Thoughts of the Week

So many thoughts have run through my head this week....

• My first week back to work went... surprisingly well, actually. I didn't cause a scene or burst into tears in front of my coworkers. No one said anything insensitive. Any comments I received were genuine and kind. I felt very missed and needed, which made it easier to get out of bed each morning. It is difficult to focus, and I'm certainly not working at 100% yet. I want to think about Asher and Evan all day long, and I just can't do that and get any work done. But overall, I feel good about how the week went. I feel so very blessed by my job, and my boss. He paid me and kept me on regular health insurance the whole time I was gone. I will always be grateful for that amazing generosity.
  

• We had a visit from our pastor on Tuesday. I was kind of dreading it, but it was really good. I cried, of course, but I felt better afterward than I had all day. I'm thinking more and more that J and I should see a counselor, because sometimes it's so helpful to have a third party asking the questions, so we can focus on simply answering them. We are very blessed by Dave.

• My blood pressure has been pretty good this week. It was high on Monday after work and wouldn't come back down, so I took a small dose of labetalol. But since then it's been fine. Still not perfect, but much better.

• I thought a lot on Thursday about how things turned out. Despite how unbelievably, tragically awful our situation is—the kind of thing that only happens on TV dramas—it takes my breath away to think of how much worse it could have been. The thing that leaves me breathless it that yes, this actually happened to us. Bad stuff does happen, and it did. And it could have been even worse. Even worse than this, the worst pain I could ever imagine. Obviously, I could have died, too. Or I could have been permanently disabled by my illness. Specifically, I've thought about the TTTS that my babies probably had. If I hadn't developed pre-e, we would be dealing with TTTS right now. Which means they still may not have lived. The only treatments for TTTS are fetoscopic surgery (so risky) or sacrificing one of the twins. THAT terrifies me—to think that, had things gone differently, I may have been asked to choose between my boys. That is a decision I could never, ever make. To me, that would have been even worse than what we've been through. Just thinking about it paralyzes me with fear. As odd as it sounds, I am thankful that (although I will NEVER understand why something bad had to happen AT ALL) if something bad had to happen, it was not something that would cause us to make, or not make, a decision that we would question for the rest of our lives.

• Speaking of decisions, I am thankful that we don't really have any doubt that we did what we had to do. I admit that I feel very defensive about it, because I feel that some people don't understand our situation, and that the "choice" we made was not really a choice. That if I had been any sicker, there would not have been a "choice" to make. I feel that we are probably being judged by some who are misinformed. But I feel a peace surrounding everything about the babies' birth. I got to see my babies alive, and talk to them and kiss them. They died in my arms. That is more than many women get with HELLPS. If it had to happen, this awful thing happened in the most "perfect" way possible. God's timing is perfect, and I believe that if He had wanted us to wait longer, we would have known that.

• I talked to Grandma Dee recently, and she told me that a friend of hers donated money to the Ronald McDonald House in our babies' names. This woman does not know us. Her daughter-in-law recently had twin boys, and I was going to meet her and talk about "twin stuff," but that never happened. I cannot explain how touched I was to hear that Asher and Evan are being remembered by people who don't even know J or I. That their names are being spoken and written by people who didn't even know them. It brings me to tears. That woman blessed us more than she will ever know.

• Melissa told me something kind of eerie the other night. She said that when we first told them we were pregnant, at that moment a thought popped into her head. The thought was that my baby would not make it (this was before we even knew it was twins). She said she felt horrible for even thinking such a thing, and pushed it out of her mind. As we started having complications, she worried even more. And once I was in the hospital, she had the worst feeling, of almost knowing that it would not turn out well. SO WEIRD. I have to believe that God gave her some kind of premonition, so she would be prepared to help us deal in the months to come. She said that for her, it is added assurance that we did the right thing, that this was how it was going to turn out. It's so sad, but sometimes I think to myself that Asher and Evan were never meant to be here for long. (I would punch anybody who tried to comfort me with a trite saying about how it "just wasn't meant to be," yet that may actually be true.) All the days ordained for them were written, before one of them came to be. I just wish I could figure out what the point of it all was. What meaning and purpose their short, precious little lives had. I know that I am forever changed, but I hope that I can find some sense in it all... eventually.