Ellie & My Heart

May 20, 2010

My Precious Ellie-

Today was another difficult day. Yet again, we're potentially close to a diagnosis. It's not confirmed so perhaps I shouldn't worry. But so much of it makes sense and we've ruled out everything else - so maybe this is it.

We saw your Dallas doctors and began to plan your birth. I want it to be a celebration of you, Ellie, just as Will's was such a party!

And yet, I dread it. I want to meet you but I am terrified that you won't be safe outside my womb. I love having you with me all the time now. What if they must take you away from me for a while for testing? I'm so scared, Ellie girl. I don't know if Mommies are supposed to confess that to their children. As I look at dates on a calendar for your birth, I can't help but wonder if I must bury you then too... or will I bring you home?

Do I dare to dream and hope that you can live? If you do live, what does life look like for you? Will I be able to nurse you as I long to do or must I learn how to daily insert G-tubes? Will you be able to grasp my hand, roll over, sit up? Will you understand cognitively how to do these things and yet be frustrated when your body doesn't respond to your brain? It's so difficult for a mommy to watch her child be frustrated with their body... & at the same time so love that little body just as it is!

Do I plan a service in your honor when just typing the word funeral makes me sick to my stomach? Or, do I plan treatments for bettering your life?

How do I prepare your big brother when I don't know how to prepare my own heart?

Am I even capable of being the mommy you need me to be? I keep asking God what He is thinking??? I am honored to be your Mommy but afraid I'm just not strong or good enough!

They said today that you have a "beautiful heart." I love those words. What would the cardiologist have seen had she looked at my heart?

Might she have noticed how very full of love it is? It's full because the joy you and Will bring me is so great- it overflows.

But with the fullness, there is such heaviness. It is heavy because you each will face challenges I am incapable of preventing or personally relating to. It is heavy because there is cruelty in our world and because I can't always fix your pain or fight your battles for you. I am told you will know pain. I am furious at being incapable of taking your pain on myself.

If they could see my heart, they would see old scars- places where it has been broken. Those places have healed but the scarring remains. There's new rips too - ragged and not very pretty. It's not broken in half- I'm still clinging to threads of hope.

We listen to your heart and measure it in detail. Could they measure the sounds of my heart, would they hear the moans and groans and sighs? Would they see how it sags with each crushing blow? Is the ache detectable by their expensive machines?

If they could go back in time, would they be amazed how my heart has loved you from the moment I first heard about you? Would they know that I loved you as a "figment" - long before you were conceived? Would they see the joy this heart has known as it has rested comfortably just above you for 6 months?

Ellie, you & Will have captured Mommy's heart. I love you with every fiber of my being. My heart aches to know you, to hold you, to love you for my lifetime.

I love you, Sweet Ellie girl-

Love, Mommy

ps - Ellie, mommy is now 25 weeks & 4 days pregnant with you. You don't have to make Mommy so very sick when she goes out to eat anymore! I really thought those days were over! I am so thankful for your reminders that you remain inside me... but maybe gentler reminders? Maybe it was your way of forcing me to bed earlier for some much needed rest for the two of us!