Family

Today I experienced a eye opening, mind blowing revelation. Yesterday was the start of another migraine that flowed into today. Work could wait today, so I stayed home to recoup, which involved about 4 more hours of sleep, acetaminophen, and my daily beta-blocker. After the pain subsided, slowly life started to move through my body enough to turn on the T.V. After watching pretty much nothing, I looked at the On Demand options and found "Bones". Recently, I've been watching old episodes of Bones on Netflix during my treadmill sessions. The On Demand episode was the birth of Booth and Bone's baby. I had to watch (because I'm obsessed with having another child). It was a good episode, not one of the best, but good. The one line that struck me was when Bones, holding their newborn, looked up at Booth and says, "We're a family." I bawled my eyes out. That one little line struck such a chord in my mentally exhausted brain. Have I ever referred to my husband and my daughter as my family? I felt so ashamed of my selfishness. Have I ever thought of us being a complete family because we only had one child instead of the 2 or more I would have loved to have?

This past September I had another miscarriage. This time was tough for me to grasp because my husband and I agreed (prior to this pregnancy) that if I were to get pregnant again, it would be our last try. The pregnancy happened with the help of Clomid. At 6 weeks I had some bleeding and went in for an ultrasound. There were two sacs, one empty and the other with a teeny, tiny heartbeat. Is it true?! We have a heartbeat?! The last heartbeat we saw was our beautiful daughter's 6 years earlier. Things started progressing. I went back in at 8 weeks, the empty sac hadn't changed but the embryo was starting to take shape. The doctor was very happy with the progress and gave me a less than 5% chance of loss. At 9 weeks, I started to have some bleeding again, so another ultrasound was taken. The baby was fine. We saw arm buds and they were waving to us. A small blood clot was found near my cervix. I was told this wasn't a big concern but they wanted to see me back weekly until the clot either dislodged and eliminated or dissolved. I went back in at 10 weeks.

It was my daughter's first day of Kindergarten. My little girl was so grown-up. She smiled the whole time. She marched on the bus and into her classroom. I was so proud of her. In the afternoon, I was supposed to be happy, see her sibling waving back at me again. Sadly, that did not happen. The ultrasound tech was very quiet. She couldn't find a heartbeat. The baby stopped growing at 9 weeks. Heartbreaking. Heart-wrenching. Complete sadness. I felt like a failure... again.

Why do I keep torturing myself with this need to have another child? Am I afraid my daughter is going to be sticking out like a sore-thumb because she plays differently with friends that have siblings? She's not used to sharing. She doesn't know how to take turns. She doesn't know what it's like to have a sibling squabble and win or lose. I love the fact that we get more time with her but I wish she had someone closer in age that she could share her secrets, play dolls, dress-up, Legos. I wish she could have little kid dreams and little kid adventures. Because she has only her parents to spend time with, she doesn't get that time to be free. She's a wonderful child, why do I feel as if I let her down? Or is it me that I'm letting down? Or my husband? Ugh! Such and emotional day! It's a good thing I didn't go to work today.

On to bigger and better things. I'm working on starting my own business here soon. When all the details are finalized, I'll post the exciting info.