I had hoped to create a picture of waking up knowing that something was very wrong; of how the doctors started a trial of a different contraction medication only a few short hours before the girls would be born to see if it was possible for me to go home. I wanted you to hear the whisper in my consciousness of God telling me that this was it. The day I could never turn back from. I thought it would help to explain how awful I felt not being allowed to stand up and shower or wash my hair in almost two weeks. I had hoped you could have experienced the profound moment when I knew my hair was the last thing I would think of. I wanted you to be there as I was bleeding to death, flying down the hall on my hospital bed while a nurse rode with me pulling my rings off. I wanted you to feel what it was like not knowing if Jeff would make it; if any of us would make it.
I am surprised to find that I can't have you there with me. I'm shocked to know I can barely go back there myself. My babies were born 3 months before they were due and they nearly died that day. I almost died that day. In some ways I think we did die, and in that exact moment we were also born. All of us to a new life and purpose, to a foreign land.
Jeff did make it to the hospital that day only to find my room empty. He had that awful moment of not knowing if the babies and I were okay. Someone brought him to me just as they were starting my C-Section. As the girls were being born, Jeff looked at them and started laughing and saying "they're huge, they are so big". I'm sure you can imagine the eyes above those masks in the O.R. looking at each other like "What??" They were tiny compared to full term babies, but he had expected little palm of your hand babies. They cried when we weren't sure we would hear any sounds. They were born 2 minutes apart. Emily first weighing 2 lb 12 oz and then Abby weighing 2 lb. 11.87 oz. They were stabilized and sent to the NICU. Later I would learn that preterm babies often do well for the first few minutes of life and then need help. That was the last typical thing my girls did.
Looking back, I can see how awesome Jeff's perspective was, even though at the time I thought he was a nut. Our children were the smallest babies born that day. They were sick and unable to survive on their own. That didn't matter to him, what he had expected was so much worse than what he saw. That was maybe one of our first days of actively seeking the good, when everything seemed so bad. His natural inclination to look for the positive in a situation helped me form that attitude myself, even from the first minute of my new life.
These are pictures the hospital took of my girls after they were stabilized. They take them so parents have a picture of their child alive. I couldn't see the girls for myself yet. My daughters could have easily died before I ever laid eyes on them. I think these pictures look horrible. I can't tell you how thankful I am that they aren't the only pictures I have. I have had the opportunity to take so many more, but these were the first.
Emily Claire
Abigail Grace
So as I look back to 12 years ago, it has been an unbelievable journey. How could I have known looking at those pictures then, what a complicated road we would travel? My heart has broken so many times over those little girls, so frail and small. How grateful I am that God has eagerly taken every shattered piece of my heart as I learned to pick them up and hand them to him one by one. He put them back together again, not the same, but in a pattern that he can use in a way I could have never dreamed.
No comments:
Post a Comment