A story

Adam's not doing well. We think he has PTSD. We think it's from the military. We need support and love. Here's part of our story.


Remember Myspace?That's where I met my husband. And yes, we are still together. It all started looking at our almost matching profiles about how we loved abercrombie, books and going to the beach. We met in person at Starbucks. We walked and talked about our families and I told him about my favorite kids names. I felt so perfect with him, I still do. We had two more dates and then he was shipped off to the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan in the Persian Gulf for 6 months. Just our luck. I was devastated, but deep down I knew the distance was good because I had just gotten out of an extremely unhealthy relationship and I knew I needed some time. We emailed each other every single day. I have every single one saved in a file titled "love letters". I sent him care packages and photos, he sent me flowers on my birthday. He came back and within a month we had moved in together. We partied, cooked and loved life. Then he had to leave...again. This time it was a 3 month surge deployment with very little warning. He left and I kept myself busy working at State farm and letting my friends busy me and drinking too much wine and talking about how great things would be when he got home. He returned again and although we had met almost a year ago I had only spent a few months with him in person. It's amazing though how much you can get to know a persons soul though writing alone. Throughout his deployments we wrote hundreds of emails and sometimes I even miss communicating with him through writing. Our emails were truly intimate and I had never had that in a relaationship before. He returned and we continued our adventure. His family came to visit, we camped and barbequed. We even got a cat together. We were a couple and I knew we were going to live happily ever after. I think we became quite comfortable and settled into some unhealthy routines. I drank too much and lacked responsibility and he played a little too much World of Warcraft. We were young and just trying to figure it out...together. As I drudged through the days at a job I loathed in a cubicle, I remember crying and telling him I couldn't do it anymore I hated it so much and I needed to do something that made my soul happy. He told me to just quit and I was really good at quitting jobs so I loved that advice and took it. I quit my job with full benefits and a 401k and i got a job at a little cafe making fancy coffee drinks and experimenting in the kitchen. I wanted to cook. That was my passion and I was going to chase it down like the last bus of the night. I wanted to go to cooking school, cater parties, have fun and cook cook cook. A week after I quit my job a bit of a curve ball got thrown at us.I was pregnant.I knew it was always a possibility, being a woman. But we were a "safe" couple knowing we wanted to get married first and buy a house and do all those other "normal" things people do before they have babies. I will never forget that moment I saw the double lines. It was the scariest and most intense moment of my life. Even scarier than when I was 10 and I got caught in a huge rip current at Coronado shores and almost died. Like terrifying. I rushed to target and bought another test. Adam was still sleeping. I needed the solitude. I called no one and just trembled my way through the aisles calculating the due date and knowing that was when he would be on another deployment to the Persian gulf. I rushed home and took the second test. It was positive. I crawled in bed with him and put my head under the sheets and bawled. "I'm pregnant" He could barely hear my muffled sobbing statement. "what?" "how did that happen?" One cell of my body laughed at his question. We just laid there, silent for a while. Then more tears. Tears because no matter how we calculated the due date, he wouldn't be there. I was angry, I was sad, disappointed. Life was not going as planned...at all. We discussed options, like there really were any for either of us. A small part of me actually considered having an abortion, but i knew in my heart i could never do that. There is still guilt for even having that thought in my head, but mostly I feel gratitude for a bigger force guiding me in the right direction. For knowing much more than I did at that time. For seeing the big picture, even though it was out of focus. Weeks later I drove over a bridge on my way to work and the U2 song "one love" came on. I cried and begged God to help me through it all. And then I felt peace. A peace I hadn't felt in my entire life. I felt a connection to a baby growing inside of me and knew it was all going to be ok. We weren't married and I didn't have any insurance so I went on the state program medi-cal until other things came into effect. Everything seemed so rushed and I hated it. Here he was leaving in a few months and I was pregnant and trying to figure out how I was going to manage it all. I was about 14 weeks along and we were finally in the excited phase. Even though his departure was looming over our heads, we found joy in knowing we were soon going to have a little family. I started having a lot of hip and side pain and kept being assured that I was so small it was just my body growing. I ended up in the E.R. on a morphine drip waiting for a cat scan. They thought appendicitis. After several hours they diagnosed me with "a large mass". My heart sank and now I thought I had a terminal illness and would soon die. What kind of doctor says "large mass" and forgets to say benign? Luckily it was a large benign mass. A 9cm degenerating fibroid tumor. Fibroids can grow from hormones and when it outgrows it's blood supply it degenerates and causes excrutiating pain. The morphine barely took the edge off. The pain subsided slowly after several days and things returned to normal. Or whatever normal was for us at the time. Or lives were changing whether we liked it or not and we were adapting, it was painful and joyful all at the same time. We had a baby shower and things were drawing to a close. The dreaded day of his departure was weeks away and as each day drew closer I felt more and more like I wanted to throw up and disappear into a pool of my own tears. We were married on May 17th at our house. My Mom and a few friends were there. It was very impromptu and it actually started out as a goodbye bbq for Adam. We wanted a big wedding, but we needed things to be legal and We needed insurance. I made our wedding cake. Banana pudding with the pepperidge farm chessman cookies. We sat on our balcony and fed each