Roadblocks are a part of our everyday lives. Whether it’s traffic backed up on our way to work or feeling like something is stopping us from pursuing that one thing we’ve always wanted to try, something always seems to be telling us to slow down when our brains are screaming HURRY UP! I think it’s ingrained into the systems of every adult in our modern society. And I’m kind of starting to realize that maybe those roadblocks we’re constantly dealing with are a way for the universe or God or whoever or whatever you or I believe in to tell us to STOP. Maybe it’s time we do that. Stop and think. Stop and listen. Stop and learn.
I went into 2022 with massive ambitions. It was going to be MY year. I’m sure that sounds familiar. But then…well, I almost died. And that really took its toll on me in ways I am still struggling to put into words eight months later. I thought when I was pregnant at the beginning of 2022 that I wasn’t going to miss a beat. I was gonna have my little guy, I’d maybe be bumped off the radar for his first month, and then I’d get back to work. I’d keep writing. Creatively, professionally, as just a hobby. But man, I was so, so wrong.
I wrote about it briefly not long after it all happened. When the emotions felt fresh and alive and angry. But I couldn’t express them in a way that I felt was right. Add this to the fact that I was in that loop of, "Someone has it worse." After all, my neighbor had an unplanned hysterectomy due to hemorrhaging two weeks before me. She obviously had it worse, so who was I to complain? A high school friend had gone through six months of recovery due to an ectopic pregnancy that attached to many of her vital organs just the year prior. My experience was nothing compared to that, so why write about it?
I hope that now, with all this time to process them, I can put them down properly. Without fear of judgment or thoughts of, "I shouldn't write about it because obviously someone had it worse." And – more importantly – I can use those emotions to explain what I want to do with my 2023. Happy New Year, and strap in. It’s gonna be a doozy.
When I went into my hospital room, I was confident. I was composed. I was ready. I strode right in and got hooked up to the IV. I didn’t bat an eye when the first three attempts at getting my vein failed. I knew it would happen. I had a deep-seated understanding that it would only be in there for a couple of days at max. I’d be okay. I sat nice and relaxed in my labor and delivery room like I owned the place. Because at that moment, I did.
In many ways, my writing was the same for me. I’d kept most of it going, only dropping back from my bigger projects a few weeks before my due date because I was so tired and ready to have this kid. I was calm. I knew exactly what was going to happen.
If only these things were so simple.
Fast forward twelveish hours. Now, this was an induced labor. With my husband being in the military, the difficulties of finding a solid sitter while stationed overseas, and the anxiety of why isn’t this kid out of me yet kicking into high gear, we made the decision because we thought it was what was best. My first daughter was induced, and I had no problems with her. In fact, her birth was straightforward. So, I assumed this one would also be the case. Plus, after some bleeding a few weeks prior, I don’t think I could have had any more anxiety at that point. Unlike my first birth, this one used a different drug: Pitocin. Basically, man-made oxytocin. The happy hormone - and the one that kick-starts labor.
After roughly twelve hours on the stuff and at max dose, my doctor walked in and told me that my body isn’t responding well to it. It’s trying to start, but it needs a little push. So, they broke my water. By this point, I did not have an epidural, and I went from a five-ish on the pain scale to oh, no, make it stop real quick. And it was during those horrible contractions, as the anesthesiologist was trying to get the needle in, that my son’s heart rate dropped. And mine skyrocketed.
In just a few short seconds, I went from what I thought was going to be a normal labor to someone shouting, “General anesthesia, we need to get to the OR now!” And then feeling a catheter shoved into me. The lights were so blinding, and I was in full fear mode, made all the worse by a burning, slithering, stabbing pain. I screamed so hard, I thought I would break my voice box, even as an oxygen mask was shoved onto my face. Then...nothing.
When I woke up again, I was so thankful. My husband was by my side with our son in his bassinet, and the world felt perfect. I was tired, and everything felt kind of off. As it does when coming out of anesthesia. But my baby was okay, and my partner was by my side. All was right with the world. The first thing he asked was if I wanted to hold our new baby, which was of course answered with, “Gimme!”
Unlike when I first met my daughter, as a fresh mama with absolutely no idea what I was doing or how I was supposed to feel, holding my son for the first time felt perfect. It felt right. I was his mama, and he was my baby, and that was enough for me to love him in every way imaginable. Maybe one day, I’ll talk about the stark contrast from how I felt with my daughter, but for now, let’s focus on more recent events. That love – that moment of pure perfection – will last me a lifetime.
Then I felt it. As I’m holding my son, it feels like a very heavy menstrual day. Weird, I didn’t give birth the normal way. Why am I bleeding so much? My doctor walked in around that time and asked me how I was doing. I passed my son back to my husband – rather reluctantly – and explained the sensation. Now, I couldn’t see anything. I could hardly move. However, my husband saw it, and he says he could probably see anything now, even a friend dying in combat. Let’s just say it was a little more than a regular PMS day, ladies.
