FBW: I Survived So She Could Too

Please welcome back each of our calendar bloggers as they join us for another week as the featured blogger of the week (FBW). This time they are sharing stories of survival and photos of the strong women in their lives. If you want to know how you can be a part of the Blogger Body Calendar project, please click here.

Two lines. Sunset outside the window of the cold, tiled bathroom. He stood outside waiting, pacing. I didn’t want to tell him. I knew where this would go, what road we were going to head down. He knocked. I opened the door.

The next day, he called and scheduled my abortion. I sat on the couch with my hand over my belly; young and tight and flat still at that point, but I knew I loved her. I felt my Mama Bear starting to form.

I left while he was at work. I packed everything I could fit in my car. I left behind a volume of William Carlos Williams poems, my favorite jacket as I forgot it was hanging in the closet and my glasses. Other odds and ends. In the end, they meant nothing compared to what I was escaping to save.

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At 18 weeks pregnant, I felt tired, hot and weak. I napped and awoke to a fever of 104. In the emergency room I was informed that I had an undiagnosed kidney disorder. I needed surgery. To save myself, to save her. I was placed on Level III bed rest, unable to work.

The plans came crashing down around me.

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I went into labor at 28 weeks. An ambulance ride later, I found myself in a big hospital connected to lots of things. I accepted the steroid shots to strengthen her lungs. I endured the shakes from the mag drip to keep her inside. My skin crawled when they gave me terbutaline to stop those contractions. I went through another surgery in hopes that it would make a difference.

In hopes that we would both survive.

They almost lost me then; lost both of us. But we survived.

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I was pushed to the front door of the hospital with her in my arms. I wasn’t even sure how to hold her. She was beautiful. Healthy, despite everything we had been through together. And now we were parting. My father handed her to her new parents.

I got up and walked out the door. Without my baby. Without my soul.

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I watched her play the guitar last week while we had a visit. She’s so beautiful, so tall. So very talented. I am amazed by who she has become. I’m equally amazed by who I have become. I am not the same young girl I was 8 years ago. I have been changed by chance, by choice, by life itself. Despite the lifelong grief and loss that I live with, despite the scars — physical and emotional, despite the hell I went through to keep her safe enough until she could be born — I wouldn’t change a second of it. I’ll endure whatever I have to endure as long as she’s okay.

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Jenna blogs at Stop, Drop & Blog and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. She has been blogging for ten years. She is a freelance writer and photographer living somewhere in Ohio with her firefighter be-mustached husband. She is an everyday mom to two little boys and a birth mom to an amazing Munchkin. Her photographer is Courtney Paris of Lousville Boudoir.