Father's

I have the worlds best father...well in my eyes anyway. I am so lucky to have had the unconditional love that I grew up with. In both becoming a parent and working as a social worker with children who rarely even know who their own father is, I have learned to appreciate mine in a whole new way. 

My husband's  relationship with his father is much more complex. A product of a divorce and a father who seemingly disappeared and started over with a new family, my husband has had both a hard time learning to parent and a hard time defining his own relationship with the man who never really parented him.

In the past few years my husbands father has started to try, in his own way, to be a bigger part of his life. My father in law has always struggled with some sort of addiction but mostly hid his demons from his kids and as selfish as he is/was,  has made sure to let my husband know he loves him. 

On Friday we got a call that my father in law is in a coma. He fell down the stairs thursday night in his home and was so drunk when the ambulance arrived with him at the ER that they had to put him in a medically induced coma to detox him from all the pain meds he has been taking. My husband, being the oldest and "next of kin" has had to sign off on this, making the decision to keep his father in a coma to rid him from the demons that probably prevented him from being a good father in the first place. When he "wakes up" it's on him whether or not he wants to go to rehab and for now we can only hope for once he will make the appropriate choice. 

Yesterday while visiting him in the ICU I asked my husband if all of this made him sad. I couldn't imagine looking at my own father in that state, hooked up to a ventilator with tubes every which way. My husband answered, not really. This surprised me. He stated that if he was in a coma for a different reason or if he was not expected to live, than yes, it would sadden him deeply. But for now, looking down at the absentee father with a prescription pain killer addiction and a life filled with selfish choices- no, he wasn't really that upset. What a complex bag of emotions to carry, huh?

This got me thinking about how my husband parents Noah, how he is loves him so purely but doesn't seem to ever know what to do with him. Thinking about the lack of fatherhood in his early years puts a lot of it into perspective as does looking down at my helpless father in law whom no one is really shedding a tear over. 

Today I am thankful for my own dad and for the father I know my husband is capable of being. He may not be "mr. wonderful" all the time but he loves his son and I know he would never be absent from his life. 

Happy Father's Day.

Baby steps

I am starting to really miss our "baby". Initially the miscarriage wasn't really that hard for me. Yes, I was shocked and disappointed and fearful it would happen again but I coped and was feeling "ok". I am obviously still "ok" but growing sadder and sadder thinking about how I would almost be entering my second trimester. I know January is going to be really hard, right smack around new years. Hopefully I will be carrying a healthy little one by then!

I am still taking things one day at a time. I am trying to pay more attention to Noah and spend more quality time with him. My husband and I are trying not to raise our voices. This week has been positive and I keep telling myself rome wasn't built in a day. 

O.k. I am back from my pity party. 

I don't really feel the need to explain myself but I did want to say one thing before I move on. I love my little boy more than life itself and I by no means blame him for the negative path my life has sometimes taken this past year and half.  At times I feel I come across really pessimistic and maybe it's because I tend to post only when I am feeling really emotional, I dunno...but moving on...

My husband and I had a great talk on Saturday night. He took a drive. I vented on my blog. When he returned we sat on our back porch, he smoked a cigar and I had a marlboro light and we just communicated for once. I cried. He cried. But it was less about drama and us as individuals and more about our family and our future. Maybe there is some couples therapy in the works and maybe not, but it was definitely a good starting off point which gets me to my next topic, health.

I feel gross. I weigh 138 pounds which is heavier than I was 6 weeks post partum. I was always an exercise fanatic and I have become very out of shape. I am not a smoker but I have been bumming random cigarettes from people far too often. I drink way to much pinot and eat way too much cheddar cheese. Part of this has been the huge funk I have been in lately. Following the miscarriage I went over the edge in terms of indulging myself. It's time to stop. I know I have said this before but if I want to have more children I need to a) get my relationship under control and b) get myself under control. Lofty goals but necessary for our well being. 

Stay tuned!

Oh and one more thing: picky eating is not our only challenge- we have now adding hitting to our list, any suggestions????

I wanted to delete that after I wrote it. Very melodramatic but very real to how I am feeling. Hubby and I got into a "fight" tonight, actually more of a discussion after Noah went to bed and I was pretty honest with how I feel. He hit the road as usual and is taking a drive. It felt REALLY good to get that out...I won't delete it since this is my 21st century journal after all. 

The other toll....

Truth be told my marriage has suffered. My husband and I have always had a very tumultuous relationship filled with a lot of fighting but a lot of love. In the early days it was passion and now it's anything but. I'd like to think it started with what happened 19 months ago but the foundation of our troubles started long before that.

We met in October 1999, I was 18 he was 19 and we had both just started college. He was tall dark and handsome, the cutest boy I think I had ever seen. I was short, skinny and insecure and he swept me off my feet. He taught me what tears of joy were, what passion felt like and most of all through him I learned to love myself. 

After a year or two things started to change. We both had a lot of growing to do and we seemed to grow apart. My insecurities opened up a door for him, and at times he would abuse this power that he knew he had over me. Often we would fight about anything and everything but I always clung to him, not sure if I could ever love someone the way I loved him. It was my first love and one I clenched fiercely. I often wonder if I held on too tight, should I have let go?