other and smashed it into each others faces. Such a bittersweet day. We were married, husband and wife with a baby on the way. And he was being deployed for 6 months. He left two days after we were married. May 19th. I remember dropping him off next to that huge ship and feeling like I was going to throw up. I knew things would never be the same. It was one of the worst feelings of my life, the pain was almost unbeaarable. I kept thinking "what if this is the last time I see him" "what if he dies and never gets to meet his daughter" "how am I going to get through this?" "how is he going to get through this?" It was dark out and kind of foggy and there was an overall feeling of numbness in the air. So many people saying goodbye; wives, husbands, parents, kids, babies, friends. But all I could think about was our little family and how devastated I was. I drove back to my Grandma's house. It was really late and my Mom and Grandma were asleep. I curled up on the couch with a blanket and pillow and held my dog Spike. I cried a little more but I was too tired to exert any more energy. I just wanted daylight to come. I woke up early and drove up to Point Loma to watch them pull out of port. I was hoping others would have been there doing the same, but I only saw a couple of people. I don't know why I tortured myself except maybe I needed some kind of definite closure. Seeing the ship pull away was painful, but I figured if it left, it could also come back. I just had to wait. As I walked around taking pictures high upon the hill, I met a lady. She was older, probably a Grandmother and she talked to me about her husband and children and the hardships they had been through in the military. I don't remember exactly what she said but I remember feeling comforted and leaving feeling stronger then when I came. Days passed and we survived. I really don't remember much up until the night I started organizing the mess on my desk. I was watching some horrible tv show about mothers having premature babies in unusual circumstances. I was sitting on the floor trying to sort through bills, birth certificates and photos. I needed to get that done before the baby came. It was late and I was having some back pain. I figured it was normal since I was 35 weeks pregnant and quite uncomfortable. The pain kept getting worse, I organized quickly and watched some lady give birth to a baby on an airplane on tv. I called my Mom, it was around midnight and she came over. This is where things get blurry. I was up all night in pain and by morning I was still hurting and exhausted. I couldn't eat and the pain was getting worse. I called my acupuncturist and he came over for a house call and tried to help my pain. Unfortunately it was a matter of space and the fibroid was pressing on my sciatic nerve causing me unbearable pain. After several calls to the doctor, she finally told me to go to the hospital. She also told me that the baby would probably have to go to the nicu since she would be born 5 weeks premature. I was heartbroken and didn't want to put my baby in harms way, but the pain was excruciating and I was vomiting. The baby had to come out. I was admitted into sharp Mary birch hospital June 13, 2008. I remember it was a Friday and I really didn't want to have my baby on friday the 13th. I got checked in and they gave me some kind of drugs for the pain. Nothing helped until I got an epidural. I wasn't in labor, but it didn't matter. I had to make it through the night and the next day would be my csection. I kept dreaming that Adam would walk through the hospital doors and take away the pain of missing him. They gave me sleeping pills, but nothing worked. They also gave me some horrible medicine that made me feel like I drank 7 shots of espresso. I was shaky and cold. My Mom and friends Lyndsy and Donovan were there with distractions thank goodness. Morning came slowly and I was just so nervous and excited. I barely remember anything up until Bayley's birth. I remember waiting in the operating room, it seemed like eternity. Then finally once the doctor started it went fast. My Mom was sitting to my left and there were what seemed like a million people with blue masks all around. There was a matching blue drape over my belly where I knew some pretty crazy things were going on. I hated the feeling of being so numb. I was numb all the way up to my chest and at times it felt hard to breathe. I wanted to cry but I physically couldn't, the numbness was everywhere. I'm not sure if it was the medicine or a coping mechanism. Finally they pulled her out of me. I remember feeling pushing and pulling, it didn't hurt but it felt intense. Then the doctor lifted her above the blue drape so I could see the perfect little soul. Her mouth was open so wide from screaming, she was a strong one. I remember her crying, but it was wheezy. They checked her and bundled her and I gave her a kiss on her cheek and then she was gone. She had to go to the nicu. My mom went with her and I stayed on the table being stitched up. I was so afraid. Afraid for her, afraid for me. I think deep down I knew everything would be ok, I was just disappointed it all hadn't happened how I had planned in my mind. But life usually doesn't happen how we plan and a lot of times the results end up even better...if we let them. I was wheeled into recovery and my friend Chara came in and put lipgloss on me and reassured me. It seemed like I had to wait there for eternity. I eventually got wheeled down on a bed and saw my sweet Bayley. She was just laying there eyes closed with a million tubes and things coming out of her. Her face was so angelic and I just remember wanting her to be ok more than anything and feeling so helpless. I know I talked to Adam, but I really don't remember much. I know I made things seem better than they were because I didn't want him to worry more than he already was. I couldn't imagine how helpless he felt. But maybe he was the one person I could share my hope with. He didn't know any of the stuff that had happened and I was able to share with him the joy and put aside the pain for a bit. I think I needed to do that in order to stay sane. The next 8 days were the longest days of my life. Luckily Bayley was off of the breathing tube within hours, but she still had monitors on her and an iv going into her belly button. A nurse wheeled me down and I read bayley a book called "on the day you were born". I started to nurse her. It was amazing. Except for the fact that my husband wasn't there and he wouldn't be there for another 5 months. It was a nightmare and I just wanted to wake up. I just wanted to enjoy our baby, but i kept feeling sad.