Motherhood

Motherhood - noun

1 the state of being a mother; maternity

2 the character or qualities of a mother

3 mothers collectively

Webster's New World Dictionary



The hardest decision I ever made has to be the decision to have a tubal ligation (tie my tubes) before I could ever have a child. I was a very sick child and since the summer of my senior year of high school I was extremely sick and many years later would find out that I had fibromyalgia. My mother had a rough time getting me here. She had 4 miscarriages before me and 1 miscarriage after me. Needless to say I was her miracle baby. So with my background of illness and this new fibromyalgia that claimed a vibrant life to one that could barely function before I turned 18 and knowing how hard it may be for my body to even carry a child to full term, I prayed. I had always wanted children and always saw children in my future. I wanted to be the cool parent's house where all the kids would hang out. I didn't just want a child I wanted a family with a mother, a father and children. After high school I struggled but I was able to work, but due to fatigue and comprehension problems college would have to wait. I dated and still thought about the children that I wanted, but I didn't see how I could make it all work and still be the mother and the wife that I wanted to be. It took everything out of me just to work, come home and go to bed just so I could do it all over again. I was barely surviving how would I be able to be that multi-tasking woman? What kind of wife or mother would I make? This fibromyalgia was so confusing and the thoughts of passing it on to my children and then being too sick myself to take care of my family seemed very selfish to me. I prayed for well over a year and then a month before I turned 25, I went for my annual gynecological visit and talked to my doctor. I explained all my reasons of why I wanted to have my tubes tied. For me an abortion would never have been an answer to birth control, and yes abstinence was an option, but not very practical for my whole life. So I guess my most selfless act was to never have a baby.



It has not been the easiest decision I have ever had to live with, but by far has been one of the best. The past 6 years I have had cousins having babies all around me. I see how happy they are but they are also a family in each situation and no medical issues to deal with. I never planned on talking about my health on my blog, but I wanted to write about "motherhood," its definitions and how it has affected my life. Surprisingly I do have my own tales of motherhood and they will follow this post. My fear of passing my fibromyalgia is starting to show in the medical field as a possibility. They now have a diagnosis of Juvenile Fibromyalgia. Medically speaking they still don't know much about fibromyalgia or even if it is genetic. I truly hope I'm wrong. I wasn't wrong about my medical condition; it has gotten much worse since then, and much more complicated than just having fibromyalgia, however since July of 2008 there have been changes in the medical community that help my day to day well being. It has given me a new lease on life and who's to say what my future holds. For you to truly understand how precious my next few blogs mean to me you needed to have this back story. I promise this will probably be my last post about my medical condition.

EJ

Apartment Etiquette

I need your advice! I’m sooo mad, tired and infuriated!!!!!!! Are my feelings justified? You tell me:


I live in an apartment building with laundry facilities on site. At 12:00 am I went to do my laundry because I spilled water all over my bed, and hadn’t had a chance to wash my spare set of sheets. So I decided to do all my laundry, not just the sheets. Nobody was in the laundry room and all 6 washers were empty and no dryers were operating. However I did see a basket on top of one of the dryers. 25 minutes later I go to put my laundry in the dryers, but there is a problem. Out of 5 dryers only two were available. Whoever had washed and dried their clothes still had not gotten them out of the dryers. It’s 12:30 am by now. I put the most important clothes into the 2 empty dryers, and then I sat down on the bench for 5 more minutes. The clothes in the other 3 dryers were dry and had obviously been dry for quite some time. I know that they had been done for at least 30 minutes. I kept asking myself if I should just put the clothes out of one of the dryers and lay them on top of the dryer. I debated for a few minutes, but I gave in. I stood there and emptied one of the dryers, but I couldn’t just put the clothes on top of the dryer and leave them. I stood there and folded all of the clothes that I took out of the dryer and placed them neatly on top of the dryer and then proceeded to use the dryer. It was a good thing that I did go ahead and use the dryer, because by the time I was finished roughly a 1 & ½ later nobody had come back to get their clothes out of the dryer! Was I wrong? Did I have to be so nice and fold a dryer packed with jeans and shorts? It has been a long time since I lived in an apartment that I didn’t have washer/dryer hookups in the apartment. So did I use proper Laundry Facility Etiquette? What would you have done?