November 1, 2012.  The day of reckoning.  The day I moved on from my sad story and onto my happy one.  There is a seismic shift happening for me.  I am moving phases into something new and unknown.  Now there is only healing and repair.  Then rebuild, refashion, remodel.  I am still broken down but I am optimistic.

Oscar weighed 6 lbs 9.2 oz yesterday at the GI dr.  And his eyes were officially deemed green and healthy by the pediatric optometrist.  And I am free.  I am no longer supposed to be pregnant.  Three times I’ve had that experience.  “Right now I was supposed to be X weeks pregnant.”  As unhealthy as it sounds try asking someone who lost a baby as I did to not keep count.  Impossible.  And then to have one so early, the weekly count was more about how much I could have been doing for Oscar had I been able to keep him in longer.  How many fewer days he would have been in the NICU.  How much bigger his diapers would be.

Now it is about letting go of those alternate universes.  The one where I had a surprise baby named Axel and got to keep him.   The one where I rolled into the hospital a ripe 40 weeks and had my little (or big as he may well have been) Oscar.  Like the ‘choose your ending’ books I held dear as a child, I rolled the dice and came up a winner.  Not in the way I pictured or planned, but victorious nonetheless.

What’s next?  I’m not sure.  But I know it will be more about savoring the present than it has been in a long while.  I hope it will be more about me reinventing myself as a mother to three happy boys and something more.  I just want to feel well again, inside and out, The embers are there, burning away.  Promising to ignite something that has long been dormant in me.  The pain and heartache eclipsed all the joy right in front of my eyes for far too long.  And me, well I lost myself for most of that time too.  I took a detour and it was circuitous as hell.  But I have arrived.  In pieces but I’m here.