The TRUTH About Motherhood

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Lost Baby

Lost baby. No crying. You’re lost to me. Helpless, my only option to carry on. 4 years ago today, I lost my world as I knew it and what was to become of it. My life was shattered into a million pieces and scattered to the wind, blown around the universe like a zillion tiny particles of air. But with all that “air” blowing around, for the life of me, I couldn’t breathe all I could do was cry for my lost baby. I cried until I no longer had any tears. I cried until I felt numb. I cried until I felt like an empty shell of who I was.
I couldn’t speak. Words failed me. They formed at machine gun speed in my broken mind but got caught in my throat and I nearly choked to death on them, right there in the parking lot of my OB, again in my bed and for several months following. The emotional time bombs of grief that come with a mother’s loss blew up beneath my feet and left me in tattered, bloody parts; strewn far and wide.
All I could do, while witnessing the end of my world, was fall to my knees, howl at the world and sob inconsolably at the inhumanity that the world had thrust upon me. I could not draw breath in the fog of my sadness; I suffocated beneath the weight of loss a little more with each passing breath I took. Each time more painful; crueler.
They say God doesn’t give you more than you can handle but I felt as if God gave me so much more credit than I deserved.
The entire world came crashing head on at me and I was stunned, dumbfounded and all I could do was wait to see if I could withstand the impact. I braced myself and prayed for swift death.
I’m not meant to survive this sort of blow. It’s too much. I didn’t even want to come out the other end because I knew, in that one moment, I would never be the same. I would be changed forever and there is no coming back from that. There is only surviving and that’s not the same as living, as you were.
For months, there was only sobbing and darkness. Solitude and Vicodin were my only comfort. I wanted to go to sleep and not wake up, I wanted to fade into forever because I was no longer any good to anyone. What good is a mother without her child? What is a childless mother? This was not how nature intended it.
Lost baby.
In the mirror, all I saw was pain and loneliness. All that I could feel was overwhelming anger and bitterness. I was in the deepest recesses of hell and no one could reach me, save for my living children. Like a tether to life, like a far off whisper begging me to step back from that ledge. I had one foot here and one foot in another world, lingering in the loss. All I wanted to do was step off that ledge.
I couldn’t make out where I belonged. All I knew is that it hurt to breath. It was torture to exist. I wanted to die. I deserved to be dead. I didn’t deserve to live. I had failed my child.
I don’t know if I’ve ever said that out loud but it’s how I felt. How could I live, knowing the child growing inside me had died? A part of my soul had died. The best part of me ceased to exist. I felt worthless and worse, undeserving to even love the children I had because in losing one, I had failed them all.
It still hurts; not every day and not always. But I feel like I’ve spent the past 4 years changing and hiding in the shadows; afraid the sadness would find me and inflict it’s cruel punishment once again. The grief is too unbearable.
But I hear my daughters laughing and something inside me, tells me that I deserve to know this happiness. I don’t have to feel guilty for living and loving these girls because it’s not wrong to go on living for them. It’s not wrong to feel pride, unconditional love and overwhelming gratitude for the gift of motherhood. I deserve to be here and it doesn’t diminish the loss because I’ve been able to carry on when once all I could do was cry.
I think of my baby that I lost, every single day. I am mother to three children. If I’m lucky, I get another 50 years on this earth with my girls and then, I look forward to finally meeting the child I never got to hold but have always loved just as much as I do my other two. One day, we will all be together and I deserve to live, to thrive, until that day because my children deserve nothing less; I deserve nothing less.
As long as I can draw breath into my body, I will love you always my lost baby.
2016/05/01
Parents who Send Sick Kids to School You’re the Worst
Do not send sick kids to school! I repeat, do not do it! I recently read an article in which a parent was asking that schools police children’s health and punish those parents who send their sick children to school. If you wake up and your kid has a 104 degree temperature or is actively vomiting and diarrheaing all over the house, it’s a pretty good bet that you should keep that kid home. But should the school have the right to take punitive action against the parents?
