Mourning My Dear Friend, Fertile Myrtle

I suppose I should start by warning you that this post is about lady business. Dudes who read my page: you could benefit from reading it all, as someday, it may pertain to a woman you love, but feel free to turn away at any point. I promise I won't be offended. What I'm about to share is so deeply rooted in my mom-ness, and simply writing about it for you is healing, so would you please bare with me through this experience?

Now, let's get to it.

I have had a lot of nicknames throughout my life. Some were cute, some were mean, many were the result of little kids unable to say my real name. Elizabeth is a mouthful for children in any language, as we've learned. One nickname that my dear old dad bestowed upon me as I was popping out two babies in one year was Fertile Myrtle. As I announced that second pregnancy, I distinctly remember him saying, "Well, I guess we can just call you Fertile Myrtle, like your mom!" As more years passed and babies kept coming, the silly name lingered. Last Thursday morning, I had to say good-bye to Fertile Myrtle forever. It was so much harder than I imagined.

I had always considered my fertility an abundant blessing. Four pregnancies resulting in four healthy children was pretty incredible. I knew it to be true. I was defying statistics, so I was thrilled to be Fertile Myrtle for most of our married life.

She consciously retired after number four was born, but the possibility of her creeping in for one more April Fool's joke was never far from my mind.

Ever.

So, I went along the past five years, raising our four kiddos with no room or reason to add any more, yet my baby fever never broke.

Ever.

I always wondered, "What if...?"

Always.

Then, within the last year, the possibility of me actually permanently losing my fertility became a reality. I would need to have a surgical procedure for my own health, and the end result would be the end of this life I have always equated with who I am.

Fertile.

Woman.

Mother.

Gone.

As my surgery date grew near, the most unforgiving nag in my mind was not typical anxiety over pain or nausea or anesthesia or the laundry that would pile up during my recovery. It was the conscious steps being taken to strip away this beautiful gift I received upon my own birth. My gift of fertility.

On that early March morning, as my doctor popped into my hospital room to prepare for what would be a routine procedure for her, I suddenly felt the urge to stall. I knew that as soon as she said, "See you in there," it would be the end of an era.

Deliberately removing the lining of a woman's uterus to improve her health would be nothing unusual for my trusted and gifted surgeon. All in a day's work, as the saying goes.

Losing that precious cushion, which was the very first resting place for all four of my babies, would prove to be a grievous moment for this mama.

Knowing, from that day forward, that my body would no longer be a safe haven for any future surprise chocolate fans was difficult for me to swallow.

I grasped at the right words to explain my thoughts.

Women my age are just now starting to have babies.

I know we don't need any more kids, but I would always want more.

I just don't know if I'm ready....if I can do this.

It's so final. It's irreversible.

Witnessing my inner and outer struggles, my doctor graciously asked if we needed to postpone my surgery.

Then, my husband did what he does best. He cracked a joke, "Would you please stop dreaming about having more kids without me?"

And, there it was. Our laughter. The laughter that had guided me through every difficult moment in our eighteen years together. It's what I needed at that very instant. After punching him in the arm, I sighed a few more times, gave the all clear, and the rest is history.

It's been less than a week after having said farewell to my lucrative gig as Fertile Myrtle, so I don't know how long it will take for me to truly accept this next phase of my life. My days of housing and cradling babies in this wonderful womb of mine are officially finished, but I am truly thankful for the many years it served my bouncy babies so well.

Here I am, expecting number four, holding a drawing that my recent preschool graduate had given to me. It says, "I Love You, Mama." When our last baby was born, our other kids were only 7, 5 and 2. Wow, Fertile Myrtle was really busy!  

 

A woman's fertility is such a delicate subject. I wonder if anyone else who has gone through circumstances like mine felt a similar range of emotions before surgery. Even if you had no previous plans to have more children, was the permanence of it all difficult for you to handle? Would you be bold and share your experiences with us? I'd love to hear from you!

I'd love for you to find me on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/mamalovesyouandchocolatetoo

http://mamalovesyouandchocolatetoo.blogspot.com/

My Christmas Tree is Still Standing

Nearly five weeks have passed since Christmas Day, yet our Christmas tree is still perched in our living room, fully decorated, right in front of our windows. Go ahead, feel free to gasp, shriek and judge. Revel in my laziness. I have found that my readers especially love my posts which document that I do fail at some parts of my job as wife/mother/woman of the world.

I talk to my mom on the phone every day, sometimes more than once. During one of our chats in the middle of January, she asked me if our tree was down yet. Of course, I laughed and gave the same response I give her every year around the same time,

"Nope, it's not Trixie's birthday yet."

We do not leave the tree up until Trixie's birthday for any real reason. It has just become a nice, solid deadline to strive for and a way to remember that when she was born, my mom took down our tree while we were at the hospital.

The year that Trixie was born, I had a semi-legitimate excuse for still having up our Christmas tree toward the end of January. Coming through the holidays with one baby who had just learned to walk and being extremely pregnant myself, who had time to think about taking down ornaments and lights and then putting them away in boxes? Weren't we lucky enough that the tree was decorated at all that year?

