Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start
- A long, long journey - no longer hiding from life or the pain
- Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start
- Let’s start at the very beginning, Part II
When you read you begin with A, B, C.
When you sing you begin with Do, Re, Mi
Now that I have that song stuck in your head I shall begin her story. My sweet little Princerella. First though for some background, because it’s part of the story, the story that binds my emotions about where it all began.
In the fall of 2000, SmockDaddy and I began discussing the idea of having a fourth child, or not. We had three beautiful, healthy children and did want more, but we were not sure the timing was right. Our timing, anyway, as if we had ultimate say so in the matter. Without getting into too great a discussion about birth control and those choices (not in this post) we decided to attempt having another baby for three months and if it didn’t happen in that amount of time then we would back off for a while and try again later. Timing, see? The birth, not the conception. Anytime a couple decides to try to have a baby they start to think about all kinds of things. It doesn’t matter if there is another child(ren) or not, some thoughts are there for every child and pregnancy. We all want healthy children, happy children, good children, easy babies, good sleepers, good eaters, et cetera. Seriously, who dreams of having a child that isn’t healthy or happy or hard and high maintenance? Who dreams of having a baby that won’t sleep or eat? Get the picture? Anyway, the attempts at getting pregnant with the fourth were more about no longer preventing the possibility. Nothing happened in the time we had allowed so we returned to the state of prevention. I was sad about it, but had finally resigned myself with thinking maybe it was for the better. We had three beautiful children and the third pregnancy had been a bit hard (another post for another day). In my rationalizing my disappointment away, I made a few comments to my mother and one or two other close friends about some financial concerns. These were not major concerns, just thinking through it all, out loud.
Fast forward a month.
Yep, you guessed it. The deed was done, no details will be shared, you get the point. (I almost wrote, “you get the picture”.) Four days after the moment of decision had been made I felt funny, kind of bad, not right with anything. Anything. I wanted to cry about everything. Everything. I knew, yes I did, I knew that I was pregnant. I was elated that I was pregnant. Baffled. We had just decided to go back to preventing and here I was pregnant. That is how it goes sometimes though. But something was wrong, it didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel right. It was Thursday afternoon and I just couldn’t take it anymore, I had to call my doctor. I knew calling him wasn’t going to do much good. Shoot, I wasn’t even sure if blood work would prove that I was pregnant. I told him I knew I was pregnant and that something felt wrong. I also knew that there wasn’t going to be anything I could do about it, but what if? What if it wasn’t too late and maybe taking hormones or something would help? I would never have been able to forgive myself if I thought I could have done something and did not. He talked so kindly to me and asked me to come in the next day for some blood work and a general check up to make sure nothing else was wrong. I went, nothing seemed out of the ordinary except that I felt like something was wrong. this is another reason we loved my OB back in Happiesburg, he was so kind and understanding. He never once said anything like, “if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be” or any other standard line about how I felt. He took me at my word. He asked me to come back in a week or so to see if we could find anything on an ultrasound.* We went back hoping to see something, but knowing we might not. Not because I wasn’t pregnant, but well, we just might not see anything that early. I spent that entire week praying for good things and only good things. Worrying about what we might find out, like maybe I was having a molar pregnancy or something was terribly wrong with my system or there was a growth of another cellular makeup.
