For the first few visits to my OBGYN she said the baby’s heartbeat echoed and it sounded like there was two. By the time I was 20 weeks she told me and the Bio that there was a ‘solo heartbeat’. After re-reading my handwritten journal and reliving that day in my head I thought about those words.
Solo Heartbeat…it means so many different things to me now.
My bed is empty of any Monkey’s who have crept into my room late at night or single Dad’s who used to keep me warm on these nights…and I’ve got a head full of thoughts and a heart full of emotions. My heart as a Mother will never beat alone. The moment my dazed eyes peered at the 4th plastic stick I’d peed on in four days I knew this heart was never going to be solo.
I’ve dedicated my life from the day that heart started beating outside my body to giving him everything he needs to live and thrive. It started with quitting my job, moving in with my folks and signing up for State assistance to make sure he had health care and a place to put his little noggin’. I wore him every moment. I hugged him when he cried. I cuddled with him during nap time. I took him everywhere with me. Even on the exterior of my cocoon body he was as close to me as humanly possible…it’s the only way I would have had it.
I barely write about being a Mama, let alone my parenting choices and how the have made me feel. I went from being a virtual book of Parenting information on sleep schedules, bedtime routines and how to be a successful Mommy to clinging to every instinct in my body for the right thing to do for me and my son. I threw the books out and I threw myself into just being present and accounted for when it came to my son’s needs. Why am I writing about this today now? The Bio challenged me and tried to make me second guess who I am as a Mama. Not gonna happen. I’m not the kind of woman anymore who let’s trite commentary make me feel anything other than sadness for the Bio.
My childhood wasn’t full of roses daily, but I was loved and I knew it. When the Bio and I butt heads about parenting choices that ultimately have to do with our own life choices, I want to run up to him and grab him by the face and remind him of the days when we were kids. The kid he was. The fear he felt. The torment he lived with daily. Not that I want to air anyone’s laundry, dirty or otherwise, but his childhood was not one I remember with fondness…and I was there for most of it. So when I think of how he chooses to degrade my choices to hug our Monkey when he’s crying or let him crash in my bed when he’s scared it makes me wish I could pull a Scrooge on his a** and show him how it was for him. How it was for me. How it doesn’t have to be that way for the Monkey. Even apart we can make his life better than it would have been with two parents in one house. It’s our job. It’s his right.
My Monkey is attached to me. He’s attached to his Bio. He loves with all his heart and you can see that in his little eyes every time he hugs those he holds dear. I spent the first two years of his life fighting to make sure that the little heart that fought so hard to be here gets to beat with all the love in the world.
Tonight thinking about the choices I have made and the life that came of that little heartbeat that echoed in my mind for weeks before it became ‘Solo’ I’m proud that my son is who he is and that we are learning to be here together as Mama and Monkey…
Our heartbeats will never be Solo…