Reflections on Life

This Christmastime I have pondered a lot about birth and life. This is the season where we celebrate the birth of our Savior and His humble beginnings. We celebrate His life and His sacrifice for us and reflect on His infinite love. My thoughts this year have turned to Mary, the earthly mother of our Savior Jesus Christ. I think of how she must have felt being entrusted with the Son of God. I think of the amazing experience she must have had as she carried this precious child and learned His personality while in the womb. I also think of the spiritual experience she must have had birthing the Savior into this world. What a miraculous and truly special gift that I am sure no one can comprehend but Mary herself.

December is especially precious to me as it not only is the time where we can celebrate the birth of our Savior, but I also have the opportunity to celebrate the birth of my own two children. What an incredible gift they have been to me. I often contemplate about the incredible and arduous task that has been given to me to teach, train, and rear these special children of our Father in Heaven and am humbled to think that I have been entrusted with them. They teach me everyday about love, compassion, patience, innocence, and forgiveness. What a blessing they are! I can not imagine life without them. They have made me grow as I learn how to rely on my Heavenly Father to teach me how to raise my children and watch them learn and grow themselves. Life is such a miracle and I love every minute watching my children live it!

I thought that this would be an appropriate time to share my own experience about the birth of Weston and Natalie. I have never actually taken the time to write down my experiences and feel that it is such a momentous and beautiful highlight of life here on Earth that I must take the time to share my thoughts and feelings.

Pregnancy was a whole new experience for me. I always wondered what it would be like to carry a child and even on occasion was a little weirded out by the idea. I was very enthralled by sci-fi television show "The X-Files" as a teenager so the image of an alien making residence inside a body was not a new concept to me. So, the thought of carrying around a little person inside your belly immediately made me think of a freaky little alien (the fact that ultrasound pictures look amazingly alien-like did not help the situation). I actually did not look forward to pregnancy for that reason only - I didn't want this little "thing" in my belly and kicking me and moving around in there. It really grossed me out to think about it. Oh, and the whole childbirth kind of turned me off as well.

Roland and I weren't really planning on having a family at the time we got pregnant. The thought had crossed our minds and I would say that we may have had the "baby hungry" bug just a little, but then reality would set in and we would quickly realize that we just weren't ready. We weren't ready to give up our freedom, we were both still in school, and I was the one with a job with benefits. So, it just didn't really seem like a good idea. I continued to religiously (or apparently not so religiously) take my birth control pills and we were content going on our merry little way. I had recently started (January 7, 2007) a new kind of birth control that allows you to go three months without a period. I liked the idea of that, so I jumped on the bandwagon. Looking back - not the greatest idea. How do you know that you are not pregnant then?

About a month into the new pills I did start to notice some strange "symptoms" if that is what you can call it. I had a very strange craving for hamburgers at all times (this would later be a craving with Weston too). I also was emotional, my breasts were tender and unusually larger (there were no complaints from me!), and I had a lot of tenderness and twinging pain in my lower abdomen. I figured it was just some side effects of the new birth control pill as my body adjusted to the hormones. After a while, I started to suspect that I might be pregnant but then the symptoms started to subside (about February 21, 2007). I was so confused as to what was going on and I didn't feel comfortable being on the birth control anymore so I decided to stop taking them (February 23, 2007). Then one day, everything changed.

February 27, 2007 I was at work and got up to go to the bathroom. While I was in the stall, I noticed something strange partially dangling out (I will try to not be too graphic - so I assume you know from where I am speaking). I pulled on it and out came a "blog" about 3-4 inches long and maybe an inch wide. I was caught a little off-guard and surveyed it for a minute in some toilet paper. I quickly realized what it could possibly be. It has been so long, but I do remember that I could make out what seemed to be a network of blood vessels. I thought that would be strange for just a blood clot so immediately my heart lept. I knew this was a little embryo.

I tried to study it a little more just to make sure. I just couldn't see through the tears. I also had a hard time really looking at it after I knew what it was because it bothered me so badly. I didn't want to actually see anything. I don't know if I was just scared or what was stopping me, but I really didn't want to be able to see anything. It bothered me that I was holding this child in my hands. I then had the dilemma of what to do. Did I hold onto it and take it to the doctor? Did I throw it away? Did I flush it down the toilet? The very thought of throwing this child away or flushing it down the toilet turned my stomach. How could I do that? Then I thought that it wasn't very logical to carry around this clump of blood to my desk either. After sitting and staring for a while, I decided to go ahead and put it in the toilet.

It broke my heart to flush. It really does sound silly, but I felt like I was just flushing a dead fish down the toilet and I felt that my child deserved better than that. It is kind of silly to think of "burying" a couple week (or possibly days) old embryo but I just felt so disrespectful to drop it in the toilet. After doing so, I lost it. It is not like I even had really wanted a child or that I had even known that I was pregnant, but it hurt me still the same. To know that there was a life inside of you that is now gone, it bothered me more than I could have imagined.

I went outside and called Roland (and my mom to determine if that is what it could possibly have been) then decided that I was such a wreck that I just needed to go home. I went back to my desk (trying to hide my tear-stained face), wrote an email to my boss, then left.

I experienced a lot of bleeding, pelvic pain, and even got a little sick for the week following. I decided to go see my doctor because I was paranoid if there was something that I needed to do if I did indeed miscarry. She didn't believe me that I had been pregnant. She looked at me like I was psycho. She took blood tests to test my hCG levels and when they came back as "not pregnant" she seemed content that she was right and I was delusional. It hurt me that she didn't believe me or even really take the time to listen to what I was saying, so I just left knowing what I knew and had no validation (although coincidentally all of the strange "symptoms" went away).

To this day, I still don't know for sure if I truly was pregnant or if there was just some strange fluke thing that happened. I figure that it really isn't that important if I was or was not pregnant. What I learned is more important. If I was pregnant, it is definitely a blessing that I miscarried when I did. Being on birth control probably would have led to all sorts of birth defects. I did walk away with an appreciation for life and motherhood. I realized that I was excited to have children and that it may not have been something I planned, but I would find a way to make it work. I knew that having children was important to me and it put life into a whole new perspective. I felt selfish as if I had miscarried because I was unwilling to give up the luxuries I had and the time that was mine. I felt horrible and knew that I needed to change my outlook.

As a result, Roland and I were not particularly careful but once again were not really "trying" to get pregnant either. So, no surprise (but actually a HUGE surprise to us) we wound up pregnant two to three weeks later. Oops!!! I think I was given that experience so that I would know that this was a blessing and that I would be ecstatic that I was pregnant. I think it worked because I was super excited, but still very worried. Otherwise, I think I would have just been frustrated.

To be continued....