Just when I thought I was completely overloaded with the stress of trying to balance family life and study, I fell pregnant with our third daughter.
I’m not sure when you will pick this letter up and read it. It could be next year, 5 years from now, or 10 years from now, but when you read this I want you to remember again what it feels like to be just 4 months into motherhood.
It wasn’t until my symptoms changed that I insisted on seeing a different specialist at a different hospital. It was cancer, and I found out the week I turned 40.
As we down size, sell our house, and prepare to move into the bus I have been thinking a lot about the meaning of “home”.
And then I wonder, why am I the lucky one – when will I run out of luck?
It helps to know that when I’m deep in laundry and diapers, there’s another mama out there doing exactly the same.
It was a Friday night with a forecast of a full moon, lunar eclipse and comet. All three of these universal occurrences pulled my body into an 18-hour labor.
The first time I found out, a piece of my heart broke and it will never recover. It was all just words, but reading each one was like a knife to my chest. Words he used to save for me, feelings and emotions meant for only us, typed to woman after woman.
Prior to having my son I dreamt of play groups and mommy-and-me classes. I expected breastfeeding to be a breeze and I expected my son to take a bottle like most babies do.
Enjoy the extra cuddles in the middle of the night. Laugh at the milk spilled on the kitchen floor.
I may not ever forgive my OB, but I hope I forgive myself one day. And I dream of a future where empathy is a non-negotiable standard for professionals in the health and medical industry.
I wonder what will happen when someone asks them why they have two mums. I wonder about the time when one of them asks how babies are made and I hope we can answer proudly and tell them about the Greatest and Most Generous Man in the World.
I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. While I excelled in school and had fleeting thoughts of this and that; I never found my passion to pursue and turn into my ‘dream’ job.
As we looked around and saw other families grieving, we realized it was okay to be sad. It was okay to cry and just be in the moment.
Infertility temporarily changes a person. It can make you selfish; it can make you shamefully jealous; it can make you irritated when friends complain about their own kids…
Everybody says that cases like mine are “just” the 3%, but I matter. My right to choose my life mattered. My right to end my child’s suffering mattered.
