Where to even start… I met my husband when we were in 7th grade… We started dating when we were 29. Everything was amazing. He lived in North Carolina at the time helping to take care of his mom and I lived in New York with my daughter who was 7 at the time. We met half way in a small town in Virginia. After 6 months of meeting or one of us driving the whole way to see the other, he decided to move to New York to be with me permanently. He quit his job, applied to college, and moved in. Everything was perfect. I had a great job, he was finally going to school, something that he had wanted to do since he left the military years ago. Our life couldn’t be any more perfect. We took trips, went to baseball games, all, of course, with my daughter. We rarely took trips without her, that’s how it is when you decide to be family. He had my bestfriend distract me so he could pick out a ring, he proposed at a lighthouse in Cape Cod, it was beautiful.
Then came the day we had been hoping for for almost a year, we got pregnant. We were so excited. My daughter was excited. We had waited until our doctor’s appointment to confirm before we told the whole world our exciting news. We called all our wedding vendors to make sure everything could be changed (especially the dress!). Nothing could have prepared us for what happened a few weeks later. I got up to pee in the middle of the night (I know, figures right) and I was bleeding. I don’t think the sound I made as I realized what was happening will ever leave my husbands mind. My neighbor watched my daughter as we rushed to the hospital. As we sat there listening to a nurse tell us how stupid we were for coming and it was ‘most likely caused from having sex’, the doctor came in and did an ultrasound and told us there was no baby there. We had miscarried at some point and it was just then that my body had decided to let us know. We listened to the doctor as he told us it wasn’t our fault and a bunch of other things that honestly, I wasn’t listening to. How could this have happened? Everything was so perfectly in place. We had financial stability, we were settled, we were happy. It Just didn’t make sense. We told the doctor we would just go home and wait for it to be finished. I took a few days off from work and I don’t think I even got dressed out of sweatpants and a baggy sweatshirt the entire 3 days. The only reason I got out of bed was because I knew I had a daughter that was counting on me to get her up and ready for school, a daughter who couldn’t see me sad. So I sucked it up, got up, got her to school, and cried while she was gone. Nothing happened in those 3 days though. That’s important to know. Because I went back to work. I wasn’t back a half hour when it started. And it was bad. I was making something for a customer and I just started clot bleeding everywhere. Thankfully, my coworkers and boss jumped in, one took over for me and the other grabbed a garbage bag, tied my jacket around my waist, put me in my car, and made me call my husband (fiancé at the time) to meet me at home and bring me to the hospital. I wound up having a D&C to empty me out. I use the word empty because that’s exactly what it felt like. There was nothing inside of me. Nothing. It felt completely empty. I remember the next day him asking if I felt ok for a drive. He took me to a waterfall to try to get my mind away for awhile. He has always put me first. Then we called everyone and let everyone know the news. It’s not fun, I hated every second of it. Having to relive it for every person who wanted the same answers we couldn’t give. People who thought they knew the answers and how it must have happened because of ‘insert random excuse here’. We worked through it, mostly because my husband held the strength for both of us even though he was crumbling himself. We made it to our wedding and relaxed for the first time in a long time.
