I can't remember the specific day or time I realized I wanted to be a mom. Growing up with four brothers, I spent as much time as I could playing with my dolls and barbies and Polly Pockets and I always knew that as soon as I met the perfect guy to marry, we'd have lots of babies.
I never gave it a second thought.
It was a given.
You get married, have kids, and live happily ever after.
Mr. Superman and I want absolutely nothing more than to be parents to babies here on Earth.
Babies we can hold.
Babies we can rock to sleep.
Babies we can tuck into bed.
Babies we can play with.
Babies we can take pictures with.
Babies we can make giggle.
Babies.
Having been together for almost 6 years, we are often asked about kids. On top of that, we live a lifestyle where kids, lots and lots of kids, are almost expected. Being in the military we get looked at as if we are 'those people' who just want to play around and be selfish.
"They don't have kids, they have no idea what responsibility and sacrifice really are."
"They've been married how long and they still don't have kids?"
"Oh, they just don't know what's really important."
Something I don't advertise to everyone who asks, for the sole reason of me dissolving into tears, is that Mr. Superman and I don't have children here on Earth. Its a distinction that is important to me, but one that I am nonetheless not very strong about sharing with every person who brings it up. When I first started blogging, I shared little things but never really delved into the nitty gritty of it all. I had toyed with the idea but never got the strength to go through it all again. Well I was asked to be a guest blogger for Nicole in Summer 2010 and after weeks of trying to find something to write about, it came to me.
My angel babies.
They are a huge part of our lives. They've made us who we are and each loss has chipped away at our dreams. Some days are better than others and at times every flicker of hope is extinguished. Being up front and open about these angels of ours is something that helps our hearts though so here they are.
By November
Have you ever wanted something so badly it made your heart hurt? Have you ever gotten so close to finally achieving the thing you want and before the happiness of it settles in, it is ripped away from you, breaking your heart? Do you have something that keeps showing up in your life? You know, like a recurring theme? My name is Mrs. S. and I have, I have and I do. Let me explain.
It all started shortly after Mr. Superman and I got married, back in 2007. We knew we wanted kids right away so we tried. We tried and we tried and we tried. It seemed everyone around us was either posting on Facebook about ‘finally’ expecting (two months after tying the knot) or they were sharing their oh so fabulous news about being parents for the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time. I tried not to get upset. I tried not to be jealous, but God was beginning to test me more rigorously than ever. Girls I had been friends with in high school emailing me about their dire situations of being “knocked up and it’s too late for abortion.” I was on the verge of a break down. Then, it happened. Before the news of impending mommyhood and feelings of elation could sink in though, I was mourning my angel. Estimates were “miscarriage at 7 weeks.” I didn’t care about the details or reasons why. I felt like I was living a nightmare. The one thing we had been praying for, waiting for, dreaming about and wishing for, was gone. Our angel baby #1.
Fast forward to 2009. Our dream of being parents seemed unreachable but we continued to dream it. Life ‘happened’ to us a few times and we found ourselves living in Taylorsville, Utah, on the West side of Salt Lake. Mr. Superman had enlisted in the United States Air Force and I was trying to reconcile myself to the idea of being apart from him for his four months of BMT and Tech School. I would often muse aloud about how badly I wished I could get pregnant before he left so I could have a piece of him with me and feel like I had someone to take care of. “Wouldn’t it be perfect if we could have a baby by November?” I asked this question so often, I’m sure Mr. Superman would have thought his day incomplete if he didn’t hear it at least once. Maybe if I wished, dreamt, and thought it hard enough, it would happen.
Our lives were on hold. Mr. Superman had signed his contract with the USAF but we hadn’t yet been given a date of departure. We willed the days on so we could begin our new adventure. He was working for his grandfather’s company as part of the apartment maintenance crew for the complexes he owned. I on the other hand, was at home jobless and beginning to get very sick. My illness progressed to the point that anytime I would eat even a cracker, it would come right back up. I was weak and in severe pain. We didn’t have health insurance so I just kept telling everyone it was the flu. I also kept telling Mr. Superman that I wouldn’t mind throwing up every few minutes if I knew it was for my baby. I just wouldn’t mind it under those circumstances. I knew it couldn’t be a baby though. Aunt Flow had already visited twice since getting sick. Mr. Superman would beg me to go to the doctor but me being the practical person I am knew we couldn’t even begin to afford it.
