My Friend Has a New Baby and Almost All of Me is Happy

Today one of my best friends had a baby boy, to go along with her almost three-year-old daughter.  She and I were pregnant together for her first time, and my first time and my last. A few months before Tyler’s second birthday I was diagnosed with Lupus, although I had been becoming sicker months before.  I did have a time of good health where I naively thought that I had been as sick as I was ever going to get and my husband and I decided to try to have a baby.

I conceived easily and my diseases obediently stayed away.  Now I can barely handle the care of my one child, much less think about ever having another.  Because I have been so ill, I have been unable to work for over a year, so having another child would be financially impossible as well.  I don’t know what is to come for me and I don’t know how Tyler will feel having a disabled, sick mom.  Even if finances were good, for me, it wouldn’t be right to bring another baby into my situation.

It’s a different kind of feeling, I think, than being infertile.  You can make babies, you just shouldn’t. It makes you so angry that chronic illness has taken away from you one of the greatest powers a woman has.  I always pictured myself with at least two children.  I was one of those women who wanted to have children ever since she was a child herself.

As I was writing this, an email with pictures of the new baby came.  As I was watching the slide show, an up way too late Tyler came in and I showed him the pictures.  He only wanted to see the ones where his little friend was in.  I told him that now she was a big sister. “Mommy, your nose has boogies.”  “Oh, thank you, I’m sorry,” I said, reaching for a tissue.

I got up with him and put him to sleep by singing him a very  long lullaby that I made up for him while he was a newborn.  As I sang, the tears ran down my face.  Tyler is still my baby and I know I am lucky that I had my ONE, but sometimes I do wonder, what if?

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About mamasick

Emily Cullen is a pen-name. I suffer from chronic illnesses and diseases which include Bipolar Disorder, Asthma, Diabetes and Fibromyalgia. I had battled Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis but there is no longer evidence of me having these diseases and my Rheumatologist has declared them to be "burnt out" of my system. I am separated from my husband, “Grant”. Our son, “Tyler” was born in September of 2006 and suffers from tics and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and is delayed in fine and gross motor skills. In my blog I seek to let sick moms know that they are not the only ones going through this, and to educate people about what can happens when one becomes catastrophically ill. I also strive to break down stereotypes of what a “Welfare Mom” is like. Anything that I have gone through due to being sick, is written on the pages of Mama Sick.
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