Timeline

Since the first positive pregnancy test, my feelings regarding life with Bemma have fluctuated like a teenage girl picking her favorite 'Twilight' character. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I always loved them, but my enthusiasm for all they required ebbed and flowed, tides pulled by the moons of sleepless nights, adorable smiles, exploding diapers, first words, endless words, and so on, and so forth.

I'm going to jot down a rough time line of my life with Bemma so far. Its not exact, and it's based on my alternating sleep-deprived and caffeine-injected memory, so the stories and the children involved may blur...kind of like their names. Bemma. :)

This blog is the first in a series of the 'Timeline' blogs, so if you like it, there's more to come. If you don't, well, I don't really know what to tell you.


Pregnancy

The entire pregnancy was an emotionally, and--for Nora-- physically grueling ordeal. It was a snail-paced gauntlet of nausea, stress, a shrinking cervix, and bed rest, mixed with moments of pure ecstasy when Emma would make her presence known by shoving her foot through Nora's abdomen and Ben would show up on the ultrasound as an accommodating roommate, folded in half and pushed to the very bottom of the womb as Emma enjoyed her bigger umbilical cord and penthouse view.

Mostly, the pregnancy was very hard on both Nora and I, but we pushed through because those little peas in the pod were growing and revealing their personalities, and we wanted to do everything possible to make sure they got a chance to express themselves. There were a lot of doctors, a lot of doughnuts and a lot of prayer. I must say that Nora handled it all beautifully, proving herself a selfless mother long before she'd even held Bemma in her arms. When I think back on that time I don't remember her complaining. I just remember her on the couch, face set and spirit determined that she would do anything, everything to make sure she got her chance to get to know her children.

Meanwhile, I felt helpless.


Birth

It seems that I'm horrible at anticipating how I will react to the biggest moments of my life. The days I graduated from high school and college, the day I proposed to Nora, and my wedding day all felt entirely different than I;d imagined they would. In many ways they exceeded my imagination and for the most part I reacted much different emotionally than I'd guessed.

For example, I always thought I'd be one of those guys that couldn't stop crying when he saw his future wife walking down the aisle, and that I'd blubber through the vows. But on my wedding day, as Nora floated gracefully down the aisle, I felt no urge to cry. I found myself flooded in peace and could do nothing but smile. I saw my lover, my friend, my life-partner making her way to join me and felt an overwhelming and simple reassurance, peace wrapped in joy...with a heaping side of excitement for the honeymoon to come...

Likewise, I thought I would rain buckets of joyful tears upon seeing my children, especially after the hard road of Nora's pregnancy. But on that beautiful April evening at 8:28 and 8:29, respectively, I found myself in the company of the same peace I'd met on my wedding night. As I held my son, and then my daughter, covered in the birth goo only a parent can find adorable, I didn't want to cry. I just wanted the world to stop spinning so I could drink in my children and be refreshed by their cooling presence after the desert of fear Nora and I had wandered. I wanted just a moment to get to know the serene little man that Benjamin was and marvel at Emma's bright red afro and fierce cry. As I took big gulps of their presence relief and thanksgiving washed away my fear and I realized that the tears I'd anticipated for so long were nowhere to be found. I felt the purest happiness I've ever known. I was still, at peace with the Universe, my family intact.

In the next blog I'll reminisce on our time in the NICU and the early weeks...oh, the early weeks...