I got a new iPhone this past week. My PrePlus was dying a slow, painful death and I can't afford to have my only real phone be in that kind of condition. I've never had an iPod or real mp3 player before (tho i guess my other smart phones have had the capability) so it's a pretty novel thing for me. A few years ago, a friend put her twilight audio books on my computer and it'd been a while since I'd had an opportunity to listen to them (especially a portable one).
Twilight is one of the series' that I re-read almost every summer (my peak reading time) but I didn't this year. I had a reason at the time, but it didn't occur to me... until I got closer to Breaking Dawn. Bella's unexpected, supposedly impossible honeymoon pregnancy is an infertile's nightmare in it's own right, but her uber short high-risk bed-ridden pregnancy that ends in a traumatic birth and, unlike in reality, a healthy mother (if you count vampirism as healthy) and baby.
I'm still not to the birth part yet, and I'm not sure how I'm gonna handle it but like everything else that has made me shy away, I'm trying to push through it, get back on the horse.
This morning, I heard two passages that got me thinking:
"From that first little touch, the whole world had shifted. Where before there was just one thing I could not live without, now there were two. There was no division - my love was not split between them now, it wasn't like that. It was more like my heart had grown, swollen up to twice its size in that moment. All that extra space, already filled. The increase was almost dizzying."
"When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved?"
Maybe the first one just made me remember that joy and miss it... and hate the brokenness that love gave me when my "little nudgers" (as Bella would have called them) were taken from me.
But the latter one... *sigh*
When my water broke and we knew there was no way we could save Elizabeth, we chose to induce. The reasons were twofold: Staying that way was pretty dangerous for me and I hoped in vain that if Elizabeth was born quickly enough, she might survive it well enough for us to have a few seconds with her before she passed. They had been trying to talk me in to inducing for two days before then, but if there was any way we could have saved Elizabeth, I really didn't care if it was risky for me. Before they induced, they did another ultrasound. Because her heart was still beating, I had to sign abortion paperwork. Because it was considered a risk to me, we were able to forgo the 24 hour waiting period. I can't tell you how it pained me to sign paperwork that I'd marched on DC year after year to abolish. Most abortions in this country are by choice, not medical necessity, but I'll admit: I always considered the "risk to the mother's health" part to be a bit of a cop-out. As a mother, I could never imagine choosing to save myself if there was any way to save my child. I sympathized with Bella. But that option never existed for me. No one ever asked me to die for my daughter or tried to talk me out of it. My baby was going to die whether I chose to act for my safety or not. I know it's silly, but I can't help but be jealous of a fictional character and her happily ever after this morning.
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