Learning to Fail

Well it has happened again. My daughter is yet again successful at something she is doing. Don't get me wrong, I love that she is so great at everything that she tries. But, at some point she is going to try something new and she will fail miserably. No one can be perfect at everything. This will not be easy when the time comes and she will not go down silently. She already expects perfection from herself and hates to make even a small mistake and no matter how hard my husband and I try, we can not teach her the concept of how to not be a sore loser. There is a reason for all of this though. She has seemed to take all the best traits from my husband and I. She gets the tenacity to try and be perfect from me. I hate doing anything half-ass and always try to be as close to perfect as possible. Nearly thirty years of life have made me realize that total perfection is impossible, so maybe in 23 more years she will wise up to this. Unfortunately, she gets the need to win from both of us. This has been a very interesting point in our marriage. Both of us hate to lose at anything including driving distance times and especially board games. I think that we are the only couple that will play the game of life "best 2 out of 3", then "3 out of 5" and so on, just because the one who is losing doesn't want to quit until they are ahead. Rummy 500 turns into Rummy 1,000,000 with us, because whoever is losing at 500 wants to keep going and the competitive spirit of the other is always up to the challenge. This has also translated to the bedroom and no one wants to admit that they are absolutely exhausted, so after 7 years of marriage we still quite often have all nighters. One of these days one of us is probably going to croak from the exertion, but what a way to go! But back to the point. Everyone I know tries desperately to teach their children to succeed and I am trying desperately to teach my child to fail. The need to succeed has just been born naturally into her, so failure is going to be a much harder thing for her to learn. I decided that the best way would be to find and activity that she is bad at and force her to keep doing it, until she learns how to accept failure gracefully. This is easier said than done. She is great at school, so that is out. She is an excellent artist with a great natural ability for six, so scratch that. She succeeded at tap, jazz and ballet, even though she was so clumsy at first. She just seemed to grow right into it. Soccer is definitely a no go and the same goes for basketball, she's great at them both. She is doing awesome at swimming and up until tonight I though that t-ball might be it. She wasn't all that into it and had only hit one foul ball all season being coach pitched. Granted, she hit it off the tee awesome every time, but eventually they take the tee away, so I thought that I had finally found the one thing I could use to teach that we can't always be great at everything. That dream was shattered by the three for three batting that she did tonight. Somehow it just all of a sudden clicked for her and she hit the ball coach pitched each and every time at bat. One the way to the car she exclaimed, "I love t-ball!" So much for that idea. Maybe that nagging sensation of needing to succeed and be perfect finally got to her tonight and she just couldn't not hit the ball. So here we go again, on my journey to find the one activity that she doesn't do well. This is proving to be harder than I thought. My husband and I are like day and night where our talents are concerned. I am artistic, an avid reader, great at music and English, History, and languages. He is athletic, very coordinated, great at sports and Math and Science. Somehow, she seems to have inherited both of our talents, except for maybe music. She has never tried that yet, but I have her signed up for violin lessons starting next week. Maybe she will be tone deaf like her father and I will finally have a tool to use to teach her to accept defeat. Or maybe she will be ultra talented with a great ear like me and I will have to look for yet another thing that she might possible be bad at. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

The Roads I Used to Know

Yesterday, on the way home from my doctor's appointment, I decided to "take the road less traveled" so to speak. I took the back roads home and turned onto roads that I hadn't taken since before my oldest daughter was born almost seven years ago. I was probably wasting more gas and money than I should have been, but time to reflect is something that I truly believe is priceless. I had a lot of time to reflect, while I was driving and I used that time to the fullest. I thought a lot about who I was the last time I traveled these particular roads and the person I have become, since I traveled them. I am definitely not the same person that I was all those years ago. Since then, I have become a wife, a mother, seen three deployments, lost friends to the war, and even lost a child. I have watched my father's health decline and realized the true meaning of mortality. I have made many mistakes, but have always learned from them and become a better person because of them. I went from a weak young woman, who thought very little of herself, to a stronger older woman, who is confident in herself and her abilities. I have met myself along the way and learned to love myself. I have especially learned to love my faults and embrace my failings. I have learned that everything happens for a reason, though it may take forever to figure out what the reason is. I have learned that every mistake we make, helps us become who we need to be. I have learned that God is not playing tricks on us or merely moving us around like pieces in a giant chess game. He lets us choose our own paths and make our own mistakes, so we can grow to become the person we need to be to survive whatever may come later on down the road. He picks us up and dries our tears, knowing full well that we are probably going to do something just as stupid, if not more stupid again. I have learned that anything is possible and anything can happen. I have learned that even when we do everything right and by the book, things do not always have the perfect outcome. Most importantly, I have learned to let everything in life become a learning experience to make me grow wiser. So even though I will be filling my gas tank sooner than anticipated and griping that I wasted gas with the prices rising higher every minute, I took myself on a journey that all of us need to make every once in a while. We all need to take the time to occasionally visit the roads we used to know.