The absolute chaos that ensued was even scarier than the first time. Three other people rushed in. The doc immediately moved my bed sideways, and a nurse was telling me everything would be okay. But I felt anything but okay at that point. I was scared. Really, truly scared. In ways that there are just no words to describe. And then, once again, it was dark, and memory faded away.
Even bringing up the memory in such vivid detail has left me shaking. Shivering like I can’t get warm. Eight months is just not enough time to process such emotional turbulence. I don’t know how anyone could possibly process it. Still, I will trudge. I feel this is my moment to stop and listen. Stop and think. Stop and learn. I may not get over these feelings, but I can listen to them.
When I woke up the second time, I was in a different room. The lights were super bright, and I had weird leg cuffs on. Like the ones they put on your arm for your blood pressure. But these were for my calves and constantly filling and emptying to keep blood clots from forming. And the pain…wow, the pain. I can certainly say it was the worst I’d ever experienced. And this comes from someone who dealt with eight years of chronic pain that limited my ability to walk some days.
I could barely breathe. My chest felt like someone had put it in a vice grip and crushed my ribs and lungs down to two sizes too small and then left them there like that. Each breath was a gasp. And the first few were panic-filled, leading to hyperventilation. Which, of course, made the pain worse. Everything was too loud and too quiet all at the same time. The lights were too bright. The room was far, far too cold. And how many IVs did one person need? The oxygen in my nose burned. And where was my son?
The doctor put her hand on my arm, quietly shushing and calming me. She had a gentle smile on her face, and her soft eyes put me at ease, allowing me to regain control of my short breaths. “You gave us quite a scare,” she said. Nurses surrounded us, checking monitors, lines, and the weird machine in the background balancing a bag of blood in a rocking motion. Everything ticked or beeped or wheezed around me.
“You’re in the ICU now,” my doctor continued, “You had a cervical tear that started hemorrhaging after we stitched you up. You lost a lot of blood. We had to call some in from another base because we didn’t have enough.”
Man, I still don’t know how a person is supposed to take that. Cool, so I got to hold my brand-new baby for two seconds, and now I can’t be in the same room as him? Not to mention the fact that my husband had never handled a newborn before. We hadn’t gotten together until my daughter was three, so he missed all those crucial first moments. And now, he was just forced to wing it after almost seeing me bleed to death. Awesome. And what about my daughter, blissfully unaware of all that was going on?
Hell, what about me? What was I going to do? Talk about a roadblock. I guess learning how to breathe is the new order of the day. So, so many emotions happened as I processed her words with all the unnatural noises going on around me. I think, more than anything at that moment, I just wanted to be outside with the birds. Or at least in the maternity ward where I belonged. It was so frustrating!
And this was where things really stopped going my way. I was truly forced to slow down. I had hit a roadblock unlike any other. Where the simple act of breathing suddenly made me realize how grateful I was for a breath of fresh air unhindered. For a small sip of water that the nurses were far too stingy about giving me. Now, I’m that kind of person, like many, who has that need to go, go, go. I don’t like stagnation, and I hate sitting around and doing nothing.
If I’m just sitting, I need to write or watch or read or play. I need that stimulation. Even if it’s just doodling on a scrap piece of paper. But you can’t do that if your hands have IVs and one of them is already swelling because of a blown vein. Not to mention the agony of moving my arms onto the table that rolls by my bed. Or sitting up for that matter. I had to sit completely still at a 45-degree angle just to get a half-decent breath. No doodling for this lady.
Just sitting. And breathing. And...maybe sleeping?
After the initial meetup with my doctor, who went home to get some kind of sleep for a few hours afterward, L&D brought my baby down to me with my husband as his official chaperone. I was able to nurse him for the first time, an awkward and beautiful experience given the state of things. I cried. Pretty sure my husband cried, even if he didn’t let me see it. He’d grown stubble in that short time I was by myself.
In that moment of bliss, while my baby nursed, oxytocin really came in handy. I forgot my pain for a moment and just breathed in that fresh, clean baby scent. I held my husband’s hand. I slowed down. And I was okay for just that one tiny moment.
Everything was going to be okay.
I slept. Woken every hour by nurses checking my blood pressure and temperature and sometimes giving me pain medicine. The lights were always too bright. The machines were always too noisy. But at least I had my go-to sleep noises on my phone or videos on my laptop to keep me sane. I was going to get through this. My spirits were high. About as high as my temperature, apparently.
The next morning came, and my doctor came to check on me just as I was waking up. Belly palpitations feel awful when you’re bloated and pain-ridden, by the way. I don’t recommend them. Still, I had no choice in the matter. Doc went to work quickly, her brow furrowed as her hands pushed my belly down and then massaged it in weird circles. “I don’t like how distended your belly looks. Let me get an ultrasound on it.”
