Creeva’s World 2.0

The birth of my son, it’s some­thing I haven’t explic­itly writ­ten about, until now.   It’s been almost four months and it’s now of those thing that you expe­ri­ence and you won­der how can I write about this.   It’s also one of those things when your some­one who shares so much about your­self online you say how can you not.  Not writ­ing about yet has put a writ­ing anchor around my neck where I haven’t known where to go or what to write.  It is a road­block to get­ting other writ­ing done.  It’s an emo­tional roller coaster that of course goes back to the begin­ning, which is fur­ther back then some of you know already.  I guess it’s best to start at the begin­ning and see where it goes.

This jour­ney started back in 2007.  Some­time around the August/September time frame we found out that Xie was preg­nant.  Then a week or two later we were told she went through a mis­car­riage.   This was a back and forth thing of the doctor’s stat­ing one thing and then back track­ing later.   On Octo­ber 31st 2007 I got a call at work from Xie that she was being taken to the hos­pi­tal.   What had hap­pened is that she was going through an ectopic preg­nancy.  What this means is that fetus had started to form inside the tubes instead of the uterus.   They had to per­form surgery to make sure that she would sur­vive.  Unfor­tu­nately there was no pos­si­ble to save the fetus.

My fam­ily only found out about the preg­nancy at all because I called my grand­par­ents and my father to tell them what was going on since the doctor’s had told Xie that she had to have the oper­a­tion that day or things could get dire.   I wanted my sup­port chan­nels in place with­out a sur­prise about why she was in the hos­pi­tal.   Orig­i­nally you think when some­one is preg­nant you don’t tell the whole fam­ily imme­di­ately, we didn’t.   When we thought she had a mis­car­riage that there wasn’t a need for them to know.   How­ever it got down to crunch time with the hos­pi­tal visit.  That night the surgery essen­tially saved Xie’s life, but yet took the life of our pos­si­ble first child.

I took it hard, and Xie took it hard.   I had been down this road once before.  In col­lege within two days of each other, two dif­fer­ent girls told me they were preg­nant.  A month or two down the road, with dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances they both had mis­car­riages.  While polit­i­cally I am pro-choice, I wouldn’t choose abor­tion for my own child.  So whether this was teenage girls say­ing one thing to get their way, or if they were actu­ally preg­nant — it doesn’t mat­ter.  In the end from some­one who has to side with the truth, even though facts and sit­u­a­tions may skewer the truth dif­fer­ently — emo­tion­ally I lost two chil­dren that year.  With the ectopic preg­nancy I lost a third.

They assured us that even with one tube that many peo­ple can still have a baby and it things could go com­pletely nor­mal.  Xie stayed up and cried that night.  Partly from sad­ness, partly from hor­mones, and partly from what-ifs.   I cried with her.  I com­forted her the best that I could.  I’m not always the most emo­tion­ally there per­son at all times, and that frus­trates Xie. We made it through it though.   In the end we left the hos­pi­tal with a one inch high teddy bear that they gave her.  We still have this and it sits on our shelf.

Con­tin­ued in part 2 com­ing tomorrow.