“A lifetime isn't forever, so take the first chance, don't wait for the second one! Because sometimes, there aren't second chances!..."

I’m going to start off with a warning, for some of you this post may be TMI… heck maybe for all of you. But I feel like this is what I need for me so here goes. Feel free to read it or not! And it is totally unedited, this is me just writing, if there are typos or grammatical errors, I make no apologies.

For those of you who know me well, you know that family is my number 1; I have wanted to be a mommy for as long as I can humanly remember.  You also know that my biggest fear has always been not being able to be a mom, and for a lot of years that fear was very painstakingly true. I lost my first baby in 2007 just a few months after I got married, followed by an ectopic pregnancy that was caught very early, and then a miscarriage in my second trimester in 2008. All of this followed by my divorce. Then in 2010 Vinnie and I got back together and we tried and tried to have a baby… in 2011 I was told that my body had stopped ovulating on its own and I would never have a baby without help. So I started taking medicine to ovulate, and in late 2011, I got pregnant… only to miscarry days into the new year. Then started the real fertility journey which ended with the most beautifully perfect baby boy in 2013, my life was finally complete. (Side note because I didn't give birth to him, we also were blessed with an amazing adopted baby too who was also born in 2013!!)

Due to all of this I haven’t taken birth control in years, if I can’t ovulate on my own, why waste the time of filling a prescription and remembering to take it every day. This was my first mistake… I guess you never know the human body and you should never assume never really means never. 

So here is where my real story begins. I have always been very blessed with very regular, very easy cycle. I can only remember a few times where it has ever caused me more than a little discomfort… and all of those times were in high school, and I’m pretty sure it was more the discomfort of going to school than my cycle. So in November I started a very normal cycle… that a few days in became a bit painful but nothing I hadn’t felt before in life. Then 6 days later, I started again. My first thoughts were, “huh, I wonder if I some how got pregnant, and miscarried.” So I called my doctor and told them everything and they assured me that it was just an irregular cycle and I had NOTHING to worry about. I then spent the next 3 weeks with some bleeding and some not. Then I woke up one day with a perfectly normal cycle, exactly on the date I should have started in December. As the days progressed so did the “cramps” and then one day it turned into the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life. By the time Vinnie and I got the boys to bed, it was pretty obvious that I needed to see a doctor and I needed to do it right then, and luckily we have people who care enough about us to drop everything so we could go to the ER without waking the boys.

So there we sat in the check in nurses office so they could get my temperature and what was wrong and how I was feeling, and being told that it was going to be a little bit of a wait but they wanted me to give them a urine sample while we waited. That was the first time that night I don’t remember what happened. Apparently, sitting in that chair I passed out for a few minutes and woke up to me vomiting all over everyone and everything in the room. I then got rushed to a room where I did that same exact thing again. Once they were finally able to get me stable they asked if I was pregnant, to which I expressed that it was completely impossible and that the test would come back negative and I knew it. But of course they had to be sure. But due to me being me… I tried to pass out a few more times and did pass out one more time before they were finally able to get a test. Then all the sudden the doctor went from wanting to do a CT to wanting to do an ultrasound… which at the time didn’t even phase me… until I was laying alone with the ultrasound tech (who wouldn’t let my husband come in… which by the way was a HUGE HUGE fiasco with the nurses, the doctors and the tech… but that’s another story) who said, “so how far along are you?”….. UHHHHHHHHHHHHH what?.....

Yep, sure enough I was pregnant… and not the happy so excited yay you are going to have a baby kind of pregnant, it was the baby isn’t where it’s supposed to be, she’s bleeding internally and could die kind of a pregnant. And my whole world stopped, I was being faced with a reality that I never thought I’d have to face until I was a happy old grandmother of all kinds of grandbabies. I was dying, if the doctors didn’t do something I would be dead. A young mommy of 2 amazing little boys… and I was being faced with death. And in that moment I wanted 4 things, my mommy, my husband, and my babies. 

They sent in the on call OB and she told me that I was going to have to get surgery and it had to happen right away. So as I sat there and looked at Vinnie I knew he and I were in the same place, this was a life or death situation… and he had to leave to take care of our kids. I was going to do this all alone; my last moments of life could have been spent alone.  

So he and I said our goodbyes and we talked about the boys and what I needed him to do to help them remember me, and that I needed him to love them enough for the both of us. While my insides were screaming for him to bring the boys to me, to let me say goodbye in person for him to never leave my side ever again. As they rolled me out for surgery I watch my husband that I loved more than life, walk the other way out the door. I then spent the next 30 minutes thinking about had I told everyone I loved that I loved them, and did I kiss the boys goodnight, and had I given them everything they ever needed from me… and could that really be the last time I would ever see my family again. I thought about how on earth Vinnie would be able to be a single parent and work full time, and what would happen to all of them, and would someone be able to love the 3 of them the way I loved them. And as this was all happening I was talking to this nurse and that nurse and this is going to happen and that is going to happen and I just kept thinking, “Is this the last person I’m ever going to talk to again?” I specifically remember the nurse who checked me in for my surgery, he was also my recovery nurse, I remember him trying to calm me down and talk to me about my family and him comforting me and telling me that he would be there when I woke up. And then I was gone, I don’t know for how long and I don’t know how the surgery went, but I do remember hearing, “Jana, can you hear me, I’m right here, just like I said I would be.” I then opened my eyes and realized I was alive, that I had survived. And for the first time in my life I realized how lucky I was and how beautiful life is. 

I then spent the next day in a hospital bed alone, waiting very un-patiently for Vinnie and the boys to walk through my door. And then there they were the most amazingly beautiful, perfect three guys I have even seen in my life.

I guess what this long crazy rant of a post is all about, is live every moment to the fullest, live in the moment, say what needs to be said, tell those that you love that you love them, even if they may not love you back, love with every fiber of your being, because you may not know when it’s your last moment… and trust me that is quite possibly the scariest thing in the world. And if you made it this far, please know that if you are part of my world, I love you, and I cherish you as a person. Even if we haven't talked it months or years you have helped shape my world and I am a better person because of you!