Due Date

This is one of those posts that I wish I did not have to write, and the reality is I do not have to write it, but I am choosing to, because it will feel good to get it out.

Today is my due date, for the 10th child that I lost in April/May. Last February we found out we were expecting our 10th child. We were surprised and excited and busy and we never told anyone. I did tell my girlfriend who was also old and expecting and we got real excited about being old pregnant ladies sipping lemonade together. She lost her baby and I was so sad for her.

March rolls around and we stay very busy with wrestling, and life, and we still just keep the news to ourselves. For a few reasons. One is we are busy and one is it is hard to be excited about something only to have most people not be, or ask the crazy question about whether or not we know how this happens, etc. So life just moved on.

April comes and we prepare for our vacation. The day before we leave I have a slight bit of spotting and it stops me in my tracks. I get sad, worried, and even a bit angry. We leave the next day and are gone for 12 days watching two boys wrestle and taking a vacation. While gone my sister Janice finds out via a post I had made on a website and expresses her excitement. Life moves on. When we get home the spotting continues and I just have a feeling.

May 5th, I go in for my 1st appt, 12 weeks, and she cannot hear a heartbeat. She sends me to the radiology dept for an ultrasound. I call Dean and tell him and he meets me there. No heartbeat, the baby had not made it past 8 weeks, right about the first time I had spotting. I asked not to see the baby in the screen, and later really regret that decision. I take a call from the doc with all my options. I am in a bit of shock and tell her I will talk with her on Monday. I text the only two people who know and who also know how I feel. I come home and go straight to Mackenzie who had figured I was expecting and told her the news. She held me in her arms while I cried and we shared tears together. My friend came that same day with a plant, pizza money, and love.

Mother's Day and I start to really bleed - how nice. I am also in a gym all weekend watching 3 of my boys win wrestling triple crowns, I feel like everyone is looking at me like the lady with the dead baby. We also go to Dubuque to see Mackenzie and Brandon off to prom. He also knows too, because she told him, but no one else.

Monday comes and I tell the doc I will wait it out and let the baby pass on its own. The bleeding continues. However, as time goes on and the days stretch out and I know nothing is happening other the bleeding, I start to get scared at my decision. So I call the doc back a week or so later and they send me in for an ultrasound. The baby is still there, and this time I look and I will never forget that little bean (Sarah), and how sad I felt, and what it felt like to wait in the waiting room for her to call the doc, this time without a baby. All other times I waited in that room it was for pictures, and I cry more. I no longer care that I cry in public.

We sit the kids down and tell them. I will not soon forget their faces when they thought I was pregnant, all the excitement, and then the faces when they realized the baby had passed. I loved them all so much at that time. We wanted them to know how wrong it was that we did not share with them right away so they could have shared in the joy. We wanted to let them know there was a sibling in heaven waiting to meet them. We shared more tears.

I always had thought that when I miscarried I would roll with it, not really having much issue with it. I was wrong, very wrong. What I was not prepared for, was the raw emotions in brought out in me. One of the hardest parts? Not having told anyone. I did not have to tell everyone the news of losing the baby, but I was also so alone with my feelings. I finally shared with another friend. Wow, how hard to say what was and yet is no more. There are so very few people who know about this, even family. While you are going through it, you find it hard to share, when it is over physically it becomes even harder to talk about.

I am referred to an OBGYN because at this point we are getting close to Mackenzie's graduation ceremony, and I fear have a full fledged miscarriage in the midst of it all. She schedules me for a d&c, and I go in two days before Mackenzie's graduation party. I think I have the slightest feeling how a death row inmate feels being the 'dead man walking'. Exactly what I felt like walking into that room, having them explain the process, seeing the machine, having them refer to my little bean as a product of conception, and then waking up and it is over. And I cry and apologize because I wanted to be strong. After, I come home and just sleep. Two days later our oldest daughter graduates from high school, a joyous celebration. A week later we have a large party for her, again a joyous celebration. And life moves on.

While life moves on, I get angry that I am not allowed just a little bit of time to grieve. I would like to say that time has healed my wounds but that it not true, I still struggle with this emotionally, and I still cry. I know I have 9 children and I am richly blessed, but it does not change my love for the 10th child that I do not hold in my arms. The one due today. The one in the arms of Jesus.