There was bleeding in the beginning.
There were trips to the feminine hygiene aisle and resignation and tears.
There were friends having “ooops” babies and getting pregnant while not-quite-divorced-yet. I soldiered on, my deeply oiled way of being. “She’s a trouper,” they would say. “Always looking out for others,” they would say. “Smiling through tears,” they would say.
I watched the then cutting-edge parenting show created by celebrity pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton. I read books on childbirth, specializing in doing it the natural way. I became expert in everything except for actually conceiving.
This was what befuddled me: I couldn’t make my body work in a way that was so simple, so natural and usually so effortless.
Three years later a miracle happened. My body finally gave in and a sweet baby girl began to grow in my womb.
I carried her through Summer and Fall and several snowstorms before she died, still inside the womb where she was conceived. The cord of life wrapped around her neck and I delivered her in the passenger seat on the way to the hospital. “Our baby is dead.” I said, pronouncing the succinct existence of this perfectly formed yet lifeless person who rested between my legs.
There was more bleeding.
I started a hope chest for the future baby. Every month when there was blood, I went out and bought a little something for when there wasn’t blood.
The car where my baby Marlena was born went on to other owners who never knew she had been born to death there in the front seat.
This isn't a story I tell much anymore. Marlena would be twenty-four years old now. Who knows how my family would be configured if she had lived?
We hunger for happy endings after beginnings like these.
One of the important lessons I’ve learned is it isn’t the happy endings that matter, it is what you do with the beginnings when they don’t turn out the way the books tell you they will that matter the most. Sometimes they fit the conventionally happy mold, but the richer times are when those skills in soldiering on and being a trouper and smiling through tears prepare you to gently clean up the blood and choose to be hopeful, anyway.
This post was inspired by Charity Craig's Good Enough Mom Tuesday Link Up. Click the banner below to check it out and add your story of being a #goodenoughmom.
Link up with #GoodEnoughMom every Turesday
=====
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)
Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot
Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)
Follow on Instagram
And naturally, on Pinterest, too!
© 2014 - Julie Jordan Scott - all rights reserved.