We kept praying I would get better and one night after bedtime prayer, I had this overwhelming knowledge come over me that no matter our financial situation, I needed to get to the doctor. Mr. Superman called his mom and arranged for her to pick me up the next morning to take me to an urgent care.
After getting seen in urgent care and hooked up to an IV for two hours, they called the nearest emergency room and had me transferred because they felt it was something more serious than they were ready or prepared to deal with. Mr. Superman was phoned and I was admitted to Alta View Hospital. After taking blood samples they rushed me to get a CT Scan to determine whether or not the excruciating pain in my right side was from a ruptured appendix. My nurse was a complete sweetheart. She was a bubbly blond with a baby bump. I asked her when she was due. “November!” she responded. “That’s great.” I said with a smile and I meant it. I could tell she was genuinely ecstatic. She asked if I had any children. I told her none here on Earth. She told me about her angel baby. After the CT Scan I was returned to my room and twenty minutes later my nurse came in. She wasn’t smiling. “I’m not supposed to tell you this. It’s the doctor’s job but I had to come in and tell you so you had some sort of warning. Sweetie, it’s not your appendix. You’re experiencing an ectopic pregnancy. Your right fallopian tube is about to burst and it has to be removed. I’m so sorry.” Her eyes were brimming with tears. I could tell she felt guilty for having to tell me that I had lost another baby while she herself was expecting. My throat closed, I couldn’t breathe, and my head was spinning. “What? Are they sure?” They were. Within thirty minutes the ER doctor had confirmed it and the on call OB surgeon had been called in. I was being wheeled to surgery. I was in the room where my baby would be taken out of me. I would then be sent home, once again, empty. All I could feel was the emptiness, the screaming silence, the aching hollowness, and the echoes of my dreams dying around me. “If it would have been a healthy and viable pregnancy, you would have had the baby by November. I’m sorry for your loss Ma’am.”
After surgery, I was told I was a miracle. In the thirty-five years my surgeon had been practicing medicine, he had never seen an ectopic pregnancy go passed 6 weeks without rupturing the fallopian tube, let alone the 9-½ weeks mine had progressed to. If I had waited even another hour, it would have ruptured and the toxins that had built up in the last 2- ½ months would have killed me. In the 5 weeks of bed rest that followed, all of my Lord’s tender mercies that had manifested themselves through our experience had begun to add up.
The morning my MIL took me to the doctor, she had two different appointments canceled allowing her to get to me 4 hours sooner than planned. The urgent care center had taken me straight back and wasted no time in getting me to the ER. My RN at the hospital was sensitive to my case and knew exactly what I was going through. The on call OB surgeon had 35 years worth of experience and the minute he came into my room, put me at ease. He reminded me of my dad. He was a brother in my faith. He was heaven sent. Mr. Superman and I, in the days spent at the hospital, and the weeks preceding were both blessed with substantial and overwhelming feelings of rightness. This was supposed to happen. Our baby girl was back with her Father and our Angel Baby #1. Yes, I said baby girl. This was our Angel Baby #2.
A few weeks after getting released from the hospital, Mr. Superman got his departure dates for BMT. When I asked him if they had given him any idea of when he’d be home, his response was, “By November.” Sure enough, he was finished up and home by November.
The One Where I Let It Out
Mr. Superman and I have been together for well over four years and married for just over three. Even though that's a relatively short time, it feels like its been forever, but not in a griping sarcastic way. I mean it in the way that we clicked so fast, so perfectly, so smoothly and everything for us relationship wise has always been border line heavenly that it is hard to imagine my life before him.
Very shortly after we began dating, we knew we would be getting married. Its as cliche as it sounds but when you know, you know. Before we got married, a few months I'd say, we knew we wanted children. Immediately. You know how some people feel drawn towards attending a certain university or feels as if a specific career is their calling in life? For us, we knew that kids is what we wanted. It was the only thing that could have possibly made our love stronger and more perfect.
You all know, we tried.
I wrote all about our Two Angel Babies for the first time a few months ago. I have answered many, many questions about our plans for becoming parents. With my health issues, things were laid out by the doctors in a way that gave us little to no hope of being able to conceive on our own and have me carry a baby to term or even to a time that the baby could be delivered and still live. I was told in February of this year in a post-op appointment that without invitro fertilization, we wouldn't be able to become parents and even then, my chances were below 6%. We were absolutely heart-broken.
