The picture above isn't Matthew. Unfortunately, I don't have a scanner or I would have his on here. Someday...
Today I thought I would go back, way back...... I have a journal that I did when Matthew was only 17 months old... I thought that I would start to put my thoughts and moments from that time out there today.
This is obviously under exaggerated for family and friends sake, but it is still a really good draft of the real moment in time for Matthew to have someday.
To my Matthew
My love, my life, my son, my heart, my soul…
It sounds like I am starting a poem and I could because you give my life so much happiness.
But this is not a poem. I’ll do a poem later. Right now this is a journal, for you of my life before you, with you and always with you.
Today is Sunday July 18, 2004. Your father needs me to watch you for a minute while he goes to the bathroom. I need this time though to let you know how much I love you so I will be right back.
Ok…it’s been over an hour but I’m back now.
I don’t know how to start this though. I have wanted to do a journal for you since July 29, 2002. The day I found I was pregnant with you. I was so excited and yelled so loud to our neighbor RJ that there was a pink line on our pregnancy test and I never had a solid pink line before and I knew I was pregnant and couldn't stop screaming and I called everyone in my address book to let them know. Daddy and I wanted and prayed for you for 7 years. We tried so hard and just kept holding on because somewhere in the depths of our souls and our hearts we knew you were up there on a cloud looking down at us deciding if you wanted to join our family or not. You are an angel. It sounds like such a small word, but the impact of you being such an angel and a miracle is greater than anything else in the universe. There is no bigger or better love than the love we have for you.
That’s one reason why I am finally now after you turning 17 months starting this journal for you. I want you to always have my thoughts, dreams and love to know and never doubt or question. Things in life will come your way to try and put roadblocks up or walls for you to knock down. I want you to always have these letters from this journal to get you through the tough times in life. Sometimes life takes from us the ones we love in more ways than one and sometimes you need those people more than you could ever imagine. This is my way of giving what I know I can give to you, while I can still give it to you. There might come a time when I might not be able to give these words to you but I will have done this journal and that will help in your life.
You are only 17 months and your life is a long one ahead of you, I hope and pray. I want to be there for every milestone and every challenge, for what will bring you happiness, success, love and what will make you sad, scared and overwhelmed, for every emotion in your life, I pray I will be there for you in mind, body and spirit, happy and healthy for you. But if I’m not, please always keep this journal and treasure it as your most prized possession. You might get mad at me and want to tear it up out of frustration, please don’t. Because when the frustration calms down for just awhile, you will want to reach out to me and this will be my only way to give you a hug.
Right now we have a few favorite songs. “You are my sunshine” is one that I have sung to you since the day you were born. You were two months early and you were in the NICU for 32 days. They wouldn’t let me even hold or see you for 19 hours after you were born because I had severe preclampsia/high blood pressure during pregnancy. I wasn’t allowed to sit up and be wheeled up two floors in the elevator to where you were until my blood pressure came down. The first moment I laid eyes on you, “you are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray, you’ll never know dear, how much mommy loves you, please don’t take my sunshine away.”
Your father and I tried to put our pregnancy in God’s hands because I was brought up a strict catholic. We had been told by fertility specialists that if we went through invetro insemination we would most likely become pregnant. I had much anxiety over this and many times tried to convince your father of giving up the fight and to adopt a baby. I knew I would love any baby after so many years of trying. But your father didn’t want to give up on you. He felt you in his heart and would tell me that he wanted our baby, with his eyes and my height, just not my nose and once he reminded me that an adopted baby would not inherit the vocal/musical talent that runs in my family I knew that I had to get past my anxieties and get onto invetro. Another big hurdle for me though, was that I am pro-life. With IVF, you have the risk of having multiple pregnancies and we had to decide upfront how many to destroy if this got to be a health risk for me. I was torn between how I would know if the one I chose would wind up surviving and what if I destroyed the healthy baby and had one with an illness or had health problems. I didn’t want to be making the decision, but one day I prayed really harder than others and I realized that if God didn’t want these scientists to be helping people have a child, and he didn’t want me to have a baby this way, that along with our natural way and an attempted IUI in 1998 we would fail. Our insurance company would only cover so many tries and I felt if God’s plan was us not to have our own child, then we would find out by our 6th insemination.
We decided to only be inseminated with two embryos per insemination. My first IVF was on Mother’s Day 2002 and what was called a natural cycle without any fertility medicine. I was inseminated with two embryos and your father made me a very sweet card on the computer that read “To the mother of our embryos”. We found out two weeks later that the pregnancy failed. The mother’s day before I had been sitting on our little side porch and we had a lilac tree that had a bird’s nest with a mama bird feeding her babies. I remember praying to God that even birds can have a mother’s day and their babies, why not me? So when I was inseminated the following year I felt God was with me…but he had other plans.
