Motherhood you're so cruel

 Motherhood you're so cruel

You make me laugh, you make me cry

You make me ask WHY

...over and over again, the pain and the joy repeat, back and forth, back and forth, as if doing a dance so familiar and so knowing that it reverberates all the way back to the beginning of time. 

I am not the only one you have in your clutches.

As countless are the heartaches and joys of doing your bidding, are the number of women who have experienced the same. 

What makes your cruelty feel so unique to me, though? I know what it is.  It is your indelible mark of God's promise of reward and love for participating in His unique creation....the creation of  new human life from nothing.  

It is the absolutely unrepeatable and irreplaceable nature of my very self, of my very soul. 

Still, I will never forget how cruel you are to me.  My own mother died before I became a mother.  Did this even matter to you?

 Time is a thief, but YOU rob me every day because of the slow, slow, slow letting go of very humans I helped to create.  

Don't I get a say? 

I HAD LOVE.  I'm only guilty of having love to share.  Then shouldn't I be able to have a say in your cruel ways of reality and temporal pain? I'm not cruel like you. I should have a say.

The very definition of you is to let go....to literally bleed dry at the core of my body as time passes and to say goodbye over and over again with my heart and my mind. 

Motherhood, you're so cruel....

But I shall forgive you.  70 times 7 times I shall forgive you. Over and over I shall forgive you, while I keep dancing the ever so familiar dance of joy and pain.  

This is JUST Hysterical! (Part 4)

Part 3

Part 2

Part 1

 It's just so hysterical that everything happens to me in January...Or is it just crazy.

January shows up every year as a new beginning and a new way to challenge me.  Maybe I should thank January for always making me stronger....always surprising me...always keeping me on my toes.

Some things that happened to me in January....

1.A family crisis years back

2.Emergency gall bladder surgery

3. I was robbed from my car and at the bank the next day

4. I had a terrifying car accident and near death experience

5. My father died when I was 9 months pregnant with my first child, making me an orphan as I embark on my own parenting journey.

6. I had major breast reduction surgery (you're welcome)

7. Present Day unexplained vaginal bleeding health scare/ no spend challenge torture

I meannnnnnn there's some good things that have happened in January but I'm not going to talk about those because the good things will only ruin the point of this sad  and dramatic post.

So, here I am, waiting, for my repeat ultrasound, which I got moved up to next Tuesday, thank, goodness. (I didn't know where to put the commas in that sentence so I just put a bunch of them in random places) I am waiting on a doctor referral to a gynecologist so she can go over everything and tell me what's going on with my uterus and surrounding organs that played such a crucial role in my children entering this world.  Just think for a second...EVERY human being that has ever lived began their lives by living in a UTERUS. 

 That is actualy hysterical!  Oh noooo, did I say hysterical?  

Did you know that the word "hysterectomy" comes from the greek word, hystera, which means uterus? And the term "hysteria" comes from that?? A CRAZY WOMAN! I just offended myself! How dare I use such a gendered insult.  As my father always used to say, "WORDS MEAN THINGS".  Wow, this is an interesting take!  I have to say I wouldn't mind the term being changed from "hysterectomy" to "uterectomy".  You all know I am NO radical feminist by any stretch of the imagination, but I support this change! 

Frankly, the less attention drawn to my emotions, the better.  I really don't need my emotional state to be blamed on the "wandering uterus" inside my body that is causing me troubles.  Can you believe they actually thought that if they removed the uterus, they would stop women from being emotional/suffering hysteria??  Hitler tried this.  I am so upset about this!  I am so angry about this.  I can't stop crying!  Please take my uterus out now and HELP ME STAY SANE!!!

I should start a GoFund Me for my uterus.  Do you know Lorraine?  Do her unpredictable and highly intense emotions bother you sometimes? Do you feel confused when she responds to you with erratic and unpredictable retorts?  Have you seen some liquid coming from her eyes with no accompanying explanation? Have you seen her stuffing various foods into her face, like flaming hot cheetos, at random times during the month? Donate NOW to have Lorraine's uterus removed so you can have calmer and more serene interactions with her!

Also let me get this straight... my children were excreted from my crazy organ when they were born.  The three most glorious and beautiful moments of my life involved brand new humans (that George and I helped God to create) exiting their first temporary address, my uterus, AKA my crazy organ.  

Do any of us have a chance at sanity? REALLY?  Even boys live in the uterus. They are not exempt from this emotionally torturous dwelling place.   

Wait, I may have hit on a design flaw here.  There should really be a different organ for boys to live in when they are developing. Boys develop emotions because that pesky uterus leaked some stuff onto them!  The shame! There are plenty of organs we don't need in there. Boys could grow in the gall badder or spleen or appendix, possibly, so as to keep them away from all that leaky emotion.

