I Am Super Mom!

    I am Super Mom! Okay not really – I am just a mom doing what needs to be done. I am the proud mother of two rambunctious boys and one very dramatic little girl. So what makes everyone of late tip their hat to me and have them saying I am super mom? Everything I do is something that needs doing and everything I don't still needs doing. To me, I am just like every other mom, who does what she can and gets her pay in hugs and kisses.
    As a parent, whether conscious or unconscious, you tailor your life around the needs of your family and most important the needs of your children. Just about four years ago my husband and I made a life changing decision brought about by a life changing event. The birth of our daughter was the life changing event and the life changing decision was for me to become a stay at home mom after her birth. So what's so big about that? Women leave the workforce all the time to stay at home with the kids but the difference is our decision was made by our daughter.
    I tip my hat to every mother, who at one time or another, has ever stayed at home with the kids. Staying at home is insane! I was positive, by six months in, I was going to lose my mind. I would look for ways of going back to work. It is crazy all the things you have to do when you become a stay at home mom. Back in the beginning I had more bad days then good days and now when I have a bad day it has just turned into being "Well it looks like we are going to have one of those days!" As time went on though – as more and more good days came – I knew we had made the right decision. So I bet you all are wondering, with how I feel about staying at home, how our daughter – a newborn at the time – made our decision for us. It is because our daughter was born with a rare genetic syndrome called Nager's Syndrome.
    What is Nager's Syndrome? I've never heard of it. That is the most common reaction I get, well next to "Aw what's wrong with her?" Keira, our daughter, has only a mild form of the syndrome, but it is severe enough where it requires her to have a trach (a breathing tube) and a g-tube (feeding tube). Nager's, in technical terms acrofacial dysostosis, is a rare genetic condition involving physical anomalies to the face and limbs. Keira has a recessed lower jaw along with fusion of the jaw (meaning her jaw will only open to a certain point), as well as hypoplasia of both radius bones. She also was born with an underdeveloped thumb on her left hand and the absence of a thumb on her right hand. She has had surgery to correct the left – they took off her underdeveloped thumb and turned her index finger into her thumb – and we did the same process to her right hand. The syndrome also causes temporary to permanent hearing loss because of the underdevelopment of both the outer and middle ear, which Keira has, causing her to have moderately severe bone conduction loss in both ears, requiring her to wear a bone conduction hearing aid. Other than a few physical differences, Keira is a normal, healthy little girl.
    Aw how sad! The poor little thing! Oh, I am so sorry dear! What? Sorry? Sorry for what? Poor little thing? My daughter is a "thing"? Okay so I just went on a tangent there – I am sure most of you thought some of that – those are normal reactions to hearing about my daughter and those are my normal reactions to what is said. Of course I don't say them out loud as most people would be taken aback, thinking me rude at their sympathy – which no offense don't need and don't want. How people react to my daughter doesn't bother me but when they feel sorry for her or me (for having "taken" on such a responsibility), that is where I have a problem. Keira is just as normal as the next kid – smart and mischievous to boot. As for me, there is no responsibility too great when it comes to your child.
    Now here is where people ask me how I do it. And by "it" I mean take on everything I do – which I will give you the short of it. "It" refers to taking care of the housework, the household finances, be a full time college student and a writer, taking care of three kids, one with special medical needs and that includes coordinating with doctors on her plan of treatment, oh and you can't forget taking care of the ever loving man by my side – my husband. This is where I am told I am super mom and my reply to that is – "No, I'm just a mom and a wife and how I do it is, I just do." So my house isn't always the cleanest – I will be the first to admit the dinner dishes aren't always done the night they are used – but the house does get cleaned, the laundry and dishes do get done, the kids are always fed and bathed, and I do manage to get time to myself to curl up with a book or watch a movie with my husband. I have come to learn and believe that when a woman leaves the workforce to become a stay at home mom she has only traded it for another full time job, one in which she gets paid with hugs and kisses.
    Since people think of me as super mom, I began to think of all the different jobs I do, jobs that people get paid for. It is not just me who does these jobs; it is every other mom as well. Here is a litany of jobs a mom does everyday –
    She is a cook, a baker, a candy maker, a maid, a laundress, a seamstress, a grocer, a stocker, a clerk, a secretary, an answering service, a messenger, a delivery driver, a driver training instructor, and a chauffeur. She is a mechanic, a repair woman, an inventor, a scientist, a researcher, a research assistant, a computer specialist, an electronic specialist, a teacher, a mathematician, a historian, a reading specialist, a librarian, an artist, a writer, and a reporter. She is a counselor, a speech pathologist, a linguistic expert, an interpreter, and an occupational therapist. She is a human relations specialist and coordinator, a schedule coordinator, an appointment setter, a marketing specialist, a behavioral therapist, a psychologist, and an early child care developmental specialist. She is a loan officer, a banker, an accountant, a payroll clerk, a police officer, a judge, a lawyer, and a juror. She is a nurse, a doctor, and a paramedic. She is an air traffic controller and a flight instructor. She is an image consultant, a fashion designer, a fashion coordinator, a hair dresser, a make-up artist, a costume designer, a film maker, a director, an actress, a music coordinator, an entertainment coordinator, and a photographer. She is an athletic director, an athletic coordinator, an athletic coach, and a personal trainer. She is a gardener and a lawn care specialist. She is a painter, a plumber, a window washer, and an interior designer. She is in waste disposal management, water works management, and she is an energy conservationist. She is the chief executive officer, the chief operating officer, the president, and she is a queen!
    All of these different jobs can be summed up with just one title – MOM! Every woman who is a mother does all of these and probably more. Oh we might complain from time to time, or get bogged down with one thing or another, but the thing about a mom is she keeps on going and doing because that is what a mom does. So when someone says I am super mom, I'm really not, I am just a mom doing what needs to be done. In my book any mom who can do all these jobs everyday; well she is a super mom!