I was barely able to waddle after my also waddling toddler. I was falling on ice and going to physical therapy. It was cold and flu season. Our Christmas tree was the least of my concerns. Reese and our second child were going to be sixteen months apart in age, so I was storing any energy I had for when that baby did come. Having two babies in sixteen months sounded really close, yet manageable. Possible. My grandma had done it; my aunts had done it. I could do it, too. 

In reality, sixteen months was not meant to be our number. Sneaky little sister was anxious to meet us and made a very early, yet healthy debut. She brought the age gap between Reese and her even closer, making it fourteen months and some change. Her sudden birth caused quite a stir, as you can imagine. By the time we returned home from the hospital, bringing our tiny little girl to join her big brother and fuzzy doggie, all the leftover stress from a pregnant lady unable to put away her Christmas stuff had been magically erased.

My mother, always a loving caretaker and detailed organizer, had cleaned up everything for me. We were free to enter our home (and begin our new life as a family of four) with the fresh slate feeling that January often brings. Thank goodness for my mom. If it hadn't been for her, we might have just left the tree up till the following Christmas.

None of this suggests that every January has been as eventful as the year of Trixie's birth. A few of them have been really nuts, like the years we decided to move to and from Japan, and then again when we moved into our current house. I don't know what it is with us moving in the dead of Winter. On the other hand, most of our post-holiday seasons have been pretty standard. It's just that after all of the hustle and bustle, I'm never in a rush to drag up all the boxes to deconstruct the jolliness that has filled our home. It will seem so bare. So plain. So blah.

Right?

Actually, since Christmas was over a month ago, I know I'm ready for everything to come down now. It's time for me to gaze openly out my front window once again.

Trixie's birthday has now come and gone for 2015. I had set a goal to take down our tree over the weekend. I verbalized that ambitious goal to everyone here, only to be sidetracked by normal family happenings, such as a very loud trip to the bouncy house gym, fluffy purple cupcakes and our brand new, late-night Netflix addiction to Sons of Anarchy.

Our Christmas tree still remains. Its presence lingers in my mind every night when I finally rest my head on the pillow and then realize, Shoot, we still didn't take that tree down. Every time I pass by it or sit next to it as I write, I wonder, When will we ever have the time to put it away? It's exactly eighteen inches from me at this very second, but it's not down yet!

Will our Christmas tree still be standing by Valentine's Day? Surely not. My mom is coming this weekend.

I'd love for you to find me on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/mamalovesyouandchocolatetoo

I Forgot What Time my Last Child was Born

This week, my youngest child turned five-years-old. A mix of emotions has run steadily through my heart and my body, taking me from amazement at how quickly he has grown, to pride for all that he knows, to appreciation for the gift he has been to our family.

On the morning of his birthday, as we gathered on the couch to watch him open a few gifts, one of our other children asked us what time Marshall was born. Horrified at myself that I wasn't able to rattle off the number, I gasped, smiled as I tried to regain my composure and then turned to my husband. I calmly said, "Let's ask Dad."

The kids all laughed and responded with, "He doesn't know either. He told us to ask you."

How is it possible that a mom had let such an important detail escape her memory? Particularly, this mom. We wait and wait and wait for nine long months for the very second when a living, breathing, squirming human being will be brought forth from our bodies and laid onto our chests. We will exhale with pain, exhaustion, relief and jubilation. A tiny person will no longer be hidden inside of our wombs, which are basically churning pots of the unknown. Instead, that new life will be free for the world to see and hold and ENJOY! That's a big moment. A gigantic moment. A moment that somehow, when we started reminiscing about my fourth child on his fifth birthday, I could not recall.

Although the exact hour and minute escaped me that morning, I knew that I could easily discover his birth time. It is printed on his birth announcement and on the backs of photographs and in his first year calendar. Then there was my favorite place where I knew I could find it. It is the place where I documented it with the utmost care; where it is cherished and recorded with love. It is in the extremely personal story I composed just a few days after my son's birth.

I would love to share that story with you here today, in honor of my last baby's 5th birthday. He really is not a baby anymore--he makes sure to tell me all the time! It has served its purpose to jog my memory of the exact time of day that our little surprise was laughed into the world, but it is so much more than a record. It's intimate. It captures a moment in time for my family that I can never recreate. So much has changed in our home over the past five years, but what a special way to glance back to our past, to the exact minutes when our third son, our final child, was born.

"Laughed into the World"

Written in the middle of November in 2009 and then shared with my friends and family all over the world.

This little baby boy sure has caused a lot of drama the past nine months, but his birth was a very fitting end to a stressful pregnancy. Aside from other complications along the way, many people don't know that I went into preterm labor at 33 weeks. I spent the night in the hospital, and I went home taking medication every four hours and confined to bed and the couch. Three weeks and one false alarm later, I was taken off bed rest and given permission to resume regular activity. I made it to 36 weeks with baby boy still safely tucked away inside. I definitely had contractions daily, but nothing happened. Each night I went to sleep wondering if that night was going to be the night baby would arrive. Trixie had come five weeks early, and Chip's birth was very quick as well, so I was constantly on edge. I was dilating more, and at 38 weeks I was four cm. Doctor told me she would induce me at 39 weeks plus one day, to save my sanity.

