Post 52 | Body

I fly over the dirt streaks of Utah, the sand dunes in Arizona, the stretch marks of earth. Where the ground has ripped, flowed and held together.  Canyons in the body. I know what it would feel like to run my fingers across the tops of the torn land (if I could reach out from the airplane window).  The globe is marked. I know what it feels like to be a marked globe; I know where those purpley-brown and white stripes get soft and thin. Pregnant, giving breath to the world. Both the midwest and my mid center are beautiful.

pc: here & here

It looks like bread dough now. White, pocked, puffed. Your little feet step into me, your head jolts ungracefully up and down, smashing, plopping, looking for comfort. You knead me. You need me. The rolls. “…and the bread that I will give is my flesh.” (John 6:33) I tell you to hold still and stop wiggling. I jiggle beneath you.  You press into me hard. “Ow!” We do communion with our bodies, in our breaking and crying, with the whine. “Stop it!” You look sorry. I feel sorry. We hold each other and find rest, eventually.  You always find the softest places of me.

pc: here & here

I look in the mirror and when I grab it it looks like cinnamon rolls in my fist which is like Christmas which is like giving which is “for unto us a Child is born.” Yes, body, for unto us a child was born. It started with blood before summer camp, and before all the other girls I knew. It started with secret meetings in the bathroom with a small blue and green box and the vent fan on loud. 143 blood cycles later, there was you.  We’ve been practicing! Implantation spotting, vomitting blood into the toilet, blood draws in Quest Lab, bloody gums (floss more, mama), my blood-streaked warm baby laid upon me in the birth room, the enormous blood pads, the smaller blood pads, cracked nipples, our first anniversary after having a baby, the big fall when I tried to go running the first time after giving birth, 144 cycles. “This is my blood, which is poured out for you.” The wine and the bread and the remembering. 

pc: here & here

“This is my body, given for you.”

I hope it’s not unbearably sacrilegious to compare fussy nap time to the holy sacraments or having one baby and saving the entire world by conquering death. To compare myself, born in 1989, to the YHWH, The Father of Lights.  But we share with Him. We share in His world, in His home, in His family, in His body. He shows us pictures and postcards and scars of what it’s all about, while we wait patiently to see and feel the whole scene ourselves. We maybe don’t know about groaning under the weight of heavenly wrath, but we know about groaning in L&D Room 304A. We maybe don’t know how strong the love for His children is, but we know how strong our love for our children is.  We maybe don’t have scars on our side from a sword at the end of life, but we have scars on our sides to make new life.  We maybe don’t understand the close kindred bond of the Trinity or how safely welcomed into that relationship we are, but we know sex and how new life is made from it.  We maybe don’t understand how much more brightly we’ll be able to see, but we know the difference when we put our contacts in.  We get to live in the analogies and hints.

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

One more day, one more trip around the sun, one more moment in the Son, one more chance in this body -- joining with all creation in the song and dance. It's a gift.

Post 51 | Last Christmas, I Gave You My Heart

“He went to the church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and for, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of homes, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed of any walk, that anything, could give him so much happiness.”

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Last Christmas was mom's last Christmas with us.  Most of us knew it.  She and I had already had the conversation about stopping chemo so she could at least enjoy her last days without being unbearably sick.  Our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as a family are some of our strongest, most important traditions.  We go to a Christmas Eve service, come home and eat chili from the "Chili Bar," watch "It's A Wonderful Life" by the fire, and open one present before tomorrow.  Between us falling asleep and waking, Santa Mama comes to town.  Though she Christmas shopped year-round, she nearly always finished wrapping in the wee hours of the night (I've come to believe this late deadline crunch is attributed to basketball season all winter, ten whole people to think about, love on and wrap for, and a bit of the adrenaline and magic that comes in the final hour.  Every year she would say "Next year I'm getting this done sooner!" and she never did.  It was perfect.)  When she'd find a good sale in March, or a cute pair of socks in June, she'd snatch them up where they lay wait in Forbidden Closet.  All year she'd watch, gather, store up and prepare for our Christmas Day.  The presents don't go under the tree at our house until Christmas Day.  She would bring all the gifts down, load by load, creating a mass, a sea, a fortress of gifts not just filling the underbelly of the fraser fir, but marching out to the sides of the room.  

