Choosing Joy

A good friend of mine had her baby today! I have been so excited for her and thinking about her all day just waiting to hear the news of the arrival of her baby boy. She went in early in the morning and I heard from her that she was doing well around 10:30. I checked Facebook all day waiting for the announcement and when 4:30 came and I still hadn’t heard anything I started to have anxiety. All of these crazy thoughts started popping into my head of what could possibly be going wrong. About 15 minutes later the picture of her sweet baby was posted on Facebook. He was bundled up peacefully in her arms and it made me cry. I wasn’t crying out of happiness for her though, I was crying out of sadness for me. I’m crying right now just thinking about it. I know that sounds horrible and I felt horrible about it! That is why I had to do some serious soul searching.

 

Today I came to a realization…I AM TRAUMATIZED.

 

Giving birth, for me, has always been a day filled with sadness and heartache. Of course there is the physical pain of the actual birth but that goes so far on the back burner and is totally and completely overshadowed by the emotional pain of what my babies have had to go through. Even my 13 hour long, epidural free, pitocin driven delivery of Aidan is not what has stayed with me. The second he came out and was taken away, none of that pain mattered. I still remember that it was excruciating but those memories fade. What hasn’t faded is the emotional distress that I felt of not knowing if my baby was alive or dead. The fact that he is a strong, smart, handsome, loving 6 year old today doesn’t change the emotional scars that were formed that day.

 

The day that Maya was born was one of the happiest days of my life. I can’t say that about any of my other births. It’s not that I’m not grateful and it’s not that I don’t feel blessed that they were born but their birth days were sad. Maya was my one and only joyous birth. The scar from Aidan’s birth made it’s presents known when the very first thing that came out of my mouth when Maya was born was, “Is she breathing?” She was, and I had genuinely never felt so much pure joy as I did when I got to hold my newborn baby girl.

 

Arabella’s birth was equally as traumatic as Aidan’s. This one left Rich scarred as well. Aidan was taken away before we could know his condition so everything was left up to our fearful imaginations. Arabella went into cardiac arrest right before our eyes. The doctor performed CPR while Rich stood there watching and pleading with God for the life of his baby girl. Weeks after her birth he was having anxiety and flash backs. How can a person not be left with scars?

 

Then there was Eva. Of the 3 with the condition, we were the most prepared with her. We were 100% prepared as far as the medical aspect of it went. I knew that that was the easy part. The hard part is being emotionally prepared. I did not fear for her life when she was born and that made the day so much less traumatic. Knowing that it was going to be a long road and that it was going to be hard and mourning the loss of my dream of having a “healthy” baby were all emotional hurdles that I needed to overcome.

 

With Aidan, Arabella and Eva, the very first time I got to see or touch them was when I was wheeled into the NICU.

 

After seeing my friends baby in her arms and being filled with sadness, I felt guilty. Why can’t I just be happy for her? I spent the rest of the day thinking. I realized that I AM happy for her. It’s not a sadness for her good fortune, it’s those scars that are associated with the births of my kids that brought the tears. It has nothing to do with who is pictured. Those pictures are a representation of some of the worst days of my life when for most mothers it is a representation of what I felt with Maya…pure joy. I remember crying like a baby when I held my newborn nephew in the hospital shortly after Arabella was born. It wasn’t because I wasn’t happy for my sister-in-law, it was because I longed for that same joyous experience.

 

I look back on how I handled each experience and I can see how far I have come. I can see that I have learned to choose joy. I am so different from how I was after I had Aidan. I felt so sorry for myself and to be honest I felt a little angry. I cried almost every single day for months. I let my circumstances define me-I had a baby with special needs thus my life is sad and hard. I don’t want to minimize my struggles because it was extremely and overwhelmingly hard BUT it didn’t help that I had not learned to choose joy.

 

Today, I have joy. Yes, it is hard and yes it sucks but can I choose to be happy and not let my focus be on how I wish it was? I can spend my days thinking about all of  the negatives. Counting the millions of times I have to suction her or dwelling on the things that I’m missing out on like nursing and hearing her voice. Those things all had their moment. I mourned them and I let them go. There is just too much good to be focusing on the bad.

 

The scars of my hardships came out for me today. While it made me sad for a bit, I’m glad that I had the opportunity to decide not to dwell on them in a negative way but instead to think about my journey and how those scars played such a big part in my becoming who I am today.