I also had homebirths.  That means my children were BORN IN MY BED. It's a wonder I can even sleep at night! 

So as I wait for answers to explain my bleeding uterus, I shall continue to thank January for always sneaking up on me and surprising me with unexpected twists and turns of life.  

All this confusion and upset could just be me loudly and clumsily entering menopause...

MEN oh PAUSE....now that's hysterical. 

Or am I just overreacting? You'll most likely NEVER KNOW.

This is what my name means, of course. Appropriate. Also, for some reason I have had this card for years and years.  I love that it has stayed with me somehow.

Random picture of me with my father at Hampton Beach, NH in the late nineties. He died in 2007.

An early photo of me shortly after I was excreted from my mother's crazy organ. FEBRUARY 1 UPDATE I had my repeat ultrasounds on Tuesday.  It has taken me this long to update you since I just needed some time.  It's been a lot of waiting and a lot of praying and a lot of just functioning.  Sometime if you need to celebrate little accomplishments,  just celebrate them! Life is hard. As my first born child enters legal adulthood this month,  I enter a new phase of my life..... the CHANGE OF LIFE.  I guess that's what they call it.  Every phase of life is a CHANGE of life.  Why does this one feel so much harder then.  The ultimate realization that absolutely no time can be taken back, cannot be relived, cannot be changed. Whatever I did as a parent, I DID. I know my parenting journey will continue of course. But I look at Emmett now and I know he'll never look at me like he did when he was little.  One day I told him,  Emmett I'll be so sad when you stop snuggling with me. And then he immediately said, Mommy I'll never stop snuggling with you.  And it's true he really won't stop. He still hugs me and looks at me like only he can and lets me kiss his cheek.   As I sit here and type this on my phone through tears streaming down, in the very spot he was born, I remember that first time we worked together.  I was in labor and almost wasn't progressing and I was in so much pain AND SO SCARED I COULDN'T DO IT, but then I felt him kicking. I mean, no words. No words for the realization that MY pain didn't matter...for once in my life my pain didn't matter. I knew I had to help him out (literally) and his kicks communicated to me hey, let's do this thing,  I want to meet you! So for 18 years I've been trying not to think about my own pain and to put my children first.  I hope they always know I tried to do that.  So this current state of leaving my childbearing years behind and moving to the next phase, maybe I'm a little scared again. Maybe I need to think about my own pain again....acknowledge it. Truth is, every time someone says oh it's so great they caught it early and it's so manageable and all you have to do is get a hysterectomy and I'm like yeah I don't need my uterus anymore just take it out! I meannnn....deep down I irrationally feel like some doctor is going to rob me of the core of my being....(thank you hormones and progesterone). What will become of me then? How do I even know what I like to do anymore? What I'm good at?  To any female reading this (also if you're a man reading this,  please let me know! Because you're my HERO)....just know... there will be blood. So much blood. 5 minutes after Emmett was born....midwife tells me ok in about 10 minutes you'll feel the need to push, the placenta will come out. What! Ugh I forgot about that.  Bloody lifeline to your baby= placenta. Miscarriage?? Tons of blood.  I started bleeding early into my 4th pregnancy....called George and tearfully told him,  "I don't think it's going to work out." That night in the ER, I miscarried...the teeny baby was hanging on to my cervix and passed to the doctor.  Fetal demise. It just happens. So much more blood. 11 years go by where I don't get pregnant,  dont know why.... just don't.  Then more blood. Unexplained this time.  40 DAYS of it..... tests....bloodwork.....now progesterone to stop the bleeding and then having to stay on the progesterone not only to stop the bleeding but to slow down/stop the growth of precancerous/possibly cancerous growth and rotting that is happening to my uterus.  So that's the bloody update!!   I see the gynecologist on February 25th. My uterine lining continues to thicken in the meantime which is not good.  Hey. It all might be benign. Hopefully the biopsy will show that it's all fine.  One last thing... My mother died when I was 19. My children are approaching that age. It is an irrational fear I have that I won't live to see my children reach adulthood (omg the teenage lack of frontal lobe development is a real thing!) I want to live to appreciate them as adults, with their full frontal lobe brain development and all. A counselor told me once, you know you're not going to die when your children turn 19, right? Ummmm I actually had to think if I agreed with him.  It's amazing what trauma will do to a person.  The absolute terror I feel at the thought of my children losing me at 19..... well I think for me the definition of parenting in a nutshell is not wanting my children to ever feel pains of abandonment, fear and loneliness that I have felt in my lifetime. Guys, let's just hope that Barry Manilow doesn't actually die around the same time that my uterus does!! If that happens, we can just skip to the part where I'm sitting in a wheelchair in a nursing home with a blanket over my lap and I'm staring out the window mouthing the words to I Can't Smile Without You.