Around the end of June we started our next cycle and this time we used hormone medicine and fertility shots that your father had to give me every night for 10 weeks at the same time in the butt. They were painful but worth the end result. If we were out we would bring our shot and park on the side of the road so he could give the shot to me in the back of his truck. Luckily he had tinted windows.
On July 15, 2002 I was again inseminated with two embryo’s and during the two week wait to take the pregnancy test each night that he gave me the shot the anxiety over him giving it and it really hurting was starting to take a toll on me. The day before I found out I was pregnant with you, I cried so hard and told him not to do it, that I felt that it had worked, that I was pregnant and didn’t need one more shot.
The next day I took the home pregnancy test and yelled through the rooftops and it was the following day on July 30, 2002 that the blood test confirmed that you were in there and that only one embryo survived. I never even gave that other embryo a moment to cry over…all I kept hearing was that I was pregnant over and over again in my head and how happy I was. I have never been so happy in my life, but then I started to get nervous. I was pregnant, how do I make sure that nothing happens to you and that you survive. For years all I read was information and support groups on getting pregnant, then all of a sudden (well maybe not to all of a sudden) you were there and I had a whole lot more to learn about while you were in there to keep you in there, to keep you healthy and alive.
Everyone was very supportive and a few people went out of there way to make my journey easy. A woman at my work gave me my first book (which a few days ago you just tore some of the pages out) called “A Girlfriends Guide to Pregnancy”. I was very touched by it. I had one friend visit me in the hospital, PB but then two months later moved to Maine.
From the moment I found out I was pregnant, your Godmother was there for me. She would call and say if we found out we were having a boy, clothes from your cousins would be handed down. She took wonderful care of their clothes and she had a crib, car seats, toys, nursing bras, bottles and bottle rack, onsies, cloth diapers etc. and a book called “What to expect the first year?”, not to mention throwing me a baby shower. She would call me every week and ask how I was feeling, listen to my worries or anxieties and just be there as a friend for me. We had always been friends, but had never had the opportunity to get close enough. I thought this was finally happening and it felt so right when I chose her to be your Godmother, because she is what got you through your journey to life by being there for me. She continues to be there for you to this day, in more ways than just providing clothes. I feel bad that it is not as easy for me to just pick you up, put you in the car and drive you to Boston to see her more.
Your father went with me on every doctor’s appointment and ultrasound. On October 4, 2002 we found out that you were a boy. I will be honest with you. I grew up with two brothers and felt that living with your Dad for all of those years that I wouldn’t mind having a girl around. I had picked out the name Matthew for a boy when I was in 8th grade, but really believed I was having a Kristina Rose. The day of that ultrasound, we were in the waiting room and a woman was called to the office by the nurse and her name was Kristina. I had told your father it was a sign. He just laughed. It didn’t matter to him or me either way what you were, we knew how much we would love you, but I know he was hoping for a boy and had wanted one to go fishing with for years now. When the ultrasound technician (who was very rude) told us it was a boy, I said how do you know? She showed us the scrotum. I still have all of the pictures. Hehe.. Your heartbeat was 167 bpm….supposedly another sign you were a boy.
When I left that appointment I went to Babies’ R’ Us to finally buy something for “our” baby knowing what you were. When I walked through the doors, everything pink was jumping out at me. I was disappointed to find out that they boys department isn’t as embellished or as large as the girls department was. I bought you two little blue shirts and bibs. One said “Mommy’s little boy” the other said “Daddy’s little boy”. I also bought you a little Winnie the pooh musical pillow that played Winnie the pooh and would put it next to my belly every day and let you hear me sing it to you.
So far I wasn’t experiencing any problems with my pregnancy, no morning sickness, just extremely tired all of the time, more than normal and out of breath. I had quit smoking the day I found I was pregnant with you. I had previous bouts of asthma that were coming back during my pregnancy. I never had to use an inhaler during the pregnancy but felt very winded all of the time. I would get nauseous from the smell of something or looking at a trash bag, but not to the point of throwing up. The only time I ever threw up anything was at home. I didn’t like the smell of something in the bathroom one day, and grabbed your father’s dirty t-shirt to put over my nose. Unfortunately, I grabbed the part near the armpit and it sent me running to the kitchen sink. Food didn’t make me sick in fact I just wanted to eat all of the time. I had always been skinny and now this was my time to just eat for you and for me. I mostly ate healthy (or at least I thought), but would indulge once in awhile.
I don't want this post to be the length of my whole page, so I will save more for tomorrow.
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