The Life Saving - Part 2

"Yet she kept discovering in the places of deepest aloneness and emptiness the God who was with her, for her. She discovered Christ's presence from the inside out, seeing what He sees as He sees it. She now has a sense of what the world looks like from a cross. She knows the darkness of the inside of a grave. And she knows, more and more, the brightness of a new day when the world is glimpsed as from a tomb, its stone rolled away." - Mark Buchanan

Cheryl was there. She had soothed my incisional and heart wounds before...during my pregnancy with Elianna when Dr. May relocated my pelvic uterus to its appropriate abdominal home and then again after my c-section at 22 1/2 weeks. The PACU is a funny little place. You can see and hear so much...you can make assumptions. The 75 year-old hysterectomy, the 38 year-old infertility patient after her D&E, the 24 year old with her newly c-sectioned babe, the 30 year old with empty arms...the NICU light years away; what a tragically odd little cornucopia of motherhood... . Cheryl navigates her PACU world beautifully. She has mothered me a handful of times now, nursed me, taken away my pain, wet my palate, held my hand...introduced me to my children.

And Kevin...shaken...to the roots of his husbandly soul, holding me, showing me that very first picture of our boy, our Silas. What a role to play - stretched between so many hearts and places: updating waiting rooms (permanent ones in hospitals; and the makeshift ones that our dearest friends set up around their kitchen tables, on their desks, in their vehicles), arranging safe and calm childcare for sweet Tahlia, holding our fresh from heaven child in his arms, introducing grandparents to their little guy, and navigating the flock of tear stained health care providers as they began telling the story.

Neither of us understood the gravity of what had happened until hours, maybe days, later as the details unfolded. From PACU, Cheryl wheeled me into the NICU. Lorie cried over me as we hugged. Charity laid my little boy on my chest...magical as I realized that a few yards behind me was the room where I had first felt Elias' warm skin against mine and a few yards to my left was the quiet corner where Elianna had taken her last breaths against my bare and broken heart. And now here was this child...this big, wiggly, angry-at-his-cpap, 6 pound, 5+ weeks early, precious soul wrapped in boy, baby. "He's a miracle..." they all said.

It was late afternoon before I was settled in my room. Kevin was still trekking back and forth between all of us who needed him so desperately...filling each of his roles with tenderness, seriousness, giddiness. Dr. May came into my room...
- The words she chose after Elias was born are etched in my mind..."Megen, I don't know what to say...I am, quite frankly, horrified." Horrified. That was the right word.
- Elianna died during the early morning hours after my c-section. Dr. May came to my room with a quietness. I don't know that she said anything using voice. She felt my empty belly. She touched my empty arms. "I am so desperately sorry, Megen." Desperate. That was the right word.
               ...and now, "Megen, he is beautiful. I can't believe it. Do you realize that he was way up under your ribs? He's a miracle." Again, the right word. Miracle.

And I don't mean to use that word lightly - miracle. I didn't know how right she was until I learned the whole story...until I understood how literally she meant "up under your ribs." But our Silas James was...is...a miracle. I was right, my uterus had ruptured, although Dr. May didn't know it for sure before she opened my tetanic (tEtanic...not tItanic...although...) abdomen. The on-call OB that I had screamed my history to had, by God's gracious design, had more time to think through what was happening than Dr. May and had bluntly told Dr. May to cut me top to bottom instead of side-to-side ( a choice that would prove to have been absolutely necessary). Charity and Stacey had known it was me that they were waiting for an hour earlier and had gone to the OR without any prompting once they'd heard the overhead page for Dr. May to go to the OR stat. Lorie had tagged along as an extra set of hands without realizing it was me. They had readied the baby bed and then waited. I'm told the OR was silent. And then the only words that suited..."Oh shit" from Dr. May. She had opened my abdomen to find an empty, tiny, torn open uterus...and no baby. He was, in fact, up under my ribs, free-floating in my middle, cord and placenta attached to him but not to the life-sustaining wall of a healthy uterus. Dr. May told me later that she had thought, "God, no. Not again. Not this family. Not another dead baby. No." And whether she intended those thoughts to be prayerful or not, we know now that HE ANSWERED.

Silas James was born at 1230 on September 30th. He cried soon after arriving on the baby warmer via the hands of precious friends, despite the complete havoc my body had wreaked on his. His heart never stopped beating. He was a purpley-pale and furious about it. He did wonderfully. He was off Cpap in 24 hours. He was nursing a couple days later. He was out of his incubator before he turned a week old. And 11 days after our miracle, we came home...with beauty instead of ashes.

