Raw, Reflective, and Hopefully Faith Inspiring

My apologies, blogger is not letting me use paragraphs. This past week I have seen numerous posts (blog or message boards) about PGAL (pregnant after a loss) and the emotions and guarding of yourself that go along with being PGAL. This past week a lot of unpleasant memories came flooding back to me when a co-worker at lunch was mentioning checking his father into the emergency room. April 6, 2011: Just the mention of an emergency room, and my mind immediately went to that June 6th, 2010 morning, when we went to the emergency room bc I was spotting during my previous pregnancy. That was the morning that I could not speak the words to check myself into the emergency room, when I laid my head on the desk and let Charlie do all the talking. June 6, 2010 when we had an ultrasound and our bubbly ultrasound tech turned blank and would not speak to us. June 6, 2010 I laid on my emergency room bed for 3 hours waiting for the doctor to come and talk to us about the results of our ultrasound and to tell us that our child was ok. June 6, 2010 as the hours past I became embarressed and could not even look at Charlie bc I could not support our child. While the doctors hadn't delivered the news at this point, it was pretty darn obvious. June 6, 2010 my obgyn came into our room at 1:30 pm and told me that I am not as far along as I thought I was. This was the day I was treated by this doctor like it was just another day at the office. I was offered a D&E and I refused. June 6, 2010, I fell forward on the hospital bed crying and screaming bc of what I thought I failed to do. We were offered a follow up visit the next morning to confirm our "missed abortion," instead of hearing our child's heartbeat like we were scheduled to do. Those were my thoughts on April 6, 2011 at the mere mention of an emergency room. Bear with me, I promise to get uplifting. April 6, 2011, I went to my sister's house for supper and she was talking to me about what she learned in school that day (she is in nursing school). She told me they discussed miscarriage and how it technically referred to as "spontaneous abortion," but miscarriage is the preferred term. She told me that they learned about the shock that mother's go through when this happens. The mother has the thoughts of a real baby growing inside her and starting a family. All of a sudden that is taken away and the baby is not growing inside anymore. Women need MONTHS to recover from a miscarriage. You have to take time to process everything going on with you and around you. It made me feel better bc it took me about 5 months to finally turn a corner; yes, I made progress during those 5 months, but that 5 month mark really changed things. Why? not sure, but maybe walking by faith. Looking back, the day that I had those flooding thoughts was the 10 month mark of that morning at the hospital. You see at first, we just waited for my next cycle to arrive...you never know when that will happen. After that first month, we knew we were another month closer to trying again. I picked up a book called "Hannah's Hope" by Jennifer Saake which began to change my outlook on the situation and my life. Up until this book, I had a WTF God? attitude over the whole situation. I prayed everyday that God would bless us. Numerous nights of Charlie not at home, I was on my floor praying for hours, just asking for God to take my pain and for God's blessing on us for such a miracle. My faith grew in so many ways during this time. I now realize that I needed this time to be shaped into the mother that God wanted me to be. I may not know God's plan behind the loss, but one day we will have a nice chat about it. My anger turned into sadness, then into faithfulness. You see, I grew to realize that we have all these plans in life, but OUR plans....God just laughs at those. You are not on your own time here, we are on God's time. My relationship with God grew to such a place that I relied on Him for everything. I cannot do life without Him, and I don't want to. When PGAL women become pregnant, there are a ton of emotions that go into the next nine+ months. I was certain I was going to be an emotional wreck, analyzing everything, and living in fear the entire time. I realize I went through this one time; for many women the circumstances are more extreme and it may happen numerous times. For me, I have been the calm one during this pregnancy; Charlie has been the anxious one. There has been complete ease and peace of mind during these 4.5 months carrying our son. When I feel doubt creeping in, I just ask God to take it away and I rely on my faith to pull me through. It always does. I have never worried once during this pregnancy, and I think that is what I needed from Him to get me here. With God all things are possible. I leave you with this 1 Samuel 1:27 "For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him."