-Laurie-
Hi!
Member since 5/05 2536 total posts
Name:
|
Re: Mommies who had m/c...
I like to think Jack's my spirit baby, especially since a few weeks later I was pregnant with him.
Spirit Baby
Colin, my twelve-year-old son, discovered me late one rainy
afternoon sitting at the kitchen table, a damp Kleenex crumpled in
my left hand, wiping my eyes as I tried to compose myself for his
sake. It was the third week of January, two months after I'd
miscarried a pregnancy, but I still found it impossible to get
through a day without at least one meltdown into misery.
Stunned w hen the test came back positive, Rog and I had stared at
each other with doubt and ambivalence. At forty-one, my professional
life consumed me. I'd just achieved what some had predicted was an
impossibility: I'd been granted delivery privileges at Alta Bates,
and as a consequence, my midwifery practice burgeoned. Some months I
delivered twelve babies, and no one ever knew if or when I'd be
home. Rog, too, felt stretched to his limits, keeping his business
afloat while picking up the slack for my frequent unscheduled
absences. Colin and Jill approached their challenging adolescent
years. How could we fit an infant into our lives? But when I lost
the pregnancy and all hope for resolution dissolved with my tears, I
fell in love with the baby that was not to be.
Colin asked, "Are you crying about the baby?" and when I nodded
tearfully, he said, "Well, you just have to have another one, Mom,
because it's a Spirit Baby, and you should be its mother."
I must have looked puzzled because he said, "Don't you know about
Spirit Babies? How could I know about them if you don't? I mean,
you're my mom!" But he could see my perplexity.
So my first child, this not-yet-teenaged boy, pulled a wooden chair
to my side and draped his thin arm across my shoulders,
saying, "Well, Mom, here's how it is. See, I was one myself, so that
must be how I know. Anyway, every woman has a circle of babies that
goes around and around above her head, and those are all the
possible babies she could have in her whole life. Every month, one
of those babies is first in line. If she gets pregnant, then that's
the baby that's born. If she doesn't get pregnant, the baby goes
back into the circle and keeps going around with all the others. If
she gets pregnant but something bad happens before the baby's born…
now listen, Mom, because here's the really cool part. It goes back
into the circle, but it becomes a Spirit Baby, and all the other
babies give it cuts. Each month, it's always first in line. Isn't
that great?
"So you just have to get pregnant again, and you'll have the same
Spirit Baby. If you don't, though, then the baby circle will just
beam that little Spirit Baby over to some other woman's circle, and
it'll be first in line for her. It keeps being first in line
somewhere until it finally gets born.
"But it'd be a shame for you not to have it yourself, because I know
how much you want it. So you just have to try again. Mom, remember
that baby you lost before I was born?" I nodded wordlessly. "Well,
that was me. Really. I've always known I was a Spirit Baby. I mean,
I know what I'm talking about here, Mom."
In spite of Colin's certainty that our household, so often bordering
on chaos, lacked only an infant to make things perfect, Rog and I
demurred. But Colin didn't give up and even enlisted his sister's
support. Driving with them in the car one evening, I looked at my
son in the passenger seat beside me. He stared out the side window
and tried to hide his tears, but I saw the flush on his face, the
shaking of his shoulders, and the surreptitious swipe of hand across
cheek.
Six months had passed since my miscarriage, and I had just finished
yet another discussion in which I'd told my pleading son that having
a third baby at my age was out of the question. I reached over the
space between us and squeezed his fingers. "Colin, I don't
understand this passion you have for a baby. Why do you want one so
much?"
He tore his gaze from the distant hills and looked at me with
swimming eyes and trembling lips. In a choking voice, he put all of
his twelve-year-old passion into his reply.
"Oh, Mom! Oh. Just for the joy of it!"
Jill stretched forward from the back seat and placed a hand on each
of our shoulders. "Yeah, Mom, just for the joy of it."
It was my turn to look out the side window and struggle with misty
vision.
So, at a time when most women eye the empty nest at the end of their
branch on the family tree with something approaching relief, I gave
consideration to laying just one more egg. Several months of
discussions peppered with doubt and disbelief followed. Although Rog
and I made the final decision, there's no denying that a big part of
our decision to have a third child began with the insistence of our
adolescent children that we "needed a baby in the house." Rog and I
took a deep breath, looked at each other across the blond heads of
those two wishful children, swallowed – and made a giant leap of
faith.
I conceived my Spirit Baby a week later. Just for the joy of it.
|