I get that parents have jobs and they can’t always get time off. Not every parent is a stay-at-home or even has the opportunity to work from home. My family is very fortunate in this way. I work from home and, if need be, my husband can work from home some days so I follow all the rules. I fully realize that most parents can’t do that and they work to pay for food, shelter and utilities. Sometimes, you just have to send your kid in and pray he doesn’t infect anyone else because, quite frankly, the electric company doesn’t care if your kid is sick and the grocery store doesn’t take I.O.U.s.
If my girls are running fevers or vomiting, I always keep them home. Furthermore, if they have to stay home, I take them to the pediatrician because we are lucky enough to have insurance. And if they ever have any continued sinus problems resulting from their illness I will take them to a pediatric ent doctor. It’s not always easy, but it’s what has to be done.
Recently, I was really sick with the flu myself. What I thought was a man cold, because I was being a whiny little girl and complaining about everything, turned out to be the real deal, pull on your big girl panties and prepare to hate your life for the next 7-10 days FLU! The one year we don’t get our flu shots and pow… Right in the kisser.
The worst part of this whole situation was that my girls were also sick so I couldn’t just rest and recoup, I had to tend to them first and then rest. It was brutal. To make it extra special, the night I felt my absolute worst from the killer headache that accompanies this death flu, 5 minutes after finally drifting off to sleep, my 8-year-old ran into my room screaming my name as she projectile vomited all over my carpeted bedroom. The last thing I wanted to do in the middle of my dying was clean up vomit but that’s what I did.
For the next four days of my crippling flu journey, the little one feverish and clingy spent every waking and sleeping moment draped over my body, attached to me like some adorable little parasite; killing me softly as I stayed silent; comforting her when all I wanted was solitude and sleep. I didn’t want to be touched or looked at but I had to suck it up.
To make things worse, when she’s sick she’s kind of mean. She was short and irritable. So was I but I’m the mom. So not only did I get to feel absolutely dreadful, I got to be her punching bag (because who can yell at a sick kid) avoid sleep because of worry and go quietly insane.
So at the end of last week, just as the antibiotics started to kick in from the compounding situation of walking pneumonia, the Big Guy got sick. Fevers, coughing and achy soreness for everyone.
By Saturday morning, the oldest had 104-degree temperature. None of us wanted to move and all of us wanted to die. Still, I had not one second to be sick in peace. No moment to curl up under the blankets and wallow to the hum of the humidifier. Not even one lone moment to nurse my scratchy throat in peace.
Essentially, we had almost 3 weeks of children home. 10 of those days, I was extremely sick myself. I kept my girls home because that is what school policy dictates, that’s what their sick little bodies demanded and it had to be done. None of us liked it. We were all just trying to survive it.
Then I got a carefully worded letter in the mail, “warning” me about my daughters’ absences. The ones they had missed due to the flu they caught at school. The same absences, which I had taken them to the pediatrician for and called daily to let the school know. I felt threatened and appalled because if the other parents had kept their kids home when they were running the fevers, maybe my entire family could have avoided 3 weeks worth of missed school, ballet, gymnastics, violin and tumbling. Maybe I could have saved all that money I had to waste on OTC drugs, doctors visits, prescriptions, Kleenex, and takeout because no one felt up to cooking.
Instead, I got the reprimand for doing the right thing and the parents who knowingly send their kids in sick with fevers, stomach flus and lice are left to go on about their merry ways. I call bullshit.
I’m Bitter. I did all the right things and I am the one being policed. How is this fair? We need a better system.
Parents, I know that its not easy and sometimes it might not even be possible but if your child is sick and you knowingly send them in to school, you know better and you should be the one being given the threatening letters, not me.
What do you think about parents knowingly sending sick kids to school?

