Christmas 2011

Sending peace and love to all my friends and readers 

and their children, where ever they may be.

 My gift from G. My plan is to put all the letters thanking us for the donations 

we make in honor of Reid at Christmas time in his stocking.

 

The ornament I made this year. I kept some things from the flower arrangement 

my aunt gave us last year and they made the perfect filling for the ornament.

Christmas Eve 2011

I have not spent the last month and half in a constant state of dread like the last part of 2010. It's not that I have been looking forward to Christmas 2011, but I am dealing with it better.

Being in the middle of what has become a high-risk-like pregnancy and Thing 3's imminent arrival has provided plenty on non-Christmas related distractions. It has also given me plenty of excuses to stay home and avoid as much of Christmas as I want. (I better start looking into a plan for next year now while I still have a tiny amount of brain function left.) But it's not just the new baby distracting me.

I decided that the Christmas tree should be upstairs this year and have more than the ornaments made for Reid and those that D made at school on it. However, I did let 2 four year olds do most of the decorating which allowed me to not focus on the fact that the bottom of the tree should be naked in order to prevent Reid from having his way with the ornaments. The sad thoughts about what should have been are still in my head, but I can think them without crying, most of the time.

I have stopped hoping that anyone outside my little family will mention Reid in relation to Christmas. (and by anyone, I mean all those people who aren't missing their own children too.) I would be thrilled to find a mention of him in a Christmas card, but it doesn't send me into a sobbing fit when he isn't. I am pretty bitter about other people's ability to have live children though so the Christmas letters where I found out that D.G.'s cousins have managed to have 2 live children in the time since we started trying for just one more make me wish our fireplace was wood-burning instead of gas.

(I did receive a beautiful gift from my wonderful friend G and hopefully I will be able to take a good picture of it tonight to post tomorrow.)

This mornings activities had nothing to do with Christmas, and maybe I was just torturing myself by doing it on Christmas Eve, but I felt the need finally split up Reid's blanket and get his ashes and clothing moved from the crib to my nightstand. I don't regret doing it, his things now fit into the box I wanted them to, I have a piece to hold on to when I miss him most and there is a piece that is going to stay under the bottom sheet of the crib right under where Thing 3 will sleep (hopefully). I held it together through actually cutting and sewing the blanket, but putting his piece into the box with his ashes and clothes, I fell apart. Lots of the sadness that is always present and some of the anger that a few others of us have mentioned feeling this year; anger that this is the only thing I can do for my son this Christmas, anger that I can't sing to him, or give him gifts or bake his favorite cookies.

36 hours from now Christmas will be over and the world's focus will be on Bo.xi.ng Day sales and hockey (at least here in my local "world" it will be). Those I can deal with.

I finally got what I wished for

I realized a few days ago that this time spent on bed rest is exactly what I wished for in the weeks and months after Reid died. I desperately wished to be allowed to just close the door on the rest of the world and spend my days curled up in bed with only the TV and the computer for company. All I wanted was to be left alone and not have to deal with anything.

Now I have had 7 weeks of bed rest which had included me being at home alone during the day for the last 3 weeks. When I got hospitalized, I was horrified, not just about the risks to this baby but also about being stuck in bed for 8 weeks. How did things change so much that I was upset at the thought of not being able to go places and see people (and cook and do housework for that matter.)? How did I get to a place where I had a "normal" reaction to this? Is it all because of the pregnancy or did I actually start to heal in some small way?

I may be a wuss but I'm not short on Omega-3's

I'm still a huge wuss. I haven't read the email from M yet. I did ask D.G. about the letter from last fall and he informed me that he recycled it long ago. It clearly upset me so he wanted to get rid of it. It's okay that he wanted to protect me, but he now knows that he shouldn't "recycle" letters without checking with me first.


I bent the bed rest rules to make Kristin's bacon guacamole recipe. So yummy, why have we never thought to put bacon in the guacamole before? Clearly the way to make something yummy and full of fat even more delicious is to add another kind of fat. And I can actually have quite a few tortilla chips before I hit my carb limit for a snack so it worked out great. Not that I wouldn't sink to eating this stuff with a spoon if I was maxed out on carbs.

