Thursday, January 27, 2011

Time is a funny thing...

I've come to the conclusion that time is a funny thing. It really is. Sometimes it goes fast...other times it crawls or stands still...it's been known to heal wounds and we've been warned all our lives to not waste it because it's precious. While I wait for Mike's special work assignment to end...it crawls. Yet when I look at how much time has already passed since he left; I can't believe it's already been a month. When I look at my newest amazing niece Emery and how she's grown up and become an irreplaceable part of my life...it seems to have flown by. Yet when I think of how much she still has ahead of her it seems as though it is crawling and that she will forever be 7 months old. And when I think about my life over the past year and half it seems to stop as I cling to promise that it will heal my wounds; all the while being reminded not to waste it. Time is tricky. It feels so subjective. It seems to live in the emotion of the given situation. Slow when you're waiting, long when you're grieving, and short with those joyous moments.

After having these 3 miscarriages...I know my timeline of emotions. I know the time of physical recovery and I know the time of emotional recovery. And what I know right this moment is I have passed one of those thresholds of time and I'm so excited to be moving on! I will explain...

There are phases I go through emotionally after having a miscarriage. I go through the normal emotions associated with loss like denial, anger and sadness, but getting to the place where I can see myself moving forward with trying again and taking the steps necessary to see what issues my body...takes a while. When it first happens...the miscarriage that is...I refuse to ever try again. I refuse it because I convince myself it will just happen again and because they are extremely painful. Then after the pain is over and recovery starts; i start to feel thankful that I have my body back and that I'm not pregnant with worries about healthy babies. I see myself doing all those things that I would not be allowed to do if I was pregnant. I picture myself riding roller coasters while eating sushi and carrying a dresser while painting the walls in the hot tub after having slept in. I begin to think that maybe Mike and I are ok without kids. Then during those hard "baby days" as we call them (days where the sadness returns)...I realize I want nothing more than to be a mama. And after enough of those days, I get to where I am right now...the moment where I'm ready to start doing my research AGAIN on why my body continues to reject these little lives. I am ready to see new doctors who I will have to tell my history too AGAIN. And I'm ready to face the reality that I will never be guaranteed that it will never happen again...and it very well could happen again. But at this stage...I accept that it could happen...that I could have the pain and that I will have to experience the reserved excitement of a pregnancy test and another walk down the long hallway to the ultrasound room where the nurses all know us now and are holding their breath for good news. But at this stage...those things are ok. They don't bother me. The only thing I can think of at this stage is that I want to be a mama. I see babies and I want to have one to fill my arms and my heart. I want to see Mike with a baby. I want to love a little person and have them stare back at me with love. I want to take care of a little life. And suddenly those vivid memories of pain, crying and loss are exactly that...memories. And time, at that point, seems to have flown by since the news that our little twins were no longer living. And time, at that point, seems to become precious with no desire to waste it. It seems to crawl as we eagerly wait to meet our little one...someday.