2016/02/17
ISIS Barbarically Murders Steven Sotloff & the Entire Internet Watches
ISIS beheaded Steven Sotloff and the world watched, no one intervened. We let it happen.There was no rescue.I am fairly sick over the fact that our world has become so desensitized to the vulgarity and cruelty of the world that not only was it allowed to happen, we were allowed to watch the video. It wasn’t just photo stills, it was his brutal murder. All we could do is sit stunned and watch. It made me sick in my stomach, just the way I felt the day I watched the planes crash into the World Trade Center.
The news is over saturated with entertainment. While sad, these things seem inconsequential in comparison to what happened to Steven Sotloff and the brutality with which it was carried out. Leaked photos are not a national crisis in comparison to beheadings. We live in a world today where reality television is a mainstay and we’re all flies on the wall of society. But still, we do nothing. Nothing has changed except that now we KNOW, we see the awful things happening in real time. It’s disgusting. We are going to raise a generation of desensitized children. Soon, beheadings will no longer shock us at all. One day, my children’s children will not be rattled to their core as I am today.
What are we doing? I just watched the video that ISIS released of the American Journalist, Steven Joel Sotloff, a human being, have his head cut off very crudely with a hunting knife in the dessert, by a masked ISIS executioner as restitution for what our government has done. The brutality and coldness with which the executioner beheaded another human being, snuffed his life out, was nothing short of evil. I am in shock.
“just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people”
I don’t know how these things happen. How people, the general public, become pawns of government politics and terrorists. This man was not a soldier. He did not go to a foreign land to fight. He posed no threat. He was just someone’s son, doing a job, and because he happened to be American in a country that hates Americans, he was murdered like an animal. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The executioner crudely and callously sawed his head off with a hand held knife. It wasn’t a smooth motion to slit a throat, it was a hack job. This took calculated effort and a desire to finish the job. It took hatred. There was no compassion or humanity. There wasn’t even the courtesy of an ax. There was only brutality.
The whole thing was filmed and at the end, there in the dirt lay some mother’s son murdered, dead in the sand with his head placed on top of his corpse in some disrespectful, cartoonish way like a trophied kill by a hunter only this wasn’t an animal, it was a human being. This man was someone’s everything. He didn’t deserve to be beheaded. He didn’t die in the name of his God or his convictions and beliefs, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and no one rescued him.
Right before Sotloff died, he spoke calmly to the camera speaking words that I am sure he was forced to say under extreme duress, but he was eerily calm and resigned to his fate. In the end, he didn’t even resist. I think he had given up or was sedated or perhaps, just refused to give his executioner that last satisfaction of his fear. He’d given up waiting for his hero to rescue him. Given up on living. Given up on trying and wishing and praying.
I hate the Internet for giving these terrorists a venue. I won’t share the video as I don’t want to be part of the problem and really, I am doing you a favor by not sharing it. Don’t look for it. I will never forget what I saw in that video. It shook me to my core. I can’t unsee what I just saw and I can’t stop crying for this poor man and his mother who so desperately begged for his release and his life. It was warned that Steven Joel Sotloff would be beheaded after journalist James Foley was beheaded two weeks ago. Still, Sotloff was not rescued. Our government did not heed the warnings. No one did anything, other than his mother who publicly begged for her son’s life. Now, she gets to see her son, who looks tired and gaunt, in his last minutes before he is murdered speaking his last words and then she has to watch helplessly as he is savagely butchered by a terrorist. And finally, the baby boy that she once held in her arms and soothed to sleep, is laid out on the floor like garbage as a warning to Americans.
I understand that we do not negotiate with terrorists but the longer we take to “develop military strategies” safely from within the U.S. borders, more innocent Americans ( real life human beings not ideas or policies) are being brutally murdered, in real time, by ISIS. Did we learn nothing from 9/11/01? What are our leaders waiting for, ISIS to come to our country and go door-to-door beheading innocents to prove their point? How many mother’s sons have to die before we do something?
Today, I am saddened , sickened and shocked with the world and more specifically by ISIS and the Internet. I pray for the family of Steven Joel Sotloff, especially his mother, whose heart I know is irreparably broken, that she can know peace in the knowledge that those assholes can no longer terrorize him or hurt him.