We talked about trying again, it took awhile, less than a year later we found out we were pregnant again. We waited to tell everyone, except my boss who watched me almost crawl into a ball crying so hard because I was terrified I would lose this one too. Sure enough, the day I hit 6 weeks, gone. The baby was gone. AGAIN. This time it was the day my husband was supposed to do his fitness test to get into a police academy. We spent all morning at the hospital confirming what we already knew. This time wasn’t as awful as the last, my body was clearly getting used it (seriously?!). My husband wound up throwing up half way through his run and failed his fitness test. He decided he wasn’t going to try anymore on that dream. Nobody knew the real reason for him giving up because we made things up. Turns out most of your friends don’t want much to do with you when you’ve been branded someone whose had a miscarriage. They won’t say it to your face, they’ll smile when they see you. But the visits get shorter and further between, the texts and phone calls come in less, and slowly they distance themselves to the point where maybe once every few months you get the ‘I miss you, adulting is hard’ text. We aren’t stupid. We get it. We tried to make light of it, make jokes so people didn’t feel so out of place. But it’s not easy, it’s not that we didn’t understand, it just sucked for us to go from having friends who went on vacation with us, played games with us, our kids having playdates, to nothing. We had lost 2 babies and almost all our friends within 2 years. It’s hard not to blame yourself. We never blamed each other for any of it… but we certainly did a lot of blaming against ourselves. We loved each other and neither of us would let the other dwell but we both knew we were doing it. In secret, away from the other. It took a toll on our life, and our marriage. Where we used to snuggle or giggle over the most ridiculous things, we now sat opposite sides of the couch just watching whatever show was on. We still loved each other, we didn’t want to lose each other, that was for certain. But at that time, we just couldn’t bare to allow the other to know how much we blamed ourselves. It was the most difficult time we have ever had. And according to my husband it included him being in the war. We realized where we were headed and tried to regroup, take time with each other and work on just us. It worked, but we were never the same. I can still think back to before the first miscarriage and remember the way we looked at each other, the way we touched each other, the way we kissed. We both know it’s not the same, it never will be. To go through 1 was hard enough, to go through a second was even harder.
We decided we would try one more time to have a baby. We managed to get pregnant again. If we lost this one, that would be it for us. I went down to barely part time at work so I wouldn’t have any stress, we had saved up money so it wasn’t a concern at the time. I mostly sat on the couch in fear of a miscarriage. At 3 months we told our closest friends and family. I spent most my time waiting for a miscarriage. At 6 months we had an ultrasound we were waiting for. To find out if our baby had a cleft/palate like my husband. We knew it was a possibility, so we prepared for it. Sure enough, our baby had both. To make matters worse, she had it worse than my husband did. But at least she was ours, and healthy beyond that. We didn’t care about any of it. We were finally having a baby. We found out around Halloween that it was a girl. We didn’t even care. it was a baby, she was ours. We made jokes about how we wanted a boy but let’s be honest here, that was for them, not us. We didn’t care. nothing in this world would take away how much we already loved her. I still spent the rest of my pregnancy terrified. I don’t think we had sex much before month 7 because we had it in our heads now that that might have caused the miscarriages (obviously not, but that’s where our heads were at). My husband spent most of the pregnancy reassuring me everything was fine.
We had our baby. She was beautiful to us. And then we were told how much we would have to put her through because of her cleft/palate. How many surgeries, doctor’s appointments, dentists when she is older. As if having 2 miscarriages wasn’t enough, here’s a doctor basically telling you good job, you wanted a baby so bad that you brought this baby into the world that would have to suffer numerous times just to look “normal”. We know that’s not how anyone feels but after all we had gone through, that’s exactly how we felt. We felt selfish. And if that wasn’t enough the constant “we feel so bad for you, that your baby didn’t come out perfect” speeches all the time was about enough to make us lose it and never talk to anyone ever again. OUR BABY WAS PERFECT. SHUT YOUR FACE. That’s what we wanted to say, except maybe a bit more explicit than that. But we didn’t. we are not people who cause scenes unless we have to (sometimes I do). We try to be nice to everyone. We are respectful people and sometimes I also want to punch everyone who is rude, especially to my husband, because he is the kindest man I’ve ever known. I get protective. So instead, we just said we understand how you feel, but we love her just the way she is. And then we would walk away because we were definitely done with the conversation.
Our baby also lost almost a pound before we left the hospital, we had to go back the next day to make sure she wasn’t still losing (she started to maintain, which is the ONLY reason we were able to leave). Then, once a week, for the next 3 months after that. Did I mention her special hospital for her needs is over an hour away from our house? Yea, that’s fun. Also, we were super sleep deprived, because per doctor’s orders we were not to allow her to go for longer than 3 hours without feeding. Oh, and the time starts at the beginning of each feeding. So really 2 hours down time because it took her almost an entire hour to eat 2 ounces of formula. We took turns so we could get a little sleep in between. At 3 months she slept through the night and we missed every single alarm we set we were so exhausted. Thankfully, that same day was her checkup appointment and they approved her to sleep through the night because she was finally gaining weight. Not much, so no longer than 6 hours of sleep, but enough that the concern for her failure to thrive rate lowered drastically. We were so excited. However, because her weight gain was so slow, she couldn’t have her first surgery like planned because she wasn’t at the recommended weight yet. So, it was another month before she hit that point and they finally scheduled her surgery.
