Take Me Down a Peg

I handle alot, and I mean alot, of crap in my day to day life. Doing this whole deployment pregnancy thing ensures that I am never short on stress or have patience at the end of the day. But a thousand sleepless nights worrying about the husband and stressing over the potential of preterm labor fails to hold a light to when I got to watch my poor baby hurting.

Today was probably the longest day I have had so far this deployment. I can't understand how there are "moms" out there in the world, that can walk out on or fail their children... I would have done anything today to keep my poor baby from going through catheters and IVs and xrays... ugh.

I thought to myself hey you're a NICU mom, you can handle this but I was so very wrong! I think that the nicu took all my ability to handle seeing my children go through medical b.s. It feels like as a mother, you can only handle so much, and it literally broke my heart to sit there and have to hold my poor little girl while she was poked and picked on by those doctors. Maybe it was best that all the scary medical stuff that happened with kitty, happened with my first baby, when I was young and dumb, and not ready to be a mom.

I can look at who I was back then, and I totally understand the concerns that people were feeling when they knew that I was bringing a child into this world. I was still acting like a child myself, and I didn't understand the emotional extent that went into being a mom. That and, as much of a monster I feel like when I say this, I had 6 weeks in labor to detach myself from Stasia while I was sitting there in the hospital. I don't think any mother goes into labor at 21 weeks and expects a good outcome... hell, it took me months to even wrap my mind around the fact that she was home, okay, and destined to be an amazing little girl.

Somedays I look at her and still can't believe she is the same little 2lb baby that I brought into the world all those years ago. What a veteran's day that was! And what a fitting birthday for a little girl that proved to be one hell of a fighter... nowadays I call it stubborn, but when you think about it, she has been stubborn since day 1. I always felt like a "bad mom" for waiting so long to allow myself to truly fall in love with her. It was too much of a risk, and I am a rather emotionally guarded person, so I am not surprised, not proud either.

It's a bad pattern, that has followed suit with each pregnancy since. Even Ivan, I have trouble seeing myself holding that little boy in my arms, its too soon... give me 3 more weeks and I can start to come to terms with the fact that he is going to be arriving healthy and I won't be so afraid to be expecting him.

I just hope that the next time I have to be stuck in a hospital is because I am stuck there, not one of my babies... preferrably sometime at the end of September... at labor and delivery. My hat goes off to any mother who has  had to go through real medical stuff with their children, just tests were killing me to sit there through. but as much as I wanted to leave the room, I could never look at her without feeling some level of guilt for abandoning her when she was hurt and scared... I'm just glad it wasn't anything serious and that she is already doing much better than she was just a few short hours ago.

Sure makes you realize that it's not only your own health you take for granted sometimes. I'm lucky to have such healthy and happy babies driving me crazy everyday. Well, meds at 0300, and 0300 comes very early. So I am off to my bed that is made up on Boo's floor.