Forgotten

I fear that he will be forgotten.  It’s already happening.  A coworker was whining and I told her only one of was allowed to be depressed at at a time.  She asked when her turn was and I said February 2nd.  She asked what was so special about February 2nd and I explained it was the day after my due date. She apologized for forgetting and I told her I didn’t really expect her to remember.

Because logically, no one else carries him around with them every day.  No one else remembers that I was supposed to be about to pop at this time.  I mean, in a vague way, I guess they remember that I was pregnant and maybe I should be big or have given birth or something but no one really remembers that it was supposed to be NOW.  Not even my coworker who was complaining to me about why she doesn’t “feel like taking the gestational diabetes test” and is a week late for it.  Finally I got all the information for the nearest Quest off the internet, emailed it to her and told her not make me play the “I wish I could carry a pregnancy this far so I could make this appointment” card.  That seemed to have worked.  We’ll see.  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to speak to her again if she doesn’t go for this test.

On February 1st, people will post mundane details of their lives on Facebook.  Someone’s car won’t start.  Or they’ll be enjoying their morning coffee so much they have to post about it.  Or they’ll just post a cool video they saw.  I will want to scream at them. Don’t you know that my baby is dead and today was supposed to be his due date? But how could they know?  Who could remember the due date of a baby that died 17 weeks ago?

I fear that everyone will treat February 1st as a normal day, while for me it will be a day that my heart breaks just a little bit more.

God

God knows when something glorious in the future necessitates something difficult in the present. Because he knows the glory will be worth it, God will risk being misunderstood. -Beth Moore

How can I believe something like this? How can I believe any of this is “part of God’s plan” or “God’s will” or “is happening for a reason.”  What reason? Why would God give me a baby – the one thing I’ve been praying so hard for – and then take him from me?  How can anything in the future be more glorious than the baby I was carrying?  And if there is another baby in my future, why couldn’t I have had both.  Why take the life of my little boy?  Why take him before he ever even had a life to live?

What lesson is God trying to teach me?  I have already learned what seems like infinite patience.  I waited four years to conceive.  Four very long years.  My pregnancy was difficult.  I had morning sickness. I had anxiety. I had back aches.  I got into a car accident.  We thought our baby had Down’s.  I bled.  I had a horribly slow start with terrifyingly low hormone levels.  I was grateful for every last second of it.  I would have gone the other 18 weeks. I would have gone 20 weeks more.  I would have been grateful for every second that baby was inside of me and growing and being healthy.  I was miserable at times.  But so grateful.  I would puke and thank God that it meant he was safe.  I sobbed because my back ached so badly (now I realize this was likely a symptom that something was horribly wrong – my preeclampsia was diagnosed a day later and I swelled up like a balloon two days late) but I kept thinking, I can do this for him.  I know patience.  I know suffering for something I love.  What other lesson did I have to learn from his loss?

I often think that I’m being punished.  And I remind myself that God wouldn’t kill a human being he created to punish another human being.  Right?  God couldn’t do that, right?

Nesting

My body is confused.  Terribly confused.  I have slight twinges and cramps, like my uterus is stretching.  My breasts are sore.  I have small bouts of nausea.  My belly seems bigger. I gained four pounds this week.  Is that even possible?

The worst part of it all is that I want to nest.  I want to clean things up and organize.  I want to sort out the office and our spare room – the room that would have been the nursery.  I have this urge to get the house in order and prepare.  Prepare for what?  There is no baby coming on February 1st.

Despite what my body thinks, I’m not pregnant.  Despite what my mind thinks, there is no baby to nest for.

Instead I try to put my head down and ignore all these things.  And hope that when February 2nd comes around, these feelings will fade.

Two week wait

Two weeks.  In two weeks, it will be my due date. I’m in a two week wait.  Maybe when I hit his due date, I will have some closure.  Maybe then I can stop counting in my head.  Maybe then I’ll feel better about the fact that my belly stopped growing and that my baby is gone.  Can you ever feel better about that?  He’s gone.  There’s nothing to change it.  I know that time heals.  But this will always be a horrible, sad thing.  There will never come a time that I will be happy about this. It will always be sad and I will always miss him.

How do you come to terms with that?

How do I stop hurting?

I know that February 2nd won’t change a thing.  It won’t be the day I stop counting down.  It will probably be the day I start counting up.  He should be one day old, one week, one month.  Will I ever stop counting? Will I always remember how old he should be?  It feels wrong if I don’t.  But if it feels like I’m not healing if I do.

I see and hear his name more and more now.  Is that a sign? Or is it just because I’m more cognizant of his name now? It’s not exactly common. I feel guilty because I still haven’t bought a necklace like I wanted to.  Nothing seems right and if I do find something that I like, my husband doesn’t like it. I know it’s my necklace but I feel like we should agree upon it.  He was our baby.

It’s the year of the dragon this year.  That was a nickname we had for him.  When I first heard that, I thought it was lucky.  I thought he was bringing us luck for this year and maybe that would mean good things for adoption. But then I realize that he should have been born in the year of the dragon. Why couldn’t he bring luck to himself?  I’ve been seeing dragons everywhere, too, by the way.

