This is the sweet story of friendship & fears, of babies & blessings, and the one little robe that felt them all.
Firstly, I should tell you that I am fundamentally incapable of compartmentalizing things. It’s just not part of my make up. There have been times in my life where I have wished I could just package up an issue in a pretty little box and shove it away for a later time….but ALAS! Its impossible for me.
Got a problem? Let me process it and then I have to talk it out.
Got a disagreement? Same thing. Working through things is something I was taught from a young age.
Get yourself into trouble? Well…buckle up buttercup, you are about to deal with it.
The same can be said for the topic of child birth. When I was pregnant with my first little love my friends told me very seriously, “Remember EVERYTHING.” Between the ages of 21-22 I suppose this sounded like a fantastic idea. So here I was a preverbal Guinea Pig ready to remember every detail down to the last blood test. I reasoned that in todays age it couldn’t be that bad….I mean…EPIDURALS, PEOPLE. Its a no-brainer.
That would have been all well and good had the epidural worked the first time… and Oh honey I felt every little millimeter that little one went down to make his way into the world.
We won’t get into that. Lets just say I spent the last 7+ years shuttering every time I thought about babies and grimacing when the subject of “more kids” came up.
NAH-not gonna happen.
Then I fell in love and whatdoyaknow…..first came love then came marriage….and fill in the rest.
The day I found out, my husband was watching football on TV, I casually got a beer, went to the bathroom and plunked myself down with the magical stick that tells your future….and waited.
A faint line.
Barely there.
Straight. up. panic. mode, y’all.
I walked out of the bathroom with sheer horror on my face and immediately burst into tears.
Heaven help me.
During this time my super close group of high school girlfriends where slowly getting pregnant also. I swear there is nothing in the water, and though it seems like it was planned, it totally wasn’t. What can we say??? GREAT MINDS.
The first to pop out a little beauty was Noel who now has a gorgeous little girl creeping up on 5 months. Yours truly was going to pop out the 2nd baby in the herd. The next is Leslie, due just 7 weeks after me, and so on after that.
All these ladies knew my fears. They knew my deepest thoughts on pregnancy and labor and though I tried my very best to stay positive, the women who knew me knew I was on the verge of curling up in the fetal position like the baby in my womb and sobbing for the next 9 months.
I was scared.
A few months before my due date Leslie and I got a text from Noel saying she had an idea.
She had a custom hospital robe that she wore when she birthed her daughter and she wanted to have it monogrammed with their initials and her daughters birth date and then wanted to pass it on to me, who would then pass it on to Leslie and so on. She thought it would be a way to send some strength through our little group of Mama’s.
It would be a way to remember all the prayers that where prayed and all the love that surrounded us.
It would catch happy tears that were shed and hear the first coos and cries.
Our greatest blessings would carry one common thread…..the hospital robe we all shared.
It would be like a suit of “Mama armor.”
One robe that all our babies touched in their first moments of life.
One robe that would remind us that our bodies where meant to do this great thing.
One robe that we could wear while we held our husbands hands and remembered that we where so loved and so safe and so blessed.
I could hardly contain my hormonal tears when I read this. At that moment I felt a surge of pride for my body and what it could do and a boost of confidence that no matter what this next birth brought, I would be fine. One of the most profound things that Noel said to me a few weeks before I went into labor was this,
“Remember that you can do anything for 10 seconds at a time. Just count. When you feel like you can’t go on any more, close your eyes and count to 10. You will survive, and then start counting again.”
Baby #2 came into the world on September 22nd and just about shattered it. On his way out he ripped my cervix and caused bleeding that the doctors couldn’t stop. I remember being so cold and I was shivering more than I ever had in my life. I kept thinking “WHY won’t anyone give me a warm blanket?” I heard bits and pieces of what was going on but all I could do was keep counting to 10 in my head. “I can be cold for 10 more seconds,” I thought….. “1…..2……3…..4…..5…………..”
Immediately after he took his first breaths, mine started to slow and the world went black. After emergency surgery and a million prayers going up to heaven, 3 hours later the doctors where able to stop the bleeding.
The in-between parts don’t matter now. They are things that my husband and I will work though. The what-if’s and could have been’s aren’t and every moment in the past two and a half weeks I have thanked God above that they weren’t.
I am just so happy to breathe. So happy to cuddle my babies and so blessed that I have an amazing support system to get me through it all.
There are times in life where you feel a shift.
Sometimes it happens in tragedy and sometimes it happens in joy.
Shifts make you look at situations, life and relationships totally different than you did just a moment before. They make you look at your loved ones in a different light and they even make you look at people you don’t like differently.
Priorities change again. Silence is spent dwelling on different things.
Love feels heavier in the best possible way and life feels new….. just like it does to our newest little baby.
What has this taught me?
Sometimes you need a million prayers to get through something.
Sometimes (most of the time) things aren’t going to happen the way you thought….but its ok.
Sometimes you can wake up in one little robe in ICU and think as you look down at it, “we made it through.”
Sometimes you don’t know just how loved you are until you see people at their most vulnerable.
And sometimes…..all you need is to count to 10…..and then do it again until you remember how strong you are.
I feel so honored to pass this robe on to the next friend and so blessed to have such an amazing Mama Herd to support and love me.