2014/09/02
5-Years of Blogging, Thank You!
Happy 5-years of blogging anniversary to me!
My blog is officially going off to kindergarten in the fall. Honestly, every year my blog turns another year older and I completely forget to celebrate on the anniversary. I never forget my kids’ birthdays and let’s face it; this blog is like my third child. It’s been a labor of love for sure and I have definitely poured my blood, sweat, tears and truth into this hear little website.
It probably has a lot to do with May being hell month in our house. We are booked solid all month long. The four of us, the Big Guy, the girls and I, just muddle through the entire month in a blur and then on June 1st we all sit down, put our feet up and exhale a sigh of relief.
But not today, today I have flower beds to plant, pitches to send, conference calls to attend and a garage that has to be rearranged as we are finally emptying our storage unit from back in the days when the house was staged for selling. It’s been 3 years. Anyways, today, I am pausing to say thank you. Thank you for the past 5 years! Thank you for all of the love and support and perspective. You complete me. The Big Guy made me a wife, the girls made me a mother but you all made me a blogger. And all of you helped me to find my dream and go after it.
When I started this blog, I had no idea what to expect or what I was doing. Some of you may suspect that I still don’t and, truly, I am still learning something new every single day. That’s what I love about blogging. Like motherhood the space is constantly changing, the rules are different and there are fads a many but I have just stuck to my original plan; to do it all with honesty and try my best to not screw things up too badly.
Today, The TRUTH about Motherhood turns 5. I can barely remember the time that I didn’t write this blog. It’s gotten me through the toughest moments of motherhood and I’ve made lifelong friends through this site. You’ve been there to make me not feel alone in those quiet times of doubt, held my hand when I thought I couldn’t go on and even celebrated the little wins in my life and I hope I have done the same for you.
There are changes coming for The TRUTH, you’ve been warned. I mean you know how 5-year-olds are? They like to shake things up. This month we celebrate 5 years of blogging, 4 years of Throat Punching on Thursdays, 15 years of marriage, 9 years of motherhood and my youngest turns 7-years-old. I’d complain about being so damn busy but I can’t because I am so damned blessed.
Stay tuned for changes. Speaking of changes, this Friday I will start a new weekly feature called This Blogger’s Life. I will be interviewing some of your and my favorite bloggers and even some new and up and coming bloggers. Wouldn’t you love to be the fly on the wall on the inside of a blogger’s brain? Well, now you can. Our first interview will go live this Friday with Jill Smokler of Scary Mommy. Hope you’ll check it out.
Thanks for the past 5 years, it truly has been life changing. If you want to stay connected, I am also lots of fun on Facebook ( I won’t lie, I like to share a lot of cool things I find on the Internet and see what you think about it), Twitter ( I like to have silly conversations in 140 characters), Instagram ( I posts lots of photos of cute bulldogs, cute kids, nature and the occasional photo of myself with no nose ), Pinterest ( where I pin all the pretty and cool things) and Google+ ( where I am still trying to figure it all out. Want to follow me so that I can get some lessons from you?)
2014/05/07
The Worst Day of My Life
Is there a right or wrong way to experience loss? Is there a time limit on grief? I don’t think so.
May 1st is my annual day of mourning. I don’t know if this is normal or not but it’s what is normal for me. My miscarriage changed me forever. It’s how I get through this. It’s the one day of the year that I am completely still and I allow myself to feel all the feelings because quite honestly, this week just knowing that the anniversary of such a terrible event in my life was approaching had me walking around feeling like an exposed nerve. I changed forever on that day and I‘ll never be the same. No matter how hard I try or pretend to be.
I have cried at song lyrics and at the sound of the giggles of my daughters, knowing that one is missing. There is a hole in my heart that will never be repaired; not for my entire life. When my littlest daughter cuddles into me at bedtime and asks me for baby brother or sister, I hold my breath, push down the lump and pray I can hold back the tears long enough for her to fall asleep. Most days it’s a tiny little ache that I hardly even notice anymore but other days, it’s a sharp shooting pain that steals my breath away and others that confine me to my bed and the space in my head where I am allowed to dwell in my heartbreak.
