{Originally published on Sarcastic Mom}

Several nights ago I was sitting in the dark of Braden’s room; he was cradled in my arms, breathing quietly. As we slowly swayed back and forth in the rocking chair together, lullabies playing peacefully on the CD player, my mind jumped back and forth. It climbed mountains torturously, then lept off of the summits and plummeted into the valleys below. My face was slack, but my thoughts rumbled and tumbled below the surface while I felt the warm, soft life in my embrace cuddle deeper into sleep.

Suddenly, I burst out crying. Crying for the tiny life that I wasn’t able to hold onto in this way. I sobbed - quietly, so as not to disturb Braden - for a few long moments. Then I placed him in his crib and left the room. As suddenly as it had come upon me, the weeping was gone.

It’s been like that for weeks now. Since the miscarriage.

The extreme dichotomy of my feelings and thoughts lately has been a confusion at times, to me. At others, it has made no less than perfect sense. See what I mean?

I was pregnant one day. Then, suddenly, I wasn’t.

Riding the roller coasters at this Carnival From Hell that no woman wants to go to, but that is packed full of people, nonetheless, has been strange.

Some days, hearing about how many others have gone through this, multiple times, even, is a great comfort. I am actually incredibly buoyed by the scores of other women who feel somewhat betrayed by their bodies, or maybe even by God. By women who have experienced this same thing and are floating alongside me in this sea of uncertainty.

It means that I am not really standing out in the middle of a barren wasteland, alone, while a relentless wind tears and rips at my exposure-ravaged limbs, muffling my cries and carrying them silently away into the vast nothingness surrounding me, where they will mean nothing and no one will ever respond to them.

{Originally posted on Slouching Past 40}

How does it happen that a sixteen-month-old girl with eyes that managed to reflect all of the abundant colors of the ocean at once and with a smile containing such joy that strangers couldn’t help but smile with her, a girl with all of it before her (only 500 days under her belt, give or take), might be here one moment and gone the next?

*********************

I do not know. I am one of the lucky ones. My son comes home with a sore throat and later spikes a fever. His temperature soars, and I fret. I take him to the doctor, who diagnoses strep throat and hands me a prescription for penicillin. Eighteen hours and three pills later, my child looks and feels remarkably better. He is no longer pale with a slightly greenish cast. He is not hot to the touch. Fatigue does not ring his eyes. I can’t believe how well this medicine works!, he grins. I could almost have gone to school today! And then he glances at me. Worry has crossed his face. He amends: Well, not almost… I’ll be ready tomorrow, though.

All of us wanted Maddie’s story to go like this, and most of us expected that it would.

But a few of you know better. Experience has taught you different and cruel lessons. You were cast out of Eden some time ago. The rest of us bite our lips and hold our children closer, huddling up against one another, afraid that we, too, might be called on, might have to forsake the complacence we clutch as tightly as we do those children of ours, might have to bump up against the fact that our children are mortal, no different from us, from our parents, from their parents and all the parents before them, too. What hubris we show when we congratulate ourselves on how well we’ve managed to protect our offspring when the reality is that we have so little to do with it.

{Originally published at Shamelessly Sassy}

When I was five, my mother married a monster of a man, the scariest person I had ever met. She was married to him until I was seven. It is safe to say that I spent those two years of my life scared of my own shadow, and I think I’ll spend the rest of my years recovering.

The monster spent a large portion of his time punching holes in the walls that mother tried to hold up single handedly. He also threatened daily to drive us off of a local bridge or back the car into the local lake with us inside.

(I still hate that lake.)

The monster was full of mostly empty threats, and he was eaten up with heavy doses of crazy. Even his eyes looked crazy, always opened as wide as he could possibly muster. As far as staying went, the last year and a half of the marriage, my mother stayed with him out of fear. Live with him or else he might really drive us off of a bridge or burn our house down with us inside.

With the monster, you never knew.

For those two years, I felt as if I would never get out from under his thumb. At age 6, I felt like our lives, particularly the end of them, were resting firmly in his hands. I didn’t think I would see my tenth birthday. Most likely I would be sitting at the bottom of the lake in a car with my mother and my younger brother. Feeling as if I might have died in the near future was a part of my everyday life, and it was so miserable. It was nothing that a girl of five, six, and seven should ever have to do. I knew that.

Luckily, the monster never managed to hit me. That doesn’t mean he didn’t try. I was small and fast. I excelled at running and hiding from him. The only time he came close I had warm salt water in my hand, I had just lost a tooth. So I threw it in his face. That was that…

{originally published on Because I’m The MOM}

When I started this blog I wanted it to be about my family, one of whom has special needs. What I didn’t want was a Special Needs Blog. I realized though, that to ignore Thomas’s story altogether means that there are things I can’t say because they wouldn’t make sense. So here you go.

When I got pregnant with Thomas I was considered high-risk because I was 36. My ob-gyn suggested that I have the 11-week Nuchal Translucency Test. No problem, I thought, this just goes along with being a little older. I have to say though, that every time someone said “advanced maternal age” within earshot I wanted to smack them sideways and shout “I’m not FIFTY for God’s sake. I’m 36! I’m YOUNG.”

About 2 minutes into the test I saw the sonographer’s face go still and she got very quiet. Not a good thing. She summoned the doctor, a very kind man with a very serious face, and he told me that there was a 50% chance there was something genetically wrong with my baby. Probably something like Down’s Syndrome. My husband and I were devastated, of course, and thus began my running of a veritable gauntlet of tests for the next 24 weeks. The thing is, EVERY SINGLE TEST came back normal. Chorionic Villus Sample? Normal. Multiple in-utero echocardiograms of Thomas’s heart? Normal. Ultrasound after ultrasound? Normal. The doctors were elated, but deep inside I knew there was still something wrong.

Originally Posted at One Thing.

The
injury is old, but it is not completely healed. Much of the pain of it
has passed. I can hardly remember the reason it is there. Yet…when I
look at it, I am tempted. Tempted to pick at it. Tempted to touch it,
just a little. Maybe it’s ready to come off; maybe I can rush the
healing process. I shouldn’t. I know I should let it go.

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Originally Published on Velveteen Mind

Suburban Oblivion recently complained that her two year old had been replaced by demon spawn. She welcomed any interest in buying him on eBay.

As luck would have it, someone took her up on the offer. Someone that apparently can not have children. Sara responded with an exercise in gratitude, expressing that it sometimes takes getting bitch-slapped in the comments to remember how good you have it.

What followed was a discussion in Suburban Oblivion’s comments that touched on a topic that I take very personally. The topic of gratitude and our right to be ungrateful some days. This is something that I’ve been meaning to write about for some time, but always back down. Sara is a great fire-starter, so here goes.

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Originally published at Strange Musings of a Distracted Spunk.

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