Seems they keep an ultrasound machine in the room for such reasons. She whipped that baby out before I could blink. Within a moment or two, she confirms internal bleeding. “We may need to take you back in for a hysterectomy,” she explains as she pushes a button to call nurses in, “If the bleeding doesn’t stop, and you don’t opt for this, you could die.” Oh, great. Wonderful. Because I wanna have a dance with the Grim Reaper twice in one weekend. Cue the hyperventilating and fearful tears.
And as if I had that internal monologue of, “Things can’t possibly get any worse,” like a bad movie, this was also the moment they brought my boys down from maternity. My room was suddenly so crowded, and I couldn’t breathe, much less explain what was going to happen. My husband rushed to my side and smoothed down my matting hair, asking me what was wrong.
The only thing I could think of was my daughter. Being born in a previous marriage that ended in us being abandoned, she wasn’t legally tied to the man she’d come to know as Dad. What did my death mean for her? My son had his future, but what about her? That thought – that pure fear – came spilling out of me. “What will happen to her?” I practically screamed it at him.
He was so stunned. So confused. The baby cried in the background as a nurse rushed to grab him a bottle. Another nurse came and pulled my husband away from me while others came in and started unhooking me from monitors and pulling my bed away from the wall. I was rolled away without being able to say even one more word to him. I remember the lights flashing so brightly in my eyes as I passed under each of them. They don’t look very bright on their own when you’re just walking into a hospital for a regular appointment, but man, laying on a bed unable to move and stunned into silent sobs really makes those suckers blinding.
I even remember the mirror top for the elevator. Not sure what compelled someone to make a mirror the top of an elevator made for bed-ridden patients, but I hope they got fired. At least I can say I’ve never looked worse.
Now, luckily, this part of the story is where things start going uphill. The bleeding stopped, and I was able to get by with my uterus intact. Yay for the little things! Of course, I still had some troubles here and there. Most of the internal bleeding was due to an allergic reaction to plasma. So, no more blood for me.
More blown veins, which resulted in an arterial IV that was horrendous and later caused my whole hand to balloon to a point that my fingers couldn’t curl at all. Oh, and that one ended up stopping up, leading to a central line getting put in. That was the second-most fear-inducing moment of my time at the hospital, as I have a horrible fear of needles and IVs and claustrophobia (they put one of those sterile sheets over me with a clear film on it that got caught on my nose a few times), not to mention feeling it grinding on my collarbone. I'm shuddering all over again just thinking about it.
But, once that was done, I started to get better fast. My ambition – my need to do something – kicked in. I got restless. I forced myself to start walking. To go to the bathroom. To breathe deeply and stretch. My ambition helped me. And I thought maybe it would keep helping me. So, I let it fuel me, and I once again forgot to slow down.
When I got home, all I wanted to do was spend time outside and enjoy Easter lunch with my friends. I was haggard, and I felt like my belly was going to fall off. My daughter called for me in delight. I felt so helpless. I turned away and went inside. My friends brought my girl up to me, and we talked some about what happened and why I was away for as long as I was. She got to meet her brother. And I managed to go down and get some food and even get some hugs and love from the people around me. Oh, how desperately I wanted to stay and mingle.
But my body was having none of that. It still hurt to breathe, though nowhere near the sheer agony of my time in that hospital. Plus, standing was not easy. So, I came back up and ushered my haggard husband down to mingle and get that same love and support that he so desperately needed. It was just me and my babies. And yet, I felt so alone. So helpless. So angry. How dare my body not allow me to go spend time with my people! How dare it fail me!
But that’s what roadblocks do. They stop you. And my body was the roadblock I didn’t know I needed. I struggled so much this year with that. I got so many reminders that it was okay to slow down and let myself enjoy those moments of silence. To remember how grateful I am to breathe. I let my anxiety and ambition get in the way of so much. I let my frustration take over.
And because of that, I let a lot of things slip by me. Writing no longer came to me as it’s done in years past. Art was lost on me. It became a struggle to get out of bed beyond just feeding the baby. I lost myself to that sorrow and helplessness because of my roadblock. I missed out on doing newborn photos with my baby because of that feeling, and then I got angry at myself for missing that opportunity that I so desperately craved. So many angry tears.
When venting my anger about missing my son’s newborn photos to a friend, she mentioned that I should try doing some of my own. Sure, he wasn’t as tiny as a newborn, but he was still small. Why not give it a go? That sparked a flame, and I went for it it like a dog on a bone. I took lessons, practiced with my camera, and then started taking pictures.
It was then that I decided, “Why not do photography?” I went out with a friend and practiced. I started thinking about doing it as a business. But you know what happened next? I hit a roadblock.
