we met at a wedding in 2003 (thanks randy and lindsay- a person might consider that the whole of our relationship is your doing.) that night i went home and told my best friend that i'd met the man i was going to marry. mind you, that man was none other than mr. popular in high school... football player, lead in the play, mr. everything with good manners to boot. to this day, visiting home, when i run into people i knew from high school they say "oh... he married.... you?". haha.. yep... he sure did. i suppose i should really lose some weight before the reunion.
we were married (i was right) in 2005...there were lots of smiles and tears and a plan to go to china. (it was thwarted by time and money and vaccination schedules.)
we got pregnant the first time on the oops birth control plan in 2006. that pregnancy turned out to be a molar pregnancy. that basically means, psych- you're not really pregnant. but, my body was fooled, and i wasn't having an appropriate miscarriage (whatever that is) so i had to have a D & C.we got pregnant the second time about 6 months later. this pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage at 7 weeks. that one just went natural. thadd said from the first positive test that we were going to have a little girl that time...
we decided when we got married to be on the "5 year plan". but after having so many complications we decided to go ahead and start trying. not the "oops" kind of trying.. but the charting and keeping track and sex for procreation whether you want it or not type of trying. lo and behold i have a 42 day cycle... nothing can be easy with my life.
fast forward a year. we're both starting to sweat a little. but any talk of problems was of course met with the adamant "it's not me" male response. after a move to hawaii and an end to his training schedule we got pregnant within just a few months. i think maybe the stress was a little too much before that.
well, this little one tried to kill me... i would puke every time i stood up for 5 months...which resulted in a lot of lying down. but every thing's fine... we go to the 20 week ultrasound... and are told that there are possibly some "problems".. our little guy (yes guy!) was having growth restriction.. and had some of the soft markers for down syndrome. just what every excited first time parents want to hear. well, my super high speed husband was leaving the next day to go to a super high speed army competition. he offered to stay, but i said no. he left, and within 3 days i was admitted to the hospital with severe pre eclampsia and on death's door pretty much. (or so they tell me.)
day 1 of the pain was pretty intense... friday... i went in to the l & d triage... they sent me home with some gas meds... said to not eat gassy foods... lay on my left side... turns out, those things don't actually help with pre-e. day 2 was bad. dang bad. day 3 was the worst pain of my life. probably. bar none. like writhing on the floor pain. so a friend took me in.. i peed out some gatorade looking urine and before i knew it they were asking for a living will. thadd was back across the world to me within 48 hours.
maximus morris
july 17, 2008"i shall go to him, but he will not return to me."
2 samuel 12:...23
mag sulfate is not my friend... after about another week in the hospital i had to have physical therapy to help me walk again...that, my friends, is a strange and scary place to be... not able to walk. what a broken woman, physically healing from childbirth and weeks on meds that prevented getting out of bed.... and having all of my dreams and plans ripped from me in max's death. it was quite possibly the darkest time of my life. hopefully the darkest i'll ever have. but through it all i did have a sense of peace. as odd as it sounds. i would say that my faith kept me from losing it completely. the peace let me turn my anguish into something else.. maybe best described as xanax. i think i got to check out for about 4 months. one friend told me "you will never forget, but will begin to wear it like a favorite coat". and i now know what she means. max, and my experiences are such a huge part of who i am and my perspective on life.... it's something that i take with me everyday.. but seldom is it a burden. it's more an accessory.
well, according to my mfm (read: expert doctor) i have APS. that's antiphospholipid antibody syndrome for anyone who cares. leave it to me to have something super rare that's only been diagnosed since the 80s. that's my life. she said that every pregnancy with APS is a toss up. we could deliver near term, or have more miscarriages. we decided to try again.. taking blood thinners this time.. hopefully buying some time from that fiend pre eclampsia.
we only tried once this time... and found out we were pregnant on christmas eve. and that's where this blog starts. you can read from the beginning right here and see all the craziness that we're blessed to have.nmbl
through all of this we've only had hope in christ. knowing that really, the only things that matter aren't here on this world... and no matter the human tragedies that befall us... it doesn't really matter. well, i shou
ld say, doesn't really matter in a big scheme of things sort of way... because what really matters is what we choose to do with those tragedies.. how we respond to the pain and suffering in our life. sometimes when i start thinking about how terrible my life is... or the pain that i have from our overdramatic childbearing experiences.. i think about the true atrocities that people in this world have seen.my life is a piece of cake.. it may be a little burnt, and the icing may be a little off... but it's cake... i'm just going to do my best to enjoy it.
3 comments:
I enjoyed reading your article on what not to say to a preemie parent. I wish I could have printed it out and handed it out to friends, family, and co-workers when we were in the NICU. Some of the statements I could still use today, a year after his birth. It is true the affects of preemie-ness are long lasting.
Had to stop by and read your story. Thanks for stopping by yesterday fro SITS!
Blessings.
a beautiful, heart wrenching story. Thank you for sharing Max's picture with us.. and his story.
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