20 months

I swear it was just yesterday that we hit 19 months. I can even remember writing the post in the hospital. I am so all over the map right now. I can casually bring up Reid around other people (some who know, some who don't) without tearing up. I also have 20 minute cries triggered by a dad on CS.I.Mia.mi hugging his son and calling him "little man".

I finally went through all the babyloss things that were in the "baby room". It only took me 20 months to be able to make myself do it. I found plenty of meaningless paper work that could be shredded without remorse and completely unhelpful brochures that could be recycled without tears. I boxed up the casts of Reid's hands and feet and sorted out all the cards we received after he died, last Christmas (the whole whopping 3 that mentioned him) and on his first birthday. All the cards and little things have now been moved to the designated drawer in my nightstand. Reid's ashes however are still in the crib, waiting for me to be able to divide his blanket so his ashes and going home outfit and blanket will fit into the box I want them to fit into. (That's my first job when bed rest ends in 2 weeks.) It was a hard afternoon looking at all those reminders, but I am glad I finally did it. I almost feel like I should do some kind of spiritual cleansing in the baby room now. Not to get rid of any part of Reid, but to clean up all the sadness, loneliness, desperation and anger that poured out of me in that room in the months after Reid died. I want Thing 3 to know their big brother, but they don't need to be surrounded by the pain of losing him.

I love you Reid, and I think about you constantly these days.You will always be our little man.

Not everything will go away if you ignore it long enough

This is the post I was planning to write when the pregnancy announcement of the previous post arrived.

Before that email, I was obsessing about the last upsetting email I received, but have been too scared/angry/have enough shit to deal with already (not sure if there is a really a correct term for my feelings at this point) to read. I just saw who the sender was and stuck it in the first folder I could drag it into before the preview pane could kick in. It was from M of this post and this post. (I had to go back to read these posts myself and remember what was going on back then.) I am somewhat ashamed that I never did deal with that issue after receiving her letter but I did have an miscarriage a week later, followed by Reid's 1st birthday, Easter, Mother's Day and then getting pregnant again, so I will let myself off the hook for that. (An appreciation for the merits of procrastination is definitely a post-Reid facet of my personality.)

I had been toying around with the idea of finding that letter and dealing with things back in September when D started preschool again and I had a little time to myself during the day, but then other stuff came up and the next thing I know it's the end of November and I've been on bed rest for a month. You would think that being on bed rest would give me time to deal with issues like this, but it's amazing how the days just start to fade into one another and soon it's been 5 days since you got an email that you meant to reply to right away and those are the from the people you are happy to hear from.

I probably should find the letter now and then read the email. (Well likely I will have to ask D.G. to find it since prowling around the house is not on my list of approved activities and once I'm allowed to do it, I won't have time.) I know I should be a grown up and deal with this stuff, but I have latched onto the excuse that because I can't reward myself for being a grown-up with ice cream, (I have GD on top of the other issues) I therefore don't have to do grown up things that are awkward or upsetting. (Except for the bi-weekly internal ultrasounds to measure my cervix, those are always awkward and sometimes upsetting, but I can't figure out a way to avoid them.)

Expecting

(Sorry if this is too much baby talk for anyone, but this just feels like it belongs in the middle of Dead Baby Land, not in the trying to be positive, subsequent pregnancy corner of Dead baby Land.)

Today, I had an email pop up in the corner of my computer screen. (I use Ou.tl.ook) and from the title alone, I knew it was a pregnancy announcement. " ... expecting our first child in May... ". That basically sums up the difference between those who have lost and baby and those who have not.

If none of your children are dead, you "expect" a baby, a live, breathing baby who comes home with you, grows up and eventually outlives you. You get pregnant and then all you have to is wait 9 months for your "expectation" to be met.

