The After

I started having nightmares on Saturday night.  Multiple nightmares, all of them involving the events from Friday morning.

I'm always in labor.  Sometimes I'm frantically chasing Chad around town, trying to locate him.  Other times, I'm somewhere that I can't get to the hospital soon enough.  Once I was in the apartment, where it all started.

My story obviously is not what we had planned for this birth, but you know what they say - you make plans and God laughs.

I've been blaming myself for their arrival at 34 weeks.  

In hindsight (which is always 20/20), I should have called my OB on Thursday after our walk-through when my hands and feet were swelling.  I even checked for protein in my urine that afternoon and it was plus one.  I, however, chose to be an idiot an ignore it.

I also should have called around 5:30 on Thursday evening, before we ate dinner.  I look back on text messages where I was telling Chad that I just didn't feel well. I was telling him to hurry home.  But again, I didn't call.

I wonder if I had called in if they could have stopped labor and kept them in.  I could have made it another week or two.  Maybe everything would have worked out as planned.  They'd be healthier and I would have had the experience I really wanted and was looking forward to.

I know that things don't always go as planned, and my uncle is constantly reminding me that God is in control and knows what he's doing.  Maybe this happened because God knew Dr Heaps was not going to be here this weekend and he knew I didn't want a stranger delivering my babies.  I know that I'm very thankful that Dr Heaps was able to be here - hell, he even came in early for me.  

I guess the truth is that I'm having difficulty accepting what happened.

I've heard of people who aren't happy with their birth story.  I know it's possible to experience birth trauma, too.  After Charleigh's birth I just didn't expect it to happen to me.  

I feel like I'm traumatized from the experience.  Maybe it's a form of PTSD, I'm not sure.  

I have anxiety even thinking about returning to the apartment, where it all happened.  Yuck.  The memories are forever, though.  At least I'll be out of the apartment soon enough and maybe, just maybe, once we get into the new house and get the babies home, I can look at this all as a bad dream...