Patience…

Some have it and others don’t. Leo is obviously one of those who need to learn. I was one of those people who needed to learn once upon a time too.

Even when I first found out I was pregnant. My patience was nearly non-existent because all the appointments felt so far away and I wanted to know everything right now. After that first appointment where I saw him, I knew I needed to learn. The little baby inside me needed to grow and I was the only one who was going to help him do so. That’s when I decided to take each day and week as they came and embraced them. I remember being asked if I was going to find out the gender early and I just shook my head no.

“No, I’ll know at the time this baby wants me to know. Either boy or girl, I’ll be happy. Just want him or her to be happy, healthy, and have hair.’

Patience came quickly when we found out about Down syndrome. My arms were poked and pricked with so many needles. Each to tell me what exactly what was going on. The first nurse messed up the blood test and bruised my arm all up so much that the first results came back inconclusive. In the mix of meeting with Fetal and Maternal Medicine, all the ultrasounds to do his measurements, and them telling me he ‘looked fine.’ Everything seemed so normal. I was patient. Then they told us the blood results came back 99% positive. The world felt so different, but I was patient through every week and all the appointments just to see him grow and doing his best.

I was patient for thirty-eight weeks and one day. Then my world flipped upside down. 

When I was laying in the hospital bed and my blood pressure spiked, I wanted him to be out. I didn’t know what to expect because nothing seemed like it made sense anymore. They kept telling me I needed to be patient, that he’d be out soon enough.

For the five hours I was in labor, I was patient. I thought it was going to be a whole day of laboring, but he came quick. After he was born and I was cleaned up, I remember sleeping. When I woke up I showered and felt that emptiness in the pit of my stomach. The one place and part of me I was so patient to watch grow was now, just done. That’s when I realized one huge thing.

I have to be patient until my last breath to finally hold Jensen again.

Although you can’t really see everything I wrote in the picture above, the top waves say, “living with,” then “patience” in the middle. For the rest of my life, I am forced to live with it. There’s no way for me to pluck him from heaven and hold him in my arms. On this day, almost my four-hundredth without Jensen, I patiently wait and I’ll be doing the same on day four-thousand and beyond.

What I ask from my family and friends is that your patient with me. Patient with my grief and my healing. I’m living with lifelong patience to see my child again, so sometimes I need a little slack. Journeying through this life of loss and love is hard work, I appreciate all the love and patience you’ve given me so far and I hope (with all my might) that it continues.