Once you have a dead baby's ashes sitting on your mantle/dresser/shelf, you no longer "expect" that you will be getting a live baby even after you are pregnant. You desperately hope that despite your personal experience to the contrary (and the experiences of all the other DBM's that you have "met") that somehow you will manage to keep a baby alive inside you for the required amount of time. You try to make plans for bringing home a live baby, despite the thoughts in your head about where you will put another urn on your mantle/shelf. You then try to come up with a way get that baby out of your uterus without them dying or you losing your mind (or both.) All the expectations are gone, it's just desperate longing and what feel like foolish hopes.

I am 31+ weeks pregnant and I still don't "expect" to have a live baby in January. I do expect to have a c-section some time in the next 7 weeks, but I don't expect a live baby. It's not that I don't really want a live baby, but there is nothing that will absolutely convince me that I will come out on the right side of the statistics this time.

Still hurts

The pam.pers Christmas commercial is back on TV here and and still hurts to see a whole bunch of babies all sleeping peacefully.  I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to Silent Night again without crying.

Same goes for watching A Ba.by Sto.ry. (The boredom of bed rest got to me and I turned it on for 5 minutes, stupid, stupid, stupid). I watched that show every chance I got when was pregnant with D and now 5 minutes of it made me sob for 10 minutes.

Something to do with myself

So if you don't read the other blog in order to avoid the gratuitous baby rambling (and I totally understand if you need to that), here's a quick update. After pretty much 2 weeks exactly in the hospital I was discharged to the Antepartum Home Care Program. My cervix seems to have stabilized at 1 cm so I am on bedrest at home for now. I still have plenty of time on my hands in between daily nurses visits so I volunteered to take over the reins of the Remembering Together Ornament Swap. I have three other ladies to help me out and we are about to get the sign up started. We are hoping to spread even more love this year so come on over and check things out:








(Yes I am aware that it's kinds nuts to take on a project the same day you get out of the hospital but it is much easier on my brain to think about an ornament swap than the survival rates for preemies born at 28 weeks. Now I have to figure out if I can manage making an ornament while laying in bed.)

19 months

I've been saying "My son would have been 19 months old."on a daily basis for a week and a half. Now it's finally official. Reid would be 19 months old today. I miss him so much.

Being in this place where everyone is  considered high-risk is so strange. No one seems to be scared shitless, LIKE THEY SHOULD BE. Either they really don't get it or they are really good at hiding it, but how can they pretend that there isn't a chance that their babies could die? Really, once you land in the hospital how can you still be convinced that everything will be okay? Do you have to have one of your babies die (like all of us) before the rose coloured glasses come off? Isn't just being told "You could go into labour at any time." when you are only 24/26/28 weeks along scary enough to make you seriously worry?

It's not time to come full circle yet

Sometimes being in the hospital on bed rest is just a little too much like the last time I was in the hospital after Reid died. Nothing to do but rest, still no baby in my arms (although the one in the belly kicking me is far better than none at all.) and still lots of awkward conversations about my obstetrical history (but I am much better at getting through them without breaking down.)

When I met the resident today on the day shift, he looked at me kind of funny and then looked at my chart and asked, "Dr. W delivered your last baby?"
"That's right."
"And you were seeing  Dr.K and the  (...) group?"
"Yes."
"I was there that night, in the operating room."

Well that explains the weird look. He was actually really nice, said how sorry he was and how that night has stuck with him. Turns out his wife had a baby not too long after and he couldn't stop thinking about how everything had changed so quickly for us that night. It's nice to know that other people still think about Reid too, even if it is just in that context. I knew I would have to deal with all this kind of stuff eventually, I just thought that it would be at about 11 weeks from now when were in the process of delivering Thing 3 or maybe even after they arrived and I was a couple floors up from here in the Mother/Baby unit.

Here is where things get all f-ed up again...

So if anyone is  reading this, please drop by my other blog, because I am stuck in the hospital and about to lose my mind.

What I did when I wasn't blogging - Part 2

When Merry posted about a lack of courgette in her garden a few weeks ago, I had to laugh. Okay first I had to wonder why in Canada where one of our official languages is French, we don’t use the term courgette.  Then I had to laugh, because while my small garden didn’t produce a large volume of most vegetables this year, there was definitely a surplus of zucchini.