It’s just one day and it doesn’t seem enough but at the same time, how do you quantify loss?
When I had my miscarriage, I wanted to die. All I could do was cry.I wanted to sink into one of my deep, tear stained sleeps where I had sobbed myself into exhaustion and never wake up. I was given pain killers and sleeping pills to help. I can’t tell you how many times in that first month that I mixed them, hoping to “accidentally” not wake up. The only thing that kept my weary mind and body grounded in this world were my girls and the Big Guy. I’ve never told anyone that.
May 1st is the day that I had my D & E. Two years ago, I went in to my obstetrician’s office for a little spotting, just like I did in both pregnancies previous. Today was the day that my entire world crashed down around me. Then, it became real. My body failed me and my heart shattered into one million tiny scattered pieces. May 1^st is the day that I lost my baby. I was 10 weeks and 4 days pregnant. I will mourn that day for the rest of my life.
I feel like people don’t understand; not my family or my friends and certainly not the general population. I feel like people are thinking that I should get over it. After all, “It” was just a pregnancy. It wasn’t like I had a child who lived and then he died. The thing that I feel people fail to understand is that “IT” was not an “it” at all. It was my child; it was a Bella or a Gabi. In my heart and in my mind, I loved that baby just as much as I love the two I get the privilege of kissing good night every blessed night. I lost everything and I won’t ever get over that.
I don’t linger in my loss anymore these days. I live each day knowing that a piece of my heart is missing and it hurts when I think about it. I give myself this ONE day of the year. I don’t need permission or to explain it to anyone. I just need this one day to not buckle under the weight of my own heart, to not choke from the lump in my throat, to cry until there are no more tears left and to be mad as hell that where my baby should be, my arms are empty and will always be.
The pain of losing a pregnancy or a child is like no other pain. If you’ve never experienced it (and I pray that you don’t) just take that all-consuming, unimagined love that you felt for your baby the first time you held her and then multiply that by a million in the opposite direction. That is what I feel like on May 1st, like I am being hit by a Mack truck and the worst part is that I know its coming.
I know I’ll always take pause in remember the day that my world was shattered. Some years the anniversary will hurt less and some years it will hurt more. But every year, on May 1st, I am giving myself the day to feel all of my feelings , even if I feel absolutely nothing but flat exhaustion. Or maybe one of these days, I will be happy dressing my daughter for her wedding or witnessing the birth of my 1st grandchild and I won’t be overcome with grief or even tinged with sadness. No matter what I feel, it’s okay but I have to do this for myself.
Part of me shut off that day. I pushed it down, way down so I could function but it’s there bubbling beneath the surface. There are feelings that are so overwhelming that I’m afraid to let them in and that is what today is for, to sit still, alone and feel whatever feelings come up.
Can we ever truly recover from loss?
2014/05/01
Falling Only Makes Us Stronger
Falling only makes us stronger.I saw this video and I sat there with a giant lump in my throat because I am still at the pick them up, kiss the booboos and tell them to get back up and carry on. I tell them to carry on because that is what I am supposed to do but each time I watch my girls stumble and fall, I hold my breath and my heart aches for their pain.
It’s very difficult for me to tell them to carry on when all I want to do is take all the pain away and tell them they don’t have to do it again. Any pain, emotional, physical or spiritual inflicted on my child makes a chink in my own soul. It wounds me to my very core but as a mother, I have to teach them to persevere; to work hard and fight the pain because life is not easy. Hard work is needed for success and when we fall, we learn to pick ourselves back up. We become stronger and better people. We have to let them fall so that they can learn to get back up. I watch with baited breath at every new beginning and hope they can achieve what they set out to accomplish and if they do, I celebrate along with them and if they fail, I encourage them to try again. That’s what moms and dads do.