I'm no artist, but my precious and tender friend Carolanne had given me a set of oil pastels and a sketch book after Elias died. One day maybe I'll have a real artist turn them into actual pieces...Michelle, one day friend. Through the medium of pastels, I have often depicted my womb as a grave, tomb-like instead of life-giving. I've also wrestled with the battle between angels and darkness that I believe have raged around my family, my babies. And so I imagine my insides on the day Silas was born...womb turned tomb-like, darkness overtaking the protection of angels' wings, and then intercession. Christ Himself, perhaps, going to His Father, our Father, perhaps tearful, certainly carrying the burden of my desperation: "Father, not again. Please. Protect. Save. Let Me Redeem."

"And she knows, more and more, the brightness of a new day when the world is glimpsed as from a tomb, its stone rolled away." - Mark Buchanan

He calmed the storm to a whisper and stilled the waves. What a blessing was that stillness as He brought them safely into harbor! Psalm 107:29-30

The Life Saving

"Once we had belonged to the school of Cross That Bridge When We Come to It. Now we wanted all bridges mapped, the safety of their struts, their likelihood of washing out, their vulnerability to blackguards, angry natives, cougars." - Elizabeth McCracken in An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

3:10am I got up to pee. I had a contraction (faithful friend since about 18 weeks during my quiet Kegel'd walk down the hallway midway through my sleep). Climbed back into bed, thankful for Tahlia's heavy snore-y breaths on the baby monitor. And then I had another contraction. And another. And then I started praying...bargaining turned to begging, to be precise, as I watched the clock and hoped I was making things up.

3:30 I woke Kevin up. We stared at each other...both surely verifying the dates and numbers in our heads...yep, 34 6/7 weeks. NICU translation = I can't have this baby today because we'll HAVE to go to the NICU, no friendly "trial" in the well-baby nursery.

4:15 I called my midwife and got the schpeal I expected: wait for closer than 10 minutes apart for more than an hour.

4:50 I'd had 6 more contractions. I wasn't interested in waiting the whole hour.

5:05 On our way to the hospital, contracting. It was calmer than trips to the end with either Elias or Elianna. I was, in fact, annoyed. "I can't just have one more day? Just to get to 35 weeks?" - I'd forgotten everything I've learned. And simultaneously I talked through, in my head, 1) how ridiculous Sherry (midwife) was going to think I was...crazy "history of multiple losses" lady, bugging her in the middle of the night with Braxton Hicks contractions and 2) how it was good that I hadn't gotten a snack while I watched the clock, counting my belly tightening up to rock-like status, since they would certainly be taking me back for a c-section within the hour.

7:50 On our way home after a fluid bolus took my contractions from every 3 minutes to 1 every 20 minutes. Back in the car after Sherry politely gave in and told me the symptoms of uterine rupture that I had asked for despite her gentle giggle at the request. "Come on Meg...don't even go there." It would hurt...like a knife she said. Driving home, still safe, watching for cougars. ... ... ... I wouldn't have gone with "knife" exactly.

9:45 Kevin wouldn't answer his phone at work...I was annoyed again. Thankfully my mother-in-law had come to our house after getting off of work at 3 am, to stay with Tahlia. I'd slept for about an hour through the routines of a two-year-old's morning, but not through the contractions that were back and relentless despite my efforts to shower them away.

10:15 Crying on the phone to Dr. May..."I think we've probably reached our limit Megen...it's time." ..."But I don't want a NICU baby!..." I really had forgotten everything...I'd gotten awfully, ugly selfish, - presumptuous really.

10:45 Goodbyes to Tahlia and my mother-in-law...re-hellos to the triage staff...hug and more crying to Kevin who had finally answered his phone (it took him almost 8 whole minutes...8...not 58...8...I guess I knew it was over, and needed my protector, my man, "daddy", NOW) and met me in my triage room.

11:15 Dr. May took one look at me, one look at my strip, probably one look at Kevin, and affirmatively made the plan to take me back for a section immediately following the scheduled section she was about to start.

12:00 Contractions picking up...completely manageable, but pretty glad I wasn't sitting on my couch, lying in my shower, or sitting in traffic on 222.

And then the life saving began.

Jen (triage nurse): "Do you think you're gonna make it another half hour? You look a lot less comfortable than you did while Dr. May was here."

In the span of another 20 minutes...a lot happened...I don't remember it all.