Getting Old and Staying Young

Well I know now that I am officially getting old. My daughter has her first crush on an older guy. She is all of six years old and is madly in love with her soccer coach, who is in college. At first this all seemed really cute and funny to me. I remember being young and having my first crush on an older guy. I think we have all been there at one point or another. After all, when you are six, most six year old boys seem so immature and silly. As my daughter so bluntly put it, "They are just weird!" So watching her try to do her best to impress and basically follow him around like a little lost puppy was amusing at first. I had to be a little impressed actually, because she has pretty good taste in guys for being only six. There is something about him that reminds me a lot of my husband, which I am sure is part of the attraction for her. With Daddy being in Iraq, it would only be natural for her to totally love guys that are so much like him, because she absolutely adores her father. I started thinking that if I were ten years younger I would probably be chasing this guy down myself. Then it hit me. "If I were ten years younger." That was the most terrifying thought that I have had in a long time. Don't get me wrong. I am madly in love with my husband, more than satisfied with our relationship, and there are still major sparks in the bedroom department. I, in no way have any intention of finding another guy or even remotely want another guy. Well I take that back. I would definitely never throw David Beckham out of my bed and honestly, my husband would probably ask if he could watch. (Have you noticed a dominating theme here. I think everyone in my family has some serious soccer issues!!!) But anyway, back to the point, just the thought that someone old enough to be in the serious dating pool is too young, was really scary. I mean this guy is only the age that my husband and I were when we started dating each other seriously. When did I get so old. Then another thought occurred to me. If I didn't remember getting so old, who's to say that I really am that old. I mean after all, age is just a number. I know that is one of the oldest cliches in the book and people only ever say that to make you feel not quite so bad about getting old, but I really don't feel that old. Maybe we are only as old as we feel. My love life is just as active as it was when I was 20. I still have a huge crush on my husband and we are still known to go parking every now and then. So maybe that is the key to staying young. By doing all those silly little things that we did when we were in our teens and 20's, we are essentially fighting the aging process. Who cares if we act silly together and do all the touchy feely PDA's that people generally are grossed out by when they hit their 30's. And take it from a voice of experience, even though your bed at home may be so comfortable and convenient, there is a lot to be said for making out in the backseat of your vehicle. Maybe, none of us ever really have to get old, even though our age number gets higher. Maybe instead of being 30, I'll just be twenty-ten.

