Blogging Apathy
Life here in the W household has been rather chaotic of late. The lowercase continues to throw fits the moment I sit down at a computer. As a result, the only time that I have opportunity to do so is when the Mr. is home -- at which point he generally waits all of 5 seconds before proclaiming that I've "wasted enough time" with blogs and should stop for whatever reason seems to be most beneficial at the time.
In the last 2 months, we have painted several rooms in our new home, unpacked scads of boxes (with many more to go), donated more than 50% of my wardrobe to charity because, seriously, size 2?!?! We have done yard work, we have cleaned more than we have ever cleaned in our lives. And we have lived our lives. We have spent hours in the sandbox and the baby pool. We have played at Gymboree, had play dates, gone to minor league baseball games. We have visited family and had family visit us. (Please note that the visits to us did not include my mother-in-law, though my father-in-law has been here once in that time.)
And, adding to that, we have dealt with the horrors of my sister-in-law's pregnancy. She had scandalously high blood pressure, she swelled immensely, she had nausea and vomiting the entire three trimesters, she spilled protein, and she had insane headaches. And she threw a fit when her OB said she needed to see a perinatologist -- when she finally did see the peri, he informed her that though her levels in all areas were higher than the norm, they were not, in fact, dangerously so. She ignored her doctor's requests for extra ultrasounds due to the small size of her baby. She did not follow orders that she be on bed rest at home. She took prenatal vitamins for only the first couple of weeks of her pregnancy having deemed them "too expensive." She laughed when the doctor told her that the wanted to induce for 3 weeks running because her baby was failing NSTs, not moving enough, not responding well, and having a fetal heart rate as low as 80-90 beats per minute. She decided, in her expertise (as a high school grad), that this baby was just "laid back." When she was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia due to having all of the symptoms and their increase in severity from her base level (having all the symptoms at a lower level) and admitted to the hospital, she informed her OB that she would "cut him open with the scalpel before he ever cut her." Remarkably, once in the hospital, the bloodwork came back normal, her blood pressure dropped to normal limits and she was sent home.
Last night, at 42 weeks gestation, she delivered after spending a day on pitocin and 3 hours of actual laboring. My niece weighs 7 lb 9 oz and was 21 inches long. She seems to be normal, though in the hours my mom has spent in the hospital with them she hasn't cried. She is however alert, supporting her own head, looking towards people as they talk to her, and as one nurse noticed, she actually smiles when her older brother sings to her.
And here I am...sad. Not because things worked out. She is, after all, my niece and I am grateful for her health. Mr. W and I both just feel so out of sorts. My sister-in-law is the one who at Christmas, in front of her other two children announced that she didn't have to like being a parent, that she did NOT in fact, and that all she had to do was raise her kids and do what was right because she does love them...just not the actual act of parenting them. I feel that she doesn't deserve to have those kids when I want nothing more than to have a family with two or three or even four children. Mr. W and I have loved every part of being our son's parents -- even those things that are less than pleasant. And yet we may never have another chance. With my history of miscarriages, we have no way of knowing if I would make it through to a viable gestation or exactly how premature our child would be and what effects of that prematurity any future children would suffer. It's a risk that Mr. W is just too afraid of to consider trying again. And, financially, adoption or surrogacy (if I could even convince a clinic to do it for us) are out.
And so we sit here, saddened by the fact that someone who does not deserve it achieves motherhood so easily.