~ Jen started prepping my belly.
~ I kept breathing...no longer aware of the clock or minutes or strip, just that my contractions were getting closer and that new baby seemed awfully perturbed by all the raucous.
~ And then, "I can't, um, I don't know if I can handle this...this contraction just isn't ending...it's still building....still..." It was crushing, twisting, tearing...like a contraction - with no end, no peak, no decline.
~ Kevin: "We're worried about uterine rupture. That's a risk for her. Rupture."
~ Jen "I have some people on the phone."
~ I had been off the monitor while my belly was being prepped. When Jen tried to find new baby's heart beat once she had me quickly prepped, she couldn't. Nothing. Nothing but that horrible rumbling squeak of the doppler gliding over my skin without finding a beating heart to rest on. Then, there it was. 68. 68. That's me. It must be. No, 68 is better than dead. Maybe it's baby. 68. Is it me? I checked my own pulse. It was in the 30s, maybe 40s. Baby is in the 60s. I'm in the 30s. My uterus is ruptured. This is it. Again. This is it. This is the end again.
~ I could hear Jen yelling above my own thoughts and building sobs: "We have to go. It doesn't matter. We're going whether they're there or not. We're going now."
~ Then there were 12 people in my room.
~ I was screaming my history to an on-call OB.
~ My bed was in motion. Down those hallways...all those same hallways.
~ "Dr. Eichenlaub or May. Dr. Eichenlaub or May to the OR, stat." Once again my real life was turning Hollywood on me.
~ I tried to find Kevin's eyes...I knew this meant general anesthesia...he'd miss seeing this baby be born. I'd miss it. Dead or alive, we'd both miss it.

It takes a lot for me to say this, but IT WAS BETTER THAT WAY. If only no one had had to see it... .

(I found out after the fact that Kevin had waited outside the OR...in the same isolated, lonely, quiet little chair where he'd waited while they prepped me to deliver Elianna.)

It's incredible how much you can KNOW someone by their eyes...I'd wanted Kevin's before the end began. I was graciously greeted in the OR by Dr. May's eyes - terrified. And then Charity's and Stacey's. And Lorie's (yes, Lorie...Elianna's "she cried!" nurse...dear friend...precious baby Alicia's mom). "PLEASE. PLEASE. PLEASE." I was wailing to my co-workers, my friends, my supermen - I don't know exactly what I meant, but there were no other words. Make this go away. ? Let this baby be okay. ?  Stop this pain. ? Not again.?

I do distinctly remember wanting to just go to sleep...JUST PUT ME TO SLEEP! WHY IS NO ONE PUTTING ME TO SLEEP?! I knew that every second of wakefulness was an extra second of disaster, a moment of rescuing that we wouldn't get back.

And there was that final thought, that strange experience of anesthetic, knowing that -yes, I was going to sleep, but that my very next awareness would be minutes - maybe hours - away, and that the story would be told. In my very next experience of wakefulness, I would know not only if new baby was a boy or girl, a red-head or blonde, but alive or dead. And, for that matter, perhaps my next experience of "wakefulness" would be eternity. After all, my uterus was rupturing...I knew that...maybe we'd both be dead.

...

"Megen. Megen, ...he's okay. He's on Cpap, and he's getting a saline bolus, but he's okay." It was Steve. My Steve. Elianna's Steve. And now, Silas' Steve. And this wasn't eternity. It was waking up to life saving.

"THE LORD YOUR GOD WILL FIGHT FOR YOU. YOU NEED ONLY TO BE STILL." - Exodus 14:14

The Salve of Hiccups

"Here I am in one panel. I am in the line of danger, but I don't know it...In the next panel, seconds later, something is supposed to intervene. Superman swooping in... . But Superman never shows. I CAN SEE IT SO CLEARLY. IN ONE PANEL WE ARE SAFE AND STUPID. IN THE NEXT WE'RE ONLY STUPID."
Elizabeth McCracken in An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Some of you thought the worst.
Some of you accurately assumed that my blogging skills and schedule are similar to how I keep up with old friends: I know I have lots to say and want it to be IMPORTANT stuff, not fluff; so I wait and wait and wait until it seems like it's been simply too long and there is just too much to fit in one conversation.
Some of you have trudged along, praying and hoping alongside us, counting down with us until the majesty of fall arrives.

I am, for those of you thinking the worst, still pregnant. 32 weeks and 4 days pregnant, with a kiddo who weighs about 5 lbs and likes to lay bottoms up and to the left and feet tucked in my right hip. Nesting is happening (mopping, washing windows, washing all of my neutral newborn gear...confident that if baby boy Kuhn is the one somersaulting in there, that he will also be clothed; this in contrast to his antithesis, baby girl Kuhn, should she be the one tap dancing across my belly, who will be overdressed for a solid 12 months thanks to big sister Tahlia's former wardrobe). Amnios and c-sections are being scheduled. I am OFFICIALLY no longer a maternal-fetal-medicine patient...graduate...woot-woot, and will, in fact, for the first time in 2 trimesters, NOT have an appointment with an MD this coming week (a first since week 11...the only since they'll see me weekly from 34-37 when I'm sectioned).

And, I am in a funny place. I am, statistically speaking, safe. This has worked. Everything Dr. Haney said was possible, was and is. I am pudgy 'round the mid-section, hungry, and have to pee. This is incredible. This is a miracle! Somewhere along the line, angels rushed in and have proven themselves to be conquerors this go around (may I add a reality-worn: "thus far." ?).

