Mixed Emotions

Am I beginning to sound like a broken record? Mixed emotions have been a common theme throughout my posts since we received the news of Gracie's diagnosis. Nothing is black or white, including our emotions about all this. Perhaps the only pure emotion I feel is love for her. Everything else is gray and convoluted.

Today was no different. Since we never seem to have a dull moment around here, we ended up visiting the hospital again. That brutal headache that I was complaining of in my last post (last night) turned out to be accompanied by high blood pressure, which was sustained overnight and into the morning. We went in to L&D just like last time and got the same work-up. Of course my blood pressure was perfectly fine the entire time we were there - this time I didn't even have to lay on my left side. It was just normal. Which, of course, is wonderful news, but it made me feel kinda dumb for going in! I still had protein in my urine, but all of my other blood work came back normal again, so home we went. All's well that ends well, right?

It was certainly a relief to hear that I was ok, that she was still in there, and that she and I could go home and continue on living this intertwined life that is all we'll ever have together. No one was going to ask me to make a choice - not today. I had fallen asleep last night with tears in my eyes. The last thing I said out loud to Ben before falling asleep was "I don't want it to end this way" - "this way" meaning delivering early, while her heart is still beating, because I'm getting sick. On the way to the hospital today I prayed "Please, God, if this is her time... please just take her now. Don't make me decide. Please don't make me decide." Losing her early because my own health is deteriorating is my biggest fear in all of this, as I've mentioned on more than one occasion. When we were given this news and I was asked (repeatedly, by every health care professional we met that day) whether we had considered termination, it wasn't even a "discussion" or a "decision" - the answer was just no. We couldn't be the ones to choose to end her life then, and it doesn't feel any better now, even with the threat of "medical necessity" looming ahead. So like the weak human being I am, I often pray and ask God to spare me that burden. As strange and foreign and awful and ugly as it feels to ask God to take your own child, I do. I want Him to do it, because I don't want to live with having done it myself.

I feel pretty good this evening, physically, but these hospital trips (all two of them) are so emotionally draining. I notice the high blood pressure, start to worry. Re-check it over and over, hoping the high reading was just a one-time thing. When I realize that it's not going away, I call the OB's office, and I'm told to go to L&D. I call Ben at work and have him start heading home. Then my stomach promptly tightens into a firm knot as I pack. I pack clothes for myself and for my husband, toothbrushes, deoderant. Today I packed the white shirts that I recently decided I'd like for us to wear in pictures with her. I packed her little hats that my dear friend Lisa made to fit her especially tiny 21-week-sized head. I packed a framed 3D sono photo of her. I packed up our box of memory-making supplies from String of Pearls. I got on the computer and read over our birth & comfort care plan for her to ensure that the funeral home phone number was on there and that our wishes were up to date before printing a few copies for the hospital bag. I changed and dressed my son and packed up his things for day care, and wondered whether I should tell him to give Gracie a "hug" before we left him.

It's wonderful that we're home now this evening. I'm relieved and happy that we've "lived to fight another day". But having to repeatedly prepare myself and brace for the worst... it's tough. Not knowing when or where or how "the end" will happen... it's awful. Each time something like this happens and we're confronted with the reality that "this may be it", it sets me back again. I get myself together, feeling good, living the day-to-day, at peace with things, and then something happens that reminds me that this is real. It's really going to happen. Fortunately today turned out not to be the day, but someday "the day" will be upon us, and we will lose her. It's like having a dark tunnel at the end of the light, instead of a "light at the end of the tunnel". I can try to enjoy her, love her, remain upbeat, focus on the happy parts of being pregnant, but there's this cloud of pain looming in the not-too-distant future. I can't "get through" my grief because it isn't over, and I don't know when it will be over, and I keep being reminded of that cloud and just how real it is and just how dark and heavy with rain it will be when it arrives. You can try to set out your picnic and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts, but that dark cloud is always there, threatening. It's a tough place to be living.

That's where the mixed emotions weigh most heavily on me. There are moments, especially in situations like we found ourselves today, that I long for some relief. I find myself wishing that I could just pop that cloud and let it rain - just get it over with. Let the lightning strike and the thunder roll and the winds and hail rip me to shreds, so that I can know that it's over, and I can try to put myself back together again. As desperate as I am to cling to her little life, and as destroyed as I will feel when she is gone, and as intensely as I know I will wish for just one more day with her, I still sometimes wish that I didn't have to live in this limbo. As devastating as they are, I've had some time to come to grips with the "knowns" in this situation. Those realities hurt. But it's the "unknowns" that make it so frickin' hard to live out each day.

At the end of the day, I am so relieved to be pregnant tonight. I am so blessed by her every flutter in there, and I wouldn't trade it - not for anything. It's a trade-off that I have accepted. I get to keep her a little longer and love her a little more, but in exchange, I have to live with not knowing what is to come, or when. But accepting it doesn't mean that I don't occasionally stumble under the weight of it all and show my human weakness. So, here I am, weak but grateful. Just trying to keep my head on straight. Praying that God continues to shower me with a brand of grace and peace and strength that I never knew were possible, to keep me afloat as I wait for whatever lays ahead. I wait, and I pray, and I love her. It's all I can do.