One year later

                               

I know I told you my next post would be the gender reveal, but my heart and mind were too full of these thoughts today not to write.

Almost exactly one year ago I sat in the surgical waiting area at UVRMC while Matt underwent surgery to remove one foot of his intestines. The surgery wasn't complicated. We had a surgeon we trusted and I had enough knowledge from Nursing school to know what was expected. But I was terrified. I brought Matt's laptop thinking I would be able to keep my mind off of what was going on by scrolling through Facebook, and maybe even blogging (man, I was ambitious back then), but it turns out WIFI at the hospital is terrible and I only got a few solid minutes of distraction before my impatience set in.

My skinny mini husband before surgery.
He weighed 140 pounds. He'll probably
kill me for posting this picture... oops.

Matt and I had been talking about having a baby for a while at that point. When we were dating we had decided to wait a year to "figure this marriage thing out" before we would seriously discuss expanding our family. Matt isn't very good at following my plans! It wasn't very long after we said "I do," that he brought up having a baby. Imagine my shock! We already knew at that point that his Crohn's disease wasn't cooperating with, once again, my plans for a healthy husband, and all Matt could think about was bringing a little bundle of joy into the world. I told him no. There was NO way I was going to raise a baby and take care of a sick husband while working forty hour weeks at a job I wasn't thrilled with. That was that.

Well, that was that for at least a month or so. Every time we saw someone with a new baby he would make a little comment about how much he wanted to be a dad. I wasn't interested. This went on for a long time, and it had only been after we decided Matt needed surgery that I relented my stubborn attitude and decided we could start thinking about babies.

As I sat in that waiting room I couldn't help but think about our maybe baby. I wanted my babies to have a dad that could play catch with them in the backyard and take them to the store for ice cream as long as they didn't tell Mom. I imagined babies with dark, curly, eyelashes like Matt framing big brown eyes like me. As the hours ticked on, my nerves started getting the best of me. He was supposed to be out of surgery by now!

The family sitting behind me had come in around the same time as me and whispered anxiously over those three hours we waited. I admittedly eavesdropped when their surgeon came in and asked them to go to a private room so they could talk. That didn't sound good. I knew it wasn't good. They knew it wasn't good, and the women didn't make it out of the waiting room before their crying filled the silent air. The next hour consisted of family and friends showing up with tissues wadded tightly in their hands and hugs being offered to the sobbing woman I assumed was the wife. She had a brand new baby in her arms. When Matt's surgeon finally came to me, hours past when I expected him, I gulped back concern.

But everything was okay. The surgery took longer than expected because they didn't realize fully how scarred Matt's intestines were. He was in recovery now and they were trying to wake him up and get his pain under control before they moved him to his room. An hour later the PACU nurse came and told me his pain was still uncontrolled but there was nothing more they could do so they were moving him to his room anyway. I forgot about that family I had shared the waiting room with. I was so ecstatic that my husband was okay, I didn't think again about the sobbing wife and child that would be raised without a father.

After Matt had returned home and the dust had settled around us I heard stories about a young man that had passed away in the hospital shortly before Christmas. I remembered that family from the hospital. I poured over articles about the woman who had lost her husband just days after giving birth to a beautiful baby boy. He was a BYU student. Just like Matt. He had a bright future ahead. Just like Matt. And, just like Matt, he had been in surgery that day.

My heart goes out to that man's family, to the son that will never get to know his dad, and his wife who doesn't have a hand to hold in the car and a warm body to put her cold toes against at night. That's my greatest fear. Right now, I have a baby that dances inside of me when I play music and a husband that kisses me good night. Matt's healthy. Sure, he has bad days, but he's still around one year later.