So then came her first ever surgery, he doctor is amazing and wonderful (if you ever need a cleft/palate doctor reference!). It was long and terrifying. We hated every moment. And the only person who was there for it was a family member. By then, most of the friends we used to have just only cared about Facebook updates…. We had a few still close friends but 3 of them live across the country and the one who lives nearby does her best to always be there when we need her but she works a lot to help support her family. You know what we heard after her surgery? “omg, doctors do wonderful things now a days, by the time they are done, you wont ever even know it was there” and “at least after this is all done, you won’t have to worry about it anymore” “at least this is fixable” and other variations of such. There you go again, telling us how our daughter wasn’t perfect but she can be FIXED, are you SERIOUS!??! And tell me again how I can go back to work? (because by her first surgery I was down to working one day a week because of all her needs and even if I could find a daycare that would take her, I probably wouldn’t trust them with her, special bottles, cleanliness, etc…no thanks. I got this!) So, my husband works long hours to support us because there’s just no way around it until her surgeries are done. I took a leave from work (again, amazing job, they completely understand!). We then are thinking ok, doctor said pending everything goes the way she wants, we should be done with lip surgeries before she’s 1 and then the palate at 1. I can go back to work once she can take regular bottles instead of the Haberman ones after her lip is done………. Then her doctor told us her palate isn’t where it should be, so now her lip is postponed until after her palate surgery… when she’s over a year old….. of course. So, I can forget going back to work any time soon. Sorry finances. By now our savings had dwindled, I had bought a car right before we found out we were pregnant again so now we have an extra payment we wouldn’t have done had we known. The way life works sometimes. One of my friends who I hadn’t spoken to in years, reached out to us, as she had apparently also had a cleft/palate when she was a baby. Now this girl I have known since kindergarten, and I never knew. Never noticed. We chatted for a long time, I forgot how much I missed her. Well, she made a ‘GoFundMe’ page for our baby to try to help us out. I thought it was sweet. We’ve never asked anyone for money, we’ve always given money when our friends needed it. But at this point we were desperate, we were slowly going broke, my older daughter is a cheerleader so she does all the competitions, and the amount of money she costs alone is enough to make you wish you were rich! (HAHA) She’s 11 now, she’s expensive in her own right. What amazed us is the people who donated. Yes, a couple friends, but mostly people we hadn’t spoken to or kept in touch with for years before we were together and a few random strangers. We were so appreciative of everything we got, it wasn’t a lot in the terms of money, but it kept us afloat for another month which was more than we could have hoped for. The only thing that angered us was the fact that people we had let borrow money, or needed money in the past that we helped, didn’t help us. And it wasn’t just about money. No one, that we hadn’t spoke to recently, reached out and asked the only question that mattered “How are you?”. Simple enough, you’d think, but no one did it. No one just wanted to see how we were doing. It never occurs to these people that maybe we just need a friend to be there once in a while. It was difficult. We are doing it alone. My husband’s family still lives in North Carolina and my family lives over an hour away from our house.
On a side note, and this might sound a bit rude, but something that made us angry, was people like us, or a family who just lost their father and are broke, or someone who needs surgery but can’t afford it, our GoFundMe pages still sit there, with less than a couple hundred or thousand dollars. But someone asks for an Xbox and 300,000 people jump on it to give this person money?! People who don’t need the money, they just want to buy a new car, same thing, people donate. How is this a thing?! Sorry, not even the point here. We honestly just want our friends back, our family to back us up when we need it, and random people not to tell us how basically awful we are for doing the best we can for our little family. Because our family might be small, and stressed, and overworked, and overtired, and Definitely broke, our family is still amazing. I wouldn’t give up the world for my husband or either of my daughters. They are my beautiful masterpieces.
Our little but loud family. 