These were about 18” long and they were far from the biggest ones that grew. I had so much zucchini and was bringing zucchini based foods to so many places that one of my friends started calling me the “Zucchini Queenie”. (And yes that is one of the other things I started doing not too long before I stopped blogging, I started socializing on a limited basis again.) I also gave zucchini away to my neighbor and some mommy friends too.

I tried out a recipe for faux crab cakes that was actually quite good. D and D.G. both liked it and ate it more than once. I also made at least 4 different batches of zucchini brownies and a few monster batches of these zucchini-carrot-multi-grain muffins that I like to snack on. Then there was the zucchini cranberry loaf that turned out supper yummy so I made 2 more for the freezer. And finally a chocolate zucchini bundt cake (that used only whole wheat flour)  that seemed to be on at least a dozen foodie blogs so I gave it a try. 

And just in case you think I only baked with vegetables, there was also this. I found it one night at 10 pm and I swear if I had had any cream cheese in my fridge, I would have made them right then. I managed to wait a couple days before baking these, but holy crap were they delicious. The whole pan was gone in 3 days. I would love to make them again, but I have to wait until we are getting company so I don’t eat them all.

What I did when I wasn't blogging - Part 1

So what did I do when I took my self-imposed break from blogging in August/September?  Well here's what we did first. It started with, "What are we buying each other for our 10th wedding anniversary?" The one thing we agreed on was a new mattress/bed. And that lead to new nightstands so we would have more storage, including a drawer where I could keep Reid's things when they needed to be moved out of "the baby room" to make room for Thing 3. Then we realized that we had now been in the this house for over 5 years, a record for us, and it was time for us to paint before we brought in the new furniture. And since we were switching from a double to a queen, we needed new sheets and so we should get a new comforter too. We went from new bed to pretty much whole new room.

Here is our bed before:

 

And while it's still not completely finished (we need some art over the bed and the drawer for Reid's things is still empty), here's what it looks like now:

 

And the other side of the room because we changed it too.

We love the way it turned out, it's very soothing and peaceful and the new bed is comfy too. Now if only I could find the courage to move Reid's things out of the crib and into our room. If only I could be sure that we will need that crib for a real live baby.

Post-October 15th Issues

I felt like such a bad DBM last weekend. I planned a date for D.G. and myself for Saturday night, not realizing that it was October 15th. I had to light my candles around 6 pm and then after 10 pm when we got home. It was a delayed anniversary date that I had already rescheduled once (due to my massive cold that I still haven't completely gotten rid of) so I couldn't cancel again. We had a really nice evening which made me feel even more like a bad DBM. Of course we cancelled out the nice evening by spending most of Sunday arguing/fighting. Apparently I am too controlling right now. Not really shocking that a woman who couldn't/can't control any of the "big" things in life, like whether her children live or die, is slightly obsessed with controlling the little things in life. (So much for being proud that we are still together and sometimes happy after 10 years of marriage and 18 months of grief.) Hormones ensured that there was lots of crying on my part too so I felt like complete crap all around. Why can't anything be easy for more than 12 hours in a row?

October 15 2011

For you, my little boy. I'd give nearly anything to have to have you here with us. No matter where or what you are now, I  love you and I always will.

Maybe even a little bit Thankful

I tried going back to posts from last year to see what we did for Thanksgiving, but apparently my lack of memories is because I pretended Thanksgiving wasn't happening, not because I can't remember what we did. Therefore I will view today as major progress. I cooked a proper Thanksgiving meal today and we did a fall/Thanksgiving craft with D. Well I organized the craft and D.G. did most of the work, he has blisters to prove it, but I did the vast majority of the cooking and cleaning and have the dishpan hands to prove it.

It was so nice to cook a holiday meal for just our family, no extra stress, no giant amounts of food and no making things just because "it's tradition". We had turkey (mostly because I want to make soup next week) and gravy, pyrogies(because they are the best non-chocolate food in the world), roasted parsnips(fresh from our garden), homemade biscuits and fresh cranberry relish(never going back to jellied cranberry sauce). I even made an apple crisp for dessert. Can you tell I'm just a little bit proud of this meal? And it was the best turkey I have ever made. (Damn, I should have taken pictures.)

