The Puppet Show

"She's been to the puppet show and she's seen the strings."- Cuba Gooding Jr. as Rod Tidwell in "Jerry Maguire"

I was just another pregnant lady among thousands in the 29 weeks leading up to Munchkin's birth.  I did the normal pregnant lady things, thought the normal pregnant lady thoughts, focused on my due date, and went about life totally naive to what was coming.

I became a different person at 29 weeks and 1 day into my pregnancy.  I was told I was very ill and they needed to take Munchkin out to save my life.  Everything changed in that moment.  My former self ceased to exist and four days later I became a preemie mom.  I became privvy to things I had no idea existed, or I knew they existed on some level but never really stopped to think about what it meant.

I learned things and saw things in the 11 weeks that followed that I never wanted to learn.  I  met people I never wanted meet.  I became aware of just how scary and dangerous pregnancy can be.  I learned just how many things can go wrong in a pregnancy even in the year 2010.  I was almost 27-years-old, healthy, and things like that just don't happen to regular people like me.  But they do.  It did.  And I met so many other moms who were just like me, like you, like anyone and we all ended up in this abyss with barely a moments notice.

So now I find myself in an odd place.  I'm not naive to pregnancy problems and how bad it can get.  I've been to the puppet show and I've seen the strings, if you will, and now we've decided to put ourselves in a situation where we could end up back in the NICU life.  It's a very strange place to be with many mixed emotions but, in a way, I feel better prepared if not a little sad I can't be blindly optomistic.

But optomistic none-the-less, because I'm pregnant. <3 p="">