Stockings were Christmas Day opener.  She hand-wrapped every individual gum and toothbrush, she didn't "package" the items to make wrapping easier.  The orange tic-tacs, the new comb, the bath salts, the body lotion, the kitschy boxers for the boys and dangle bracelets for the girls.  Each wrapped with teeny love.  They were always far too stuffed to hang from the mantle so she laid them out on couches and armchairs, like fat babies being made to pose for a photograph.   Mama would clean up and straighten the family room, light some candles, and turn her attention to Christmas breakfast.  We had the same thing every year for my whole life: some sort of egg and sausage bake, hot cinnamon buns, and orange rings sprinkled with coconut flakes.  She'd listen to holiday music and my dad would come check the fire in the hearth for her, keeping it fed all night long.  She knew 1000 things I never knew as she worked alone those silent nights, cracking eggs and cracking into history.  After sliding breakfast into the fridge, she would take a picture of the glittering family room, and find a spare space to slide herself in the "workshop" for a couple hours of sleep.

No matter how bad things were in our life, she could pull off Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  In the earliest years her entire-pregnancy-long nausea would have been enough reason to call it a day, but sickness and throwing up couldn't stop her: she made us our Christmas.  Sometimes we had guests, other years it was just our 'little' family.  One year we were moving across the country on New Years Day, and our worldly goods had gotten on a moving truck a few weeks earlier.  But we still had Christmas -- presents and all.  Cinnamon rolls and coconut oranges to boot.  One year she had lost her mother, her best friend in this world, suddenly to cancer.  She gave birth to a little boy a few weeks later.   She cried much that Christmas, and didn't take very many pictures, and she held her brown-haired baby feeling more alone than usual.  But the wall of gifts was as marvelous as any year before.  One year, she had a miscarriage before Thanksgiving and had positive cancer results before Christmas.  The troops stormed and rallied, she protected her drainage tube from surgery while she fielded hugs and excited toddlers covered in sticky cheer.  Our friends wrapped presents and decorated that year, but when just before midnight came on Christmas Eve, mama was the one to crawl out of bed and arrange the gifts, to chop the sausage and onions.  A few years she battled an ill depression, a sadness deep in the throes of human experience.  Children who hated her, hated life, hurt her, hurt themselves.  She knew they weren't happy or whole; we all sat around on Christmas morning and saw the vacant anger in their eyes.  How do you reach them?  How do you end their destructive cycle?  At times she feared for their lives.  Yet she sat on, legs spread out in a V on her bedroom floor, cutting itty pieces of tape to hold together the waving-snowmen-paper she was using to wrap breath mints for that child.  Crying over their pain, her pain, praying for that Miracle Baby to come do something, a miracle!  Help them!  They know not what they do, and I love them! Tears of a weary soul.  Tears onto wrapping paper bought 11 months ago for about 30 cents.  How could she have known she and her stockings were the miracle?  That those 2-for-1 Pillsbury cans and long nights were going to save their lives?  

Now, I believe it was God in those things, God in the wee-hour baking and ornament-hanging.  But it was her He used, her He gave.  Last year one of those children came home from rehab right before Christmas, and that very child a few weeks later, with chilling tenderness, carried mom in his arms and laid her down to die.  In one hand he held hers, in the other he held an iPod where Chris Tomlin repeated "I hear the voice of many angels sing, 'Worthy is the Lamb!' And I hear the cry of every longing heart, 'Worthy is the Lamb!'"  He wept over his mother, whispering how he loved her.  Often falling to his back, face turned upwards with the sheen of great love and great sorrow painting his cheeks.  She asked him to stay home, to stay with her this holiday season.  He had new, motivated, healthy plans for his future.  And she supported them, wanted him to follow through on them, but asked "Can you wait until after Christmas?"  