A few months later, I was diagnosed with a blood disease called HHT. After speaking with my hematologist on several occasions about the medical issues I've had through out my life and recently with difficulty in getting pregnant, and then the loss of our babies, we discussed treatment options to attempt to bring our odds of success up. He felt that my HHT was a major contributing factor to our losses. The treatment plan worked for most of my HHT symptoms but it made everything else much worse. After researching the long term side-effects of this treatment, which just so happens to be the same thing they give breast cancer patients, I discontinued the use of the medication. Around the same time I was diagnosed with HHT, Mr. Superman and I had discussed with each other and with several doctors our options of birth control for the sole purposes of easing my chronic pain (stupid woman issues) and to prevent us from losing another baby. The only form of BC I had not tried, was an IUD. It hurt like Hades (the doctor said it was because I had never had my uterus expanded by a baby. Well duh there genius, thanks for rubbing it in.) After a couple months it seemed to be doing the job. My pain level was down a smidge which was the essential goal.
Well Lovelies, it didn't work.
On October 19, 2010, I woke up feeling a bit scared (I was facing the re-opening of some old wounds) but hopeful for a semi-decent day. It was my 3-year wedding anniversary and I was expecting a gift delivered via UPS from my darling husband who's love I could feel from 8,000 miles away. I had plans to go shopping and maybe get a pedicure, you know, because it was my freaking anniversary! Let me just say now, that my day couldn't have hardly been any worse or gone any different than what I had expected. The re-opening of old wounds was horrendous. It was dramatic but more than that, it was terrifying and lonely having to do it alone. After that, I realized that the abdominal pain I had been having for about two weeks was getting much, much worse. I decided I had better kip into the Urgent Care and see what was going on. I had suspicions that it was a ruptured cyst that had arrived about two weeks before Mr. Superman deployed.
Boy was I wrong.
Within two hours I was once again given the worst news I have ever received. I was losing another baby. Another baby we had not thought probable let alone possible. It had torn away from my uteran wall and I was in very real danger of my uterus itself splitting open, causing massive internal bleeding which in turn would either land me in the hospital for months or kill me. My HHT complicates everything but when it comes to internal bleeding, it makes it nearly impossible to do anything, medically, to stop it. One more reason we know its a miracle I survived my ectopic last February. I was asked if I had a primary care doctor or an OB here in AZ. I said no. I was asked if I had anybody in the waiting room. I said no. They asked if they could call my husband to come pick me up. I actual laughed at that one. If only right? I called my sister and my mother and let them know. My mother asked me repeatedly if she could come and be with me. I insisted she didn't because the doctor was almost finished and I would be heading home to my sister's. They removed my IUD, wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic, a mild pain medicine, and nausea pills. I was told 14 days strict bed rest for my uteran lesions to heal enough to no longer be in the danger zone of internal bleeding and a follow up with my OB. I drove home in a daze.
For the last month, I have been in shock. I have been at a loss for words and the ability to outlet my emotions into something else has failed me. I have questioned, re-questioned, and continued to doubt if I could have done something different. Right after Mr. Superman left, we both began to have dreams and feelings about getting pregnant, being pregnant, and delivering a baby. I laughed it all off and refused to take a test. Taking a test that would turn out the be the 200th some-odd negative result would only depress me. I asked the doctors if I could have done something and was told that no, there was no prevention to the uteran wall tear. After all of that sank in, I began to question. You know, the age old question of WHY? Why would God allow this? Why allow me to once again get pregnant, but before I even realize it, take another baby away? Why have this happen when I was at my most vulnerable and alone. My husband is in the middle of a very real war-zone over 8,000 miles away. There is absolutely nothing he could do to comfort me and having to tell him would only cause him extreme pain and stress. Telling Mr. Superman was the second hardest thing I have ever had to tell him. I could see the worry and fear in his eyes.
I can honestly say, without fear of offending anyone, that I can count on one hand the amount of people who get it. Out of those three people, only one has suffered a loss so deep that I cannot even begin to imagine what she has gone through. Her attempts in helping me, to comfort me, have left me awed at her strength and selflessness. Being able to correspond with her though, and open up to her, has helped. Only a tiny, microscopic bit, but it has helped. Emily, you know I'm talking about you. I was able to confide in her that I felt as if I had not even begun to mourn and I had people acting as if nothing had happened or that I should already be over it. Let me say this, it hasn't even been a month yet. There is no time line for grief or mourning. There is no right or wrong way to do it. No matter how much I may seem okay or able to deal, it is 95% a facade. I have lost a friendship so very dear to me in the course of all of this which has made it all the more difficult. Losing anybody, let alone a child, is something you never, ever get over whether that child be 8 weeks along in conception, 4 months, a year old, 12 years old, or 60 years old. It is one of the impossibly difficult, seemingly unconquerable hurdles thrown into people's lives when they least expect it that tests us to our cores.