Emotions

In my two previous post, I have brought my readers up to date with my life. Now it is time that I share my emotions with everyone. I don't know what to do anymore so I am going to write and hope that something good will come out of what I am sharing with the world on the web.....

Emotions

Every morning I wake up with a headache, my ears ringing. My emotions are so taut, I wonder if I will make it through the day without them breaking. Sleep feels nonexistent to me because even in sleep my dreams torture me of how my life is heading, but it is not me that I worry about, it is my children. Those three innocent kids that do what they are told to, who help clean the house, who will somehow think it is their fault because they did not do enough to help.

I have made mistakes in my life, decisions I wish I could go back and change but if I continuously look at life like that than I will never move forward. I am a firm believer that you can’t run and stick your head in the sand when a problem presents itself. You wait a bit, maybe avoid it for a while but it won’t go away, so you must use that time to figure out what went wrong and how you are going to handle the problem facing you before it gets to a point nothing short of a miracle will save you.

They say there is always help available you just have to know how to find it; they also say you have to ask. Well I have looked and I have asked but it only leaves us worse off than we were in the first place – it also doesn’t help when you get inconsistent answers to your plea for help. I have stopped asking for help because I can ask and ask for help until I am blue in the face and I get nowhere. I have stopped asking for help because my problems are my problems alone and I am tired of people talking about me and all the things I have done wrong. I have stopped asking for help because I am tired of getting lectured about what I have done wrong or people telling me what I should do. I have stopped asking for help because I am tired of people judging me. I have stopped asking for help because no one will help without telling me how bad of a person I am for the choices I made; choice I made thinking they were the correct ones to make. I have stopped asking for help because asking for help only breaks me faster.


Once I step out of my house, I put on a fake smile and happy face, I fight back the tears that I am feeling and I brave the people around me. Why should I tell them what I am going through? So I can get their sympathies. I had enough of that when my daughter was born – I just can’t take hearing “Oh I am so sorry for you!” Being sorry for me does me no good! Being sorry for me doesn’t help that I am losing my home! Being sorry for me doesn’t help the fact that I can’t afford to pay my bankruptcy payment! Being sorry for me doesn’t help the fact that I am going to have to look at my two boys and tell them we have lost our house because I couldn’t contribute to the finances because I had no one qualified to care for their sister! Being sorry for me doesn’t help the fact that I will have to tell them they won’t be able to attend their school next year! Being sorry for me doesn’t help me feel any better about the decisions I have made that put us here in the first place! I am not sorry for myself, I am angry with myself for not having the strength to say NO! or to take the money when I had it and put it back into savings! And who suffers for it all, my children, the very souls I was entrusted to take care of and look what I am doing to them.


My daughter has been through eight surgeries to correct the birth deformities she was born with. She is the bravest person I know and she is only four years old. She can be swollen and hurting from being in surgery yet if she sees someone else is hurt or crying, she will come hug them and pat them on the head, her way of telling them it will be okay. It is in those moments that I find myself pushing forward. It is the joy of seeing her stick her tongue out past her lips for the first time in her life that tells me all the pain I am feeling, all the hurt will eventually go away; eventually everything will be better.


People say I am a strong person but I’m not, I am only good at hiding behind a mask so people won’t see how everyday another little piece of me has been broken, shattered. I don’t know how many more times I can take seeing my son’s sad faces as I tell them I don’t have the money to give them for the snow cone they want at school or the fifty cents they want to get a treat at lunch. I don’t know how many more times I can take the betrayed look on my daughter’s face as I send her in for another surgery. I don’t know how much more I can see of my husband drained from working as much as he can so we can somehow make it out of the situation facing us and all I can do to help him is to clean the house and cook the dinners and take care of the kids.


