Lucky Thirteen and Counting

I can’t sleep.  I have to clear my head of this terrifying thought that pushed itself into my mind as I was soaking in the tub.  I spent the afternoon with two blog friends.  I had lunch in downtown disney with Loralee and Heather.

You have all heard me profess my love for Loralee of looneytunes multiple times on this blog.  I adore this woman.  We have spent a lot of time together since her judgy post about large families.  (I have single handedly changed her mind on large families by the way.) When I learned she was coming to California, I made her promise to play with me.  Loralee thought I would also adore Heather, so she invited her to hang with us as well. Heather is a love.  I could totally be friends with her.  She lives just up the 405.  Anyway, long story short,  I watched these two woman at lunch today and saw the bond that was so apparent to even an outsider.  This bond is one that can only be created by a shared loss.  A loss so profound that they would give up everything to not know it. They have both lost a child.  

The thoughts of this….  I can’t imagine and I don’t even want to.  But there is the voice in the back of my mind.  It nags at me.  It reminds me of the feelings I had after reading this post.  It reminds me late at night how I read and read the words on that haunting page.  It pushes the thoughts into my head when the house is quiet.  It wants me to feel the things I am feeling, to face the unknown and possibilities. I wonder often if there is indeed a reason I became such fast friends with Loralee.  Is she going to have to be the one that picks me up and reminds me that life will go on even when you don’t want it too?  Is there a reason I have read this post so many times I feel like I was there with her?  

I pray my suspicions are wrong.  I pray I never join the club that they belong to.  With every child that becomes mine, the chances increase.  My number may come.  I may walk into a room and find a child lifeless in bed.  I have children with medical uncertiantlies that increase the odds of that happening even more.  The odds are stacked against me in every way.  

There are days these thoughts never push their way forward.  They are the days I am too busy to give one more hug, too tired to hold them any longer, frustrated with a crier, quick to scold, intolerant with a mental delay.  I have days like this more than I care to admit.  It will be a day like this that I find myself with one less.  Why isn’t this fear enough to make me the perfect mother?  Why can’t I hold and cherish every moment with every child just in case?  

Even sitting there in that restaurant, watching them tread lightly over the subjects, both cautious of each others feelings and how and where each other is in regards to the healing, makes me very aware of how real it is.  But until you go through it you never know.  I spent a good part of the night in my own thoughts, wondering how I would handle it.  Would I box up that child’s possessions and get rid of every physical reminder of them, or would I want those things around in every room?  How long does it take for the pain to go away? You could never forget, but I don’t think you would want to.  I hate that I am even wondering about these awful things.  WHY am I wondering this? 

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I am sitting here now, one week later from the time I sat at lunch with my friends, and I am still spinning in my thoughts and vacillating on whether of not to even post such thoughts and fears.  I don’t want these words to give my fears any weight. I don’t want to hear from the rest of you that my feelings are not normal.  I want all of you to tell me that you too fear often that one of your little ones will be called home too early.  

I want to know that all of the funerals I have planned in my mind in the quiet night is a normal mother thing to do.  I want to know that I am friends with Loralee because we have much in common and that one of those things will never be a dead baby.  

When I carried my very first child I was only seventeen years old.  I carried him for seventeen weeks.  We heard a heartbeat at thirteen weeks and never heard it again.  At the following appointment, four weeks later, there was no heartbeat.  I was sent for an ultrasound and there on the screen was a fetus floating in vast darkness, lifeless, absent a heartbeat, just floating in the dark, only moving when the tech pushed too hard with the wand.  Floating babies still haunt my mind.  

With every subsequent pregnancy I held my breath when they listened with the dopler. I got physically sick before every ultrasound. With every birth I delivered earlier and earlier.  WIth every child the odds of survival got lower.  When I wasn’t fearful of losing the pregnancy I was afraid of losing them in the NICU, then at home in the quiet of a nap, then when they were toddlers, I was sure they would get hit by a car, or choke on their food.  When they were older every headache was a brain tumor, every fever was cancer.  When they go off to school, I am sure they will be a statistic of a teenage driving accident, or alcohol poisoning.  Suicide terrifies me and mental illness runs rampant through my veins.  

Yet, here I am ready to bring one more home to fuss over and worry endlessly about.  One more to keep me standing watch and praying endlessly for.  I want to be a mom to all fifteen of these babies for years and years.  I want to physically mother them and keep them in my arms for as long as I possibly can.  I don’t want regrets.  I don’t want to long for them, to wish I would have hugged them one more time, or read them one more story. I am not strong enough.  I want to keep my babies.  

Sending out a plea to God and universe.  

I can’t lose a child.  

I can’t.