I had cried in her office due to all the stress of wondering what I would do with all the kids if I went into labor in the middle of the night. With the plan in place, I was ready. I was set to be induced on a Thursday at 7 a.m. On the Monday before, I thought I was in labor. My good friend, Karen, rushed over to watch the kids, Mark's mom drove to town, and we went to the hospital. Things stalled after a couple of hours, and even though I was dilated to five cm, I was forced to go home due to a law in our state. (Nothing can be done to encourage labor before 39 weeks). I was just two days away from that milestone, plus I was already scheduled to be induced, but I had to go home. I was totally disappointed, but Mark took me out to dinner, and baby stayed inside until the big day.

With Chip's planned induction at 38 weeks, Pitocin was started at 7 a.m., and he was born at 10:14. I was sure this one would go even faster, especially since I had been moving along for weeks. Nope, nothing happened for the first five hours.

I started Pitocin at 8, and got my epidural by 11, and things were still going slowly. Doctor had predicted baby would be born by 12:45, which I thought was a late estimate. I was totally figuring he would be born by 10. That just goes to show that every labor is different.

Doctor came by at 12:40 p.m., and we joked that baby wasn't going to make her initial projection. She said two more hours, tops. I texted some good friends at 1:05, saying that it was going very slowly, and I didn't know when he was going to come. I was still only five cm. (My phone had been in the closet, and I had missed several calls and texts from friends who were also sure I would have delivered hours earlier). At 1:15, ten minutes after I had told everyone that nothing was happening, it was time to push! My doctor had to come running back over from her office (thankfully, it's across the street). I pushed three times through one contraction, waited a minute for the next one, and started pushing again.

In the middle of that next push, the doctor made me laugh, and my baby's head emerged! She told me to keep laughing, because I was going to laugh that baby out. The nurses, doctor, Mark, and I all kept on laughing, and out he came. It was hilarious. When he was born at 1:27 p.m., he opened his eyes right away and started sucking his thumb when she laid him on my stomach. It was an incredible birth. I didn't even begin to break a sweat, it was over so fast. We just talked to him and cuddled him on my stomach for several minutes, until it was time to weigh him and have him examined by the nurses.

We didn't have a name for him yet, so we talked about it a little bit each hour but never decided anything until about 4:30 that afternoon. In the meantime, we had lunch and took a nap before telling anyone that he was born. Our moms had each called by then, and we decided it was time to spread the news that he was born. Everyone had been worried since he had seemed so eager to be born seven weeks early and then wasn't coming. I felt badly for everyone waiting at home, not knowing, but we so enjoyed the few hours together after his birth, that it was just a beautiful time with Mark and Baby Boy.

Our family is now complete. I still can't believe we have four kids. When I see them all together in one place, I am just amazed. Whenever a new child is added, life quickly reaches that point when you can't remember a time without him or her. I am already there. Of course, Chip seems like a giant boy now, no longer a baby. That always happens as well! Reese and Trixie's babyhood seems like a lifetime ago, and they are now the big, big brother and sister who go off to school on the bus. Mark is taking a week vacation to help take care of everyone. It will be so great to have everyone at home together. We are spending Thanksgiving at home, since it will be too early to travel with little Marshall. My friend, Theresa, told me to enjoy the "babymoon." I had never heard that term before, but we are definitely in babymoon mode now!

Thanks to all of you for your prayers along the way and congratulations messages now. We are so thankful for all of the friends we have, not only in several states across the U.S., but also in several countries around the world.

Although I don't have a carefully crafted baby book for our fourth child, I do have this very special gift for Marshall. It is found in my written words. They carefully describe the events and my emotions surrounding his very momentous arrival! I would like to encourage all of you, no matter what stage of motherhood you are in, to record your birth story. Obviously, doing it right after the birth is awesome, because our minds are so full of what has just happened to us and the emotions are raw! When I went back to read this story today, I had forgotten so many of the little details that I am thankful that I did record. For instance, I didn't remember that he started sucking his thumb just seconds after he was born. However, it's never too late to write your own birth story. Enlist the help of anyone who was there with you. Husbands, moms, friends! We know those birthing rooms are busting at the seams these days.

Keep them to yourself or share them with the world. I know I'd love to read each and every one of your stories. I will be taking my own advice and writing my other three birth stories, not to be shared on the blog. You already know so much about me that one of my accounts about the very private act of childbirth is probably enough for you to handle.

Marshall was surprised when he awoke on his fifth birthday without a mustache or a deeper voice (something he was certain came with turning five). He was also convinced that he would no longer be attending preschool but would be jumping straight to kindergarten. I truly enjoyed my day alone with him. We had peanut butter sandwiches on a blanket in our living room, and I realized that it would be the last time he would be home with just me on his birthday. Another one of those roller coaster moments of motherhood, for sure.

I'd love for you to find me on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/mamalovesyouandchocolatetoo