Since this blog is obviously very brand-new-again, I don't have anything new to say. I only have old to say. ;)
But for those of you who may be facing a diagnosis right now, I figured I could share the thoughts I had this year on her diagnosis. It might help somebody.
From my Facebook (seeing a pattern yet?) status on June 21, 2013 --
Waiting Room
^^^ (that's a song and you should listen to it)
For as long as I can remember, June 21 has been my favorite day of the year. I like it more than Christmas; I like it more than my birthday. I like to treat it like a holiday by waking up early to watch the sunrise and by making sure I'm outside to watch the sunset. I relish both events, knowing that I am watching them earlier and later than is possible on any other day of the year. I love the Longest Day of the Year with the same amount of passion that I hate the Shortest Day of the Year (which is really, really, really a lot). I know it's weird to have a favorite day based on how much daylight there is. That doesn't stop me from loving it.
But in 1999, June 21 was not only the Longest Day of the Year, but also the Longest Day of My Life. It was the day that I was unexpectedly ushered into my Waiting Room.
I was 21 weeks pregnant and running late with my sonogram. We had been in North Carolina visiting Walt's family when the scheduled time came, so I had to back it up a bit. I could have scheduled it earlier, before our trip, but the odds of learning the baby's gender would have been slimmer, and we wanted to know if at all possible -- so 21 weeks it was.
We dropped our kids (6 and 2) off at a friend's house and made the drive to San Angelo for my appointment. When we got to the doctor's office, he was running late. We waited and waited, and I began to get nervous (we'd had three losses between our two older kids; staying calm during pregnancy had long since ceased to be my natural tendency). I mentioned to Walt that I was getting nervous, and he helped me brush it off. Everything would be fine.
The doctor finally came in. He told us that we were having a girl, which sounded pretty good to me. I remember him pointing out her heart and saying that it looked great. Then he started looking at her head.
He got very quiet for a long time.
I had only thought I was nervous before.
He walked over to the table where my chart was and flipped through it, looking for something. He went back and forth between the chart and the ultrasound machine, looking intently at both of them, before he said, "I can't find any record of an AFP test -- did you have one?" I told him that we had opted not to. He got very quiet, looked for a while longer, and finally broke the news to us: our daughter had anencephaly.
She would either be stillborn or die shortly after birth, but one thing was certain: our daughter would die.
He sent us for a second opinion and told us that when we were finished we should come back to his office to discuss our options. The second doctor confirmed that our little girl was indeed anencephalic.
Back in the obstetrician's office, he told us that most people choose to terminate anencephalic pregnancies by having labor induced, but that some people do carry to term. He wanted us to know that he would support us no matter which way we decided to go. He advised us not to make any decisions for about a week so that we wouldn't act hastily and regret anything later.
We left, stunned and heartbroken.
I tried to call my parents. They weren't home.
We drove home. We cried a lot on the way.
We picked the kids up. We cried while we did it.
We thought and we cried and we prayed and we cried and we talked and we cried and we planned and we cried and we considered and then we cried some more.
We cried an awful lot that day.
We finally reached my parents. I lost it. I didn't just cry. I sobbed. I bawled. I still remember falling to my knees on the kitchen floor and crying even harder after I realized I had turned 'anencephaly' into an unintelligible mess of about 24 syllables because of my sobbing -- and that I'd have to say that awful word again and do a better job of it.
We told the kids that our baby had a broken head and that she was very, very sick. We tried not to cry. We didn't succeed.
We looked up anencephaly on the internet and realized that one must be very careful how one does that.
It was the day for my weekly internet chat with a group of other mothers who had delivered stillborn babies. Pregnancy after a late loss is a terrifying thing, and they had all been anticipating my sonogram with me. It was hard to tell them - we had all already experienced heartache before, and we had all expected that I would receive good news. Fortunately, 'anencephaly' is easier to type through tears than it is to say through them.
'You've Got Mail' was on TV that evening. I had never seen it before. I have never seen it since. I needed the distraction. I can't tell you much of what it's about. It was kind of hard to see through the tears, and it was kind of hard to concentrate through the thoughts.
After a day that had lasted at least eight million years, it was finally close to sunset. We had a door in our bedroom that opened out to a west-facing doorstep. Walt asked if I wanted company, and I told him no. I sat on that step in my maternity clothes, feeling our daughter move, and I cried and watched the sun set. It was June 21, and I needed some sense of normalcy. And watching the sunset is what I do on June 21, so watch the sun set, I did.
After it set, I continued to sit there for a very long time.
The sky grew dark and the stars came out and the sky looked just like it always does on a normal West Texas night in June. It hadn't changed, though my life had been turned upside down.
It reminded me of the line, 'God's in His heaven, all's right with the world'.
I didn't know it then, but I was getting ready to learn some very important lessons about that. Good lessons -- lessons that I'm glad I learned, though I wasn't a huge fan of the way I had to learn them.
But those are stories for another day, and not for June 21.
This story is about June 21, the Longest Day of the Year and the Longest Day of My Life.
And this is my account of that day, just because I've never put it all down in one place, and I need to write it down before the memories start to get fuzzy.
It's June 21 again. Tonight, I will go out and watch the sunset. And I will remember my Talitha Hope on the longest day of the year.
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