Losing Sophie-Three Months Later

It has been three months now, since we lost Sophie. I would love to tell everyone, who just suffered a loss that the pain goes away, but it doesn't. It does get easier though. The first week was probably the hardest week of my life. As I said in my last blog, I came home to a house full of baby things that I just couldn't bear to put away and in all honesty, there are still things laying around right now. Waking up in the morning was the hardest part. As long as I was asleep, I didn't have to think about the fact that I came home from the hospital with empty arms. I think the first few days home were the closest to insanity that I have ever come and I never want to be in that place again. My husband has always spoiled me rotten and done anything that I asked, no matter how unreasonable. This is the man that went to every store in town that was open at 11:30 at night looking for cheeseballs and I wasn't even pregnant. In those first few days I bordered so close to the edge of insanity, that when I woke up in the morning, it took every ounce of sanity left not to beg my husband to bring Sophie back to me. I have never confessed this to him and I probably won't until he comes home from deployment, because I don't want him worrying. For some crazy reason, I would have moments where I actually believed if I pouted and threw enough of a fit, that he could do something to change what had happened. I think about those days and it still terrifies me that I came so close to losing my mind. Things gradually got easier. My husband had to go back to Iraq a week after the funeral and that basically left me as the single parent for our oldest daughter again. This was probably the best thing that could have ever happened. No matter how dark the days were, I still had a reason to get up in the morning. Someone had to dress, feed, do homework with and play with her and I was the only one available. I couldn't just "check out" of life, I had to keep living it. There was no other option. I thank God every moment of every day that he gave me a child to keep, before he took one away. I've often heard the phrase, "God doesn't give us more than we can handle" and I truly believe that. Despite taking care of our oldest, I still had some really bad days at first. Especially on school days. I would wake up in the morning, feed her breakfast, put her on the bus, then come back inside and go back to bed until it was time to get her off the bus in the afternoon. I felt like there was no reason to be awake, since I had no one to care for and nothing to do. I wasn't mentally able to take on any new tasks and anyone who knows me, understands how far from my personality that is. I am a born multi-tasker and over-extender. I try to do anything and everything that comes my way and then some. Losing Sophie had made me feel like such a failure that I was afraid to do anything at all, for fear of failing. I blamed myself for losing her and felt like a complete failure as a woman, because of it. As a stay at home mom and wife, I felt that my number one job was to produce and raise children and by losing Sophie, I had failed to do the one thing that was required of me. It is a really irrational thing to think. There was nothing that I did that caused what happened. It was just a fluke of nature. There was nothing I did, nothing I ate, nothing I didn't do that caused the esophageal atresia. All the doctors and coroner's report confirmed that, so there was no reason for me to feel that way. But I did and there are moments even now that I still do. I keep reading everything that I can find about Sophie's condition, just as a reassurance that it wasn't my fault. After the first month, I finally had my first day when I was able to get out of bed by noon. Some of you may think that sounds ridiculous, but for me it was a major milestone. Up until then, I was waking up at 7:30 in the morning, going back to bed at 8:30, not getting back up until 3:30 in the afternoon and going back to bed a 11:00 at night. I was sleeping my life away, so being awake those few extra hours from noon to 3:30 a big deal. I started boxing up the baby clothes and putting them away in hopes that someday I might be blessed enough to have another child to wear them. Slowly, I started to take interest in things that I liked to do again. I started reading books again, watching movies again, and started toying around with my model horse collecting hobby. Now, here I am three months later. I was finally able to visit Sophie's grave a week and a half ago. My oldest daughter and I took flowers, since the nice spring weather is finally here. I am becoming super-mom again and totally over-extending myself and loving every minute of it. I am running our oldest to soccer twice a week, tee-ball twice a week, swimming once a week, and volunteering at the school. She is going to add an instrument in the summer and is planning on four separate sports camps. I'm finally blogging, as you can see, and shopping like a maniac, although that is becoming a bit of a problem. I think to help cope with losing my child, I may be trying to accumulate things to fill the void she left behind. "Things" are not filling it though and I am spending money hand over fist, so I have been trying to avoid any store, including online ones. I'm like and alcoholic, trying to stay away from beer. I still have the occasional dark day, if there is nothing I need to get done. Especially on rainy days, I tend to stay in bed until noon. I am battling the fear of losing our oldest daughter and felt like a horrible person, because deep down I was relieved that she had to miss her field trip to the circus, because she was sick. What if she got lost, or stolen or killed? It was just so much safer for her to be here with me at home. I have moments of panic, watching her at swimming lessons. What if she falls off the edge, hits her head and no one can get to her in time? I have become such a pro at thinking up the worst case scenario, that I think maybe I should get a job working for national security. But I resist and fight these urges and never let my oldest daughter see these fears. I push her to try new things, no matter how scary they might be. I push myself to try new things too. Basically, healing has become a choice that I have made and not just something that happens. I still hurt in a way that I know I will never recover from. We are not supposed to outlive our children. It goes against the laws of nature. Nothing will bring her back and nothing will ease the pain of losing every special moment that was stolen from me when she left this world. But, I will not stop living my life. I will not stop loving the child that I still have with me and I will not stop being the best mother I can possibly be to her. I will not miss out on all the great and wonderful moments that life still has in store for me, just because it is hard to get out of bed in the morning and I will not feel guilty about living my life, even though my baby daughter is gone. I think that is what healing truly is. It is choosing to be alive and choosing to live life to it's fullest.

