Sixteen years ago … Waiting to become a Mom

They always say plan your blog posts out and do not write from an emotional point of view.  Well as you’ve probably noticed my blog doesn’t follow that advice and has hard things when emotions hit.  This month and next are pretty much emotions that roll and sometimes are like the waves and sometimes hit hard.

Sixteen years ago…

Sixteen years ago we were nervously awaiting a doctor’s appointment believing our local midwife that all should be alright, but we were just being cautious and having a visit to the “local” perinatal center…three hours away.  Through Lake Effect country and yes at the end of January.

The baby was moving around a lot, which was reassuring.  I loved feeling her move around (although we did not know it was a her at the time).  I was waiting to become a mom to the little person inside, and thought we still had plenty of time. The due date wasn’t even until late February, a few days before some family member’s birthdays.  There were the usual jokes of those days being a good day to be born.

The appointment would be in three days at this point sixteen years ago. It was a Saturday and I had just the day before had my day at work trying to make sure things were set for my colleague to handle, just in case, but with assurances from my midwife that we wouldn’t need those just in case plans.

We had just painted the nursery over New Year’s.  The crib wasn’t even together yet.  I might have washed a few baby clothes.

Her assurances were wrong, and our lives took a very different turn starting us on a roller coaster ride on January 29, 2002 that in some ways has never ended.  But the ride changed in 2005.

Today…

Today, sixteen years later, a wave hit me this morning like a mini-tsunami and it was hard to get my emotions back under control.

I should be planning a birthday party.

I should be crossing last minute details off of my list.

I should be worrying about her future, since we know it would have been different than a child without Alobar Holoprosencephaly and Hydrocephalus.

But I’m not.

I thought about not posting it on Facebook but my friends and family know this is a hard time of year.  If you can’t share with your friends and family when you are having a hard day you need some new friends on Facebook.  So I posted and the hearts and understanding began, which helped some.

Thankfully my husband is home today, so I walked downstairs and gave him a hug, cried on his shoulder some and for a moment just wished…  Wished for a few minutes to be able to just openly grieve again.

But… that is not life right now.

I had to get myself together and still be mom after hearing the crying and fussing from coming upstairs from her youngest baby sister.  She’s sent us four you know.

I had to get myself together because I still have to school the girls today, and do the normal things like shopping for cat food because we are now out, and planning what to have for dinner.

I had to get myself together because I can’t just crawl back into bed and wish my girl was still here.  It wouldn’t solve anything.

Life would have different, it likely would have been very hard in different ways if she had lived past 37 months.  Especially if life had continued as it did and with all the surgeries I’ve had to have to heal this broken body.  I can’t wish that she was here instead of the blessings (her sisters) I have here.  That isn’t anything I would do, I could not choose between them.

I wish…

I do wish sometimes that they could have met her.

I do wish I had kept up with the scrapbooking and had her stories out in albums that they could peruse, along with the stories of their own growing up.  This is one thing I really hope to get better at and get down more during this coming year.

I do not make New Year’s resolutions.  But there are many things that have pointed me that I need to share more of her story so they have that story to know her.  So that will hopefully be happening here at the house and also stories of her here on my blog.

Here at the blog in the hopes of someone else waiting to become a mom and receive the unexpected rollercoaster ride of an Alobar Holoprosencephaly diagnosis might find some help.  Even though our experience was 16 years ago, maybe her story, our story, can still help someone else.

I do wish some days that when I see something that instantly makes me think of her, I could buy it to hold during times like this.  I know the adage that things are not important, it is the memories that are.  …blah blah blah…  Sometimes adages like that just need to go back into the book and not be said aloud.

(picture from and old post at http://www.cloththatcounts.com/2015/12/lotto-for-the-right-to-buy-a-tula-blanket-6-hour-only/)

I know this blanket didn’t even exist when she was here.  But she loved to fly, and she loved to swing.  The little girls holding the balloons as she floats away in the sky.  The little girl swinging with a pinwheel on a cloud.  The colors… her favorite color was red, and her hair was a strawberry blonde.

Some days though it would be nice to put on a blanket as a scarf as a sign of the struggle inside.  So I wouldn’t have to say any words of the struggle going on in my heart and my mind as the memories surface and roll with the waves.

I honestly wish Baby Tula would re-release it so I’d stand a chance at getting one.  But when it is hard to find, the single blanket at all, and when a new set popped up on ebay this past week and went for over $400… even though I only wanted the one blanket of the three it is not a trigger I can pull.  I’m an emotional person but emotional purchases that will make life harder after and therefore more emotional just don’t  happen.  I’m too boringly fiscally responsible for that.

I’m not asking anyone out there to go find one and send it, unless it was maybe Tula themselves, but I know that will not happen.  My family should know that they would be in instant hot water for spending that much money.

I have decided I’m probably going to incorporate some of those special pictures mentioned above into my bullet journal that I’m starting, it was going to be for blogging/brain dump area and we will see how that fleshes out, I’ll eventually share some pictures.

So yeah… today is an emotional day.

I’ve put on a different scarf.  Not as a symbol, just for the comfort.  It’s also cold here in January.

Yes I came to my blog today to share my struggle and the emotions flying and rolling with the waves as they come and go.  I hope that if you read this far, you will stick around and just simply ride the waves with me.