I guess time has helped me be on better terms with Thanksgiving. I know I would be less inclined to celebrate anything if I wasn't pregnant, but being pregnant has not fixed many of my other issues, so there has to be something else that has changed too. Or maybe this cold has led to some kind of strange brain infection and I'll be a giant mess of bitterness and tears tomorrow.

Happy Belated Anniversary to me

Well me and D.G. of course. Thursday was our 10th wedding anniversary. Does that make us an old married couple now? We weren't planning anything big and it's a good thing because I came down with a cold last weekend and I can't shake it so we just hung out and watched TV together for a couple hours after a yummy supper with D. (It all came out of the freezer, but it was still yummy.). He did get me some lovely flowers and we will go out without D once I feel human again, but the celebration will stay low key.  We already have our anniversary present, which is one of the things I have been using as an excuse to avoid the blogging world in the last month. (will post more on that later.)

If I needed proof that nobody bothers to remember anything themselves and instead depends on FB to remind them of birthdays and anniversaries, this was it. The only "happy anniversary"s we got came from my parents and his mom (nope, still not speaking to her) and my friend E whose anniversary happens to be the day before ours. Nothing from our siblings, wedding attendants or friends who attended the wedding because we didn't post anything on FB. This of course left me feeling losery on top of the sick, but only mildly. Hey, I already wrote most of them off anyways. (G, you are completely excused what with the explosion and all that day. No really there was a workplace explosion on the day of my anniversary.)

18 months

Thanks to coincidence and the fact that no one can count on it being warm enough to be outside for a whole afternoon by mid-October, I will always have the option to mark the 1/2 year anniversaries of Reid's birth/death in a big way. The local Walk to Remember is first Saturday of October so it will always be within 4 days maximum of October 3rd. I must admit that it was much nicer to look forward to the walk than the fact that my little boy should be 18 months old today. Despite the fact that is was a cool, gray day, it was still a nice afternoon and a wonderful way to remember so many babies.

 

 

I have mentally made today a sort of deadline for myself. I keep telling myself that after today it will be alright for me to start sorting out and cleaning up all of Reid's things in "the baby room". It probably will be at least a couple more days until I get started due to the fact that I have a nasty cold, but I am going to start soon. I have a new place for all the really precious things in our newly re-decorated bedroom. (You knew I had to be doing something in the last month, I certainly haven't been blogging.)

I wish I could have a picture of what Reid would have looked like as a 1 1/2 year old. Why can't we get pictures in the mail from that place where everything turned out okay and we are living happy lives with our children? It's been long enough that I know I can't wish him back into existence here, but I still want updates from that other place.

For Evel's 2nd

17 months

I'm glad I didn't realize that the 2nd/3rd of this month fell on Friday/Saturday. D.G. was even off work this Friday so it would have been a lot too much deja vu for me to handle if I had thought about it in advance. Of course the way my brain is working these days, I probably would have forgotten about it a few hours later. I was in the grocery store yesterday and thought I should pick up some gerbera's for today. I spent 30 minutes in the store and never remembered to go back to the floral area. I can read stories from Faces of Loss and think "how awful for that woman, how did she get through that loss?" and then I remember that I had a different (or similar) yet also horrible loss and I end up on the floor crying.

Today, I had such a clear picture of a chubby little boy trying to keep up with his big sister as she ran down the sidewalk at full speed. He'd never be able to catch her, but that wouldn't stop him from trying. I miss that little boy so much.

Random Questions

All asked by D on Wednesday:

D: "Why did he get cut with a knife?" - While driving and listening to Cuts Like a Knife by Bryan Adams.
Me: "His feelings got hurt and it feels like getting cut but, NOBODY is cutting anybody with a knife"
D: "OK Mommy"

D: "What's a freak?" - While driving and listening to Raise Your Glass by Pink, which she has heard a thousand times before.
Me: : "It's a not nice name for someone who is different. You should never call someone a freak, it's very mean."
D: " OK Mommy. What's for lunch?"

