Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Simplicity of Purpose or Life as a Human Incubator

These past few weeks in the hospital have given me a very simplified way of approaching each day. Essentially, my one purpose right now it to keep the girls safe for as long as I possibly can. It is a strange feeling, knowing that I really only have one goal each day. And every morning that I wake up still pregnant, I have completed my goal for the previous day. It kind of reminds me of when I was on chemo (though that was WAAAAY more crappy) in that my one goal then was to get better. Every day that I got through another treatment or got over another infection brought me one step closer to a healthy outcome.

We are at 31.5 weeks now, so every day I feel a tiny bit less terrified. I realized that I had my first hospitalization at the beginning of December, which means that we've been living with this worry/danger/stress constantly hanging over our heads for three months. Yeah, it hasn't been a very fun pregnancy!

Living in the hospital has given me a deeper understanding of what it feels like to be a two-year-old. As I mentioned in the last post, one of the few things I'm allowed to do is walk across the hall to refill my water cup. So when a thoughtful nurse goes and gets a fresh cup of water for me, I kind of feel like stomping my feet and yelling, "I can do it BY MYSELF!" the way a certain two year old I know does. Most of the time I try to jokingly explain that I have permission to go to the water area so I really look forward to it, but it gets tiresome to explain that every 8 or 12 hours at shift change.

On a happier note, this hospitalization has shown me that we really have become part of a community here. I'm not sure when I stopped thinking of myself as being new in town, but somewhere along the way my family developed a nice group of people who have shown their lovely support through this trying time. Thank you to everyone!

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