Last Christmas there was no hail mary.  Amazing friends came once again to wrap for us.  This was not the first or second or third year they've done so.  There are plenty of children grown enough to decorate, and we did.  We found the boxes with dad and pulled them out of the garage and worked on setting up the house while we ate a dinner someone brought us.  The oxygen tank upstairs heaved and ho-ed in it's unmistakable, awful way.  For the first time I went with mom to buy stocking stuffers.  She was cold, tired, and green.  I told her more than once that she could go wait in the car; I'll finish.  She refused until the third aisle.  "I'm so sorry." she said, not making eye contact.  I hated that I knew she felt like a failure.  I can hardly think of when I loved her more.  "Shannon likes the cucumber smells, but Katie doesn't.  Oh, and get blue things for Lauren.  Apparently she's done with pink."  She parted with a chuckle.  Once I was done, I brought all the bags and bags out to the car where she was resting, eyes closed, still.  "...Is she alive?" White and clear chunky slime sat in a puddle outside her door.  I stepped over it to open her door and help buckle her in.  She was alive. 

Christmas Eve came and she didn't go to the service, nor was she in the kitchen making chili, and she wasn't up in her room watching specials while she wrapped.  The house seemed especially messy and things just weren't… right.  The presents were already under the tree because they had been wrapped for a week.  The stockings weren't as full as when mom does them, and they were hanging over the fireplace.  As I nursed my baby I told my husband that mom wasn't going to sneak downstairs once we all fell asleep.  Caleb put Rowdy to bed, and I stayed up with my sister Katie.  She worked on breakfast, and I cleaned.  And cleaned.  And cleaned.  Starting in the family room, arranging the presents in a little more "her" way, vacuuming the pine needles, fluffing the pillows.  I moved into the dining room and set the table for our holiday feasts.  One wine glass at a time (because even juice is so much better in a wine glass).  My present to mom was a gallery of our family on the staircase wall.  Her present to me was my whole life; her whole life.  Caleb worked on hanging while I spread out the table runner and counted dining room chairs.  Katie's present was a recreation of some of my mom's favorite childhood pictures of us.  She wrapped each frame and grew the tree pile once she was done.  Slowly everyone finished their jobs, even me, but I stayed up.  I couldn't stop coming up with things to do. I didn't want it to be over.  I didn't want my last Christmas Eve to end, and to wake up for the final time to mom with us on Christmas morning.  The sun started to rise, so somewhere in the 6 am hour I decided to get a couple hours of sleep.  Everything looked 'perfect.'  I understood a few new things, a few things my mom knew, when I crawled into bed.  

Sadly and happily, there was no avoiding it; The Last Christmas With Mom Day came.  As opposed to other years, we waited downstairs -- quietly, to let her sleep -- and finally helped her up when she was ready.  We stood at the bottom of the stairs (I wanted to applaud) as she carefully came out of her room with a santa hat on.  I think I wanted to be able to cry, but I couldn't.  I was too full.  All of us together.  

"And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." I John 5:11 "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.  And His name shall be Wonderful." Isaiah 9:9 "Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder." Isaiah 29:14 "Mary kept all these things, storing them up in her heart to ponder." Luke 2:19

We're the lucky ones.  Most often, it seems, the ones left behind don't get to have the preparation and information we did.  Dying from cancer is tragic, because all death is, but it wasn't instant.  And we had time (never enough, of course -- but that's why there is forever) and we made memories.  Once you lose someone so close, it's hard to not wonder who will be lost next.  Could this be my last Christmas with my husband or son? A future baby growing in my body? My sisters? Or brothers? My dad? My best friends? My husband's family? His siblings? Our grandparents?  Our aunts, uncles, cousins?  What will happen between this Christmas and next?  When will the bell toll again?  It's a morbid curiosity but at times, for me, a very matter-of-fact one.  We can't stay here.  It isn't safe.  They aren't just looking for male two year old boys, they are looking for everyone.  We have to escape.  And we will.  We'll hand in our visa to a Free Country and never fear the terrors of night.  But until then, we will not let Death, or it's brother Fear of Death, win.  We will pop open the cinnamon rolls, find tic-tacs in our giant socks, and let the fire keep us warm.  We will carry on what has been passed to us, and if what has been passed is very bad we will do our best to make it very good.  In our case, we had someone in this battlefield who loved us very much and if it's possible to have that kind of year-long, late-night, itty-tape, tired-out, won't-stop love here, what must The Land of Advent Seen be like?  Who must be there?  How must it feel?  It simply must be similar to our last Christmas Day, and ten thousand more.