Doc told us that we may not see anything. If we saw something, don’t expect much. Reminding us that it was really early, so early that at this time most women don’t even know they are pregnant yet. We did see something. Two somethings. One of those tiny little somethings flickered a bit, the other was the same size but didn’t flicker like the other one. They were a couple of inches apart on the screen too. He showed us the one that was flickering was the heart beginning to move - that’s why it wasn’t steady movement, the heart wasn’t fully developed yet and that was very normal. The other little black hole of a bean had the same white dot in it, but it didn’t move. Also said to be normal as these were obviously not sharing a sac and could very well be 24-48 hours different in age and that can make a huge amount of difference at this stage. We were supposed to go back two weeks later for another U/S. Seeing that tiny developing heart and the one that we would get to see next time left me feeling a bit better, but still uneasy - I still felt like something was not right. It’s hard to describe in words when something does NOT feel right, but to say it feels wrong is not correct either. The best I can do is to say that I just felt like it wasn’t right enough. My emotional state did not match the physical state or was it the other way around. Being elated about another baby, not feeling ‘properly’ pregnant, and then being scared about how I felt and what that might mean. I was actually scared to get attached to this pregnancy. I wondered if I was going to lose these babies. Why did I feel like this? So many questions and emotions. I had been assured that everything was perfectly normal for that stage of development and my blood test were good for two little babies. I decided I was just tired and tried to go on about life.
I found myself crying every morning in the shower and holding it back the rest of the time. I didn’t want to get out of bed but I wanted to shout from the rooftops that I was pregnant. That I was pregnant with twins. I wanted to tell everyone. But I couldn’t. I stayed quiet until the next u/s. Somewhere in here I get a little fuzzy on the exacts days, but not long after that, but just a few days before going back for the next U/S I started bleeding a bit. Not much, but enough to scare me. I went in for the u/s the next day and we saw the first little dot had grown to this little visible silhouette with ten fingers and ten toes and a very strong beating heart. We couldn’t even find the other spot anymore. It was weird, to say the least. I felt sadness that it wasn’t there, but strangely unaffected. I think I knew down deep inside that either it wasn’t really a twin, or had never been viable to begin with. I know those words come across as dry, maybe even cold. I hate that, but it just seemed like a fact. I told myself that is why I had been feeling so strange this time around - that the hormones were out of kilter because of that inevitable loss that only mother’s intuition could feel and know, even if I couldn’t pinpoint it. I started to feel a bit better as we had just seen that beautiful little baby was no longer a dot, but WOW a remarkable little ten-fingered, ten-toed baby. I mean, I know that they start out as a sperm and egg, but to actually see MY baby go from a tiny, almost unidentifiable little dot to a tiny person of shape was incredible. It was a very spiritual moment for me.
At this point we decided it would be OK to maybe say something to family or maybe one or two close people. His parents were a bit shocked, but thrilled. I don’t know why they were so surprised because we had never said we were done or discussed it with them to begin with. I think it was just a matter of the fact that they had only had two to raise (SmockDaddy andhis brother) and SmockDaddy’s brother had had three boys and they were done. They were all thrilled and the e-mails from all his extended family came pouring in with thoughts of congratulations. I told my sister and she was happy. I told my mother and the response I got: “Why don’t you ever think of anyone but yourself?”
I wanted to throw up right there on the spot. On her. Who was she to decide when and how many children we have. I wasn’t that surprised though. I knew how she felt about our children, she had her favorite and she treated them all in a manner that the children knew who her favorite was. The favored one was spoiled beyond belief and we were dealing with that on a daily basis as Mog’s mouth and attitude constantly shared my mother’s words and actions about her and us. We were also dealing with tears and questions from the other two. She treated me and this pregnancy with just as much disdain as her response showed. I still wasn’t feeling like everything with this pregnancy was perfect so this just made it a bit harder.
I hate to stop here, but this post is so long I have to break it up. I really wanted to make the pregnancy stuff one post, but I just can’t do it - I’m too long winded and too many details I can’t cut out. So come back tomorrow for the rest of the pregnancy stuff. It’s written already, just not going to publish yet.
*This is where those weeks get tricky. For this post I will refer to actual age of the baby (my Princerella) as opposed to the medical weeks which add the two weeks prior to actual conception. Confused? Hope not. When a woman is three weeks pregnant she has usually only been pregnant for 1 week and the other two weeks account for the time between the first day of her last period and her fertile days that ended in conception.
Wow, what a post! I’m still with you here. Thank you so much for all of this. Patiently waiting for the next one :)
Where was I when all this was going on?
Holley, all this was happening before we were saying anything to anyone.