Losing Sophie

Sophie was our second child. Our second daughter and a child that we had been wanting to have for years. I got pregnant in May of 2007 after almost a year of trying. Getting pregnant is not always an easy task when your husband is in the Army. Between field problems, deployments, and general long working hours, we never seemed to be able to get the timing right. We had basically stopped trying, since my husband was supposed to be deploying again in November. I didn't want him to miss the birth of our child, while he was overseas. I've heard that you always get pregnant when you stop trying and in our case it was true. I was shopping in Wal-Mart for a my husband's birthday card, when I nearly hurled at the sight of salsa displayed in a center kiosk. It took a moment for it to click and then I started to do the math in my head. Could I be pregnant? Any woman who has been pregnant before knows those early telltale signs. So on this particular trip, I purchased a birthday card and a pregnancy test. That afternoon I took the test and low and behold....two lines! I ended up putting the pregnancy test in a gift bag and giving it to my husband as a birthday present. For some reason the children I give my husband are always gifts in more than one way. Our oldest daughter was a Christmas present, since I took that pregnancy test the day before Christmas Eve. Now I would be giving him our second child as a birthday present. Everyone was ecstatic that we were having a child. Especially, our five-year-old daughter. She had been begging for a baby brother or sister for years and now her wish was coming true. We were a little disappointed that my husband would miss the birth, but we figured that if we waited for a time that he wouldn't be deployed, we would never have a child, so it was decided that we would move our furniture into storage and my daughter and I would move in with my parents, until my husband came home. My pregnancy was and easy one in the beginning. I had very little morning sickness and I was able to do most of the normal things with my oldest daughter, that I had done before. We moved our things into storage, moved in with my parents, and adapted to a new life. Christmas came and with it, preparations for our new little girl that would be arriving in the beginning of March. I bought new baby items and even received a few things for Christmas. We decided on the name Sophie, since it was my grandmother's. Two days before the new year, I went for a regular doctors visit with my ObGyn and my urine showed positive for protein. I had to go to the hospital for what would be the first of several overnight visits. They did a non-stress test and everything appeared to be OK. They had problems keeping the heart-rate on the monitor, but they chalked it up to an overactive baby, moving around constantly. I went in a week later for another non-stress test, just as a precaution and red flags started to pop up. They were still unable to keep her on the monitor and couldn't get a good reading, so I was taken for an emergency sonogram. The sonogram showed that I had too much amniotic fluid, but didn't show a reason why. Sophie was also not practice breathing at the rate for a fetus her age and her stomach was not showing up in the pictures. I was sent to a larger hospital immediately, for further testing, since our local hospital didn't have the technology needed. They kept me overnight yet again and did further sonograms and non-stress testing. The next day a specialist came in and told me the news. They suspected esophageal atresia, which basically means that the esophagus isn't connected to the stomach. Because there was no connection, Sophie wasn't able to swallow the excess amniotic fluid and it was building up without relief. They also suspected trisomy 18, which is a severe form of mental retardation and those who suffer from it rarely survive one week. Basically, they handed my child a death sentence. I was scheduled for another appointment, the following Monday, so they could do a 3D sonogram, to see if they could better detect what was going on. At the appointment, the doctor scheduled the first of what would become three amnio-reductions. Basically, it is an amniocentesis, but instead of just taking a sample of fluid, they reduced the amount, since my body was unable to dispose of it normally. They also wanted to run genetic testing to see if trisomy 18 was a correct diagnosis. At this point, the prognosis was not good, so I sent a red cross message to get my husband back home. If we were going to lose out child, I wasn't going to do it alone. My husband flew in the day of my first amnio-reduction. I was terrified, because his plane was not due in until after my appointment and every amnio-reduction runs the risk of putting the baby in distress and requiring an emergency c-section. I was terrified of the needle, of the pain, and of possibly losing Sophie before my husband came home. Everything came off without a hitch though. There was no pain and no emergency c-section, but I would still have to be careful and watch for any signs of problems. My husband was safe in my arms and we were able to hold each other and cry for our child. My next appointment was a week later and they would have the results of the genetic testing and I would have another sonogram, to determine how much fluid had accumulated and when we would have to do another reduction. The day of the appointment brought good news. There were no genetic abnormalities and trisomy 18 was ruled out. The death sentence was lifted, but we were not out of the woods yet. Sophie still had esophageal atresia and would require surgery after she was born to correct it. She would need to be delivered in a hospital with a neonatal intensive care unit and would need a feeding tube put in immediately. There was still a chance we would lose her, but we now had hope. I was also ballooning up with amiotic fluid again. I would need another amnio-reduction to relieve some of the pressure that had built up. I was very uncomfortable and was so huge that I could not drive, tie my shoes, or reach the faucet handles to turn on the sink. As uncomfortable as I was, I didn't want to deliver my child. As long as she was inside me she was safe. My body was