I am tired of not being able to breathe because my emotions are stretched thin. I am tired of not being able to do more for my family. I am tired of always being in a stressful situation, no matter how I plan to avoid such situations. I am tired of my body being tight and hurting from the stress I face every day. I am tired of the torturous nightmares that fill my nights and the tiredness it brings to the next day. I am tired of being tired.


I have dreams like everyone else in this life but my dreams are not grand dreams, they are simple dreams. I dream of finishing my college education. I dream of staying in my house with its cracked foundation and myriad of other problems. I dream of being able to write a check out before my bills are due and not worry that I won’t have the money to cover it. I dream of being able to go to the store and pick up simple household items without worrying what I am taking away from by buying something as simple as toilet paper or paper towels. I dream that I will somehow crawl out of this hole a better, wiser person. I dream that today will be the day that I can look at my children and not see the hurt upon their faces because I told them no. I dream that the pain I feel will go away for good….


Dreams don’t pull you out of quicksand; especially quicksand you created for yourself. Many of us go through life with the best of intentions but those best of intentions are not always the best and it is only after the decision is made you realize it was the wrong one to choose. Would’ve, should’ve, could’ve does not get you through life, it only makes the situation you are in harder to face but in the end you must face it.


This writing will not get me anywhere. I am one of those unlucky souls that will never get the help I need and I will never see my dreams achieved. I will never be that lucky soul who wins or is given enough money to give them a fresh start; a chance to turn their life around. I am at the point that I am ready to give up but I can’t because I have three beautiful children depending on me, their mother.


So tomorrow and the day after and the day after that and so on, I will wake up with my headache, my ears ringing, tiredness filling me from the nightmares I have traversed through the night. I will wake up worried about the day and what it will bring. I will worry about seeing my children’s crushed faces and my husband drained from working ten hour or longer days. I will worry if this is the day that the fight I keep fighting will come to crushing defeat; a fight I don’t know when to get out of; a fight that will leave me and my family broken from…..And why do I do this every day, day after day? It is a simple answers – because I have to….

