrifice his life for me to have Dash?

Then as clear as day I could feel the words, "I know. I sacrificed my son so that you might live."

My Heavenly Father knows the pain I went through.He knows. The crying changed as my heart was filled with love and an understanding so deep it seared my soul. For one brief moment, my Heavenly Father was crying with me, giving me strength as I saw beyond my pain and had a glimpse of what being a Heavenly Mother is like.

32 Weeks and Confessions about Collections

Dash and I have made it another week. We're down to 37 days until our birthing day and I'm both petrified and excited.  I am so very ready to hold my little girl but that also means not being pregnant anymore.

As miserable as pregnancy can be for many women, I don't get sick, I can still bend down to tie my shoes, I did 45 minutes of yoga last night without breaking a sweat, and there's something truly amazing about both feeling and watching her dance within me.

I love being pregnant.

When I can set aside the anxiety, the pain from my injections, and just enjoy the moments, there's something very powerful about growing a baby. Perhaps this is a little sacrilegious, but as powerful as God is, he can't do this one thing and so he has gifted his daughters with the responsibility of growing life. He relies on us to provide bodies for his children. Without us, the Plan of Salvation, of eternal families, falls flat on its face. I feel trusted when I'm pregnant. Valued. Powerful. My body is a sacred place, a temple that houses the spirit of one of God's children.

And perhaps that's why battling infertility and pregnancy loss has been so hard. I took it rather personally that my Father in Heaven didn't trust me to raise those babies. I felt unworthy.  Broken. I had done something to deserve what had happened.

I know my Father in Heaven doesn't work that way when it comes to creating life, but knowledge doesn't always remove the pain, much like healing doesn't remove scars.

These may be the last 37 days that I'll ever be pregnant. My husband and I are open to having another baby, but being open to the idea doesn't mean that it will happen.

I'm not like the woman in my Lovenox group who, at 8 weeks postpartum from her 6th baby has found out she's now pregnant with her 7th.

I have 37 days left to enjoy those kicks and wiggles, the hiccups, the twists, and the stretching. Just 37 days to be her whole world, her temple.

In 37 days, my role transforms from one of creator to something new. Something different.

In 37 days, I am no longer the womb from which she relies on for life.

I am her mother.

I don't believe you have to give birth to be a mother, and I would think that any woman who has ever held a life in her body and lost it as well as any mother through adoption would understand what I'm trying to say (and probably failing miserably at!)

And in that 37 days, I have to get my *#&$^% together.

Confession time: My hospital bills from Jackson's stillbirth and the car accident later that week went to collections months ago.

Why? Because when it comes right down to it, who wants to deal with that kind of crap when in the throws of grief and then anxiety?

Nobody.

Some Most people are probably able to realize that not paying bills leads to collections, but even knowing that, I didn't get them paid. I couldn't pay them.

Did I have the money? Absolutely.

The time? Definitely.

The energy to write the dang check? Yup.

The emotional wherewithal? NO.

The car accident bills should have been taken care of by the responsible party's insurance company but that hasn't happened yet.

My bill hasn't been paid because, somehow, paying it seemed wrong. I mentioned months ago that the hospital incorrectly billed my insurance company for a semi-private room; a room I never occupied. I went straight from labor and delivery to my home.

Today, over 9 months after those bills were acquired, I made what I hope is the second and last phone call regarding those bills.

Both bills have been removed from collections and are back "in-house" while the billing department at the hospital reviews my medical records to confirm that I did indeed get discharged straight from labor and delivery and while the insurance company continues to work through the medical billing mess on their end.

I will still have to pay my co-pay for Jackson's birth, but at least this time I'll feel like I'm paying the right bill and not just whatever the hospital billing department thought I should have paid because they assumed I went home with a baby.

Perhaps, if I am very lucky, I can pay for Dash's co-pay at the same time as Jackson's. It will feel a lot less painful that way--like something that went very very wrong has, in some small way, been righted.