Merry Christmas, people of the world.  Merry, merry Christmas.

Post 50 | Unwrapped

that one small extra yopp put it over!
finally! at last! from that speck on that clover,
their voices were heard! they rang out clear and clean.
and the elephant smiled, "do you see what i mean?
they've proved they are persons, no matter how small.
and their whole world was saved by the smallest of all!"
horton hears a who

/ image by lennart nilsson

"Your baby's critical development will tail off in the next couple of days and weeks. His main task during the next six months will be to grow larger and stronger."

"Your baby has reached the maintenance phase.  All the major organs in formed, now they need to get bigger to support a bigger body outside the womb."

"His liver is making bile and her kidneys are secreting urine into her bladder.  He can close his fingers, curl his toes and clench his eye muscles when exposed to bright light."

"His ears are almost in their final positions on the side of his head.  Tiny fingerprints are now at the tips of her fingers (get that ink ready!)."

"Your baby has sucking muscles in her cheeks, so when you poke your tummy gently she will feel it and start rooting, preparing for survival in just a few months."  

"If you're having a girl, she now has approximately 2 million eggs in her ovaries. Half of your future grandchildren are inside you, too!"

"He may potentially be able to suck his thumb. Vocal cords created, preparing for the very first cry." 

(The following images are other babies at Ryan's last week of life.)

/ image by lennart nilsson

/ image by lennart nilsson

/ image by baby centre

/ image by amd worldwide

One of my after-midnight-routine these days is to spend time googling development and progress at the age Ryan died.  I feel like there was so much I didn't get to know about him, so studying and reading and re-reading what happens week by week, day by day if I can find it helps me.  It makes me feel more like a mother to my child than a freak-science-expirament.  The more I can (kind of) know about him, the better.  I don't know how many drawings, ultrasounds, real photographs and diagrams I've scrolled through of other babies at Ryan's age.  I didn't get to see him very well when he was born.  He was wrapped up in lots of tissue, cord and placenta.  When I held him I could feel the shape of his little self but I wasn't up for Body Scavenger Hunt in my tub of blood.  The thought of trying to tear away tissue but accidentally tearing off my baby's arm was too unsettling, and, to be honest, too dishonoring.  

(I've debated writing about heavy details, like these, because I know it's cringe-worthy and entirely un-cute and and distasteful.  What is sacred and just for me and Caleb?  What is a crucial part of our child's story, our story?  But there it is.  Here was our reality:  as I sat in the Nile's Curse, unsure as to what else would come next [more clots? More tissue? Did the placenta still have to come out?] we had to decide: get a knife or scissors and cut through this, but risk a gruesome dismembering scene, or let the wraps be and never see our child's face.  Ever.  It was an impossible and forceful decision.)

/ image from pregnant pause

 I was crying and standing up with candy-cane legs so I could see if anything important was happening.  And we decided to wrap our baby up in a blue towel, kept in his fleshy swaddling clothes.  The next day we closed him over with rocks and dirt in the earth, rolled the stone over the tomb, so to speak.  I await the day when that tiny hole is empty, when "he's not here!," when the scraps that embalmed his corpse lay in the dust, for he is risen... and alive.

It seems everywhere I go women are having their second babies.  Even the Duchess.  (We were pregnant with our first at the same time.  And who doesn't like to have an emotional connection to English Royalty?)  It seems that mom's in my Facebook groups are having Number Two by the droves.   I don't just see pregnant women... I see pregnant women with a toddler.  My second baby should look like this right now:

/ image by lennart nilsson

But he's wrinkled like a raisin in a wooden box 1300 miles away from me.  That makes me cry.  I feel my un-full-ness and am not a good person to talk to about how uncomfortable the third-trimester is (right now, at least).  Sometimes easy, deep, capable-bladdered sleeping is uncomfortable too.  Sometimes there is more than one way a heart can burn.  Occasionally I've felt phantom elbow-punches and pelvic pain (which is apparently normal, especially for women who lose children in the second and third trimester).  

