Sometimes we just don't know everything...like when "I Didn't Know I was Pregnant"

Has anyone seen that show, “I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant?”

If not, I don’t really need to explain, since they picked a ridiculous title that is pretty self-explanatory. But for those who are less than aware of the obvious, I'll give you the run-down....

 It’s a show about women who go into labor but don’t realize they are in labor because somehow, (unbeknownst to me) they had no clue that they were with child.

“I didn’t realize that I wasn’t having my period for almost an entire year because my cycle is sometimes irregular, and I just never noticed.”

“I thought the pain from the contractions was food poisoning.”

“The baby kicking inside of me was mistaken as gas….I DID drink that bottle of rootbeer before eating all those beans that I was craving.”

“Oh, I thought that extra 20 pounds was from my new shoes.”

Any pregnant woman can tell you that having a 5-10 pound human inside of you makes it almost impossible to sleep comfortably, eat comfortably, walk comfortably, or even breath comfortably; so it is unfathomable to me that anyone could NOT know they were in their third trimester and on the verge of delivering. But that’s besides the point….these women (all shapes, sizes, ages, educations) apparently had zero warning that they could be pregnant.

….and there you have it, the premise of a show that surprisingly has more than 1 episode. 

(And that was one long synopsis on one that needed no explaining.)

So last night, I didn’t know I was pregnant. 

It was one of those dreams that seemed SO real…and so traumatic…the kind of dream where you wake up and have to take a few minutes to decide if it really happened. The kind of night’s sleep that leaves you living with the remnants of emotions as you go through your whole day with a subconscious confusion from the whole “experience.”  

 In this particularly disturbing dream, I look into the toilet (apparently more babies are born in toilets than most of us realize… at least that’s what “I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant” would lead you to believe) and there in the toilet water was a teeny tiny baby, not fully grown. (My dream-self estimated 28 precious weeks.) I thought I was seeing things until the baby moved, and I yelled to Paul, 

“I didn’t know I was pregnant! [thank you TLC] She’s breathing!” 

(Okay, so looking back, it seems more than obvious that this is not reality, but just stay with me here.) 

So I reached into that water and grabbed my baby out. Her teensy body fit into just one hand. She was so tiny & underdeveloped, and I was so worried about her (and so confused how this happened); yet, I just took my time holding her and figuring out what we should do, pretending everything would be just fine. 

It didn’t seem like an immediate decision needed to be made until she started struggling with her breathing. At that point, I settled on the decision to jog her to the hospital (because in my dream, that seemed normal), tucking her under my sweatshirt for warmth because her skin was so thin and she was so frail. 

(I have no idea why the sweatshirt and not one of the million blankets that I keep in my frigid house…and my choice to jog instead of drive should have been a give-away that it wasn’t real in my world….but Please! It’s a dream.) 

So I get to the hospital and I am trying to find where to go, and everyone is giving me the run-around.The baby is losing oxygen and turning SO pale. The nurses seem kind of annoyed. I reluctantly hand her over to someone who seemed like they were important enough to be a doctor who knew how to save my baby....and they act like she is nothing of priority.

“She’s too young to survive outside of the womb”… and they don’t even give her a chance.

...I waited too long to bring her in!...They didn’t even try!...How did this happen?...I can't process this!

I’m crushed, heartbroken, guilt-ridden, confused, angry….totally devastated. It didn’t matter that I had 3 other healthy kids. It didn’t matter that “it was no one’s fault.” I wanted someone to blame. 

I woke up in mourning, in the morning.

Okay, I know. That’s a morbid and disturbing dream that I could have kept to myself. 

The point is….the reality of losing a baby has never been MY personal reality. It HAS been (and IS) the reality of more friends than I can count, in most scenarios that you can imagine. It seems recently that so many of my friends are experiencing heartache that I could only sympathize with on a limited level without the empathy of having experienced the depth of that loss myself. So while I stand aside unable to do anything to lessen the pain for so many people that I care about as they grieve babies we never got to meet, pregnancies longingly waited for month after long month, and adoptions that never finalized, I realized through one weird dream that their hearts never forget. They always know what they lost. It took a stupid, unrealistic dream to trigger a single ounce of grief that they experience on a consistent basis. 

Subconscious and God can be a crazy thing in the process of awakening.

