First month continued

First Month with Jacob continued...

I drove the father of my children home to his girlfriend's house, as I listened to him tell me my car wasn't safe enough to drive, but he, the mechanic, wouldn't take a look at it. I began to understand that maybe, just maybe - whatever was wrong between us was not about me... that it just possibly might be about him.

He kept telling me I had to go back to work, but he was the one who had convinced me to quit my job so I could care for our babies!  He didn't want our children to be raised by daycare.

I drove my baby back to the hospital to be admitted, two hours late. He's supposed to have surgery in the morning. It was now 10pm, but I couldn't walk thru the doors. I turned back for home, unable to give my baby up to the big hospital machine once again.

Home again, home again, guilty as hell, now I was a mother denying her child medical treatment.  Things were spiraling downhill fast. 

I sat down to read some medical reports, meant for Crippled Children's Service, to apply for their aid. One report said "poor mothering skills" during a visit to the emergency room two weeks back, because he wasn't gaining weight. 

It was the last straw for me - confirmation of what I already felt.
"Mother overwhelmed with the responsibilities", it also read.

I had always been a good mom and many times that is what kept me going after the father left - I had gotten my strength from Jeremy's obvious security in the midst of a separation and a pregnancy alone.

But now, it was down on paper - I was a bad mother, and the ER doctor's had noticed it. I believed it so thoroughly that I didn't even consider the shock of a baby like Jacob takes more than a few weeks to digest. Not to mention impending divorce, quitting a job, facing welfare, and being forced to move because I was living in the parsonage of a church, and the new pastor wanted my house. 

The fingernails were completely worn down from hanging on.

I called the father of my children and told him to come get them - at least he could put a roof over their head. He came, but I was hysterical, screaming and completely out of control.

He said he was going to take my children away from me... huh?

Didn't he tell me just today he - couldn't, wouldn't - help me provide for our children??? Oh I get it. It's all a plot... make me think I can't take care of them, so he could get them... it all made sense to me now...even the doctors who wrote in the medical notes were in on it. He had beaten me into admitting I couldn't handle things myself, my confidence in my usual self was so terribly shaken with Jacob, I couldn't see or think anything out straight.

All I wanted was not to feel so god-damned alone in taking care of my babies.

He tried to calm me down, telling me I was being ridiculous - that I knew he couldn't take care of the boys, that he wasn't any good for them right now... ??? what??? This made me even crazier, because of his previous threats to take them away.  He was making no sense, completely retracting his earlier words of the day. 

I had Jacob in my arms, wrapped in a afghan, trying to shield him from our voices. The father kept trying to make me put him down, but I was afraid to, convinced he would steal my baby away.

It was crazy. I had called him to take my kids. When he came to get them, I wouldn't let him take them away.  He said he didn't come to take them away from me, he came to help.

Help? I calmed down instantly at the word "help".  Hope at last.

I wasn't a dummy - he'd been gone a year, and a pregnancy and the birth of a handicapped child hadn't changed his mind about our marriage and in one way I admired him for sticking to his guns. I didn't want him home unless he wanted ME and by that time, I knew he didn't.

I asked if we could have joint custody, he said no. I asked if he could pay child support, he said no. I asked if he could help out once in awhile, he said no.  Seriously. 

There it was again. Again. He may as well be dead. He left, because he couldn't deal with my returned fury, and I said a final goodbye to him in my heart. I knew I'd never again ask him for help, I was on my own.

Ironically, the lawyers wouldn't let us finalize the divorce until the father agreed to pay child support for Jacob. The father refused to agree, cause he said welfare, SSI, and Crippled Children's Service would take care of him. We may be married forever because of his warped sense of fatherhood - I was so ashamed of the man I loved... a love that had finally been hammered out of me that day.

I put Jacob down in his crib, smiling at the way I wouldn't let him go - I had held on to him as if he were a lifeline, and in a way he was. My love for him was the only thing I knew or trusted, even tho I was confused about my ability to care for us all.

I reread the reports. I knew some things for sure; I loved the baby who needed so much extra, and I extra loved the 2 1/2 year old who was getting shoved in the background. I couldn't go back to work under these conditions, because I was all they had. I wasn't enough for them unless I got my act together. I had to stop drinking, but I knew that would be the easiest part.

I remembered the mother part of me, who wouldn't sleep on that 4th sleepless night, so I could care of Jacob, and then I remembered God, and decided that He would just have to take care of the rest of it.

I held on to that thought as I let "them" talk me into the hospital - my baby on Pediatrics, and then me, on the Psychiatric floor, for "situational stress".  I relearned how to eat, sleep, and think - and realized I had to take care of myself before I could take care of my babies.  The oxygen on the plane theory. 

I got out of the hospital, found a house, and moved with the help of friends who didn't recognize or understand the new sharp edges surrounding me.

Then Jacob came home, I got Jeremy back from his grandparents, 
and we began to make a home and be a family.

 2007 Extra Note - Jacob was a month old in the picture above, and had been to the ER late one night, because he started to have "sunset eyes", which was one of the signs that the shunt wasn't working. Later, I read the medical reports and they had said he was a "Failure to Thrive" baby. Well, yes.  He threw up EVERYTHING. But he sure looks tiny here, and not plumping up at all.
.