My Inbox

My email inbox is a heavy place lately.
Email exchanges with the nurse practitioners at UCSF, asking dozens of questions - difficult questions - about birth anomalies, chromosomal abnormalities, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, amniocentesis, ultrasound.
Scary things like the deadline for terminating a pregnancy - which still just doesn't feel like an option, it feels screamingly wrong.
Emails with my sweet sister, Sharon, who is helping me get everything together to apply for emergency MediCal insurance for pregnant women and babies.
Emails with our accountant, getting us ready to file our 2007 taxes so that we can then apply to get Dahlia on Healthy Families for her own insurance, at a huge discount.
Emails with family about all the nuances of returning to the Bay Area.
Emails with my Dad about plane tickets to get home.

And my favorite emails - those of love, positivity, support, holding - from friends and family.
Reminders that prayers are being said, because as one friend reminded me, part of the healing power of prayer is in letting the other know that the prayer is being said.
Thank you for praying and letting us know, and thank you for praying and just holding us silently in your heart.

I realize that by this time each night for the past 3-4 days, I've found myself with incredible cramps in my belly.
Stress, tension, fear, grief, exhaustion?
I get really really tired of dealing, and yet I have to deal.
No matter how this unfolds, it's not going to wrap itself up nicely anytime soon.

Then there is the little one in my knotted belly, my Tikva.
When I think about her, she kicks.
When I write about her, she kicks.
When I talk about her, she kicks.
And when I'm doing everything else, she kicks.
She reminds me that she is there, strong, growing, moving, being her.

I just want to get home, to the Bay Area, to feel less alone than I do right now.
To feel less on the edge of losing it completely.
To feel less snappy, hopefully be more patient with Dahlia, maybe sleep better.
And be able to make all the calls I have to make in real time, rather than at night when it's daytime in CA.
But mostly just to be surrounded, to be held, to be in the familiar.

I can't believe how much has happened in a week and a day.
I can't believe the way my life has changed forever.
I can't even remember the pain of the shingles I had just a few months ago.
They seem so irrelevant now, just preparation for something much more difficult.
It's been one heck of a year... it hasn't even been a year since I miscarried my last pregnancy on the day before Passover started.
I'm ready to get on that plane home.
No more than 10 days and we'll make it happen.