In taking the whole world (and by the “whole world,” I mean the few people who will actually read my blog) "to bed with me," I know that I run the risk of my dream interpretation hitting someone the wrong way. There’s something very vulnerable about sharing your thought process out loud. I ask for a little grace in interpreting my reason for over-sharing. I realize it's taking a risk with a very sensitive topic….but a risk with the hope that someone else out there who can be as careless with words as me will think twice before opening their mouth to attempt to discuss areas that we have never known or experienced. 

Experience brings awareness and wisdom. And not having had experienced something doesn’t mean that we aren’t wise, it means that we can’t relate in that area. I'm learning that it’s not to say that you avoid people who have had different experiences and heartaches, it means sitting quietly with them and letting them do the talking. 

Sometimes being a friend is being there, saying nothing.

Proverbs 17:27-28 (NIV)

The one who has knowledge uses words with restraint, and whoever has understanding is even-tempered. Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.

...And Sometimes it means not sharing a stupid dream and pretending that you can relate when really a dream is something you can simply wake up and move on from….well, it probably should mean that…but just this once, for educational purposes in breaking the naivete of all those other “mouth-runners,” I write.

Selah. Pause and Think about that

Ever have a day or a week or months at a time when you live completely in your head??

I mean, really live in that place where you are preoccupied with nothing else but your overlapping thoughts…and in turn, so focused on yourself that lots of things and people fall to the wayside.  

I’m not talking clinically unstable and hearing voices…though I have had plenty of moments when I thought, “That’s it, I really am crazy? I was borderline sane that time before, but this time I’ve legitimately reached 

‘Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch’ level of crazy.” 

...I mean, who hasn’t thought that at one point or another?!...right?.... right?!...umm, yeah. me neither! I was just kidding...only crazy people think that! 

…Well, in any case, this is not one of those times.

…But it is, however, one of those times when you realize that no one else (or by “no one” it means “everyone”) notices how preoccupied you are with yourself…. No one understands the complexity of the paradigms you live every day, with internal monologues and debates amongst yourself that keep you company while you attempt to stay present in the world around you….No one suspects that you are considering “changing the course of your entire life” in the midst of trying to decide if it is cheaper to buy the bulk package of toilet paper versus the small sale package.

That’s my fight….Staying Present…present enough to “Carpe Diem” without letting go of the process that my mind is working me over as I become more “Clair Huxtable” and less “Max and Ruby’s mom.” 

(where is their mom, anyway? And does she even have a name…or a face, for that matter?...cause those poor cartoon bunnies are never supervised; and I’m pretty sure Max needs a referral for speech therapy, if anyone would take the time to notice. PBS has some explaining to do) 

…in any case…Staying Present, while not becoming stagnant in a life routine that impedes the process of growth…Realizing the importance of implementing wisdom and intellectual challenges into a proactive lifestyle shift instead of taking your thoughts and letting them remain a tagged quote or picture on a Pinterest board of your brain.

It comes down to… “Keeping your mind right”…Exploring the depth of your identity and humanity while inviting others along for the ride, and in turn, riding along with others in their process... Figuring out the meaning of life in conjunction with keeping the fridge stocked and the laundry folded. …Balance! 

Piece of cake for Carol Brady or good old Clair…not so smooth for those of us who live real lives with real distractions and real annoying inabilities to multi-task the social with the emotional , with the intellectual, with the spiritual, with the physical, with the spacial, with the rest of the “al’s” in our lives. 

Let’s just say, Cliff would be one unhappy camper in my house right now (…not to mention his office downstairs would be overrun by clutter and possibly a few loads of laundry that I threw in there to hide from company).

In any case, my saving grace is in knowing that these “thoughtful moments” of life are very productive in drawing us out and refining us into more of who we were supposed to be in the first place….who God meant us to be. His best in us! “He has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping. For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver.” (Psalm 66:9-10, NIV)

…Difficult? Yes.        

…Awkward? Pretty much. 

      

…Fun? Never.

...Exciting? Maybe…sometimes…if you are super unpredictable and really love uncomfortable changes that leave you feeling drained with questions that tend to have no clear right or wrong answers.

...Worth it? Always!

So if you dare to follow my refining process, then you are in for a real treat. And if you dare to attempt to be refined yourself, then in the words of a good friend, “buckle up!”…. “because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” (James 1:3-5, NIV)