We teach them that everything is possible with hard work and determination. We teach them that if they fall, we will be there to pick them up and kiss their booboos. We teach them that falling down is not failure and getting back up to try again is success. We encourage them to continue on, even when they want to quit because sometimes little legs and arms are tired but we must teach them perseverance and the value of hard work. We teach them that they must face life’s challenges. But most of all, by letting our children fall, we show them that our love is unconditional and we love them no matter if they fail or succeed. We love them, so we let them fall no matter how much it breaks our hearts.
How have you had to watch your child fall?
2014/01/08
TRIGGER WARNING
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Last Wednesday, I went in for my routine mammogram and annual visit to my gynecologist. These exams have become a box to check off, since my hysterectomy. In fact, I know many women who get a hysterectomy and think they’re done. They think they’re safe. I thought I had passed the days of gynecological surprises. I thought the days of impromptu biopsies, year long periods, in office D & Es and miscarriages were over. However, last Thursday, I was informed that my mammogram warranted a call back and further testing.
“We found asymmetry in the tissue of your right breast.”
That’s all that I heard. I’ve never wanted to rewind time and unhear anything so much in my life since 2012. I’m in shock, I’m sad, I’m mad but mostly, I’m scared. I don’t usually do “scared”. I’ve spent a lifetime fighting through and overcoming hard things. I know it sounds selfish and simple but I don’t want to have to do this.
I’ve done research and mostly everything I’ve read says it’s probably nothing but until I get my follow up mammogram and ultrasound, I won’t know. I’m doing that this morning. In fact, this post will go live while I’m getting it done. The Big Guy and our girls insisted on going with me. I told them no but then I remembered being alone and getting that news in 2012 and I accepted their support but then part of me feels guilty because what if it is bad news and I can’t shield them from it? I won’t be able to hide my breakdown. I know my bandwidth, I won’t be able to protect them from the hurt and that is devastating to me.
I’m so scared and I don’t know how to process any of this so I’m writing it all here.
I’m more scared than I’ve been in a long time. The last time I was this scared was when I was spotting while pregnant with my third child. Spotting just like I’d done with both pregnancies before. I went in to see my Ob/Gyn as a formality, just to be sure. I was positive that they’d tell me everything was fine and send me on my way. I went to the appointment alone. Instead, I was told that my baby no longer had a heartbeat. Since then, I take nothing for granted and I know that nothing is guaranteed.
I’m so scared.
I’ve spent the entire weekend experiencing a gamut of emotions.I’ve cried. Sobbed in the shower. I’ve been angry. I’ve been terrified. I’ve slept a lot because being scared is exhausting. I flashed forward and looked backward. I’ve taken an inventory of my life and all the things I’ve done and all the things I still want to do. There is so much more life I want to live.
I’m scared.
I want to comfort my husband and my daughters because they’re scared too ( even though each of them has put on a brave face and told me everything is going to be fine), but I’ve realized something about myself, I can’t give from an emotionally overflowing with fear or sadness cup. When I’m this scared, I shut down out of sheer self-preservation. I can only turn inward to keep my composure. If I think too much or talk about it too much, my thoughts go to dark places and my emotions will run wild. I can’t afford to let that happen right now. I need to stay strong if I need to fight.
I’m scared because the last time I thought everything was going to be alright, everything went all wrong.
There is nothing I can do but follow up and face my truth. I’m praying it’s nothing. I’m praying for it to be benign. But I’m more scared than I can put into words and this fear has me bursting at the seams. I keep telling everyone I love that I’ll be okay but the truth is that I don’t know if I will be. If you are the praying kind, or just someone who knows and loves me, I welcome all of your thoughts and good healing and healthy vibes.
I’m trying my hardest to be strong but I am triggered and terrified in ways that I never imagined.
I’m scared and I don’t know what to do. But I wanted to take this opportunity to encourage you all to please take care of yourselves. Go in for your well-visits. Get your mammograms. Do all the things you need to do to be and stay healthy.
2024/07/23