What about my kids? I don’t have a sitter for them, and my husband’s anger issues only got worse after our issue at the hospital, so I didn’t want to leave them home with him. Was I going to have the time and energy to work on my skills and build a portfolio and learn Lightroom and figure out presets and build a client base? Could I juggle photography and the writing I’d barely done any of?
I froze. And I kept freezing.
When my friend told me I could start in the fall, I’d barely gotten my head wrapped around the idea of doing them in the spring of the following year. I wasn’t even going out to the playground at our normal times anymore because of my son’s nap times. Heck, I couldn’t even do a grocery run during the week without feeling exhausted. Plus, I’d started homeschooling my daughter, which led to other forms of emotion I’d never even come across in myself.
Then, my grandmother passed away unexpectedly. The only grandmother I was in contact with, even if I wasn’t as close to her as some people are with their grandparents. And with all of the deep, open wounds I still carried from just those few months prior, I didn’t take it well.
At first, I was in complete shock. At the time, I'd just taken in two newborn kittens whose mother had abandoned them in the rain. I continued to focus on them instead, putting more tears into the thought of losing them than the idea that I'd just lost a family member so unexpectedly. A few days later, they passed as well, and I lost myself.
Especially when my brother told me that at least he could be there for my dad while I was on the other side of the world.
Lord, that hits harder than anything. I lost myself so hard. Was I the daughter my dad needed? Was I the sister my brother needed? Was I the mother my children needed or the wife my husband needed? No. Dammit, I would make this right.
Before I knew it, months had gone by. I made my dad as much a priority as I could. I made it a point to spend time with everyone and be present for them. And then I lost myself. I stopped making myself a priority. I’d barely gotten any pictures. I had no writing to show. I stopped going to the playground because my friends were never out when I could be out. I had fallen into a rut. A roadblock rut. And then the thought of getting out of bed started to become too much again.
So, I’m facing that rut now. I’m recognizing that my body and mind needed me to slow down when I wanted to speed up. That my heart needed me when I was busy putting it out for everyone else. I’m realizing that good things take effort, but they also take time and patience. Things I haven’t given myself much of. Eight months sounds like a lot in the short run, but it’s not a lot of time to recover.
When my flight back to the States got canceled on Christmas Day, I was torn. What was I going to do? I’d made plans. Promises. And yet, some quiet part of me was glad because, suddenly, all my fears of taking two children on a plane for eighteen hours just for this were gone. Almost immediately after that feeling of relief, though, I felt angry. Angry at myself all over again.
How dare I feel relieved for having a valid excuse! How dare I not mourn more over the loss. I wasn’t going to be there to spread my grandmother’s ashes, despite having been the biggest contributor to clearing out her estate. How dare I be so ungrateful!
I’ve spent the last week of 2022 reflecting on that feeling. On all the feelings that created roadblocks for my creative journey. And I think, at the end of the day, my only conclusion to come of it is that compassion should be my motto for the new year. Sure, compassion for my loved ones, of course. But more importantly, compassion for myself. For my heart that broke for me eight months ago. For my heart that broke from the anger at myself. For the little girl somewhere in there shaking in a corner because she’s too afraid to answer to her own ambition.
So, in answer to the question, “What’s your biggest roadblock?” I say, “Me.”
It’s not time or energy. Those are contributing factors, sure. But for the things that matter most, I think I’ve been standing in my own way far too much.
I practiced grace a little during November, but it was by no means a perfect system. And it probably won’t be for a while. But that is what I want to do moving forward. I want to practice dedicating some of my compassion to myself. Does this mean I’ll shut down all the things I enjoy doing just because I’m not producing all the time? No. In fact, I think having my platforms up is a way for me to practice this thing I need so badly.
So, moving into 2023, I’ll practice that grace. Maybe pray a little more. Wear my religion more openly. Talk more about things that just come to mind instead of letting my fear of, “That won’t make a good blog entry,” get in the way of just putting my heart out there. I’ll take more pictures when given the opportunity. I’ll do more classes and practice more on my Lightroom and Photoshop skills. Even if it means I spend a little less time being Mom or Wife or Daughter or Sister.
But even more important than doing all of those things, I’ll remind myself to take that time to just exist. To read a good book or play some Sims 4 without shame or fear of being lazy. And I’ll take that time to remind that voice that keeps the little girl in her corner that it’s okay to let her come out and shine. It’s okay to let her make a mess. Because to make a mess is to be human.
I’m one human. One mama. One wife. One daughter. One sister. And for one human, I spent a lot of time mulling over death last year. This year, I want to let life be filled with more moments of bliss, whether from writing a good story or taking a good picture or simply making a good memory. Let my life be filled with light amidst the struggle.
Here’s to 2023, readers. Let compassion be our motto. Three’s my lucky number, anyway.
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