I ended up on my own...no church, no home group, practically no friends, living with the baby's father. This will be the most difficult time of my life to write about. I was living with someone who had a totally different world view than I did for the first time in my adult life. My oldest daughter was living with us and that was stressful for him. His mother was very disapproving of our relationship (and justifiably so) and my step-mother was no longer speaking to me. It was as if the earth had opened up and swallowed my life whole and I didn't have any idea what would come out on the other side. I came to believe that God hated me. That I was too sinful to love. The few times I went to church I was so convicted of my sinfulness that I ended up sobbing so I quit going.
I find myself paralyzed at the thought of writing about these years. There is so much pain and anger and self-doubt and unforgiveness that I am dealing with that it defies writing about. Plus, I still live with the baby's father, we are married now and he reads what I write and I feel hampered by this. But I will try...
Our first six months were our most peaceful. He was still playing a game with me, leading me to believe that he was someone he was not, and I was very much loving the man he painted for me. It is as if I threw all of the sense I had ever learned in my life about men out the window when it came to this man. I bought every word, hook, line and sinker. Perhaps I thought that since he was younger than me, he wouldn't lie to me? Or that perhaps there was a happily ever after, after all? I don't know. I only know that I fell in love with someone who was a story, made up as he went along, to be what I needed at the moment. And he is a VERY GOOD story teller!!!
My goals at this time were to get my children back and to have a big, happy family, of course, including this man. I was working and hoping to save money so that we could move into a big enough place to have all the children come live with us. And then My husband decided to take the children and move back to Washington. I was devastated. I knew then that it would be very difficult to get them back with me. It never occured to me to leave them with their father. They were all I had had in my life. All of the companionship and affection I had ever gotten in my life had come from my children. I needed them to come back to me.
The children left Austin in June. Bethany went for six weeks and then came home. It would be a year before I saw the others again. Four months after they left, Michael was born. He weighed 8 pounds, 8 ounces and was 21 and one-half inches long. He was tiny and blond and beautiful and we loved him. His father was into drugs when Michael was born and was not really there for him for his entire first year. Bethany and I and Carrie and Debbie (friends of mine and Bethany's) took care of him that first year between work and school and everything else. And in June of the following year, my other children came home.
Again, I cannot talk easily about the following year. I was working and Jon was not and I was not physically able to provide for my children very well. Our duplex was deteriorating and the landlady had filed bankruptcy and she let us stay on anyway and there were no locks or windows or heat...I was failing my children. Amber was very angry at me for leaving her father and went through a sexually rebellious period. I felt she was self-destructing right in front of my eyes. She wouldn't talk to me or listen to me. My happily ever after was crumbling in front of my eyes.
I had to send Amber home for her own safety. I felt that if she stayed here, with me, she would end up pregnant, married, or dying of AIDS. She was angry at me all over again for abandoning her but we have worked hard to get to a point where she now sees that sending her home was the only option I had for her. She went immediately to a Christian Youth Retreat where she rededicated her life to the Lord and she has been following Him since then. This year she has been in therapy for the things that happened while she was home, and I am happy to report that she is a changed and more peaceful woman for the first time. She even sounds different on the phone.
Michael's father was put on probation in 1995 and because of that had to give up the drugs. And a few months later I got pregnant again. By this time in my life, I was involved in divorcing my husband and trying to decide whether or not to marry the children's father. And my pregnancy basically settled the question for me. My divorce was final in December of 1993. I re-married in January of 1994.
Sean was born on June 20th, 1994. He weighed 9 pounds, 7 ounces and was 21 and one-half inches long. His cord was knotted twice, once loosely and once tightly and he was a bit blue when born. Within a half hour he was very blue and was in the neonatal ICU. They detected a heart murmur and a cardiologist was called. By eight o'clock the night he was born my room was full of doctors and nurses who had come to tell me my new baby was very sick.
Sean was born with Pulmonary Valve Atresia. He was cardiac catheterized the day after he was born and had open heart surgery two days later. He spent his first month of life in the pediatric ICU. He has a wonderful doctor, Dr. Finnigan, and a wonderful surgeon, Dr. Dewan, and I am very thankful for them and all of the pediatric nurses who worked with Sean during his time there at the Hospital.
In his first surgery they put a shunt in his heart and enlarged the hole between the two chambers of his heart because he was getting very little blood to his lungs and was only 60% oxygenated. The left side of his heart was very underdeveloped and the valve between the two side had not developed or opened at all.
I was unable to work the first 10 months of Sean's life because he wasn't allowed to be in daycare, near other people's germs, and so our family life deteriorated even more. And unknown to me, my son Jeremy had become afraid. Afraid that our house would be broken into (this is a misnomer as we had no locks and one window was out). Afraid he wouldn't have enough to eat or clothes to wear to school. He didn't want to worry me, so he didn't talk this over with me, but a plan was forming in his mind. He was going home to visit his father the day after Sean was born. He was to stay there six weeks and then come home. But Jeremy didn't come home. In his fear for himself and his concern for me, he chose to stay with his father. Legally I could have fought this, I have total custody. But I couldn't, in good conscience, bring my child back to the life we were living. I cried so very much. I still cry at the sight of red headed sons walking with their mothers. But, again, the right choice had been made.