By the time we graduated college things were falling into place. I got in to a great grad program and he found the perfect job working for my uncle's business. He moved into an apartment that his parents owned and seeing as he was now working and I would have my master's soon we started to plan our marriage. He proposed on December 8th, 2004. I was 23 and he was 24. At the time I felt so very old but even typing 23 makes me shudder..we were babies. The time we spent planning out wedding was one of the best times of my life. The endless possibilities, the romance and fairy tale and most of all the thought of marrying my first love, that tall dark handsome boy who had swept me off my feet. We got married on 10-1-05, the day was unseasonably warm with not a cloud in the sky. I felt more beautiful that I ever have and had not a drop of insecurity as I walked down the aisle. 

I'd like to say happily ever after followed, but not so much.

Right from the start we were on separate pages. He was all about making money, buying a house and having nice things. I wanted a baby. He was not ready. I wanted a smaller house in a family neighborhood. He wanted lots of land and to build. I drove a Honda. He drove and Audi. My husband does not know the art of compromise and this led to fight after fight after fight. Don't get me wrong, there was also a lot of love and some very good times but maybe we just weren't the right fit? No one's fault, just a bad match.

In December 2006 I got my way for once, we started to try for a baby. Three months later I got a positive pregnancy test and started the best 9 months of my life. We both rallied together. The fighting all but stopped. It was like planning a wedding, but better. Once again, the future was bright and the possibilities were endless. 

On November 10th 2007 Noah entered our lives and changed them in more ways than we ever could have imagined. I sometimes imagine that day as being normal, me in my nursing gown laying in bed holding my son. My husband visiting with roses, friends and family bringing balloons. Would it have been different? Would our marriage look different today? 

In those early days, when I would lay awake for hours, days even, the post partum depression so bad I contemplated suicide, my husband was no where to be found. Working late. Dinner with friends. He left me high and dry and alone. Was he coping- yes. But did he abandon me when I needed him the most- you bet. The resentment built. The stress of first time parenthood coupled with a sick newborn, tripled with building a home, it was too much for us to bear. The foundation was not there and our relationship began to crumble.

Truth be told things are not good. We love each other and we love Noah but honestly  I am not sure what's keeping us together. I really think it's time I start seeing a therapist but truthfully I'm not sure that has much to do with our marriage.

 What a toll this has taken on us.

Patience

I have never been a patient person. I have never liked surprises. I picked out my own engagement ring, as a kid I always snuck a peak at my presents before christmas. I can't help myself, it's as if my mind is always on overdrive. 

When I was pregnant with Noah it was the first time I ever stopped to slow down. Part of it was that I loved having him inside of me and I didn't want it to end, the other part was due to my ever growing belly and the heat of the summer of 2007. After Noah was born I wanted to go back in time. Since time machines are not a reality, I forced myself to focus ( and by this I mean obsess) on the future. For anyone, the future is scary. The uncertainty and the "surprise" factor. When a doctor is telling you "we'll just have to wait and see" in reference to your child's brain and future life functioning it made me crazy. I wanted answers that I couldn't get. So instead every month I looked forward to the next. It meant that Noah was getting older and he was doing well. At 6 months I wanted it to be a year and at a year I wanted it to be two. It always seemed in my mind I would feel better at the next stage but when it came, I just wanted to fast forward.

Don't get me wrong, "rushing" along my child's babyhood is bittersweet. I miss my baby and I know someday I will miss my strawberry blonde, gap toothed toddler. But with Noah I want a happy ending, and I want it to be here already. Logically I know this is not a healthy view but the mother in me just wants the best for my child and I want to be assured he will be ok. 

.....however.....

Through Noah I have learned patience. One step at a time patience. No matter how hard I try I can't rush anything because this is his life and not mine. This leads me to my doctors appointment yesterday-

after going in for my post miscarriage check up be began talking about Noah's story and if there is any possible link to this miscarriage. The doctor believes I may have had a clot in the placenta causing Noah's growth issue at the end of my pregnancy and his apparent oxygen deprivation at some point during labor and delivery. The clotting issue may have also caused me to miscarry. 

So I am going for all the testing to check for these clotting issues...and I was warned NOT to get pregnant for a few months and especially until we get this testing done. 

So here it is,  a lesson in patience...yet again

SAHM

SAHM for those of you who don't know is the acronym for stay at home mom. I am not a SAHM nor do I think at this point I could mentally handle it but since I have been off from work for a week now, I am starting to settle into the role ( just in time to return to my job tomorrow). 

Noah has been loving me at home, he is getting clingy and I fear that separation tomorrow will be traumatic for us both. It rained all of last week so we pretty much bummed around in our pajama's, went to target nearly every day and watched way too much sesame street. 

Today it's bright and sunny as it usually is on the last day of vacation whether you stayed home or spent the week at the beach! What will I do on my last day as a SAHM? Well we have already watched sesame street, we will of course go to target, and maybe we will fit in some time at the park. I could really get used to this.....