chesneycat

I was a little premature with my last post.

The next [and hopefully final] addition goes thusly:

I never expected to find myself vomiting blood.

*sigh*

I've just got back from hospital, having had the full german ambulance treatment on wednesday night. A day and a half of blood tests, monitoring and an endoscopy later, I apparently don't have any bleeding in my throat or any bleeding ulcers, but I do have a minor hernia, and can add antacids to my daily menu for the foreseeable future.

Huh.  This also explains all the belching.

Then there are the things you read about, but don't give all that much credence to.  My skin is wonderfully soft and glowy - it gave me away at my cousin's wedding this weekend.  Dad had mentioned my pregnancy to his brothers after the ceremony, but hadn't got round to all the nephews and nieces yet, when one of them mentioned to our mutual uncle how, well, glowy I was looking.  "There's a good reason for that!"

Ah well.  It's all going well, as far as I can tell.  I've got a couple more appointments tomorrow, one with the haematology professor, and the other for a nuchal translucency scan.  Fingers crossed...

... I was lying in a bed in the Hallamshire, just down the road from here.

Today, I'm a little over twelve weeks with number four, and I've got a hell of a lot to be thankful for aside from the obvious.  Looking back, a few things stand out.  How amazing everyone around me was, how compassionate and supportive.  My friends around the world who kept me in their thoughts, my family, and those I know who've been through the same thing and reached out to me, some of whom were in the middle of their own dark hours at the time.

This is Roo's legacy.  A helluva lot of love.  We were deepened by what we went through, Jez and I, and given such a great gift alongside the pain.  Everything wonderful in the world was thrown into bright relief, our selves included. It broke our lives apart, a crucible or a chrysalis, and it fucking hurt.  That's change, I guess.  Change and growth, and the fact that nothing truly worthwhile ever comes easy.  Growing and healing took time, and it was undeniably hard, and I won't pretend we're anywhere near finished with it.  I don't think I want to.  Coming of age, growing up... you set yourself all these landmarks as a child and as an adult, and they really mean nothing.  What use are they, except as walls to hem yourself in?  Life is a continuum, in every way. We're analogue, unquantised, the butterflies of chaos.

So.  I'm not just thankful for current little one, though that does take an immeasurably large part of it. Nor my own strengths, the parts that were lent or given and the parts I always had unfound within me, though they were certainly invaluable when we faced the same pain again and again, and through all the crises we've been through in the last three months.  I certainly don't pretend that it's all going to be plain sailing from here onwards either; it'd be nice if these experiences gave you a kind of get out of jail free card for life, but it doesn't work that way.  And it doesn't matter, because we've been gifted, all of us, with the scope to keep going and to keep living, to see those crumbs of hope, the lights in the darkness, the people we love or who love us that keep us living. I think Yoda said it best.

Luminous beings are we.