How the unexpected positively changed your life

What follows was originally posted on January 5^th. It got lost in the glitch. @jeanne-mayell asked me to re-create it. It’s not exactly the same, but it is the same story, just moreso. 😊 Give me a rough draft, spur of the moment, stream of conscious post and ask me to re-do it? Ha! Be careful what you wish for! I added details that didn’t come to me when I was writing directly on the site yet I am not sure it is really any longer, just more fine-tuned. I promised Jeanne I would redo it, and here it is. I think she may create a new thread for all of us that responded to @theungamer. One specifically about Unexpected events that brought blessings rather than this predictions thread.

The most unexpected experiences in my life are about childbirth, and I sometimes wonder if I planned it that way before I was born. In seven years I had five pregnancies. Two wonderful sons and three miscarriages, one of which was a seven-month daughter.

I was 23 by the time I was finally pregnant. It was a pretty positive pregnancy, but the due date (August 19) came and went, and went, and went. My son, after three days of on and off labor, finally emerged on LABOR DAY, September 3, 1973. I remind him of this every year. He rolls his eyes at me and we laugh. He is 51. His daughter was also a long, difficult birth, so he now understands, at least from the Daddy point of view! He was born with congenital hip dysplasia, so I suspect the three extra weeks were to help those hip sockets work. And they did, with a little "pillow brace" help during his first six months. He walked at nine months. Blessing. Check!

It took seven more years and three miscarriages before I finally gave birth to my second son, who came out on his due date in 1980. After, I might add, me being hit head on by a drunk driver during my fifth month. I was driving. The car was totaled. The steering wheel was shoved in where I was, big belly and all, and yet no one in the car was even scratched (me, my son, my sister). We were all sitting in front, on the bench seat. I stopped worrying about miscarriage after the car accident.

Of the three miscarriages, two were early, just barely into the second trimester. My blood type is RH-, and I had had the Rhogham shot after my son was born and after each of the miscarriages. Whether RH- was a factor in the two early miscarriages, I really don’t know.

The third miscarriage happened seven months (29-ish weeks) in to my fourth pregnancy. I was absolutely sure I was carrying a daughter. I am so old that back in that day 😉 ultrasound to determine baby’s gender was not an option, so the “daughter-vibe” was entirely intuitive. And, as it turned out, correct.

I had a very vivid dream—so vivid I remember every detail about it 48 years later. In the dream I was on my way to a baby shower and blocking my way was a pack of feral dogs. (My dream fear symbol.) I walked past the dogs without being hurt, but I was terrified. I climbed up seven steps to a back porch and discover that the screen door is locked. I can see into the house, but I cannot open the door or get anyone to hear me. Frustrated, I turned to look around and there was a beautiful woman standing a little ways away from me on the wraparound porch. I hadn’t noticed her when I went up the steps. She came over to me and enfolded me in her arms. The sense of being cherished and safe was immense. Then I woke up.

I went into labor that week. She was born alive, took one breath as her Daddy held her, but she was not ready for earth and so, with that breath, she also left us. My husband was beyond devastated. She fit in his hands, weighing less than two pounds. She was perfectly formed. Every little finger and toe, nose, ears and mouth—all perfect. She just couldn’t breathe.

Four years after her birth, when that drunk hit my car head-on, when I was five months pregnant, I finally stopped fearing miscarriage. And death. So perhaps the drunk was also an unexpected blessing. From that day forward I stopped wondering if I would miscarry. My son was born on his due date. He is 44.

I believe the woman in the dream was my daughter, and that she never intended to be born. I believe the pregnancy, in spite of what is usually very reliable birth control, was never meant to be. It wasn’t that the IUD didn’t do its job, that was just the path she used to leave. It’s more that she came to teach, not to be born. I wrote a long poem about it, but it is very intense. I will, however, share the last two verses because they really are a fundamental part of why I am who I am today, 75 and not afraid of death.

Oh, I am afraid of pain, and violence, and all sorts of illness and physical negatives that are unpleasant or scary, but I am not afraid of death, because death is the birthing that takes us to a new adventure, a new comprehension. The journey from this dimension to the next may make me nervous, but the destination? Never.

Daughter

Little One.
Your journey,
(A lesson in fearless childbirth)
Lasted but six hours.
You paused in earth's life
Only long enough to define reality,
While I rejoiced and wept, at once.

Little One.
I love you, achingly.
I miss you, with tenderness and pain;
Yet I accept your being with joyful understanding.
For you are a tiny Teacher, who
In the Wholeness of the Beyond-Self,
Taught me of Birth beyond life.
                                   ~Tesseract 1976