So there you have it. We now have 3 Angel Babies awaiting us on the other side. Its a very bittersweet notion. I think it always will be. Some days, most days, I ache all over from the emotional pain. It has been unspeakably heart-wrenching to go through this without my best friend, my husband, and the other half of my heart by my side. This is one of those things that you just don't want to believe and yet no matter how often you tell yourself it isn't real, or how many times you close your eyes in hopes that when they open, it will all have been a horrible dream, it just doesn't go away. You always want to believe things will get better and I know, deep, deep down, that it will.
Eventually.
Right now I take it one day at a time. I still feel as if it was truly, one of the most unfair things I have had placed upon me, but then I think about how much worse it all could have been and I regret being angry at my Heavenly Father. He is in control and He by far, is the only one who knows why. It is human nature to question everything, especially in our weak moments, but human nature is not an excuse. He knows my capabilities much better than I could even guess at which is why I have not yet given up. That along with the fact that I have to be whole and healthy when Mr. Superman steps off that bus next year.
Here we are now, where life's whimsy and 6 years has brought us.
Two people who may look the same.
Two people who may sound the same.
Two people who may come across the same.
You may think whatever you want about us but those thoughts and judgments won't ever change the facts.
The fact of the matter is we are incomplete.
There are 3 pieces of us missing and we feel it.
Every.
Single.
Day.
The fact is, we know better than most what is truly important and we most certainly know what sacrifice is.
We have the scars to prove it.
Very shortly after we began dating, we knew we would be getting married. Its as cliche as it sounds but when you know, you know. Before we got married, a few months I'd say, we knew we wanted children. Immediately. You know how some people feel drawn towards attending a certain university or feels as if a specific career is their calling in life? For us, we knew that kids is what we wanted. It was the only thing that could have possibly made our love stronger and more perfect.
You all know, we tried.
I wrote all about our Two Angel Babies for the first time a few months ago. I have answered many, many questions about our plans for becoming parents. With my health issues, things were laid out by the doctors in a way that gave us little to no hope of being able to conceive on our own and have me carry a baby to term or even to a time that the baby could be delivered and still live. I was told in February of this year in a post-op appointment that without invitro fertilization, we wouldn't be able to become parents and even then, my chances were below 6%. We were absolutely heart-broken.
A few months later, I was diagnosed with a blood disease called HHT. After speaking with my hematologist on several occasions about the medical issues I've had through out my life and recently with difficulty in getting pregnant, and then the loss of our babies, we discussed treatment options to attempt to bring our odds of success up. He felt that my HHT was a major contributing factor to our losses. The treatment plan worked for most of my HHT symptoms but it made everything else much worse. After researching the long term side-effects of this treatment, which just so happens to be the same thing they give breast cancer patients, I discontinued the use of the medication. Around the same time I was diagnosed with HHT, Mr. Superman and I had discussed with each other and with several doctors our options of birth control for the sole purposes of easing my chronic pain (stupid woman issues) and to prevent us from losing another baby. The only form of BC I had not tried, was an IUD. It hurt like Hades (the doctor said it was because I had never had my uterus expanded by a baby. Well duh there genius, thanks for rubbing it in.) After a couple months it seemed to be doing the job. My pain level was down a smidge which was the essential goal.
Well Lovelies, it didn't work.
On October 19, 2010, I woke up feeling a bit scared (I was facing the re-opening of some old wounds) but hopeful for a semi-decent day. It was my 3-year wedding anniversary and I was expecting a gift delivered via UPS from my darling husband who's love I could feel from 8,000 miles away. I had plans to go shopping and maybe get a pedicure, you know, because it was my freaking anniversary! Let me just say now, that my day couldn't have hardly been any worse or gone any different than what I had expected. The re-opening of old wounds was horrendous. It was dramatic but more than that, it was terrifying and lonely having to do it alone. After that, I realized that the abdominal pain I had been having for about two weeks was getting much, much worse. I decided I had better kip into the Urgent Care and see what was going on. I had suspicions that it was a ruptured cyst that had arrived about two weeks before Mr. Superman deployed.
Boy was I wrong.
