My weekend has consisted of travelling to far North Queensland to promote our pedal go kart hire company at an industry conference. Whist being away, for the first time on my own for many years it gave me a chance to catch up with an old friend from my teenage years over dinner. Yvonne and I were both Mormon youth girls in Sydney when we were young we went on many girls camps together and enjoyed hanging out with a common group of friends at church youth dances and church religious instructional evenings known by members as 'firesides' ( named because the Mormon pioneers would gather together at night by he fire to have religious discussions and religious music to boy each other up during the many trials they suffered walking across the plains)
We have only just started to rekindle our friendship due to the miracle of Facebook and my new opportunity to expand our business in her part of this beautiful country. It was a blustery evening with rain coming down in small gusts of wind, we closed the shutters on the window where the waiter had seated us and pleasantly reminisced about our early years and filled each other in on the gaps between losing contact and what our families were dealing with today. Yvonne said she had been keeping up with my blog and truly loved reading it( which was so kind of her to say) but as our night drew on we came to a kind of sensitive issue that I have not yet blogged about and really haven't given it too much of my energy until this point as for me it was a truly hard time in my journey.
Our conversation turned to having children, Yvonne has a large tribe of 6 beautiful children, and I have my 4 girls that I adore but I did have 5 pregnancies and in this blog I will tell you about my first child, the little I know about this much wanted baby, and how the conception of this child changed my life forever.
After Dean and I had been married for just over a year I fell pregnant. I was in my second year of school and Deano was studying in his final year. Being only 19 at the time I thought I was invincible. We were both pretty excited about the news. Being fit and within a healthy weight range for my height and at the time The scans were showing me as was 13 weeks pregnant. I was a leader in Young Women's youth group in our area. We had planned to take the Young Women to a camp in the Gold Coast hinterland and as part of this camp the girls and leaders were encouraged to go on the hike to the top of a very steep mountain. I was the youngest of all the leaders and so it was expected of me that I would set the example and go on the hike. In previous days the mountain had been drenched by rain and the would be track had dried out a little and turned the usually soft soil into thick gluggy mud that stuck 2 inches thick to the soles of out shoes. The hike was 7 kilometres uphill and at times it was so hard to take one step in front of the other without losing your shoe due to the suction of the thick mud or because of the grade of the hill. At times reading out for tree branches and pulling myself forward with my arms was the only way to prop myself up the hill.
Once we reached the peak it truly was a magnificent sight. With at least 60 young women at the top we watched the sun rise and gave thanks for this beautiful world that we had been blessed with. Together we shared our testimonies and joined in songs of praise. It was a hard climb but a glorious moment that I will never forget. I remember being so thirsty once I got to the top that I downed almost the whole 2 litres of water that I had carried with me on my journey.
On my return the decent down hill was awkward indeed but after we reached a certain point in the hike the ground started to level off in steepness and it became easier to walk. My bladder now being full was not agreeable to me taking my time to get back to base camp so with urgency I began to run in order to get back and relieve some tension. Running the final 3kilometres and finding the porta potties being my final goal for the morning gave me such joy only a mother that has been pregnant or has had several pregnancies would understand!
Later on that day not feeling so well and putting it all down to exhaustion it was time to pack up camp. Struggling to get my gear in the car I drove home quietly and getting into my bed after such a huge day I had never been so grateful to have a warm soft place to lay my weary body and a hubby who would cuddle me as I drifted off to La la Land.
Life went as normal for the next 4 weeks. I went to college and Deano went to uni as our usual way of life at this stage. I was I a lecture when I started to feel an unusual feeling. The type of cramping that I would usually have when it was that time of the month. I took myself off to the bathroom and to my utter dismay I found myself spotting. Thinking this was not a good sign I went straight over the road to see my older sister who worked as a beauty therapist in a nearby salon. My sister and I were not super close but when it comes to our health it seems it has been that we have been there for each other through out our life. Quickly she responded and had me at the local Doctor to see what was happening. Sending me for scans we leaned that the baby I was carrying now just into my 17th week of pregnancy had I fact died 4 weeks earlier. The Doctor was gentle when she broke the news to me, with consoling words and explanations that it was often life's way of weeding out babies that are not fully formed or that could have been born with complications of one type or another. She almost made it sound that although I was sad I should have been grateful not to have been burdened with a child with a disability. My sister came through for me taking me to the hospital picking Dean up from University and organising clothing and all my temporal needs, showing me that although we had not agreed on everything in the past she really did care and love me, to this day I will ever be thankful that she is my sister.
But the story of this child does not end there, once I got to the Lismore Base hospital the room that they put me in was in the children's ward, I shared my room with a 12 year old girl. I was puzzled why I was in the children's ward but up on asking a nurse she explained to me as I was 19 they considered me a child. My operation was booked for 9am the next day to remove my unborn child. All night I was made to listen to cries of sick children, ones who were ill enough to be in hospital, some were new borns, and others were toddlers with their mothers staying to hold their little hands, wipe away their tears, blow their noses, feed them and do what mothers do best, hug and love their children. I felt the deepest sense of loss. Laying all night thinking why would this happen to me? Why would they put me in this part of the hospital, what do I have to learn from this, and remembering back to the camp I had been on in the thirteenth week of my trimester I felt such an intense feeling of guilt rush over me because what if hiking that day had caused my baby to die. Even now with a tear in my eye I sit on the plane back to Brisbane and those feelings come back to me and bring a tear to my eye.
The hospital discharges me a few hours after my operation. Not one doctor or nurse told me anything about my baby, I will never know in this life what sex my child was, what happened to my baby's body after birth and why my baby had died.
Being young and traumatised I didn't ask any questions either. I just wanted to be out of that hospital room with all those babies as quick as I could and I wanted my life to be normal again. It took some time for me to heal but I did and it made me a strong person for it.
One thing is for sure, I know that I have a family that is sealed for time and all eternity, I will get the chance to be this child's mother, maybe not on this earth but I believe I will have a time in the worlds to come. I believe that my role as a mother to my 4 daughters has been made more precious because of my little gone before soul and I have taken my role as a mother more serious than ever because the worth of each soul is great in he eyes of our Heavenly Father...even the smaller ones.
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