/ one of four "belly pictures" i have.  one of four pictures i have of just me and my second little one. 

/ ryan was about this "much" old in the previous photo.

"And who took charge of the ocean when it gushed forth like a baby from the womb? That was me! I wrapped it in soft clouds, and tucked it in safely at night. Then I made a playpen for it, a strong playpen so it couldn’t run loose, And said, ‘Stay here, this is your place. Your wild tantrums are confined to this place.’" Job 38, MSG

“Do you know where Light comes from and where Darkness lives so you can take them by the hand and lead them home?" Job 38, MSG

“Master, come and see,” they said. Now Jesus wept.  And The Jews said, “Look how deeply He loved him.” John 11, MSG

"'Come!' say the Spirit and the Bride. Whoever hears, echo, 'Come!'
Is anyone thirsty? Come! All who will, come and drink, drink freely of Life!"

"He who can testify to these things, say it again: 'I’m on my way! I’ll be there soon!'" Rev 22, MSG

"He came out, a cadaver, wrapped from head to toe, and with a cover over his face.  Jesus told them, 'Unwrap him and let him loose.'" John 11, MSG

Post 49 | Families Who Made Me Want To Travel With Kids

"i can show you the world,
shining, shimmering, splendid."

I don't like being patronized, and I also don't like being wrong.  I'm to the point in life now where I realize how much I don't know, but I care enough about knowledge and experience to want all that juicy goodness.  People (in person and through testimony and indirectly) told me how impossible it was to travel with children.  ("Make sure you wait to have kids so you and Caleb can travel.  That all stops once babies come!  And you'll have to wait until retirement!"  It's okay, I used to talk about people and their future-babies completely out of line.  I have since learned better.  So I'm not bitter.  I know these people mean well.) 

Yes, is it true that having a minivan ("No, we're going to have an SUV.") full of kids changes your practical ability to travel like two honeymooners?  Sure, yes. But is there a way, as adults, to pursue the good things you love in life, when you have the energy and resources to do them, even if you have to be a little creative?  Even if you have offspring?  I say yes, maybe even especially in those instances. 

My parents never carted us to Europe for summer vacation, but we did get a more-than-normal dose of traveling as children.  All across America, especially up and down both coasts, Mexico and The Caribbean are in our photo albums.  My first trip to the beach happened when I was eight days old, and I flew on a plane across the country when I was four months old.  But aside from my own family, there are a handful of people I've watched and learned from over the years.  They've helped us have the gumption, realistic perspective and wonder to travel with our own little person.  It seems less intimidating when people around you are saying with their actions "Look, the effort was worth it.  You can do it, too!"

The Kaiser's

Nate and Jaclyn are renowned and scary-brilliant photographers.  These two crazies always seemed to be one place or another, tethered to their home-base in Los Angeles.  But a couple of years ago they made the huge decision to ditch suburban-city life and move away to the mountains.  They pulled their two kids out of school (opting for home-school), bought them some hiking boots, and now they explore the place they call home as well as the rest of the earth.  Their daily life and travel life are such beautiful adventures.  

/ image by nate kaiser

The Davis'

When I first heard of 'Taza' and her family she was living a stones-throw away in Washington DC.  Shortly thereafter they moved their two toddlers to New York City.  I love watching them do childhood in the heart of such a fast-city.  They always seem to find the cozy places.  But then I really popped an airplane seatbelt when I watched them travel throughout Europe as a family!  They've been multiple times and it's inspiring!  Toddlers Take Tuscany! And the Ukraine! And Prague!

/ image by naomi davis

The Coulson's

Aside from the unity and gentleness in this family (simply put: they are all nuts for each other), I love these guys because they remind me to get. out. side.  They're near the water or in the grass or under the trees constantly.  When I see pictures of them it makes me want to go for a walk and inhale earth.  With my family.

/ image by tim coulson

The Ferney's

Jordan and Paul Ferney made the stupendously bold decision to move from San Francisco to Paris, France with their two little boys.  That kind of spine is impressive when you're a couple, or even alone, but as a full family unit... I say bravo! I bow at your feet.  And they sure seemed to have had a heck of a time being there together.  What a magical experience from oldest to youngest!