Life’s Decisions

    So I was finally able to finish my first blog post yesterday. I did not get a 'jump up and down' feeling from posting it but more of a 'hope I am doing this right' feeling. Blogging is such a new experience for me and I am really not quite sure how I should be feeling but overall I guess you could say that I am feeling good about. See feelings are a big part of who I am and how I write. I tend to take all my emotions and pour them into my writings. It is such a wonderful outlet even if no one ever reads a single word I write.
    In my first post I talked about needing an outlet for what I am going through, so I decided that my second post should be a backdrop to what is going on in my life at this moment. My third post will be all about how I am feeling right now and my fourth post will be an article I wrote about being a SuperMom. I will be posting all of them in rapid succession as they are all relevant to introducing myself to those reading my blog.
    In my little world, and I do believe it is little, I see many things crumbling around me and there is nothing that I can do to prevent them from completely crumbling to the ground. As much as I hate to say this, I believe that it is from one single choice I made that put all of this into motion. I do not regret the decision I made because I believe the decision was the right decision to make and I believe that my children have benefited from it as well but I do believe that the decision did set into motion the financial devastation my family is facing at this moment.
    Almost four years ago, now, my husband's and my third child was born, a daughter. Her name is Keira and with her birth came a roller coaster which we have never gotten off of. Most every major decision we have had to make over the last for years, in some way, related to Keira's birth. See our daughter was born with a rare genetic syndrome called Nager's Syndrome. The symptoms of the syndrome are too numerous to list (and I am saving that topic for a later date) but as for Keira the main cause of concern with her has been the micrognathia of the lower jaw, as well as ankylosis of the jaw. In layman's terms, Keira was born with an underdeveloped lower jaw, as well as fusion of the jaw, which has hindered her ability to speak, eat, breath, and drink. At just over twenty-four hours old, Keira was taken in for her first surgery to have a tracheostomy done; a week later she was back in surgery to have a feeding tube put in. It is because of her medical needs I made the decision that I believe set us on the roller coaster we are on now.
    I never hesitated or waivered in my thoughts of Keira. When they told us our daughter would be born with some birth defects, they gave us options. When I say 'options' I mean they told us we had two weeks to decided if we wanted to abort her. They told us that most in our situation do; well we are not most people I guess because aborting her was never an option in either mine or my husband's opinion, she was our daughter. And so we digested the fact that our daughter would be born with some physical deformities and we came to terms with the fact that she would need some medical care. Then the time came for her birth, as with it all we took things in strides. The doctors examined her, she stayed in the NICU, and we discussed treatment options, options that would give her the most normal life possible. It was while she was in the hospital, my husband and I started to realize that even with nursing care that would be provided, one of us was going to have to stay home. Some people are better at handling medical issue than others are. I seem to be the one that can handle it better than my husband can. So I was the one who was trained on how to do all of Keira's medical care and I was the one that got to stay home.
    I have never regretted leaving my job to take care of my two boys, my daughter, and her medical needs. It was the right decision to make at the time but sometimes I can't help but feel I am getting punished by making that decision. In life we all sacrifice something and for us it was our financial stability. You weigh all the options carefully before you make a decision and that is what we did. We looked at the long term effect and knew that it was going to be rough but we thought we had made the right decision. For the most part we have did make the right decision but there have been setbacks along the way; it is those setbacks that I find myself today trying to deal with. You know the old saying you can't put a band-aid on a leak and hope it will hold. Well, I guess you could say, that is what we did with several things. We tried to do a quick band-aid fix to many of our financial problems and hoped that it would fix them but they continued to leak and now we are flooded.
    Not too long ago our daughter went in for her eighth surgery. Can you imagine being almost four years old and already you have had to endure eight surgeries? Well my daughter has and she is a trooper like none other. Kids are resilient that way. It is hard enough to deal with having your daughter go into surgery, twice in a three month period, but when you add a bankruptcy, paternity results of a child you have been looking for for nearly ten years, college finals, and bills you don't have the money to keep up with, well as the saying goes….something has got to give.
    Something did give and everything seemed to come crumbling down around us. My daughter's surgery I can handle, the betrayed look on her face as I send her into surgery, I can't but I am doing what is best for her and I tell myself in the end she will have a better life for it. The paternity results I can handle as well. My husband has a son from a previous relationship that we have been searching for in December of 2009 we found him. We had been searching for him because my husband wanted to know if the boy was truly his son. When we finally found him, the mother unleashed years of anger on my husband without giving him one ounce of credence, and then decided to file for child support. She wants my husband's money but is unwilling to allow my husband any visitation or custody of the child….can you see where this is going? So we have found a lawyer who can help us file but we don't have the money to move forward. I can handle all of that but what I can't handle is how it will affect the little bit of money we have due have. All we wanted her to do was to wait just a little bit so that we could take care of what we had going on here. Our daughter's surgery, our bankruptcy….but years of anger trumped our careful planning.
    Now on to the bankruptcy. When I agreed to file for bankruptcy, well to be honest, I didn't know what to think. I hate to say it but the lawyer we picked is not very organized and half the time can't even remember that he has talked to us but we had already paid him the money. We spent two months getting on to him about filing it then when we are down to the wire and we really don't have much money, he files and then drops a bomb on us and tells us we need to come up with $1695 by the end of May….three weeks, we have three weeks to come up with the money….HOW IN THE HELL AM I SUPPOSE TO DO THAT???????? We are filing bankruptcy, hence we don't have the money to pay that, besides he told us we wouldn't have to start paying until after we had gone to court….now we find out different. I felt stupid, I felt small, I hurt from the worry and strain this is putting on us. I can play a blame game all day long but in the end it was the band-aids we put on the leaks that left us standing in water we can't tread.
    So this is where we stand as of this moment. We have gotten past the healing from surgery, we have finished our college finals, we are trying to desperately come up with money to pay our lawyer in the paternity and custody case, and we have a bankruptcy case that will fall through because we can't make $1695 month payments. On a side note, if the bankruptcy does fall through it could mean we will lose our house. I can face losing the house and how I will look in everyone's eyes for it but I can't face my children if I have to tell them we will be moving because we lost our home.
    So now you know why I am so stressed. I try and look at it as there are others out there that have much more to cope with then me but man this is hard. I have only myself to blame. I think back to when I worked full time and wonder if we would be where we were if I hadn't left my job? My daughter is so much more important than a job but a job helps to keep us financially sound and I am so tired of being on rocky ground, my body aches from it. And for those of you out there that are asking why I don't get a job, well I have no one I can trust to take care of my daughter during the day. It is not like I can pull someone off the street and say "Hey babysit my kid….and oh yeah you have to learn how to suction, change a trach, change a g-tube, how to clean around a g-tube and trach, how to do feedings through a g-tube! Oh and I can't pay you very much." Like that will happen, right? When it comes to medical issues, I have found that unless you employ someone who has some sort of a medical background, no one wants to take care of her because they are too scared of the possibilities of what could happen should she not get the care she needed properly.
    Anymore I don't know what to expect of things. I have my hopes and my dreams, simple things, nothing grand but those hopes and dreams, no matter how simple, are out of my grasp. This is my last hope, my last effort to contribute and make right the wrongs, I hope that someone will come across this blog, that just the right person who can take pity on me because right now accepting the pity of someone, anyone, is the only hope I have to bring my family out of the lonely hole I feel we are in.