That is the place where we fell apart after Elianna...the angels and miracles and conquering part. It didn't happen. "Elianna" means: God has answered...a name chosen at the beginning of my pregnancy with her. A name whose meaning demonstrates quite a deep level of confidence...dare I say, faith. But the answer was not at all what we trusted it would be. Despite what we believed was deep confidence and faith in our Creator!, the answer was, "NO. No Superman for you. No angels. No conquering. And NO miracles." To this line, my mind added, "Haven't we been over this before? Didn't I already tell you?" This was darkness...this was the pit of my spiritual life. I can't tell you if I jumped in or got pushed there, but it was dark.

It might have been more tolerable for my soul, more understandable for my spirit, if I hadn't felt that I WAS TOLD OTHERWISE.

I was admitted to the hospital "for the duration" with Elianna on January 6th. I had a long ways to go to get to the magical number I still rely on in my NICU mind of "23 WEEKS GESTATION." 18 days...almost three weeks...January 24th...if I could JUST GET THERE.

And then I read it...a passage that I had fallen in love with years before: Daniel 10. It is essentially a very literal description of how angels work. Daniel is mourning, tortured, for weeks..."three full weeks" when an angel comes to him and says, basically: I'm trying. I've been trying since you first started praying. But it is HARD! There are demons fighting me off. I have to go back and finish this.

The passage says, "NOW ON THE 24TH DAY OF THE FIRST MONTH..." and that's when the angel shows up. Maybe you think I'm nuts for feeling like those words were written for me...apparently I was...but I did. I very suddenly KNEW that the God that I believe created and sustains me said that He was sending His angels...that there would be a miracle...that my baby would be saved.

Kevin and I even got greedy with our assumed miracle and prayed that the miracle that WAS SURELY coming was that I'd be healthy on bedrest for weeks and weeks and not that we'd have a precious micro-preemie in a NICU for months and months who would, obviously!, survive.

It would have been dark anyway. It would have felt like smothering and battery and despair whether I'd felt I'd heard directly from God or not. But this added a humiliating component...we felt fooled, tricked, lied to. Part of me still can't resolve that we weren't.

I hesitate to share these intimate details with such a spiritually broad audience...but I've chosen to anyway. What is MOST important to me is not that you see God in my story as the trusted Father who relentlessly cares for his kids (although I believe this to be true, somehow), but that you see God in my story for what He really has been to me...a mystery...missing at times...often choosing NOT to intervene...but not once leaving the picture.

At first I thought: Superman did show up...He never left in fact...He just sat in the corner of the panel and I don't get to know why.

Later, after re-reading Daniel 10 dozens of times, wondering how I could have misread it, searching for details I'd missed, I thought: maybe the fight was just too hard...maybe there are angels STILL fighting for me...maybe it's just not done yet.

Almost 2 years after Elianna died, I read a portion of Daniel 10:1 as if for the first time..."THE MESSAGE WAS TRUE, BUT THE APPOINTED TIME WAS LONG." I'm not a Biblical scholar...I'm not even good at straight up prayer. But this small statement was salve to my wound...a wound that undoubtedly will not ever completely heal.

But I'll take the salve either way...whether in the form of Scripture or sweaty two-year-old arms wrapped around my neck...or new baby's hiccups at the end of a long-winded blog.

Daniel 10:19
"O man greatly BELOVED, fear not! PEACE be to you; be strong, yes, be strong."

Milk, sweat and tears

"Every day as I love this baby in my lap, I think of my other baby. Poor older brother, poor missing one. I see the infant before me, the glory of the soles of the feet, the lips fattened and glossy with nursing, the nose whose future Edward and I try to predict daily. The love for the first magnifies the love for the second, and vice versa." - Elizabeth McCracken in An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

I got my hair cut last week. Not cut off, but cut shorter. I'd been holding out, waiting for my confidence to bolster. When I was on bed rest with Elianna, my hair was obnoxiously the wrong length...not that there is a great length for hair to be laid on for weeks at a time, but it was a small piece of frustration in the big picture of catastrophe. So after chopping it off two summers ago, I've let it grow, with one main purpose in mind: it needed to be long enough to pile on top of my head and lay flat on for weeks at a time. It's funny how we each choose to cope...what tasks we choose to take the wheel of control over when really we are, for the most part, tied up and blindfolded in the trunk. But as I type, my 2 lb 25 3/7 week little someone has remained redeemingly gestational. No bed rest. Apparently my incompetent cervix (That's really one of my diagnoses: "Incompetent." Touching. Of note, the term has been recently updated to "insufficient cervix." Phew, now I'm just insufficient, not incompetent. What a relief!) is no longer as much of a screw up as it once was. Anyway, hair? cut. Confidence? bolstered.