/ image by jordan ferney

The Prouty's

Similarly to the Kaiser's, the Prouty Family sold their Southern California home and moved away to the mountains.  However, they loaded their four young children into a trailer eventually ending up in Washington State.  They saw some amazing things on their country-wide road trip!  I wanted to jump into their images like Mary Poppins Pictures!  Brave, creative and happy -- my kind of family!

/ image by joy prouty

The Baxter's

I'm going to let Bethy do the talking (an excerpt from her blog): "In every place I've lived we've always explored and known our area. It's fun to travel and vacation, but the majority of life is spent near home. Growing up in New Hampshire we took in so much of the beauty there. We loved regular visits to Boston, Maine and spots all over the beautiful granite state. When we were in DC for a year it was the same. We took in that area and loved every bit of it. Just simple days - together as a family, grabbing something to eat, spending most of the day in the car and seeing somewhere new - enjoying what was near to us. Not trying to get all cliche here - but it's so easy to forget the beauty, fun, history and places to explore just outside our doorsteps."

/ image by elizabeth baxter

So I say: whether you are single or married or a parent or anything else... Figure out how to travel if you want to!  Even if that means wandering your own city a little more often.  Be stubborn about it, and don't worry about what "they" say.  Enjoy your family and world to the fullest!

Post 48 | The Miscarriage Story

*** mildly graphic miscarriage information and personal details. ***

I had been told my womb was empty.  Two ultrasounds, both external and internal, showed an empty uterus.  I had bled a very very little.  Google search: second trimester miscarriage without bleeding.   Google search: miscarry without knowing it.  "Though you are supposed to be 14 weeks, it is likely the baby passed quite a while ago.  It's possible he was so small you didn't realize it had happened."  Google search:  first trimester miscarriage without bleeding.  "You will bleed for the next few days, but if the bleeding gets worse instead of tapering off, come back to the emergency room.  We'll want to make sure you aren't hemorrhaging or fighting an infection."

It sucked.  Our Ryan was due on my parent's would-be 26th Wedding Anniversary.  Right before the holiday season (our first without mama bear.)  We ran away to the seashore for a month -- me, my husband, my two babies -- both of whom lived off me, one sucking from the outside, the other sucking from the inside.  Out in the sunshine, with the three of them truly all-around me, I felt so much life.  I "noticed" plants in a way I never have before.  I sat in the rose gardens and enjoyed even the browning, rippled petals.  

But in the final 72 hours of our trip, my body hissed and leaked death.  I knew before I called the midwife, before I went to the ER, before I stood from the bathroom.  I didn't even get to say good-bye.  How cruel to never get a "Hello!" but no good-bye either?  How eerie and ridiculous.  I felt (mostly) physically fine and wanted to continue with our vacations plans, to close out this month away with family time in Disneyland.  It's the place I feel closest to my mother, and missing her in normal life is enough, so missing her in my-first-miscarriage-life was an aggressive punch to the nose.  I needed Main Street USA and churros.  It was going to be my escape to what, I believe, has promises of Heaven written all over it.  

Our Disney day was outstanding.  Rowdy responded like the children in the commercials, Caleb did that weird-laugh on his favorite rides and little girls dressed like Cinderella rode on carved, flying elephants above a singing fountain.  

And my baby, who I was told was no longer with me, was there too.  I found out he was there after the fireworks (the west coast version of the place Caleb asked me to go through life together -- he and I -- forever), just as Fantasmic began.  Crampy twists turned into labor contractions.  I leaned over to Caleb: "I think we need to go. Now. Or we will regret it."  He put Rowdy in the ergo, slung on the backpack and grabbed my hand.  We were going to try to get out of the park and to our hotel, but as we jogged past tiki torches and teriyaki skewers in AdventureLand, I commanded the need for a bathroom.  "Oh no. Caleb, Caleb, something is happening.  Something is happening right now."  It was the miscarriage version of dumping out water from those translucent blue kegs found in offices and waiting rooms everywhere.  Glug, glug, glug.  I could feel the heave and dump, over and over.  Caleb didn't want me to use the bathroom alone in case I passed out, but it was filled with women and little girls and even in the moment it felt not-right to storm in there with him.  People were around.  If I needed help I could yell or knock.

