I wanted to share something I wrote just 3 days before my son was born. This was after 3 hospitalizations for an intestinal blockage (which you can read more about here) and just 1 day before I admitted myself to the hospital for a fourth time and eventually would have labor induced. It was definitely not what I had planned and it took some time for me to come to terms with the idea of letting go of the labor and birth I had desired.
There comes a point with this disease that you start to feel like your body has failed you. For me, that point was a long time ago. Longer than I can remember. And I am very thankful that I haven’t felt that way in a long time now. But by the time I admitted myself to the hospital for the third time in as many weeks, all of those feelings started flooding over me again. And this time they were even worse because I didn’t feel like I was just failing myself, but failing my child, as well. My child hadn’t even been born yet and already I couldn’t take care of him. I couldn’t get him everything he needed.
And when the doctors started talking about having to take him early, because my body wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do, it scared me. I had promised myself from the beginning of this pregnancy that I would not be one of those people wishing the baby out earlier than he was ready. Because I know that they stay in there for a reason and that when he was ready, he’d come. I didn’t want to wish any negative side effects on him simply because I was uncomfortable.
But I was also dealing with the fact that keeping him in could be just as dangerous. I had to stay healthy in order to keep him healthy. When things started going downhill for me, I had to take medications, stay away from some of the healthy, but hard-to-digest food I was eating, and spend long hours in the hospital, all of which could cause him harm. Still, the last thing I wanted was for him to enter the world surrounded by cold machines and being hooked up to tubes and wires. I have spent enough of my life there that I hope he never has to know that. I wanted the first things he knew to be me and his dad and how much we love him. I wanted it to be warmth and excitement, not being whisked away to a NICU.
These are feelings I don’t know how to move past. It’s a hard place to be when you feel like you can’t trust your own body. All I can do is pray and trust that God will see me through and will take care of my little one, whenever and however he arrives.
I cried the entire time I wrote these words, feeling so uncertain and scared. I am so thankful that God did see me through and He did take care of my little one who was born at a healthy weight, did not have to be hooked up to any tubes or wires and spent no time in the NICU. He came out to that warmth and excitement I had hoped for him. You can read the full story here.
So while things did not go exactly as I had planned, in the end we had a healthy little boy. And during the induction, my body stepped up and allowed for a smooth delivery. It’s like it knew it was time for him to be born. I guess it wasn’t as much of a failure as I had thought.