The Controvercial One

Now I will talk to you about the second pregnancy my wife and I had. I am calling it the controvercial one. After we had Emmauel (our son) and especially because of the 22 hours of labour Mel had, she wasn't ready to have another kid right away. Well, as it would end up, she got pregnant after just a few months. I don't remember exactly, but I think the kids would have ended up not even a year and a half apart. Mel was not wanting a baby at that time, and it was pretty tough for her. Then, one day she had a lot of cramping and bleeding. (This is getting much more graphic than I intended.) Omitting some of the smaller deatils, she ended up coming to me with the fetus in her hand. It was not very big, but it was difinitely a little baby. There were little arm and leg "buds". I can't explain what it felt like to hold that little baby in my hand and think about what its life could have been. I still think about that sometimes... holding it in the kitchen of our house and feeling like someone just knocked the wind out of me. Mel and I told our parents and we had a prayer in the kitchen with my parents a few days later.

The reason I am calling this pregnancy the controvercial one, is because shortly after Micah (our daughter) was born, Mel refused to acknowledge that pregnancy. Even at the time, she did not want to talk about it with me. It was hard because I felt like I couldn't process it on my own, but I had no one to talk to about it. Mel has a tattoo on her arm that she designed; it has one cherry blossom for every member of our family and one closed blossom to represent our second pregnancy. Just a little while after she got that tattoo is when she stopped acknowledging that this pregnancy ever happened. Everyone deals with things in their own way. I realize that a lot of people don't even consider a fetus a baby. I don't fault Mel for the way she feels about this pregnancy; I wish I could have talked to someone about it. Anyway... that is pretty much pregnancy number two. It was hard for me and continues to be hard. I think what gets me the most about it is that I actually held the baby in my hand. That image will stay with me forever! I don't know if I will ever understand whether it is just an image or whether the image haunts or fascinates me. I haven't quite decifered my emotions on that one yet. Perhaps through some of this writing, I will have some of that worked out.