february 2012

may 2014

may 2014

Instantly the toilet filled with red liquid life.  I focused on breathing, on not getting light-headed.  Blood streamed down my legs.  I got up and went back to my husband -- I realized I might not be able to help passing out.  It was a lot of blood.  In the meantime he had found a Disney employee who ran with us to the charming First Aid building.  Women in teal polo shirts whirred around me, laying down mats and enormous pads and making horrible faces.  We waffled between getting an ambulance or having Caleb go back to our hotel to get our rental car to drive me to the hospital himself.  I didn't want an ambulance -- I wasn't dying.  I knew that.  Caleb, armed with two dead iPhones, a hand-drawn map on a sheet of paper with a blue castle logo, and a sleeping baby in a black carrier, left me to take a tram to the main road to walk to the hotel to get our car to return to a drop-off loop where I would join him.

I laid on my back in a room much like a movie-set of "old school hospital rooms."  Neat, clean blue beds lined against two walls.  White and bright, silver and sterile.  I went in and out of sleep during contractions and blood pours.  After 45 minutes I was woken up by a soft-handed brunette security guard.  "Your husband is here.  I'm going to take you to him."  I put my hand by my side to push myself up and I splashed in my own blood.  I was laying in a pool, half an inch thick.  The security woman laid three heavy-duty pads down for me and I carefully set myself into the wheel chair.  She pushed me out secret passages and behind-the-scenes areas to get to the road where Caleb was waiting.  Even in the moment, I knew how cool that was.  

Caleb looked relieved to see me, and terrified at the amount of blood.  Relief and terror at the same time is a face I won't forget.  We were (in essence) turned away at three clinics.  "All our beds are full, and we can't guarantee a time when she could be seen.  But she's welcome to wait in the waiting room."   Caleb debated telling them I was having a heart attack.  "Do they not know how serious this is?!  What if you're hemorrhaging?! Would they just like you bleed to death because there isn't a bed for you?!"  I like his angry rants.  Even if they talk about me dying.  He loves me.

We went to the biggest hospital we could find.  All the beds were full.  It was 11:30 pm on Friday night and I was seventh in line for a room.  I sat in my bloody wheelchair and crunchy (useless) pad until 2:30 am on Saturday morning.  Once in a room, Caleb held my newly IV-ed hand and 'slept' on a pillow of metal bed-rail.  I was so sad and tired.  The ultrasound tech came in two hours later and Caleb saw our baby on the screen.  A head, arms and fingers, legs and toes.  He looked at me tearfully.  I was afraid of the miscarriage process.  It hadn't happened yet and it had been so bloody and painful already.  What do I do?    What if it doesn't happen all on its own?  What am I supposed to expect?  Pieces?  Clots?  Chunks?  How much bleeding is too much?  What pain is concerning pain?  They don't do Bradley classes on how to miscarry.  Where to miscarry.  "I'm going with a highly-medicated home birth."  

The doctor saw us at 6:00 am and told me a few things I didn't already know: our baby had died at 12 weeks, my cervix was completely open,  and he expected me to miscarry all by myself in the next 48 hours.  April 10th is when he died.  I know April 10th.  It's the day my dear friend delivered her dead son, Bobby.  He was 20 weeks old and absolutely beautiful.   He was also perfect: no chromosomal abnormalities, no defects, no missing body parts.  He died one day, for no medical or biological reason.  I was texting our other dear friend Becca all day.  She was beside Janet, Bobby's mama, helping her labor to birth her baby.  No one came in to check the heart rate.  No one turned on the heating station.  Janet, Becca and I were all pregnant together.  Expecting within a couple months of each other.  Janet's loss was blind-siding, and I held my tummy all day long, letting tears come as they willed.  Before I went to bed, as I was receiving pictures of Bobby's tiny face, I felt a mermaid-tail flip inside me.  It was early, but my first and only kick of Ryan's I got.  I now wonder if maybe that's when he died?  Or maybe he was playing hard and fell asleep later in the night and then woke up in heaven?  I remember April 10th.

