My daughter wants to have children, but she doesn’t want to be pregnant. It makes her angry that she has to go through the weight gain, the taking over of her body, the possible morning sickness, the pain of labor–all of it. How do you tell someone who has never experienced it that it is all worth it? I told her that someone once asked me “What do you love about being a woman?” and that I was overwhelmed with the sweet memories of being pregnant and that first moment when you feel that child move inside you like a winged goldfish and those moments with your baby to your breast looking down at the tiny face looking back up at you. Those tiny moments make up for all the big ones later when you are panicked, because you don’t know where your child is, or you’ve gotten a call in the middle of the night from a hospital or a policeman at the door wakes you up (I’m being extreme here; I’ve never had a policeman at my door). You always hold that baby in your heart that you once held in your body. The love is like nothing else I ever imagined. I would protect my children with my very life, and my instinct to survive and protect myself is strong. My instinct to protect them is stronger. Maybe that is because I had such a good mother. I took my mother for granted. I didn’t realize until after I had children and after I met adults whose childhoods were a series of horrors that I had a really good mother. I was so loved! That has defined my life. They say we tend to repeat the patterns of how we are raised. We do what we have been modeled to do. I was modeled to love my children. I have not been the best of mothers, but my children will tell you that they know my love.
Being a mom was both the hardest thing I have done and the easiest. Easy because I never had to figure out what my highest priorities were when I was a mom with two very dependent children. I didn’t need a Franklin organizer to help me make lists and prioritize them. My children were first priority. Housework got done, dinners got cooked, but first and foremost, my children were cared for. There was a simplicity and a purpose inherent in that. The surprising thing is that I still have things to teach them, and they still look to me as their example. Thank God! I am a much better person knowing they are watching! Hard because, well, do I really have to explain that part? Even those of you who have never been parents have had parents and you know what you put them through!
I had five miscarriages before my firstborn. I would go to the dry cleaners on Tuesdays, grocery shopping on Wednesdays, my part-time job 4 days a week from 9 am to 2 pm, to the gym on Mon, Wed, and Fri nights and I would have a miscarriage about every 4 1/2 months followed up by a doctor’s visit telling me that statistically my chances of still having a healthy baby were x percent. I told the doctor to keep his statistics to himself after the third miscarriage. I didn’t want them in my head. The first was the hardest, because I was the furthest along. I had heard the baby’s heartbeat and then on the next visit, the doctor couldn’t find it. I had to go through labor. The pain was endless, because even after the physical pain was over, the pain in my head and heart continued without ceasing. I felt hollowed out. The pain was the only thing filling all the empty space. I can still see the white sheets I left behind as I was moved from one gurney to another, the stains like scarlet flowers spreading over them, beautiful and terrible. The first baby was a boy. The doctors could find nothing wrong with him and surmised that I probably lost him to a “cord accident” meaning that the umbilical cord got wrapped around his neck and cut off his breathing or something along those lines. If he had lived he would be about 30 now. I never named him, because he never was truly mine. After him, I stopped telling my friends and family I was pregnant so I wouldn’t have to call them when I miscarried. I just kept going to the cleaners, to the grocery store, to work, to the hospital. I remember the first time when the hospital wanted to do x-rays and I was bleeding and miscarrying, and I still made them put the lead apron over my belly to protect the child I was losing. I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting him.
I went a little crazy for a time. I remember having lunch at a table with a few colleagues in the middle of the cafeteria at the large corporation where I worked and discussing some issue that was upsetting to us. I added my frustration with the situation and at some point I remember standing up and pounding the table with the flat of my had and saying in a very loud voice “. . . and I can’t believe I lost a perfectly healthy baby!” One of my friends, stood, took my arm and steered me out the door to the greenbelt where we walked and I cried. It was like that in those days. One of my friends told me that I wasn’t grieving in a healthy way and that I had to let it out, and I was so upset that she was telling me how to grieve that we were never friends in the same way again. I was numb with grief, and as I went through my days, most people had no idea. It was only when I got angry about something else that it seemed to open a portal directly to that river of grief that was dammed up inside me. I remember getting angry with my husband another time and in the middle of telling him how mad I was I started crying, and it was a long time before I could stop.
It is hard to say if I was angrier at God or myself during that time. My friends were all having babies, and the baby showers were unbearable. I stopped attending. I remember that during this time my friend Barbara offered to pay me to do some research for her for a paper she was writing. I agreed and as a result I was in a library one afternoon poring over stacks of books and articles. I remember flipping through a medical journal trying to find the article pertinent to my research and being stopped by some black and white pictures. They were pictures of child abuse, and showed the burn patterns left on the butt of a toddler who had been set on top of an electric stove burner as punishment. Those patterns are burned into my memory. I couldn’t move my eyes from the pictures. I was shaking and sorrowing and angry, and I got up, grabbed my papers and notes and left. I turned my face from the God that would allow people to leave babies in dumpsters, beat them, burn them and neglect them, but wouldn’t allow me to have one. I have always been in wonder of these amazings bodies that God created and treated mine like a temple. 1 Corinthians:19-20 says, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” I had never smoked; I tried it, but couldn’t get past the coughing. During this time of trying to get and stay pregnant, I didn’t drink, I ate organic, I bought mountain spring water, I exercised, I made my own musesli, and yogurt, and baked my own bread, etc. When I turned my face from God, I started doing things that were uncharacteristic of me. I drank a lot more for one thing. I was only drinking socially, but I wasn’t being careful about my alcohol consumption. I stopped making muesli. I stopped being kind to myself.
Then I had one of those Spirit moments.
Living Up to Mom 