Driver Eight

Jail Schmail

My blog friend Cole over at Blahblahblah has an interesting post that has stirred up some old emotions in me.  See she is an amazing woman who is going to school to become a nurse while parenting two young children.  I love reading about her wild and crazy life and if you have not clicked over to her blog from mine then you are definitely missing something.  So please, click on over and then and see why I heart her.

I digress….her post…..she is currently on a rotation covering maternal and newborn wards (I don’t even know if I used the correct terminology but hell, I think you get what I mean).  She was writing about the magical stuff that oozes out of newborns.  And I don’t mean the drool and the poop I mean that mysterious stuff that makes even a stone cold hearted person melt. They way they smell and how they fit so perfectly into your arms and can just let it all go and sleep for hours on end.  And the pixie dust that clouds your heart with joy and sends all your emotions into a tizzy.  And how she does not want to go to jail for stealing one of these precious bundles from their bassinets and lackluster teen parents smoking ciggies in the hallway.

Now before you get all crazy,  you must understand she is merely JOKING and simply writing about the mystical affects that newborns have on us.  And it made me remember a time, not long enough ago, when I began to relate to these crazy people who steal children.  We were going through IVF and each cycle prompted no revelations about why I wasn’t getting pregnant.  Everything looked great.  Eggs were great.  Sperm count post wash was great.  Fertilization results were great.  Growth of embryos was good and no one could see any reason why we were not getting pregnant.  But we weren’t getting pregnant.

And I would see at every twist and turn younger and younger pregnant women.  Some with three or four children already hanging off their arms and legs as they grocery shopped.  Every celebrity was pregnant or birthing.  Every animal in the zoo was expecting.  There were unexpected pregnancies among friends and family yet here we stood.  Barren. 

And I started thinking when I went to the mall as I watched these mothers and their children that they don’t watch every minute.  How could they be so careless with such a precious gift?  Didn’t they know that danger could be lurking around the next corner?  How many times did I hear a mother chirp out to her young, “OK….if you don’t want to follow me then I’ll just leave.”  What a heinous threat.  Because you never know who may be ready to take your place if you are willing to relinquish it.

And I started to empathize with those crazy people who somewhere deep down inside in that place that is normally good and kind and loving that starts to darken with fear and dread and hopelessness.  It could be so easy to get lost in that darkness and turn against all that is good and right and just in the world.  But I don’t because although I am lost and sorrowful and feel as though I am drowning in grief for what I cannot seem to make on my own, I am good and hopeful that by “following the rules” we will be blessed if it is to be so.  And if it isn’t, well then we’ll deal with that as it comes.

What a powerful drug grief is.  It can make the sanest person insane.  It can, if you allow it, plant thoughts and ideas in your head that may make the strangest of sense in a world that is twisted and clouded by emotion.  Thankfully, for me, the threat of actually kidnapping a baby was slim but the fear of the thoughts even running through my head were enough to scare the sweet bejesus out of me.  It’s a part of my life that is gone but not entirely lost or forgotten as I find my infertility scars still run a bit close to the surface if you scratch too hard.