Miracles

This blog has been in my heart a long time, but I haven't been able to decide on a name or where to start my story.  Its held me back for more than a year.  Yesterday I decided those were silly reasons...and that if I didn't know where "the beginning" of my story was, well, maybe that's okay.

So I'll start with the name...Miracles and Motherhood.  A single word could be used to describe each of my pregnancies: Miracle (Scarlet), Sacred (Orion), and Surrender (Iris).  Scarlet was our beautiful miracle just to be conceived.  And it took more miracles than I can count to bring her into the world alive.  She reminds me of miracles big and small with every smile and every tear.  But why leave out "Sacred" and "Surrender"?  I guess the fear has been that I used up all my miracles on Scarlet, and that's why Orion died.  And Iris hasn't been born yet...will there be enough miracles for her if we need them?  I have to believe that there will be.  I'll share each of their stories in time, but its a tangled web.

The belief in miracles, tiny and huge, has been what has always drawn me to babies and children.  They seem so much more at ease with them, so much more likely to see them.  And I'm a bit addicted to witnessing those moments of wonder.  Becoming a mom was a lifelong dream, the big goal, the one thing I wanted more than anything else.  And it has come at an unfathomable price.

Miracle: I'm currently 33 weeks and 4 days pregnant with my third child, Iris.  I nearly died (and so did Scarlet) in my first pregnancy.  I'm classified as a "near miss" which I understand to mean that the fact I'm alive could be as much because my doctors said a quick prayer as much as any other intervention they did.  They did what they could, and then waited.  I looked death in the face, saw him standing there in my room, knew exactly what I was going to lose (first steps, first tooth, first day of school, first period, first heartbreak, sending her off to college, sending her off to marriage...all without a mother...) and told him I wasn't going to cooperate.  I was going to fight like hell.  And I did.

Sacred: But death returned far too quickly.  11 months later, to the day, in fact.  I gave birth to Orion, who had died 3 days earlier, and death was standing there in that eerily similar hospital room, and I had to hand over my little baby boy.  My son.  I knew exactly what I was losing and its frankly too painful to write out.  But death was gentle and full of stardust and light and darkness and wonder.  Full of miracle.  Just not the kind of miracle that is easy to understand.  Its the kind we fight against and hate and scream out in agony over.  But I cooperated.  I handed over my son as gently as I could.  It was the most sacred experience of my entire life.

Surrender: A few months later Iris began to bloom inside of me.  I thought I had enough tenacity to go through pregnancy again.  I thought I was brave enough and strong enough.  And I'm not.  I have found my limit.  I am hoping her birth can simply be full of wonder and joy.  That I won't have to bargain with death.  That I won't have to face him this time.  But its hard to imagine.  Its hard to visualize and believe in that kind of birth...the kind most people take for granted.  I am full of fear beyond words, beyond this world, full of fear of what I saw and felt the nights Scarlet and Orion were born, fear that I will have to hand this one over too.  So...I surrender.  Its all that is left to me.  I surrender to the love I feel for her (which I tried to resist in some bizarre attempt to protect my wounded soul), surrender to the fear I feel and be honest about it, surrender to the grief I feel over my son, surrender to the guilt I feel over Scarlet's birth, surrender to the hope I feel in those fleeting moments that hit unexpectedly, surrender to not being able to control any of it.  Surrender to life.  And that is pretty much a miracle too.