D: "What do the angels do with the babies?" Completely out of the blue while eating lunch.
Me: (Stunned silence) " I don't know honey, but I hope it's very nice and that the angels take good care of the babies."
D: "OK Mommy"

flowers

I seem to only have one mode lately, tired. I know, it's not really unexpected for me to be tired right now, but summer is going to end soon (I do live in the great frozen North) and I shouldn't spend the nicest time of the year sleeping (and neglecting my blogs.)

My cousin's wedding was okay for the most part. The center pieces at the reception (and the party the day after) were red gerbera daisies. I know that the choice had nothing to do with me or Reid, but it was still nice to see them everywhere. I tried to tell my aunt (the bride's mom) this but I could barely get the words our between sobs (The hormones are definitely kicking in.) She already knew that I associate red gerbera daisies with Reid, so she wasn't confused as to why I was blubbering over the flowers.

The other blog

So if anyone wants to check it out (and I won't be hurt if you don't or can't) my subsequent pregnancy blog is here: Hello Thing 3.

16 Months

Well yesterday was and it was one of the hardest days I have in ages. I broke down crying in the middle of trying to make lunch. (I can't remember the last time I broke down crying without there being a specific reason.) Stress, hormones, Reid's anniversary and everything else are wearing me down. I find myself wishing for a weekend alone in my bed, you know like the "good old days", a year ago when the pain was new and raw. I always miss my baby boy, but right now it feels like the ache and desperate longing has returned.

Long ago and far away

D's birthday is on Tuesday. I am exhausted from the party preparations (I can't help but go a little overboard for her birthday) but a little freaked out too. We found I was pregnant with Reid right after D's birthday 2 years ago which means this is the start of thinking of everything that happened while I was pregnant with Reid as "2 years ago". It seems so long ago when you say it that way.

Telling the most important person

We told D this week about Thing 3. I felt like we had to because I am showing and I REALLY didn't want her to find out when somebody (who has no idea how scary a subsequent pregnancy is) walked up to me and said, "When is the new baby due?". We told her that she would always be Reid's big sister but that there was now another baby who we hoped would come home and live with us. I showed her the little snippet of video on my phone that I snuck out of the U/S clinic after the NT scan. Then she wanted to see pictures of herself in mommy's tummy which lead to looking through the one album of printed pictures we have of her. (We do have thousands of pictures, they are just all digital files on the computer). Then D surprised us by saying she wanted to see pictures of Reid in mommy's tummy too. Well I wasn't about to say no to that, so I went and got the album I made for him and she went all the way through it. She even looked at the pictures taken of Reid after he died although she got a little confused about them. (I think she has an idea that "dead" looks different but she couldn't explain herself.) Going through that album with her made D.G. cry, but I was just so happy that she asked to see the pictures of Reid and that she does think of him as part of our family.

Why don't they have mental ex-lax?

Sorry if this is really gross but most people reading this have been pregnant. I am so constipated, mentally, emotionally and literally. The literal one is the most annoying but at least there are treatments for it. Besides, it's normal for me, every time I've gotten a positive test I've gotten blocked up. The constipation even outlasted the pregnancy in March.

I intended to write something here every day for the last week, but when I find the time, either I find an excuse to not even open my laptop or I can't get anything out of head onto the screen. I have at least three ideas for posts but can't actually write them. Days are passing but things inside my head are frozen. When big things happen, like the bleeding, the words can force their way out but little things that happen every day and slowly wear me down aren't enough to get things out of my head.

And I'm not just neglecting this blog, I started another one for the pregnancy stuff, not that I can say that this pregnancy is not directly related to Reid's death, but it's just a place to keep track of what happens and to blather on about this pregnancy (and look at tickers . I still don't know if it's worth making it public, especially if I can't write anything, but if I don't, no one will know why we're calling this baby Thing 3. (yeah the 3 part is kinda obvious but there's more to it than that.)

