Nine Years Ago

Nine years ago today, our little Jessany Jade was born.  She was born at 24 weeks, after an emergency cerclage, for what was later diagnosed as an incompetent cervix.  Jessany weighed only one pound, five ounces.  She was incredibly strong for her size and we were told by the doctor that she was doing great.  She was even breathing on her own for a while right after her birth.

I was so scared when I first saw Jessany.  She had so many different cords hooked up to her body that she was almost completely covered with them.  I was expecting to feel joy when I saw my newborn daughter, but I was beyond terrified.  I didn’t feel happiness at all.  I knew I was the reason this was happening to my sweet little baby.  After all, it was my body that had betrayed her.  Less than a year earlier the same thing had happened to her twin brothers, Griffin and Gavin.  They were so premature that they hadn’t even been able to successfully take a breath.  We were told that there wasn’t a reason that we lost our little boys, but obviously it was me.  It had happened again, with our beautiful baby girl.

Jessany only survived for 25 hours.  She did so well until the end of her first day of life.  She suffered a brain hemorrhage because of her extreme prematurity.  She died in my arms.  Jessany was absolutely perfect, just so very tiny.  We were absolutely devastated to lose our baby girl.  We had been struggling with infertility for so many years and had just lost our twin boys not that long before.  Jessany was our miracle.  We had finally been blessed with a child to complete our family, but she was taken from us before we could give her the life and love we dreamed of for her.

We will never forget our little girl.  Even though she was with us for such a short time, she will be forever in our hearts.  She is a part of us.  My husband and I struggled to move on after Jessany’s death.  We made a lot of mistakes in dealing with our grief, but in time we did begin to heal.

I can now think back to that time and feel blessed to have known her, even for the short time we did.  I don’t feel the deep pain that left me so empty for so many years.  Knowing Jessany has helped me become the mother that I am today and for that I am grateful.

Infertility and Marriage

I’m not a marriage expert by any means, but I’ve been in one for over seventeen years.  Of course, every marriage has its ups and downs, times of troubles and times of happiness, but I believe that dealing with infertility is a unique challenge in itself.  Blame, guilt, anger and grief are some pretty powerful emotions.

My husband, Jason, and I have been through so many things together on our journey to have a family that it seems almost unbelievable.  It is amazing to me that we’ve made it through everything and still are together.  We’ve been through some very unique circumstances, but we were like so many others in that we were going through an emotional rollercoaster just trying to have a baby.

Having your hopes dashed with each negative pregnancy test was only the beginning.  I felt like a failure that I couldn’t get pregnant when it seemed everyone else in the whole world could.  I wasn’t being the wife Jason deserved.  I was angry and sad.  We weren’t enjoying our life together.  I wanted to have a family with my husband so much that I didn’t even realize what it was doing to us as a couple.

Sometimes, seeing everyone else have what we wanted more than anything, made us feel like maybe we weren’t really meant to be together.  I mean, we couldn’t even have a child together.  Even two strangers just having a one night stand could make a baby.  It made me feel pathetic.  Would we still be having these problems if we were with someone else?  I felt guilty for thinking things like that, too.  After all, I loved my husband completely.

We felt very angry to have to go through fertility treatments and spend thousands and thousands of dollars, just to try to become pregnant while others got to experience the joy of making love.  It made me feel less than human.  Sometimes I would feel angry at my husband because he wasn’t the one who had to take shots and have his body pumped full of hormones that probably weren’t very healthy to be taking in the first place.  Giving his sample, in a cup, didn’t seem like it would be all that unpleasant.

Having a baby became an obsession.  We weren’t spending the time we needed on our relationship, we were just going through the motions and putting all our effort in trying to become pregnant.  I felt like that was all I thought about, all I cared about.  We weren’t about each other anymore, we were about our quest to get pregnant.

We went through so many difficulties and such sad times going through infertility treatments and losing babies.  We felt constantly stressed and carried around a lot of pain.  There were a few times that we seriously considered calling it quits.  But we loved each other too much to let our marriage fail.  We knew most likely we wouldn’t have a child to love, but we did have each other.  In order to keep our marriage strong, we had to slow down and think about what we meant to each other.  If we weren’t going to be able to have children, we were going to have to find a way to find happiness within ourselves and our life together.  We didn’t give up on our dream, but we did realize that having a child couldn’t be our only goal for our life.

Spending time together doing things we both enjoyed helped us a lot.  We concentrated on each other and moving on in our lives, finding happiness in the everyday.  It was hard, at times, to accept that it was going to be just the two of us.  We did get off track at times, feeling depressed or angry because of our situation, but we made it through the hard times.  I believe our marriage and our love is stronger because of all that we have been through together.