Truth be told, I suppose there's a second reason for skipping my fancy trips to Holiday Hair. Maybe it'll sound crazy, maybe you'll get it to the point of feeling relief that you aren't the only crazy one: when you've got desperately and shockingly little to hold on to after tragedy, you hold surprisingly and frighteningly tightly to whatever is left. Cutting my hair enough times in the past 3 1/2 years would mean cutting off all of the hair that had been mine while I mothered Elias and then Elianna. After Elias was born and died, I stood over a bowl of orange jello at my sink for much longer than is reasonable debating whether or not to toss it. Jello gets moldy. Who knew? I poured it and a fair number of tears down the sink. That jello was part of my mothering, feeding myself what my stomach would tolerate on narcotics meant to dull the discomfort of my baby and uterus expanding within the trap of my pelvic bones instead of up in my abdomen. Weeks later, I had to hold my tongue and choose to literally walk the other way as I watched Kevin calmly dumping baggies of ice out into the sink....more mothering, down the drain - ice meant to soothe my body before it sacrificed my baby for itself.

So we all cope. Some in therapeutic ways, some in family shattering ways, others in ways that you'd never tell someone out loud for fear of a 302. Scratch that. We all cope in all of those ways, simultaneously, hoping no one is keeping a tally of which kind we favor.

I remember precious little about my last minutes pregnant with Elianna. I know my nurse said my water had broken. I know Dr. May was there, glassy eyed, straight lipped, not an ounce of disguising her appall...exactly the kind of physician I want, someone who rightfully doesn't trust me and isn't afraid to show it. Elianna's heart rate dropped. My blood pressure bottomed out. I passed out. Someone was asking for scrubs for Kevin so he could go to the OR. Steve came in...dear friend...beloved co-worker...fantastic neonatal nurse practitioner. "Do you have a name picked out?"-what a kind heart, letting me be a mom for a few minutes longer. Then the cold OR. Kevin so full of hope and joy over our little girl. Lorie's words, "She just cried. Did you hear her cry?" And my realization (experience sucks sometimes) that there was no way she was the 680 grams she had measured on ultrasound. She couldn't be much more than 500..."she's little, isn't she?", the mother version of my assessment. 530 grams. A kiss (thank you dear friends) and then gone. Off with her Daddy to the NICU, my NICU, to the hands of my MaryAnn, angel, surrounded I believe literally by a legion of the celestial version. Then the PACU to recover (now there's a loaded word) and wait to see Elianna again.

Kevin coped by Daddy-ing...introducing his little girl to her family, checking in on me, bringing me pictures of our girl while I waited for the anesthesia to wear off and then for the NICU team to be done their eventual futile attempts to get an arterial line into my tiny baby. Me? I wanted to pump. Now. I knew the stats. I knew I had a window to make things work if they were going to work. I knew that my milk was a necessary piece of Elianna's intensive care. Mostly, I knew I wanted nothing to do with lying still while everyone else took care of my baby.

So cope I did. Elianna was born at 9:40 am. I pumped at 1:30 pm, 4, 8, and 11 pm. After that, there was no more need for milk. Kevin and I stayed with Elianna in the NICU until 2:10 am when her little heart stopped. Two big girl extubated breaths while she lay naked on my chest (thank You for moments of mercy) and then stillness. Stillness together for another 3 days.

"...death, burial, and resurrection...God is continually revealing Himself through this cycle...There are always those three days...the three days between burial and resurrection - the longing, the waiting, the questioning." - Gwen Kik

And then home.

One of the more complicated steps during the three days was one that took us by surprise, one that had never warranted thought after Elias. Which funeral home? check. What pictures to take? check. Cremation or burial? check. Do I want to do her postmortem care? check. Who needs to meet her before we give her frame away? check. Start pumping again? Keep pumping? For no one? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...check.

Three weeks after Elianna died I had a mature milk supply. Four weeks after I had oversupply...1200 mL a day, 40 ounces. We bought a deep freezer. I filled it. I borrowed freezer space from my parents. I borrowed freezer space from my inlaws.

For no one?

No, for my sanity. To cope. To mother. What started as, "Maybe I'll see if I can get some colostrum to store in case we really pursue adoption" turned into being matched with a birth mom and having a baby to pump for.

By the middle of the summer, I had donated 39 gallons of milk to a mother's milk bank for premature and ill babies and to three adoptive families willing to drive and fly my milk as far away as Oregon.

And on May 22nd at 10pm, my little spitfire, 18-hour-old, 32-weeker, Tahlia nursed after a precious and gracious blessing from her birth mom.

Resurrection.
Redemption.
Grace.