Within two hours I was once again given the worst news I have ever received. I was losing another baby. Another baby we had not thought probable let alone possible. It had torn away from my uteran wall and I was in very real danger of my uterus itself splitting open, causing massive internal bleeding which in turn would either land me in the hospital for months or kill me. My HHT complicates everything but when it comes to internal bleeding, it makes it nearly impossible to do anything, medically, to stop it. One more reason we know its a miracle I survived my ectopic last February. I was asked if I had a primary care doctor or an OB here in AZ. I said no. I was asked if I had anybody in the waiting room. I said no. They asked if they could call my husband to come pick me up. I actual laughed at that one. If only right? I called my sister and my mother and let them know. My mother asked me repeatedly if she could come and be with me. I insisted she didn't because the doctor was almost finished and I would be heading home to my sister's. They removed my IUD, wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic, a mild pain medicine, and nausea pills. I was told 14 days strict bed rest for my uteran lesions to heal enough to no longer be in the danger zone of internal bleeding and a follow up with my OB. I drove home in a daze.
For the last month, I have been in shock. I have been at a loss for words and the ability to outlet my emotions into something else has failed me. I have questioned, re-questioned, and continued to doubt if I could have done something different. Right after Mr. Superman left, we both began to have dreams and feelings about getting pregnant, being pregnant, and delivering a baby. I laughed it all off and refused to take a test. Taking a test that would turn out the be the 200th some-odd negative result would only depress me. I asked the doctors if I could have done something and was told that no, there was no prevention to the uteran wall tear. After all of that sank in, I began to question. You know, the age old question of WHY? Why would God allow this? Why allow me to once again get pregnant, but before I even realize it, take another baby away? Why have this happen when I was at my most vulnerable and alone. My husband is in the middle of a very real war-zone over 8,000 miles away. There is absolutely nothing he could do to comfort me and having to tell him would only cause him extreme pain and stress. Telling Mr. Superman was the second hardest thing I have ever had to tell him. I could see the worry and fear in his eyes.
I can honestly say, without fear of offending anyone, that I can count on one hand the amount of people who get it. Out of those three people, only one has suffered a loss so deep that I cannot even begin to imagine what she has gone through. Her attempts in helping me, to comfort me, have left me awed at her strength and selflessness. Being able to correspond with her though, and open up to her, has helped. Only a tiny, microscopic bit, but it has helped. Emily, you know I'm talking about you. I was able to confide in her that I felt as if I had not even begun to mourn and I had people acting as if nothing had happened or that I should already be over it. Let me say this, it hasn't even been a month yet. There is no time line for grief or mourning. There is no right or wrong way to do it. No matter how much I may seem okay or able to deal, it is 95% a facade. I have lost a friendship so very dear to me in the course of all of this which has made it all the more difficult. Losing anybody, let alone a child, is something you never, ever get over whether that child be 8 weeks along in conception, 4 months, a year old, 12 years old, or 60 years old. It is one of the impossibly difficult, seemingly unconquerable hurdles thrown into people's lives when they least expect it that tests us to our cores.
So there you have it. We now have 3 Angel Babies awaiting us on the other side. Its a very bittersweet notion. I think it always will be. Some days, most days, I ache all over from the emotional pain. It has been unspeakably heart-wrenching to go through this without my best friend, my husband, and the other half of my heart by my side. This is one of those things that you just don't want to believe and yet no matter how often you tell yourself it isn't real, or how many times you close your eyes in hopes that when they open, it will all have been a horrible dream, it just doesn't go away. You always want to believe things will get better and I know, deep, deep down, that it will.
Eventually.
Right now I take it one day at a time. I still feel as if it was truly, one of the most unfair things I have had placed upon me, but then I think about how much worse it all could have been and I regret being angry at my Heavenly Father. He is in control and He by far, is the only one who knows why. It is human nature to question everything, especially in our weak moments, but human nature is not an excuse. He knows my capabilities much better than I could even guess at which is why I have not yet given up. That along with the fact that I have to be whole and healthy when Mr. Superman steps off that bus next year.
Here we are now, where life's whimsy and 6 years has brought us.
Two people who may look the same.
Two people who may sound the same.
Two people who may come across the same.
You may think whatever you want about us but those thoughts and judgments won't ever change the facts.
The fact of the matter is we are incomplete.
There are 3 pieces of us missing and we feel it.
Every.
Single.
Day.
The fact is, we know better than most what is truly important and we most certainly know what sacrifice is.
We have the scars to prove it.
