As men we are programmed to be problem solvers. Most of the time if you come to a guy with a problem, the first ideas that pop into our heads are ways to solve it for you.
About two and a half years ago I found myself in a position where there was no solution to a problem that my wife and I faced. Needless to say, I was dumbfounded at how helpless I was.
We had delayed our honeymoon six months so my wife could finish the last clinical rotation she needed to complete her doctorate. While we were on our cruise she kept thinking that she might be pregnant. A home test the day after we were off the boat confirmed her suspicions, then there were the doctors visits and finally the ultrasound.
Based on the numbers we were supposed to be 10 weeks along, but the baby was only measuring about six. Trying to be optimistic, the doctor said our dates were probably off and scheduled another ultrasound two weeks later. Second ultrasound, same result.
It was then that he told us that it looked like this pregnancy wasn’t going to work out for us. My wife’s options were to have surgery or let it “resolve” itself. To me that seems like a very cold term to use when you’ve already started loving the child that your wife was carrying. Long story short, it wasn’t “resolving” itself and she was then given some medication that didn’t work either. Ultimately she was forced to have surgery.
As I sat in the inpatient waiting room all I could think of was my wife and what she was going through. I was mad at the world because I was completely powerless to provide any relief to her pain. I’m pretty hotheaded at times, but I’ve never been that angry in my life. Still, I knew I had to contain it for her sake.
Before I was a stay-at-home dad I was “Bob the Builder” remodeling our house that I had demolished. I was doing the trim work in what was going to be the nursery when I looked up from what I was measuring and saw the paint swatch on the bare drywall. Tears and sawdust are a bad combination.
Four months later my wife found out she was pregnant with our son, which brought great joy back to our lives and made us appreciate the gift he is that much more. One day, a few months after that we were out running errands when we noticed the “coming soon” sign on a new Target that was being built near our house.
At the stop light near the construction site I looked over at my wife and she looked away, I noticed she was crying. Even though we were nearly three months along with our son, it hit us that the day that store was supposed to open was the due date on our first pregnancy. If things had gone right the child that we started to love would have turned two years old today.
While we had talked about it and thought it was past us, we quickly realized that it was never going to be out of our minds and hearts. I realize that many have gone through much worse, but for us this has always been a difficult time of year.
On the positive side, we are blessed with a healthy little man who, despite the fact that he is really starting to test his boundaries and our patience, brings us more happiness than we ever could have imagined.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f5d208c8-115a-4fa8-aeef-a59b22c9cf7a)
