naivety

RaeAnn just climbed up on my lap...She's supposed to be laying on the couch for quiet time and usually I would sternly tell her to lay back down before I put her in her room for a nap (such a threat! LOL) But this time I let her stay with me...I had been reading a blog about a woman who lost identical twins after they were born prematurely, with tears streaming down my face. (she didn't notice, she just wanted me to protect her from the wicked witch!)...It never fails that whenever I start reading yet another blog about someone else's loss, RaeAnn always finds a way to interrupt me. She wants a snack or needs help on the potty (or the wicked witch is about to kidnap Dorothy!) But really I think it is God interrupting me to make sure I pause for a second from my computer and see what I am lucky to have... My beautiful baby girl.

I don't know why I do it to myself...I don't plan on it...I just innocently follow a link from one of the blogs I keep up with and stumble upon someone else's story of loss and I end up crying my eyes out reading their story. There are way too many blogs about pregnancy loss, even move about stillborn babies and preemies that don't make it...I had been under the impression,naively, that in "this day in age" with all the medical advances, babies are born healthy, and those that aren't get the help they need to live. But I was living in a bubble before I started my journey of loss...because what I've learned through the blogosphere is that it happens. And it happens often and it makes me incredibly paranoid. When I was pregnant with RaeAnn I worried about it but only because my aunt gave birth to a stillborn when I was younger, I even asked our genetic counselor if it was possible because my aunt had had a stillborn that it could happen to us. She reassured us that every pregnancy was different and the complications that my aunt had were not genetic, and I was smart enough to know that from the beginning but it really helped to be reassured of the fact. If I hadn't experienced that terrible loss as a kid I would have never thought twice that I wasn't going to have a healthy pregnancy. Like I said...naive. Or maybe the word is Optimistic...I don't really think any mother starts off thinking that something will go wrong...but after it does, how do trust your body and God when it's time to try again?
I could never imagine carrying a baby past the first trimester, starting to feel the baby moving, learning their gender and then suddenly for no reason lose them...or even worse carrying them full term only to have them born sleeping.
These mothers who share their stories have to be some of the strongest women on the planet, They write beautifully. Courageously they share their stories as a way to remember their child and along the way they help other mothers of loss cope with their own story. It's an amazing community, but it's one I wish did not have to exist.
I will never understand it, why God chooses some women to have 19 beautiful babies but others can't even have one. I try to take comfort thinking that God chooses certain mothers for his angel babies because he knows how strong they are...but on my worst days, when I long for my own angel babies, I don't want to believe it, because we mothers want our babies too!

Tonight on Secret Life of the American Teenager, Adrien is going to lose her full term baby. Kind of a rough topic for such a poorly acted show. (but yes I am guilty of watching it! I had read in a magazine a couple years ago that Molly Ringwald was finally making a comeback so I started watching and even though I was so disappointed with her, I was hooked!). It is going to be hard to watch and I hope that they portray it realistically and with dignity. It is such a sensitive subject.

And with that RaeAnnie Fannie is getting antsy and trying anything to get my attention LOL aaaahhhh even when she's on my last nerve, I love her...she'll never know just how much!