This photo popped up in my “On this day” section of Facebook today. Channing and I took a fabulous trip together to Russia during the summer of 2008 to visit my sister in law who was living there at the time. I was gloriously pregnant. I was only 21 weeks along at this point, but with twins I definitely looked MUCH further along. My whole life I had dreamt of the day I would be pregnant. Growing up, whenever anyone would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was always “a mom”. When the time came, honestly, being pregnant was crap. I had a nightmare of a pregnancy from day one. I was violently ill from the moment before I even confirmed I was pregnant. I was a full-time nanny at the time and was on a spring break ski trip for work and simply could not keep food down. I had a hunch that I was pregnant. I don’t know if you know this, many people apparently don’t, but if you don’t use protection during sex you usually get this illness called pregnancy. Anyway, I got it, and as with everything else in my over-achieving life, I got double pregnant.
Y’all, my mind was blown when we found out it was twins. God had answered my prayers and fulfilled my wildest dreams! Well, as you all know from reading my previous stories, my pregnancy was hell. We all almost died. In this particular picture above, on our fabulous trip to Russia, my water had broken in the plane just days before. Now, I’m not awesome at everything in life, but what I can do is push through. I can shut-off emotions when I want to and just barrel through. So, that is what I did on this trip. I turned of my fear, worry, and pain. When we got back from this trip it was a whirlwind. Bed rest, diagnoses, and drugs. We had very poor projected outcomes for the girls. I could not deal. For the first time in my life I could not shut my emotions off. They were too strong. I could literally survive anything, but I could not survive the emotion of my biggest dreams being slaughtered right inside of me with nothing to do but watch and feel it happen slowly. So, when they offered me demerol to numb the physical pain of constant stalled labor, I took it. I kept taking it. I took that syringe every 4 hours for 2 months. My babies were inside of me, struggling to live, and I took a drug every 4 hours for 2 entire months because I couldn’t cope. Sure, nurses were offering it. Sure, I was in a hospital. Sure, I was actually in a great deal of physical pain. However, if I had been of sound mind and in a healthy emotional state, I would have let someone cut into my stomach with a pocket knife void of any anesthesia or so much as an aspirin before I would have subjected my babies to drugs. But I wasn’t emotionally healthy and I couldn’t deal. Without the drugs I felt loss. I felt overwhelming worry. I felt my heart stop beating. So I said yes. My emotional pain intensified my physical pain and I said yes.
It wasn’t easy to admit this drug fact to anyone outside my closest circle for the longest time. See, my babies did live. The same God who created the heavens and the earth moved mountains in my belly and breathed life where there was no life. He saved my girls and I will shout it until the day I die. I know the doctors were amazing. I know medical advances are miraculous. All of those things failed. The doctors had nothing left to try and my babies weren’t living. They had exhausted all medical options and my babies were dying. Then God.
There have been videos circling Facebook of babies in hospital incubators violently shaking and screaming because of drug withdrawals. I’m sure you have seen them and shuddered. These babies were put in this predicament because of their pregnant mommies taking drugs. 100% of moms of these babies in the videos were taking illegal street drugs while pregnant. We offer public outcry and damnation for these moms who could be such low-lifes that they would subject an innocent, tiny baby to this. It hurts our hearts to see these infants shaking, vomiting, and their bodies desperately trying to rid themselves of these drugs that they had no part of or choice in taking. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it on the videos and I’ve seen it in real life. I saw it on October 4, 2008 and the weeks afterward because that was my child. My girls and I also went through horrible, violent withdrawals from demerol and it makes me vomit to recall those tiny shaking bodies. To think that because I couldn’t deal, my babies who were already fighting to live, were in horrific, unimaginable pain. I cry as I type this. It still eats me up if I dwell on it. I had lost hope. It had been suggested that my children wouldn’t live out of the womb and I lost hope. When people lose hope they do stupid things and sometimes those stupid things hurt others.
