My first foray into motherhood began with abdominal pains. My friend Kayla accompanied me to the emergency room, where they informed me that I had a UTI, and a baby on board. Not wanting to announce this news over the phone, I called my beloved and asked him to meet me there. White faced and looking very much like a terrified kid, he responded, "How did this happen?" Um....
Two weeks later, the UTI was gone, but the abdominal pains were not. The ultrasound technician investigating my plight found no evidence of a pregnancy. Though we would check again in two weeks, the doctor told me, sorry, but there is a 90% chance that you have miscarried, and the yolk sack has been reabsorbed by your body. These things are quite common in early pregnancy, usually indicative of a problem with the embryo, and are in any case unpreventable. Sorry, and see you in two weeks.
During this nerve racking two weeks, we discovered that we very much wanted our baby, and were, after all, as ready as possible to suck it up and become parents together. Jaded by my own father, I gave him the opportunity for an out, and let him know that under no circumstances if he took it, would he be offered another chance at being let back in. He was all in. We did not want to loose our "speck", and so, we waited.
It turned out that our baby was well and healthy in there the whole time, but that the afore mentioned technician was just a relief person who just overlooked my baby....
We looked for a house to settle into as a family, and the pregnancy passed smoothly, until 33 weeks, when I went into early labor. After a harrowing hospital stay over Christmas and 2 weeks of bed rest, Kayla was on her way over for a movie, when my water broke. 5 hours later, I was catapulted into the world of motherhood. After 8 days in the NICU, they sent us home with our fragile little bundle and that surreal new mom feeling..."They are really sending me home, with this baby, to be alone with it? Are they mad? Don't they know I have no idea what I'm doing?"
The few friends that I had acquired since I moved to Billings were young, single, and childless. Lance worked two jobs so that I could stay home. It was winter, and I didn't want to take my preemie out where people could touch her; she could get RSV. We knew no other moms. We were isolated. I had to set my alarm every 2 hours for her feedings. I was exhausted. I had new mom hormones. I was emotional. I didn't know God. I was desperate. In those days, I depended so much on Lance. I'd be doing fine, and then exhaustion would sweep over me, and I could not see how I could possibly make it to the end of the day, I would call crying and beg him to come home. I worried about who I was, now that my whole life had been swallowed whole by the cavernous need of a newborn. Lance would come home wanting to be intimate, and he seemed, often, like just another parched drinker at a dry well. Though I loved them, I often felt I had nothing left to give, and nothing left for myself.
Oddly, all of this coincided with loving my life, my little family. I was introduced to the strange duality of motherhood; fatigue, stress, exhaustion, and guilt, being bedfellows with joy, gratitude, and love. Such was the terrain of my new world.
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