Life and Death

Yesterday my best friend gave birth to her twins at 35 weeks. They are both perfect and weigh in at 4 pounds, 4 ounces each. The little girl, Kaelin, had no problems, and the boy, Brendan, had to be on oxygen. Still not too bad for those little preemies! They'll be in the hospital for a week or so. Everyone is doing great and is thrilled about their healthy arrivals.

Onto the sad news from yesterday: my husband lost an old friend - his cat. It was a cat he found in college and took in for a few years. After his allergies got the best of him, he gave the cat to his parents to take care of. They have kept it ever since. Over the weekend we saw the cat and it had terrible sores on the side of its body. John convinced his dad to take it to the vet on Monday and the vet said it was cancer and it had spread all over. The best thing was to put the cat to sleep, which they did. My husband was very upset about it - more than I thought he would be.

I did the best I could to support my husband and just let him be upset about the cat (over the phone of course, since he's traveling). I mentioned that it was hard because I had never seen him like this before. And then he told me something that hurt - he said "well, I've never had anything like this happen to me before." I almost cried upon hearing that. I know that losing babies to miscarriages is completely different for a man and a woman because the man has no physical connection to the baby yet. But it still hurt to know that our lost babies don't even compare to a cat.

I'm not being hard on John - as I said I know the miscarriages were totally different for him. He did not experience them in his body and feel the connection the minute we found out we were pregnant. He didn't bleed and cry and suffer the emotional trauma that I did. I know that. But it still hurt just the same. I won't mention it to him because I know all this is different. And I will get past it - it just upset me at the time and I wanted to write about it. If I lost my own cat, I would probably feel many of the same emotions that I felt when losing my babies because my cat *is* my baby right now. I know it's very difficult to lose a pet, especially one you've had for so many years.

For my readers, please don't judge my husband. I think it's probably a normal reaction for almost any man and he just wasn't thinking. I'm really ok because I know when Pea is here, he will have an emormous love for her and there won't be any question about his feelings towards her. Men need to see and touch, women just need to feel it in their hearts.