So, now I have empathy for moms who do stupid, stupid things to their children. I still think they are stupid, but I have empathy for it. I made a stupid choice, but I’m not stupid. I know why they make the decisions they make. I still think 100% that consequences need to play out, but I have empathy. I have empathy for the mom that has an abortion. I have empathy for the mom who can’t get her crap together to take care of her kids. I have a heart for them. They are my sisters. Did I dump my kid in the garbage or drown them in the tub? No. Did I allow a doctor to cut them into 10,000 pieces? No. But I have been in that fight and I know. I’m disgusted that abortion is a thing, but it is. I cannot fathom allowing someone to cut my child up and throw them away or simply not want my baby more than anything in the world. I want all the babies. I want every baby I see. However, I couldn’t fathom drugging my unborn children either. I did that.
PREGNANCY is a huge undertaking. Motherhood is an impossible mountain to climb. IT IS SCARY. I empathize with fleeing the scene. I have also been on the other side of the coin. I have desperately longed for my babies to live. I have lost 3 others to miscarriage. I get not being able to deal. I have escaped and not dealt, so I know. I don’t judge or blame mom’s who choose a decision that I, in my right mind, would never choose. I don’t agree with their decision and feel legally the child should have the right to life. I don’t understand not wanting a child, but I do understand losing hope. Empathy is a thing that will rock your world. It will provide a tender place in your heart where there wasn’t before. You don’t get empathy without traveling the road of hell, and you can’t experience hell and come out of it without your eyes seeing a little wider and your heart beating a little bigger.
I can sit and spew hate and judgment, or I can do what I can do to change the course and HELP. Not help by posting a Facebook article slamming anyone who makes these decisions or supports it, because that is NOT HELPING. That is shaming. No, I can get in the game. I can love those moms who struggle. I can be present. I can love on their babies while they get it together. And I will. Buchanans will foster children. We are in the process. Toby is a little concerned because of my family history of trying to save ALL THE CHILDREN IN THE LAND. It is in my DNA. He knows my heart and knows I would take all the children from all the world. I would give up every organ in my body, dollar in my pocket, and square inch of my home to save a child. I can’t realistically do that, but I can start with one. I can love on one child and champion for his or her mother to find hope. I can grab that mama, hug her, and tell her THERE. IS. HOPE. I can change the course for ONE family at a time. THAT is helping. THAT is getting skin in the game. THAT is being the hands and feet of Jesus, and oh what an honor and privilege to be obedient.
So, on days like today when pictures of me pregnant pop up in my life, I cry. I so desperately wanted to experience a “normal” and healthy pregnancy. It was, and still is, a burning desire in my heart. I got it all wrong the first time. Three miscarriages and a hysterectomy later, and sadly it is a physical impossibility for me now. So, I grieve that loss all the time. However, I’m not consumed by it. I tell my story, even the embarrassing and gut-wrenching moments. I can proclaim the ways in which God has sovereignly gone before me and carried me through. I can give my all to champion for children all over the world to have a better life and for their mommies to fight to give them better. Perhaps I was allowed to travel that road 9 years ago to bring me to this one. I may not have gotten here otherwise.
So, I challenge you today. Tell your story. Share how you have been carried through. Get some skin in the game and change the world.
Oh, and those violently shaking babies whose lives were spared 9 years ago? They are just fine. Too fine, most days. They are venturing into the world of boys, at the ripe age of 9. Our house rule is that until we feel they are emotionally ready to handle it on their own, they may not have a boyfriend. Any boy who dares pursue a crazy Buchanan twin will have to come ask their daddy permission. That ain’t happening at 9. So, we have drilled into our girls that we will guard their hearts for them until they are mature enough to do it on their own. So, they know. We have the conversation like 156 times a week. But they are having none of it. They want all the boys. All the boys all the time. Boys in class, boys on TV, boys in the American Girl magazine, and boys their big sister has married. Oh, they swoon. So, yesterday Raleigh says this:
“Mom, a boy at school likes me. He likes, likes, likes me. If they just like, like you then you are just friendzies. If they like, like, like you, then its serious.”
So, I say, wide-eyed and eyes rolling, “Raleigh, what did you tell this boy when he told you he likes, likes, likes you?” hoping she would say eloquently, “my daddy is guarding my heart until I’m older, so thank you, but no”.
Instead she says, “I told him he can still like, like, like me and bring me presents and stuff, but my mom and dad are mean and won’t let me have a boyfriend.”
So, yeah, those Buchanan girls are JUST FINE. Sweet Jesus come quickly.
laughingbutnotreally 