Spring in winter

                                                                      
I never wanted to have children.  However, one week after saying our wedding vows, Jim and I conceived a baby girl.  I was devastated and extremely sick.  I spent most of the pregnancy in bed, doped up on anti-nausea medicine.  I would constantly pray that I would have a miscarriage and that life would go back to normal.  It wasn't until sometime in the second trimester that I began to get excited about having a little girl.  After a healthy delivery of our little Narnia, I was immediately struck with post-pardem depression.  I couldn't stand being in the same room with her, I was constantly having panic attacks, and when I held her it felt like I was suffocating.  We fought to get some help from the medical profession, but not much came of that.  After about a month I began to somewhat adjust to having Narnia in the house, although depression was also a constant companion.  To be honest, I do not remember the first 3 months of Narnia's life.  I am so glad we took a lot of pictures during that time. 
About 2 months after Narnia's birth, I found out I was pregnant with Noah- so I spent the first year of Narnia's life pregnant with her brother.  After Noah's birth, I got post-pardem depression even worse than I did with Narnia (more on that later).  After having two babies 11 months apart and developing severe depression and anxiety, I was looking forward to things getting somewhat better.  I remember desperately praying that I would not get post-pardem with Noah and feeling that God really let me down when I did.  When we found out that Narnia had autism, it felt like another slap in the face.  One night, after I had fallen asleep, I woke up scream-crying and telling Jim, "This can't be happening!  She's perfect, she's my baby!  This can't be happening!!"  There is something that's built into the heart of a mother that cannot seem to believe that there is something physically or mentally wrong with her baby.  I went thru times of thinking that somehow this was my fault; that maybe because I had post-pardem depression and couldn't hold her a lot in the beginning that somehow that caused this to happen to her.  The truth is, that I can never really know what caused this, so I had to stop trying to figure out why it happened and begin the process of acceptance. 
Having Narnia was one of the most intense things I'd ever done.  Not in the sense of physically having her, but emotionally having her.  It felt like pushing out one of my internal organs and watching it walk along outside of my body.  And, finding out that Narnia had autism was like watching that organ begin to fail and there was nothing I could do about it. 
Narnia's name means "spring in winter".  I didn't know that was it's meaning when we decided to name her that, but I find it very fitting- especially now.
God and I are still trying to repair our relationship in regards to all of this.  There are questions I have for him that I feel he needs to answer in order for us to move forward in our love affair. 
In recent news, Narnia has started having therapy five days a week and she seems to be responding very well to it.  She has 35+ words now and can communicate much better than before. 
I think that is all I can process thru for now.  *Breathe*