This is a copy of a speech I gave for my communication class. They asked us to 'tell a story' about an event that was life changing, and explain how it affected our life.
We all know Murphy’s Law “If
something can go wrong it will”.
Tongue-in-cheek I lived by this
rule. I tended to live life “glass half
empty” and kind of felt like the world was out to get me most days. People
would joke that if it wasn’t for bad luck, I would have no luck at all. Who
would have guessed it would take the worst tragedy of my life to change my
perspective.
As a child I always dreamed of growing up to
be a mother. I am the oldest of 8 kids, so having a big family seemed the
normal course of events for me. Of course, given my luck, it took me three
years, and several failed fertility treatments to get pregnant with my
firstborn, Nathan. You can imagine my surprise when a month after my husband
returned from a 14 month tour to Iraq, I found out I was pregnant with my
second child.
Everything
was going almost perfectly until 20 weeks gestation when my water broke while I
was asleep. This began a chain reaction of horrible, worst-case scenarios.
Everything that could go wrong was- quite literally- going wrong. No doctors
could tell me why; they speculated but came to the conclusion that it was a
fluke and a “medical anomaly”. The only definite answer they could give me was
that I had a stage 4 abrupting placenta previa.
This
meant that my placenta, which feeds and provides oxygen to the unborn baby, was
not only located in the wrong spot and blocking my cervix, but had begun to
separate from the wall of my uterus. So my son was slowly being cut off of his
life support, and I was losing significant amounts of blood each day and was
running a high risk of infection. Most hospitals will not allow you to stay
pregnant for more than 24 hours after your water breaks, yet I was facing the
prospect of several more months in this condition.
Additionally,
because amniotic fluid, or your “water”, is necessary to lung development, and
my water broke 4 weeks before viability, I was told it was highly unlikely that
his lungs would ever develop. I was put on bedrest; specialists suggested I
terminate my pregnancy and informed me of the great risks to my own life if the
pregnancy continued. Espousing the ideal that ‘where there is life there is
hope’; I remained pregnant for another month. On August 6th while my
husband was 4 hours north at a drill weekend, I went into labor in my bathroom
and began hemorrhaging. My 17 year old sister rushed me to the hospital and
within the hour I was in surgery, having an emergency C-section to save my
life, and my son’s. Noah Ethan was born at 11:37 pm where he was met by a
neonatal team who had taken a medical chopper from Marshfield. They worked
desperately on him but sadly, Noah was born with hypoplastic lungs and only
lived for a few hours.
Over the next several months I
blogged about my son. My blog originally was a source of information for family
who wanted daily updates on how my pregnancy was going; but after Noah’s death
became an outlet for my grief. I found it to be very cathartic and before long
I was getting several hundred hits a day to the new blogs I was posting. There
were strangers from all over the world logging on to read my every post. I
developed a true passion for writing. It helped me to work through my feelings
and eventually changed my entire perspective on the circumstance.
I stumbled across the quote “Life is
10% what happens to you and 90% how you react”. It sounds almost too cliché to say, but his brief existence has
really helped me appreciate life. He has made me a more patient mother and has
helped me to realize what is important and not get upset about seemingly
insignificant things. I take everything in stride, and all things considered
believe I am truly blessed.
It amazes me how a little boy who
only lived for just over 2 hours could have such a profound effect on my
attitude.
Oscar Wilde said “The optimist sees the doughnut,
the pessimist sees the hole.” I decided that instead of focusing on the
metaphorical hole in my life, I would instead “see the doughnut”; never focusing
on the bad things, but only on my enormous outpouring of blessings. I have my
health, a husband who loves me and an amazing son. What more could I ask for?
