Our Story, Part 29 - I need a time out

Monday February 10, 2003 – Ruth’s Doctor appointment (18 days before Ava was born).

Ruth was still seeing her doctor in Salt Lake and because she didn’t have transportation I would take her to the appointments. I didn’t mind having the boys see Ruth, they knew she was pregnant; she would point to her belly and say “this is your little sister.” The boys would even ask her if she was going to “give her to us” and her response was affirmative. I didn’t want to leave the boys with a baby-sitter for this trip, so the boys came with us on the drive to the appointment ~ two hour round-trip, plus doctor visit… and NO I didn’t have a DVD player in my van! Luckily one of my best friends I have had since grade school lived only a few minutes from the hospital and she consented to watch the boys during the appointment. (Thank Heaven for small miracles!)

I went to the doctor’s office with Ruth but I stayed in the waiting room and leafed through the numerous baby magazines that littered every possible end table and magazine holder available. I remember thinking to myself “I wonder what people would think if they knew I was here with my children’s birth mother…” it was such an odd situation that I was sure no one would believe THAT!

I have a hard time looking at baby magazines (baby anything for that matter) and the non-stop pictures of the new mothers breast feeding, photo shoots of pregnant bellies, happy smiling pregnant women, etc… is all too disheartening for me. To this day I really don’t like to hold infants (the only exception was Preston), so I just make myself scarce when a newborn is present. I have five sisters, four of whom have children (two of them have eight children each) and it has been challenging watching family and friends have children so effortlessly. I really try to be cheerful because I am genuinely glad for them, it is the incessant talk about every little facet of someone’s pregnancy and delivery that I cannot bear to hear (you may as well pound bamboo shoots underneath my fingernails, it would probably be easier to endure). I usually just make a subtle exit and find something else to do like clean the fridge, scrape mold from my window wells, fold laundry, scrub toilets, or anything that doesn’t make me feel even more demoralized as a non-childbearing woman. But again, I digress…

I'm really not bitter, I mean, my son Preston said it best ~

"Mom, if your tummy wasn't broken you wouldn't have us!"

After the appointment and picking up the boys we were on the way home…. The boys needed to stop and go to the bathroom, (they were hitting each other, screaming, and basically acting their age) but finally I couldn’t take it anymore ~ I yelled at them to be quiet. I don’t know who was more surprised, Ruth or the boys, but the car went silent. (Ruth probably wondered what kind of person she placed her children with… but maybe she was just finally seeing the real me and not the perfect mother I tried to be whenever we were together.) We pulled over at a gas station and I took the boys in to the restroom and took a time out for myself. (Ever have one of those days when you just want to just start running and never come back?)

I was tired of the enormous amount of pressure I felt trying to keep everyone happy. I was tired of driving. I was physically and emotionally drained. I wanted to just go home, read a book and check out from reality for a few hours. I was just plain tired and I needed a break…