My Favorite Gift

I'd always wanted to be a mom. But for a long time, I didn't think I would ever get the chance. 

In junior high, I'd frequently get sent home from school each month for cramps and nausea. The doctor said it was normal, so I dealt with it. By high school, when I wasn’t dancing 15 hours a week, I was curled up in the fetal position with debilitating cramps. The doctor said it was normal, so I dealt with it. When I started college, the doctor finally prescribed me 800 milligrams of ibuprofen so I could drag myself out of bed and get to class. I'd slowly gotten sicker and sicker. My hormones had caused my skin to break out and my weight to drop. I’d gone from a size 8 to a size 2 in a matter of months.

Finally, during a routine exam my sophomore year, the doctor felt a lump in my pelvic region. He ordered an ultrasound. They found what appeared to be a large ovarian cyst. I was referred to a specialist and was scheduled to have surgery a month later. I woke up to the specialist scratching his head. "Well, the good news is it wasn't a cyst. The bad news is it's one of the worst cases of endometriosis I've ever seen. I don't know how you stood up straight. All of your organs were plastered to your abdominal wall. But I pulled out as much of the tissue as I could. We'll put you on continuous hormone therapy to manage the growth, but you should try to be done having kids by the time you're thirty. You should feel a lot better from here on out." The recovery from that surgery wasn't too bad. 

While it was liberating to not be sick every month, I still had some pretty bad back pain. Another exam revealed that I had a tilted uterus. I was advised to go ahead and get that surgically corrected if I ever wanted a family. So, my senior year of college, I had a uterine suspension. The recovery from that surgery was probably the worst pain I've ever felt. The internal stitches holding up organs protruded from beneath the incisions healing near my hip bones. I was so thin that there was just a delicate layer of skin between the stitches and the outside world. The rubbing of the stitches on my nerves felt like someone was holding a hot curling iron to my hips. Without the benefit of painkillers, I could't get out of bed. I would attempt to make it to the bathroom on my own, but would only make it as far as my dresser before ringing the bell on the nightstand to summon my mother to bring me more hydrocodone so I could make it the additional 30 feet to the bathroom. It took about three weeks for me to walk at a normal pace. 

But once everything finally leveled out, I felt like a million bucks. No more periods. No more hormone fluctuations. No more debilitating pain. No more acne. I was only 22, so 30 seemed like an eternity to get married and have kids. 

Unfortunately, when I did make it to 30, I found myself childless and in the middle of a divorce. My parents were helping me move into a new apartment in Dallas. When they left to go back home, I sat on my couch and sobbed. It wasn't that I regretted not having kids; I had been in a situation that would not have been healthy or safe for children. But here I was — watching my friends on their second or third pregnancy — starting all over again in this empty apartment. And I felt decades older than everyone else my age. I cried out to God and asked Him why. Why was I in this situation I never asked for? I thought I'd done everything right, and I was still here. Alone. In a beige one-bedroom apartment in Valley Ranch. 

About a year later, I went on my first official date with a guy I'd known since I was twelve. He was working as a camera assistant on two scripted shows filming in Dallas at that time. We'd met up a few months earlier to catch up, but that dinner of four turned into the two of us lingering at Cafe Brazil until 6:30 in the morning. The ink on my divorce papers wasn't even dry, so we pumped the brakes and didn't hang out again until Christmas break. Once again, what started as a dinner full of mutual friends ended with the two of us talking until 4:30 in the morning. We decided to not see each other until I had completed Celebrate Recovery at the end of February. 

So, after much anticipation, there we were on our first official date: February 26, 2011. I felt myself falling for him over the course of the many hours we spent together that night. As a method of self-preservation, I presented him with my entire Celebrate Recovery inventory — basically a blueprint of the baggage I came with. If he was going to run, he needed to run now before I got too attached. I even told him I wasn't sure if I could have children at this point. He kissed my forehead and said, "We can have as many biological or adopted kids as you want." About two and a half years later, we got married. 

A year into marriage, we decided to start a family. I went to my doctor and had her check me out to see if any endometriosis had grown back. After 15 years, everything was still clear. I couldn't believe it. After I went off hormone therapy, I had no pain at all. I was cautiously optimistic. But after months of trying, I began to get very discouraged. I'd started to try to get used to the idea that I'd never get to be a mom. Mother's Day of 2016 hit me hard; I drove the nearly 200 miles from College Station to Dallas sobbing the entire way. But two weeks later, I wandered into our bedroom in a daze, woke up my husband, and showed him a positive pregnancy test. He held me tight as I burst into tears and said, over and over, "See? There was never anything wrong with you. You're perfect."

After forty-three weeks (Yep. That's not a typo.), I had an 8 lb, 12 oz, baby boy on my chest. I was still in disbelief. When the nurses were weighing him, they said, "Mama, he is your mini me!" I couldn't stop staring at him. I held onto him like my life depended on it. All through the night, if they wanted to check his vitals or do anything at all whatsoever, they had to do it while he was on me. I would not let this precious gift out of my sight. 

That precious gift turned six today. Sometimes I still can't believe he's mine. I thank God every day that I get the privilege of being his mama. He's funny, kind, smart, thoughtful, affectionate, and just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. We prayed he'd get a sibling for a long time. After all, I'm the only child of an only child. I know well the drawbacks that come from being the only kid. And I at least had 17 cousins to play with during the holidays. My son is still the only kid. Sometimes it makes me sad; sometimes it makes me feel guilty. But I also know it's out of my control. 

But when that sweet boy asks me to lay next to him for a few minutes before he drops off to sleep, I notice the perfect slope of his nose. The playful way his hair is tousled. The smattering of freckles splashed across his cheeks that just kills me every time. And I whisper to God "Thank You for trusting me with him."

I remember how I felt moving those boxes into that lonely apartment in Valley Ranch and how that young woman would've killed to have the life I have now — even with all the complications and chaos and messiness. And I am grateful.