Mommy Tattoos

My belly is not quite what it once was. Once upon a time, my belly was free of scars. Now it is a map of my past, in a sense. I have a scar above my hip from the claw of my cat's back foot as he jumped off of me fresh out of the shower. It then became half scar-half stretch mark as that skin refused to stretch properly during my pregnancy with Naomi. Then there is the scar from getting my belly button pierced when I was 16 or 17. Pregnancy stretched it out and then it shrunk back down into a bigger, looser scar. So lovely! Not too big of deal, though. Then there was the time I went face first into the road, after passing out and falling off a curb out of nowhere. That was a very difficult, expensive and toothless way to find out I was allergic to antihistamines. I woke up spitting out teeth. It was made all the better by the fact that I'd only started my dental assistant job a few weeks before that. It felt pretty lame to show up at work with half my teeth broken. My mouth got put back together again, but it required a bone graft from my hip to replace some bone from my upper mandible that was lost. That scar was concave and only filled in after I had Lawson, some four years later. If I was in a game of scar poker, the stakes had just been raised.

Then the scars started getting a little more serious. Life had a serious hand to play. In November 2005, I went off birth control. It wasn't to get pregnant. I just wanted to stop feeling like a hormonal ball of rage for a few days every month. I wanted to give my body a break. Well, a month later, I found out I was pregnant. So much for the break! Five days later, I miscarried. It was hard, but it showed us that we were ready and wanted a family. Two weeks after the miscarriage, I woke up and knew I was pregnant. No one believed me, but I knew. I waited two weeks and then started testing. They all came back negative, until finally, one came back positive... well after it should have. A couple weeks after the positive, at 7 weeks pregnant, this dull pain I'd been having for a week or so got intense. After a night of agony spent writhing around and bawling in pain, I went into the ER at 3 in the morning. Turns out, the pregnancy was ectopic and was going to have to be removed. We didn't know why then, but it's likely that some tissue from the miscarriage blocked the end of my fallopian tube and the baby began to develop just outside my uterus. My tube had burst and I had a lot of blood pooling in my stomach. It was an awful night and left me with a scar on the lower part of my belly button, a scar where my right fallopian tube no longer resided and a scar low on my bikini line. Three scars all at once.

Well, fast-forwarding past all the trials and tribulations of getting pregnant with one tube, I found myself pregnant a year later. It was a wonderful pregnancy until the last week of hell that ended in an emergency c-section. (That's a whole other post!) That was the cherry on top of my battle scar belly. A big, long line all the way from one side of my belly to the other. Not to mention the two little stretch marks that appeared from the ridiculous stretching that occurred as he was being delivered.

Needless to say, I wasn't really all that fond of my scars. I didn't give them much thought, but I wasn't planning on wearing bikinis anymore. At least not in public. Well, I found myself in the bathtub with Lawson and Naomi a few nights ago and Lawson noticed my scars. First he pointed to the little one and got a big, sad frown. "OWIE! Little." To which I responded, "It doesn't hurt anymore, it's just an old scar." "Oh." he said and continued to inspect my belly. His eyes got huge. "OWIE!!! BIG!!!!" he said as he found my c-section scar. "Oooohhhh, Mama!!! Hurt! Owie!!!" I then explained that it wasn't painful and that not all babies come out of their mommy's the same and THAT was the special mark from where he had come out of my belly. The twinkle in his eyes was precious. "Ohhhhh. Lawson IN!" he said. "Yes, you were in my belly once just like Num Num was." I started to say, but stopped as I realized that he had meant that he wanted back in my belly. Standing with one hand on the shower wall, he put his foot over my belly button and concentrated hard to try to figure out a way back in. "Button. In. Button! Hmmmm..." He looked disappointed when I let him in on the fact that that he had taken a one-way ticket out and there was no reentry. So, he thought for a minute then climbed up on my belly and curled into a little, tiny ball with his head on my chest and sighed. "Lawson happy. Momma happy. Baby happy. Happy. Happy!" I was sitting in a tub full of love and baby smiles and it was beautiful.

Scars fade, but I can remember well the hurt that I felt both physically and emotionally with each one. And something about explaining them to Lawson made them feel a little more special. I have never really though of my c-section scar as special, but it is. I meant what I said to him. It is a special mark from the day he was welcomed into this world and it makes me feel tremendous joy for that day and a bit of sadness for the way it all happened when I see it. Then there are the "little" scars left in place of a piece of myself. I may not have one of my fallopian tubes anymore, but I have a scar to remember the baby that I carried for that short time. They're kind of like mommy tattoos. And you know? I think I kind of like them.