I wonder, aloud sometimes, whether people who've not experienced adoption really actually believe that I can love Tahlia as much as they love their biological children. I wondered it before it happened to me, changed me, redeemed me. Kevin and I have met one another in a perhaps surprising place, wondering whether or not we can possibly love new baby as much as we love Tahlia. I think what we know from our own unique parenting tale and from what we've watched happen around us and to those we love and trust is that when you have another child, it isn't that you have to divide up the love you have for one and share it evenly with the next. You grow a whole new heart. I love Elias desperately, with my whole heart. I love Elianna with a whole new heart, all for her. And Tahlia with another gaping wide heart. And Maura..., and now new baby. And it works in reverse too. Just like I love Tahlia with a whole new heart of infinite love, I MISS my other babies infinitely with that same whole heart they started with. There's no "closure" of missing them based on newly found love for Tahlia and new baby just like there's no dividing up the initial love for them.

I will say this...I believe that when God names you as mother, you can mother
under wild circumstances,
in strange places and ways,
under conditions you never thought a possible part of your story,
children you never knew you couldn't live without,
babies born not of blood, sweat and tears, but of paperwork, interrogation, suspicion, sweat, tears, travel, and waiting, for years sometimes.


And I believe that my mysterious, sometimes silent and back-turned, often sheltering and redeeming God knew that part of my mothering story would be to nurse my babies. There is redemption in knowing that while her birth mom's strong body and heart grew Tahlia for 32 weeks, that my body and heart quite literally grew her for months afterward...25 of them in fact. Milk, sweat and tears over two little girls. Not the story I could have ever written. A story I've thought could never be redeemed. But a story of redemption none the less.

And such is life today at, now, 25 4/7 weeks pregnant with new baby: it feels like return, rescue, redemption.

 

Shouting and Weeping, Mingled Together.

"We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." -C.S. Lewis

Yesterday Tahlia said "cicada" and "Eichenlaub" clear as day, hooked-on-phonics-esque. Yesterday I used the season's first swiss chard and zucchini from my little garden. Yesterday I grew to 22 4/7 weeks pregnant with new baby...there is a first time for all things.

Yesterday Kevin felt this little person moving and wiggling beneath my skin and muscle and uterine wall with a tentative MO and I thought, "I hope that's not the last time he feels this tiny one squirm." Yesterday I made at least one overly confident statement about having an October baby - in retrospect, presumptuous to say the least. Yesterday I chose my underwear based on which ones are capable of easily showing blood. Other things don't change no matter how many ultrasounds in a row show a "boring-old-normal cervix" (my perinatologist's words), save for the 5 mm band of mesilene that is keeping me from shear disaster and my fifth child from eternity now instead of later.

Kevin and I are in the middle of our biggest summer project, small compared to years past, but impressive considering that some believe I'm entitled to curling up in my bed and waiting for the leaves to fall. We are "spring"-cleaning our closets and consolidating so that we can empty our guest room closet of all smoky/sweaty camping and climbing gear and make space for all the pink and yellow 2Ts you can imagine. Kevin, resident psychologist on Main St. and 10th, wants Tahlia to be moved into her big girl room and out of her current nursery before any hub-bub with an impending new baby-sized resident...ie:  new room = yay! instead of kicked out to make room. It's going well...I am not the shyest of purgers. But there is hesitance...Elias was born within a week or two of sending our pretentious Christmas cards overflowing with pregnancy announcement; I was admitted to the hospital on bedrest with Elianna the week after we set up her crib, Elias' crib, for her (against my better judgment I might add).

Your baby dying makes you crazy. Your babies dying makes you other. I can't describe it; there are no right words. It is somewhere amidst feeling beaten into submission, feeling forgotten altogether, and feeling somehow chosen and set aside for a task that no one else wants but someone has to take. So I cleaned out my closets today, but unlike you, I seriously waged whether or not it was a wise decision in the eternal scheme of things.

I think things are a bit complicated right now by the underlying notion that if Maura had lived, I would be due with her this week. This, by the way, is the kind of philosophical terrain that I am terrified of exploring. After Elias, I SOOO abhorred the idea that someone would ever take it upon themselves to give me a good reason why it "had to happen," that we waited to get pregnant until after my due date with him had come and gone. (You think you don't like condoms? Try using them when the thing you want most in the world is to be pregnant...sorry, a second uncensored sidebar.) In my mind, this took away the possibility that someone would ever say, in a sweet churchy way of course, "Isn't it amazing? God is just so in control! He knew that He needed to take Elias from you in order for ______ to be here." There's no sweet churchy way  to assault someone in return for such a comment, so I planned on not risking the charge by controlling for conception rather than having to keep my cool. When Tahlia was born within the window of my intended pregnancy with Elianna, I could control for this to a degree by arguing that if God had WANTED to, He ABSOLUTELY could have blessed us with both beautiful girls instead of one...all-powerful, right? Right. But now, I've crossed that bridge. New baby will be our first "interval baby"...a baby conceived within the interval of presumed pregnancy with a a previous baby who has died. Now people will have the opportunity to say stupid things and I will have the obligation of responding. I hate having to respond appropriately when there is no appropriate response to be had.