 We left the hospital and drove straight to the airport after fetching our eldest from Caleb's brother and his girlfriend in the waiting room.  A long night was had by all.  We had an 11 am flight to catch.  We talked over and over about our options, but decided to take our chances and fly.  We were headed to Dallas for me to shoot a wedding.  I couldn't think about that yet.  And I still had a week to worry about the wedding.  But I wanted to try to arrive, to get the flight out of the way.  We carried our luggage and Disney plastic bags and crap to the big windows in front of the ticketing gates.  I tried to find Rowdy's birth certificate and all the liquids in the carry-ons.  Rowdy took delight in pulling one item of clothing out at a time, putting it on his head, and running a few circles before starting again.  We let him.  Caleb had diarrhea (sausage McMuffin and coffee after a night in the emergency room, anyone?).  I felt thin and waif-like (I'm not... but my body was timid and drained.)  

You don't know until you know.  My group of three pregnant friends was down to one.  My mom wasn't around to call or come help.  My body held my dead baby.  And we were playing peek-a-boo at gate B3 in LAX.  When it comes time to never-be-the-same, you somehow just do.  

I delivered Ryan Day Morris on Sunday night, May 4th, in a friend's tub.  There are 100 reasons why I should have never been in that particular friend's house, let alone master bathroom.  But I'm grateful that that's where I was.  I'm grateful my husband was with me.   I'm grateful we weren't 30,000 feet in the air.  Contractions had laid low for most of the morning and afternoon, but 15 minutes after we arrived at our destination they started.  When they got too painful, I left the kitchen and conversation and went to the bedroom to labor.  

I'm grateful that though I didn't get 12,000 mother-moments with Ryan, I got a birth experience with him.  I had been so afraid of golf-ball-sized blood clots.  I worried I wouldn't know when he had come out, or that I would accidentally flush him down the toilet, or that he would get stuck.  The Lord told me "You're in labor.  You pushed out a very big baby once before, and now you're going to do the same with a much smaller baby."  The mental transition to over-the-top-clotty-period to natural labor was just what I needed.  It was calm, peaceful and nurturing.  It was my last chance to do something with Ryan, to be a mama to my baby.  I enjoyed in a heartbreaking way every stitch of it.  Swaying and breathing, with a good daddy rubbing my back.

The final large contractions set in, and I got in the warm tub (at my husband's recommendation) and quickly felt the urge to push.   Two painless pushes later, my apple-sized (much bigger than expected!) little one was "born."  No nurses.  No cord to cut.  No cry to wait for.  No skin-to-skin for bonding.  Caleb lifted his little boy out of the bloody water and wrapped him in a blue towel.  You don't know until you know how much you can love a wrinkled brown (human) lump.  The next morning we drove him out to the farm where his father and I met.  

On Tuesday May 6th our little family of four went out to the land we love so much, and we left one we love so much.  The house was built for the joy of little children like him; built with visions of him in mind.  Ryan ("Child of the King") Day ("Light, Hope") Morris lays outside our future-bedroom window, in the center of the future-front-garden.   When I walk over to his hole in this red earth, my heart carbonates and spills over.  Inside his too-small wood tomb (which is sealed shut by dad so "the ants don't get him.") is a heartfelt letter from each parent, and "dit! dit!" (sticks) from big brother.  I look forward to the day you sword-fight with sticks, while mom and I sit on the front porch with the Lion of Judah laughing at our side.  

"I love that God is leaving nothing undone. It's like He's going back in time and mending wounds, the big gashes and the tiny tears. He sees them all and He does not forget even when I try. I pushed things into the 'forget' corner because they were too small of hurts that didn't matter all that much. And yet God brings them to the light and says, 'This one too. I'll mend that too. I'm not done here.'"  [The Nato's]

Sing like never before, oh my soul.

Good-bye my baby.  Snuggle grandma for me.  Go delight in being the child of the King, and I'll be there to play and talk and get to know you very soon.