Tough Perspective

I've had a knot in my stomach for the past few days, and it lead up to this: a more serious post than typical for me.

I stumbled on a couple different mommy blogs recently, and I can't stop thinking about them, and I can't stop thinking about how beautiful my babies are and how good our lives are.

One of the blogs is written by a mommy who has a child near Dear Daughter's age who has a disease/disorder that has left her unable to walk or have full range of motor movement. She has had multiple surgeries in the first couple years of her life. But this mommy feels so fortunate because her little girl wasn't even supposed to have lived, and if she did, she wasn't supposed to live very long, and before the little girl was born, testing suggested that her disorder was going to be much much worse than it turned out to be.

The other blog is written by a mommy who gave birth to a baby girl in her 5th month of pregnancy, three days before my own Dear Son was born. Her baby was stillborn. The pregnancy had been normal until a clot in the placenta choked the life out of her baby. She'd suffered at least four miscarriages before this. Her older daughter was born with an extremely rare genetic disorder. She is also Dear Daughter's age, and after recent surgery on her legs and six weeks in full leg casts has been able to finally walk some with the help of a walker, and has recently said her first word. Her condition will cause her to die prematurely. And everyday this mommy holds her little girl, never knowing for sure when, but knowing she will have to bury her second child.

I just cannot fathom this. I cannot consider what it would be like to hold my own child knowing that s/he will die and knowing I would have to somehow endure the journey, and the emptiness afterward.

I am also reminded lately of an obituary Dear Husband and I saw in the local Sunday paper when Dear Son was only two months old. A baby boy who was born the same day as our own, in the very same hospital, had died at the age of two months and two days. I felt a little ill when I read this, and I tried for a moment to consider how it would feel to lose my baby and how my arms would ache to hold my wee-est one if he was suddenly gone.

And all this leaves me hugging my kids a little tighter, being a little more tolerant with them, and begging the air for answers such as "Why me?" But not the kind of "Why me" these other mommies ask. I get to ask why did I get such beautiful healthy babies and why do I not have to endure such pain? Only I don't want to ask too loudly or too often, almost fearing that my own fate will be changed if I draw too much attention to myself. But I can't stop feeling overwhelmed by it all. I thank God for my beautiful, perfect, healthy babies, but even that feels somehow unfair...being thankful for having something so wonderful that someone else didn't get to have...when I am no more deservant of it than they are.