her life support system. She didn't need to breathe or eat on her own, as long as she was inside me. In my womb she would stay alive. I had three amnio-reductions total. During the third and final reduction, Sophie kicked and caused the needle to nick the placenta. They had to end the reduction early and were not able to take as much fluid as they wanted. I was 36 weeks pregnant, which is far enough along for a normal delivery, but not for one with complications. My placenta was starting to shred from all the expanding and reducing of fluid, so they tested the fluid that day for lung maturity. Sophie's lungs were not mature, so I would have to try and hold on a little longer. On January 28, 2008 at 5:00 in the morning my water broke. I was only 36 weeks pregnant with a baby whose lungs were not mature enough to deliver. The hospital where I was supposed to deliver was almost two hours away, so we had to go to the local hospital first, so I could be stabilized and transported to the other hospital. While they were monitoring me at the local hospital, Sophie started showing signs of distress and they decided I would not be able to be transported after all. They had to call in a life-flight neonatal specialist team, to stabilize Sophie after she was born and fly her to a better facility. I would also need to have an emergency c-section. Giving birth to Sophie was the most surreal moment of my life. My husband sat on my right holding my hand and the neonatal specialist team was set up at a small station to the right of him. They would take Sophie immediately and get her stabilized for transport. It took the doctor two tries, to pull Sophie out of the womb. At 11:28 am she was born and never cried. I remember laying there and waiting to hear the first scream out of her lungs. It never came. The specialist team took her over to their workstation and started trying to save my daughters life. I couldn't watch and I tried so hard just to stare at the ceiling and detach myself, while the doctor finished the c-section. I was detached, but at the same time, I was totally aware that my child was still alive, but not breathing. They ended up calling in another specialist, to do a tracheotomy and after 20 minutes, Sophie was able to have enough air to keep her alive. After the c-section, they wheeled my out of the operating room. They specialists were still stabilizing Sophie and I passed by her on my way to the door. They allowed me to stop for a moment and pushed me over, so I could touch her. Her hair was so dark and curly and it was so soft when I touched it. This would be the first and last time I would touch my child while she was alive. While I was in recovery, they life flighted her to a larger hospital and three hours later we received a call to say that they did everything humanly possible to save her, but it wasn't enough. Sophie came into the world at 11:28 and departed at 3:30. The next few days in the hospital were a blur. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and having a moment of panic because I couldn't feel her moving inside me, only to remember that she wasn't there anymore. I could hear the other mothers on the maternity ward and their happy visitors. I hated them. I heard the mother next door to me ranting because she was tired and wanted them to take her baby back to the nursery. I hated her. All I wanted was to be able to hold my child, even if only for one more minute and she didn't want her child near her at all. They brought Sophie to the hospital where I was, before taking her to the funeral home. We were able to hold her for awhile and say our good-byes. Our oldest daughter was with us. We wanted her to be able to say her good-byes too. She was sad that her baby sister was dead but wanted more than anything to be able to see her. I held her for a long time and just looked at her and cried. Our oldest daughter sat beside me and snuggled into my side and was gently patting Sophie's head. We took some pictures that are still on a roll of film yet to be developed. They are the only family pictures that we will ever have with Sophie in them. Then it was time to say our final good-bye. Our oldest daughter kissed her baby sister on the head and told her good-bye and my heart broke for my living daughter who wanted nothing more than to be a big sister and prayed for baby Sophie every night. I filled out the birth certificate papers that night. As I wrote Sophie's name, I realized that I would never be teaching her how to spell or write it herself. There were so many things that I would never get to do. I cried silent tears the whole way home from the hospital. I just couldn't help but think that this was not the way it is supposed to be. I should have my baby with me. She should be here. But she wasn't. So I just cried, but made no sound. The tears just quietly flowed down my cheeks. I came home to a room with an empty crib and a bedside co-sleeper that is still in the box. There were baby clothes and blankets ready to be washed and put away and a new diaper bag that would not be used. I couldn't put them away though. Part of me wasn't ready to let them go yet. I was still in pain from the c-section and it was such a bitter pain, because there was no joy of having my baby in my arms. Sophie was buried on a Monday afternoon. The skies were gray and no sun would shine on that day. It was very cold and there was a light drizzle of rain at times. The weather seemed to fit the mood as if the heavens were crying with us. We had a small service at the funeral home with our family. Her casket was so tiny, smaller than any I had ever seen before. I broke down when I saw it. I hadn't actually really cried until that moment. There were tears with no sound, but there was no outright bawling before. I think it was the finality of seeing the casket there. We ended by having a small burial service at the cemetery. Sophie was laid to rest in the plot next to the one where I will be buried someday. She is near her great-grandmother and her second born child who was stillborn. I remember staring out my grandma's grave and wishing that she could be there. She lost her second child too and I just wanted to be able to ask her how she survived and have her there to tell me that it would get better.