In 37 days, everything changes: our Rainbow Dash will be here.

#DashDays

Approaching Mother's Day

For the first time in my life, I feel forced to go to church on a day when I seriously do NOT want to.

I have dreaded attending church on Mother's Day ever since my first one as a wife.  We were about to celebrate our first anniversary and had just moved in with DH's parents for the summer so he could do an internship in Washington, D.C. I knew very few people in the ward, which seemed to be filled with people less than a decade older than we were with large homes and children everywhere.

I was only 23 and I felt my biological clock ticking painfully.  We'd stopped preventing pregnancy 3 months before and still hadn't gotten pregnant.

Each Mother's Day since has become increasingly difficult, with the exception of the year I was pregnant with my first daughter. I remember standing up at the end of Sacrament meeting to receive my ridiculous carnation and thinking, "Finally! I feel like I actually belong!"

For several years now it has become the tradition to include ALL women age 18 and over in the Mother's Day gifts.  I suppose the reason is so that everyone can feel included regardless of their circumstances, but in reality all it did was leave me feeling like I fraud or "that woman over there who needed to be pitied because she'd been married for 4 years and still didn't have kids."

That first "Finally!" moment was also my last.  In the years since, my eyes have been opened to a whole world of pain outside my own.  I want to hide all the commercials, quotes, and speeches about the joys and pitfalls of motherhood from my friends who are hurting, whether due to the loss of their mother or infertility, or child loss.

Nobody likes having their pain "celebrated".

My own mother "humored" us on Mother's Day and I don't remember ever giving her a gift. She had lost her mother when she was 27 and I'm sure the day was painful for her, too.

I want to stay home.  Nobody will miss me, really, and I think anyone who realizes I'm not there will understand why.  

Unfortunately, my first rainbow baby and her older sister will be singing with the other children at some point during Sacrament meeting.  I don't know if it will be earlier in the meeting or later, but I don't feel like I can deprive my child of her first chance to get up on the stand and sing something she has been practicing for so long. . .no matter how badly it hurts me to sit there.

Mother's Day isn't about me anymore.  It's about my children and them having a day to celebrate having a mother in their life.  I'm going to do my absolute best to cheer them on silently from my pew, to smile at the cards they've made, and to thank my Father in Heaven over and over again for their presence in my life. They are both  miracles as month after month, year after year, of infertility and pregnancy loss testifies.

My husband has purchased gifts for me but I'm not entirely sure why.  Our money is tight and the gifts are just a reminder of what we've lost and you can't "buy away" that kind of pain. But I also know that I'll do the same for him on Father's Day.  It's what we do, even if it doesn't make much sense.

I have a little over 48 hours left to prepare myself for the emotional onslaught. I have been preparing for several weeks but I don't think I'll ever be that person that just loves Mother's Day.  It's just not my style and has been a painful holiday for far too long.

So please, be gentle with me.  With your friends.  With your family.  I am not alone in my fight, in my feelings, in my pain.  Many of us have lost a piece of our heart.

____________________________________________________________________________

A old friend of mine posted a link to her Mother's Day post from last year.  It's beautiful and put me in tears because I know how she feels/felt because I've been there. She is FAR more eloquent than I am.

I want to share the link for you to read because it is so much better than anything I could ever write.

http://blog.hoosejohnson.com/2013/05/happy-mothers-day.html

And the truth comes out . . .

I Am

I am an infertile mother
I wonder when bitterness set in
I hear the sounds of my daughter praying for me
I see the child I have not concieved
I want to be a mother again
I am an infertile mother

I pretend that my chances are gone
I feel jealousy where none should exist
I touch my womb and sob
I worry that bitterness will consume me
I cry with each passing month
I am an infertile mother

I understand I have been blessed
I say "I can't" to hide the pain
I dream of a little nursling
I try to keep my chin up
I hope I can win the fight
I am an infertile mother