So I continue on in this strange little otherly way...

• Due this past Monday and in 3 1/2 months.
• "No, she's not my first. And yes, she is my oldest."
• Almost 23 weeks for the first time, although pregnant for the fourth.
• Considering how convenient it will be that we still have not buried Maura's ashes at the Pinnacle with Elias and Elianna - we could take new baby's along and have a dual burial!...and emptying closets to make room for having two children in our home.

Now when you ask me how I am doing and I say "really well," you can be confident that I mean it...but that saying anything else would take 20 minutes, a box of tissues, and several reassuring baby belly kicks to get me through.

We are well. We are blessed. My two year old can say "Eichenlaub." I am the mom of five precious and eternal souls. And I am more pregnant than I have ever been. We are really well.

Many of the...leaders remembered the first temple, and they wept aloud when they saw the new temple's foundation. The others, however, were shouting for joy. THE JOYFUL SHOUTING AND WEEPING MINGLED TOGETHER in a loud commotion that could be heard far in the distance. ~Ezra 3:12-13

Taking up screen printing

"In the Chronicles of Narnia, the children ask if Aslan is safe. The answer is, 'no.' He is not safe... - but He is good. This is where my mind shuts off - where I generally have to leave it as 'I don't understand, but it's not my place to I suppose, so just stop thinking.' This way of relating to You has slowly - over almost 3 years - drained me of my trust in You - not my belief, but my trust. Can you, in fact, 'trust' some One who is self proclaimed to be NOT safe???" - my journal, 12/14/10

This is the thing about being this kind of pregnant...I want everyone everywhere to see and nod sweetly at my tight fitting shirt, to take notice. After all, I've been here before and not taken advantage - not realized that it was my last month of baby bump, last week of kicks, last day of humming to my mystery miracle someone. But the catch is that I want it to be appropriate for my tight fitting shirt to bear the markings of some catchy screen printer...it would say something like, "Yes, I'm Pregnant! Not the kind where it's a sure thing though. Don't get any big ideas of me and childbearing being a good match." I'm not exaggerating. I want that shirt. Some cultures do this...you fast when people die - you wear black for months - you communicate clearly so that people aren't held to an unreachable expectation of responding to you appropriately despite their ignorance.

When we were pregnant with Elianna, going to church became uncanny. For weeks and weeks and weeks our friends announced their simultaneous pregnancies in Sunday School or over coffee. I felt no joy for them, not then - maybe a hint of "aww, that's nice" but certainly not joy. Each announcement felt like an additional weight of pressure to live up to their impressive mothering skills - of utmost importance, bearing children who stay alive. All together, 7 babies were due (and born, and now toddle around quite adorably each week) in the months around Elianna's due date. My two best long distant friends were due that summer. My sister-in-law, precious friend, was due with my favorite niece just 4 days after Elianna's due date. I said to Kevin, "If all these people have all these babies and we don't...I'll have to leave." Not just church...probably the state. We talked about Wyoming.

We didn't leave our church, or the state; although I could disappear into the woods of Yellowstone and be perfectly happy (I get that from my Dad). Instead, we were given a gift, another early gift, most precious of gifts. On May 22nd, 22 hours before my May 23rd due date with Elianna, Tahlia was born. The day before. I still can't comprehend this...not in a "that is amazing!" way, and not in a "is this some kind of platitudinal 'replacement' trick?" way...just in a way where I am reminded that I know of no other posture before God than one of bruised knee, broken hearted, submissive curiosity at what His big picture must look like.

So why the shirt? Why be so clear about my identity? Because I walk by strollers and slings and grouchy pregnant women and see welcome-baby-tidings on face book and pregnancy announcements loaded with assumptions from my "untouched sisters" and allow myself to feel less than delight and gratitude for perfect package little families. I feel, in part, an ugly little bubble of anger and jealousy that floats up shaped like hurt.  I love you, I do...you, your precious family, your healthy baby...I just can't completely relate. My point? Other people are pregnant - they will have healthy babies, according to their birth plan, on their due date - well, certainly not more than 10 days after it...ahh the horror of having to labor and give birth to a healthy happy baby, and often times, AFTER one's due date...such heart ache! (Side bar.) And now, the real point...still other people are pregnant and their story will look more like mine - and they don't even know what's coming, haven't even considered it. So by grace, I will walk, past strollers and slings and swollen/sleepless/grouchy pregnant women - I'll not shake my head at announcements and assumptions. By grace I will extend the gesture I expect even of strangers on my behalf, of remembering that I know no one's past and that I know no one's future.

