Battle Scars

     I've reached my "goal" weight set years ago after my first baby. Twenty pounds lighter than pre-pregnancy weight with my 4th child, I should be so thrilled. Yet here I stand in front of the mirror, holding my breath to evaluate myself.
       I see the stretch marks and surgical incisions, healed and no longer angry red as they were not more than a few weeks before. I force myself to touch the lines that grew up my belly as my son grew to full term. My daughters marked me so minimally in the years gone by. With my oldest, she set those squiggles on my sides, barely pulling me taut on top as she was carried low and born early at thirty-one weeks. With my second and third daughters also born prematurely, I added a few vertical stripes and those two fine white scalpel lines that quickly faded from my skin, but were etched into my heart and memory forever like raw razor cuts.
       My son though, did the number on me. In the last two weeks that I carried him, past the uncross-able threshold of prematurity into unknown territory, he marked me well. I saw tiny little pink worms inching their way across the top of my belly, knowing that he was bigger than his sisters, and letting this pride work its way through me. I remarked that I was getting "sideways" stretch marks and though I was proud to have made it to term, I was anxious to see how my body would rebound.
       Here am I then, staring at these wounds, these memories and marks, these battle scars. How have I rebounded from battle? I would love to say that I feel victorious! I would love to be admiring each and every one of these, like gray hairs and wrinkles in years to come, lamenting the stress each of my children caused and attributing the changes in me to each of them. Can I admire this body now after feeling such defeat? Is a battle lost, for each of my children, to mark me forever? Prematurity, unnecessary c-section, fights for family-centered birth and NICU stays, and now uterine rupture and stillbirth- they have all taken their toll on my spirit and permanently changed me.

       My daughters have come through these battles somewhat unscathed. Prematurity has not left lasting marks on them, their respective births and stays in the NICU not even a memory but for the photos they see. They have grown and flourished, meeting milestones at their adjusted timelines and not missing a beat in the world of their peers.
       Here I pause. I want to write that Griffin's battle was a quiet one, that throughout his life he had confident and self-assured parents that planned the best birth-day for him, one that was to be free of any struggle other than labor. But that isn't the way it went. Ultimately, the night began with a rush of excitement and ended with the worst outcome of any battle- in death. I have never lost before, but perhaps I was never fighting someone so relentless and fierce as Fate or God. I was not awake or aware to speak up for my son even after his death. The thoughtful doctors and nurses that brought him earthside for me attempted to bring him back from the dead; forty-five minutes they worked in a fruitless fight for him, and for our family. His little body had given up two hours before, though, and in the end there was no saving him. I worried when I heard of their valiant attempt, not for anything but vanity...I knew he was gone before he was born, so I worried he too would be scarred from his experience.

 I see from the photos that there was a time, so brief as I never saw it, that he wore the uniform of intense resuscitation- all those tubes and lines and wires...but when they handed him to me, those were gone and he was nothing less than perfect. 

So happy am I that he never bore the marks of battles lost; I sigh and turn away from the mirror, content to know that I will wear his marks for him, will show those squiggles and worms, all those stripes and scars in his honor...