This isn’t coherent, I know.  I’m not coherent right now. I miss him so much it breaks my heart.  I miss him and the time I didn’t have and never will have with him.  I never got to hold him.  That’s all I keep thinking.  He was mine.  And I never held him.  I barely even felt him move.  Just a few flutters here and there.  I never got any time with him at all.   Just 22 weeks.  That wasn’t enough time.

So now I wait.  I wait two weeks and see.  Will his due date change anything?

Hello?

I keep meaning to post but I’ve been exhausted lately.  I do have a lot to say.  It’s been a hard week and hopefully I can get it together to write something soon.  In the meantime, it’s delurking week!

So say hello! Leave a comment… and I promise I’ll be back with a real post soon.

An open letter to the next jerk that says the wrong thing

I took my dog out about four times last night because he had horrible diarrhea and I got the pleasure of cleaning that up.  This morning, it happened again.  I went to work leaving him in his crate.  The dog walker called at 2 that he had gone diarrhea in his crate.  He cleaned it up as best he could but the dog wouldn’t go back in the crate.  So I gave him the ok to leave the dog out.  I came home to two piles of poop and one little puddle of blood.

Luckily, there were places in the dining room covered in foil to prevent the cat from spraying.  One pile of poop and the blood was on the foil. The other was all over the carpet.  I called the vet.  They suggested I bring him in.  I scrambled to get the dog to the vet.  I put the pile of poop that was on the foil into a Tupperware container and stuck it into a Bath and Body Works bag and brought it with us.  I spent 15 minutes in the waiting room restraining a 63 pound dog who wanted to make friends with every cat, dog, child and adult in the waiting room.  I met with the vet. I got my instructions to feed him a bland diet and give him an antibiotic/anti-inflammatory med twice a day.  I then spent another 15 minutes in the waiting room waiting for the medication to be filled and playing the same game of restraint.

I then drove home with the dog. I then proceed to clean up.  I fully cleaned out the crate.  I steam cleaned the carpet all while trying to keep the dog entertained with a toy instead of playing with his pile of poop.  I took out all the trash so it wouldn’t smell.  Oh and also I was running in and out of the house with him so he could go diarrhea some more.  And finally, I’m waiting for my husband to get home with chicken and rice so I can cook my dog dinner and give him his medication.

So, go ahead, asshole.  I defy you to tell me how maybe I’m just not meant to be a mother.

Toward Life

In utter weariness he asked her once in different words, “Then where do you go from here—where do you turn?” “Toward life,” she said “Toward life,” and turned toward him. – F. Scott Fitzgerald

I’m trying.  It’s not easy to choose joy.  You would think it would be, right?  It seems so easy. Given the choice between joy and sorrow, everyone would choose joy, right?  It’s the obvious logical choice.  But logic has no place in the world of human emotion.  Sorrow sucks you in.  It’s like a whirlpool, difficult to fight.  You start off trying to be happy and making the best of things.  Then a little voice whispers, “You can’t possibly think this will last, can you? It never does.”

Still, you have to try. Right? You have to keep fighting for happiness, right?

It might just be the antidepressants talking, but this weekend, I think I gave it a fair fight. I tried my best to stay positive and to say yes to things instead of locking myself in my house and not coming out.  My husband wanted to go out Thursday night.  Since I had Friday off, I agreed. We went to my favorite Mexican place and had a great night together.  Friday, we stumbled up on reservations to an amazing restaurant in Philly that usually  has a two month wait for weekend reservations.  Someone must have canceled last minute.  It ended up being a fabulous meal and a great night for my husband and me.  It was expensive but fun to get a little dressed up and have a nice night out.

Saturday we rang in the New Year at a friend’s house. It’s been our yearly tradition to spend New Year’s Eve with them.  We haven’t seen them since we lost the baby and it was great to see old friends and reconnect.  We ate great food, had some drinks, played some fun games, and had a great time hanging out and chatting.  Sunday, I slept in and we ran out to the food store to pick up dinner.  We ended up deciding on making a nice steak dinner and somewhere along the way, my husband said should we invite my sister? I told him to call her and see (that whole saying yes thing) and they were free!  It took some extra running around the store (all of a sudden we needed more of everything!) and then a ton of spur of the moment cleaning since my house looked like a bomb hit it.  It was all worth it, though.  We had a fun night and the dinner was delicious.

Monday, we ran a few errands and relaxed. I read my book and took a nap and it was so relaxing to be in my nice clean house (well the downstairs at least).  We made dinner together and it was just the perfect end to the weekend.  I really feel like we were really connected and I felt happy this weekend.  Really happy.  Not the kind of happy where I would feel happy and then feel guilty right afterwards for enjoying life without my baby.  I’m not saying it was perfect.  It wasn’t.  There were moments of sadness.  There were moments of grief.  There moments where I missed him more than I ever have.  But there was happiness there.  I’m hoping there’s more of that in 2012.

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Note: I’m attributing that quote to F. Scott Fitzgerald but I’ve had a hard time finding out if it’s really his writing.  I’m going with it for now unless someone proves otherwise.