Reflections

A new year doesn't usually really do much for me. Call me boring but I am usually in bed before midnight hits. The way I have always seen it is just that it is another January that will be followed by another February and so on. My parents never cared much for New Year's and I guess I am carrying on the tradition. But something is different this year. I have really been reflecting back on the last year and all it has meant to me. I swear that every year teaches me more than the previous one but this year, I really think this year takes the cake. The biggest lessons I've learned this year are the ones of patience and forgiveness. I certainly have not perfected either one but this was the first time that my sanity depended on me really staring forgiveness in the face and taking it on. I am not just talking forgiveness of others but also forgiveness of myself for things I feel I could have and should have done differently. I have never before been in a place where unforgiveness was making me so much less of a person than I knew I was capable of being. Sometimes things happen in life and there is no way to make rhyme or reason of them. No matter how hard you try to understand, you just can't. You scream, you cry, you bargain, and in the end none of that works and you just end up right back where you started. And then you begin to understand that people are people. And then you begin to see that most people do the best they knew how to do at the time. If they had known better then they would have done better. (Maya Angelou has some quote about this but I am currently too lazy to look it up) This includes me. And then you realize that you have to forgive. That is what this year taught me. These decisions to forgive myself and others have brought me more peace than I ever knew existed. Although this has been a particularly hard year, it is one that will never be forgotten.

I had an OB appointment and ultrasound today. Gabe still looks great and as of next week we will be to goal #1- 28 weeks. I will have another appointment and ultrasound in 2 weeks. Our next big goal is 32 weeks. Anything after that is icing on the cake. Dr. Cummings and I had a really long talk today. I swear I love that man. He is like an OB, therapist, and teddy bear all wrapped up in one. I think he may be the only person on earth who gets how emotionally hard all of this really is. As we were sitting and talking today I had some huge ah-ha moments. I was telling him how my biggest fears are that things will go like last time. I was sick last time, nobody disputed that fact. But just how sick, well, that was difficult to tell. There was never one huge red flag that stuck out . It was more of a combination of things that all together added up to something huge. I told him that I am afraid the same thing will happen, that I will limp along and keep holding on without any huge red flags and this baby will meet the same fate as the last. I told him that a full term baby is no where near as important to me as a healthy baby. A few NICU weeks versus a lifetime of doctors appointments and hospital stays is in my opinion a no brainer. He assured me that he "gets" cases like mine and that especially after 32 weeks that if even 1 hair looks out of place that will be it. After that time, his threshold for delivery will be low. And then it struck me. These are decisions that are easy to make knowing now what we know about how my body works. Had Dr. K had this type of information last time, his decisions might have been different too. He didn't have a bad experience to look at to make things better. He unfortunately had nothing to go off of and had to do the best he could with the information he had. Do I still think things should have been done differently? Yes, clearly I do. But this is all in hindsight and decisions and thoughts based on hindsight are so much easier because the outcome is already known. I have always been so certain that had I had a different doctor that things would have been better. If I had only gone to an OB and MFM and not a family practice physician... But who is really to say it would be any different? So I really had to sit and consider these things today and it was a tough pill to swallow. As I have continued to pray that my forgiveness would go deeper and deeper I had no idea would that would mean and to where God would lead me. So MK, if you ever read this I need you to know this. While I have been sitting around blaming you and being angry and then forgiving but still somewhere down deep hoping that someday maybe you would apologize for what happened and for some of the things you said after the fact that maybe I owe you an apology too. I have been holding you to a standard that you never had a chance to measure up to. I held you to a standard of perfection but you are only human and that wasn't fair of me. For that I am truly sorry. I doubt that the chance to ever tell you that face to face will happen so this is the best I can do right now. It is so hard to admit sometimes that I am wrong but I think in order to continue to follow the path God has set out for me that I must be obedient to him and this is where this journey has taken me. It has taken me not only to a place of forgiving others but also of admitting where I have been wrong.

Did I ever imagine at the beginning of 2010 that I'd be where I am now? NO WAY!!! But am I glad I've been doing the work and taken the journey? You betcha...