"'When are you due?' asked the already mother, and the young woman answered, 'Friday. I can't wait.' I have nothing in common with you, I thought. That shows I had already forgotten the one lesson I'd vowed to learn: you can never guess at the complicated history [or future] of strangers." - Elizabeth McCracken in An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Two weeks after we got home (well, to my parents' house to wait for adoption paperwork) from the hospital with our little early-bird Tahlia, I found my mom crying on the couch one morning. "Alison's baby died" she wept. "What? Alison? Alison who?" My mom had decisively chosen not to tell me that my sweet, newly married, much younger cousin was expecting her first (my mom does this NH friends...she's protecting me...it's necessary sometimes...often you have a 3 week-old before I know anything about your growing family). Hearing about full wombs hurts the empty wombs. It's just a fact. It's the same kind of hurt that adored widowed friends feel over my haphazard and off-the-cuff mention of Kevin in blogs I would imagine.
Alison didn't even know what was coming...maybe hadn't even considered it. And we thought I needed protecting from her. Suddenly I was the one doing the hurting. In all my own hurt, I walk around hurting - sometimes people I love.

Oh coveted eternity. Creator, redeem this world...it is NOT our home.

Blessings and peace on you and your family, whether separated by eternity or not. He is not safe. But He is good.

- oxo to baby Tristan (you should be two!)
- heart hugs for baby B and his mommy J and daddy R

Not nearly hipster enough to blog

Reader warning: "I am that thing worse than a cautionary tale: I am a horror story, an example of something terrible going wrong when you least expect it, and for no good reason, a story to be kept from pregnant women, a story so grim and lessonless it's better not to think about it at all." - Elizabeth McCracken (in An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination)

Well sooner or later - if all my wildest dreams come true, if the virtual guarantees of surgeons and specialists half-way across the country really hold up - you'll be onto me and my new wardrobe anyway. I had said to a friend weeks ago, "I'm not sure what I'm waiting for" - some magical moment where God put in His bid for a guaranteed success too maybe? - "but it feels better waiting. God-willing this will be a long 9 months, so I don't want to have to subject too many people to walking the WHOLE thing with us."

And so, although I am not nearly hipster enough to blog, here I am. Blogging and pregnant. 18 2/7 weeks pregnant...but who's counting? I'd love to have lovely little chats with some of you dear friends and sound all ignorantly blissful and excited and "plan-y" and "sure thing-y" about it - those were the days. But it seems easier to let you read what's really going on in my life instead of living the prettier, more polite version, with me over the phone or over coffee. So this is our announcement to you all...a blog...who would have ever thought? We totally live in "the future." (Wow, that comment made me sound super 30ish.)

So for you who found this blog online somehow, desperate in the middle of the night to hear something from someone besides "time heals all wounds" and "God always has a plan" and "God is good all of the time" and "you're such a strong person" and everything but the only thing you actually want to talk about which is the too short story of your sweet babe, let me introduce myself - at least, the part that interests you:

The loves of my life:

Kevin - my ezer kenegdo, the lifesaver alongside me, married since Oct '03

Elias - our firstborn, our first lost, at 18 3/7 weeks in Dec '07

Elianna - our second, our first to cry, our second to bury, born at 22 3/7 weeks in Jan '09

Tahlia - our oldest, our gift, our sweet girl, born and adopted in May '09

Maura - our littlest, our biggest "why", with a heartbeat until 9 weeks and miscarried at 11 weeks in Dec of '10

and now, "New baby" (Tahlia's words) - Due November 5th, 2011, kicking me since last week

And so there's maybe more to say about this pregnancy than there is for someone whose list of loves isn't quite so dark. And both my before-life and my since-life personalities cater better to being honest without having to look you in the eye than pretending cheerful things while sitting beside you. And so I'll let you know how things are going. You can still ask. You should in fact. But I also need a place where I can share when the answer to your question is raw and ugly instead of pink and blue and fuzzy.

Lastly, to answer your final question. We are doing well. Baby is growing. My body is well and normal for the first time in a pregnancy. The surgical procedures I had in Chicago 18 months ago are doing their job. And so I am simultaneously 1) taking inventory on our baby supplies and my maternity clothes and all of the things that will be necessary now until one lovely day this fall when my baby is born and lives like it seems to work out for 99% of the population, and 2) pinching myself back into the reality of how ignorantly blissful that all sounds...and who am I of all people to accept bliss when it comes to childbearing as even a possible option?

Believing...hoping at least, that this is the day of vengeance of our God...

Isaiah 61

 ¹ “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me,

      Because the LORD has anointed Me
      To preach good tidings to the poor;
      He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
      To proclaim liberty to the captives,
      And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
       ² To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD,
      And the day of vengeance of our God;
      To comfort all who mourn,
       ³ To console those who mourn in Zion,
      To give them beauty for ashes,
      The oil of joy for mourning,
      The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
      That they may be called trees of righteousness,
      The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.”