Good news

Scan went well and all looks good with Thing 3. Obviously I am very relieved but still worried. There is no explanation for the bleeding and the actual point of the scan was to screen for problems and there is still the possibility of this baby having one of those problems. It would be so much easier if I could just go back to being naive and blindly hopeful.

Should know something today

I meant to post an update last night, but the power went out for most of the evening and took my internet connection with it. (It was sunny and clear, but not super hot so we have no idea why we had no electricity for 2.5 hours.) No blood since Monday at noon (knock on wood) so I am optimistic about this scan today, but still very nervous. I will let you all know as soon as I can.

Settling in for the wait

Thank you for all the love and support in the last 24 hours. Things seem to have settled down and there was only brownish tinted CM today. Of course I spent most of the day laying in bed and reading to avoid any exertion and do as little thinking (=worrying) as possible. I discovered that 1 TV show is not enough to distract me anymore and at one point was watching the women's worl.d cup soc.cer match, the brit.ish open and The Princess Diaries at the same time. (My husband was so proud of my channel surfing)

I already had an appointment for a NT scan for this Thursday so I am going to do my best to hold on until that appointment. Which I admit will be easier to do if there is no new bleeding.

I was just getting to the point where I was started to allow myself to get excited about this. I was thinking I needed to take a picture of the belly I can't really hide anymore and now, I'm not sure there is a point.

D.G. and I went out for his birthday tonight. We stuffed ourselves with fabulous food and then I went on a perfectly innocent trip to the washroom. There was blood, not a lot and not new blood, but enough to freak me out and ruin our evening. (Well really any amount of blood is enough to freak me out right now.) I want to believe I just overdid the scrubbing of the bathroom floors this morning, but I can't write this off and not worry. How do I make myself believe that there is still a chance things are okay?

I guess it's time

A while back Suzy posted asking about how long would a normal person stare at 2 pink lines. Well, I by no means qualify as normal anywhere but here in Dead Baby Land, but I am still staring at mine 7 weeks later. I know it's completely un-hygienic, but I can't bring myself to toss them away so there they sit on the back of the toilet, reassuring me that it really did happen and I am currently knocked up. (We do have an ensuite so D and the general public don't see them.)

Mostly I am anxious and afraid to tell anyone (including you guys), but this is better than the alternatives of either having lost another little one or not conceiving at all. We told everyone right about this point (11 weeks) with both D and Reid but right now we have just told the people who need to know or that are guaranteed to be helpful no matter what happens. We won't be able to keep this a secret for too much longer as I already am showing (thanks to combination of leftover belly and this being #3) and my summer clothes are not good for hiding things.

So far everything is "normal" but I am trying to not let myself get carried away with plans for January and beyond. Please stick with me for the long wait ahead.

Getting the word out

A few days before we left on our trip to visit my parents, one of the founders of my support group asked if D.G. and I would be willing to do an interview with our local paper about our story. They had hoped to get a story in the paper before the big fundraising golf tournament in June, but the call from the paper didn't come until 2 weeks after. We did a phone interview from my parents' house on June 23rd, but the article didn't appear in the paper in yesterday. I know sharing this will potentially blow any illusion of privacy I have about my blog (and I do know that privacy is an illusion) but I still feel compelled to do it.

Now I must preface this with the information that the reporter who interviewed us and the support group founder was really young and did not understand anything about pregnancy or loss so some of the article just sounds off. He also got the background about Lori-Ann's losses wrong in addition to spelling D.G.'s name incorrectly throughout the whole article. Despite those issues, I think the article still gets the message out that there is support here for those who are dealing with loss and that's what is important.

The article is on-line here.

Real Progress

I did something on Sunday that I haven't done since well before Reid died. (Unless you count buying rubber boots at W*lm*rt, and as a recovering shoe addict I don't.) I bought a new pair of shoes. I knew they were meant to be mine when I found out they only had the display left and they were size 10's. (Please ignore my ugly, un-pedicured feet).

I also was hunting for a necklace to wear with the dress I bought for my cousin's wedding in August but that was totally frustrating and unproductive. (The shoe shopping was also frustrating but at least I found something in the end.) I spent a few pleasant hours on Et.sy over the last 2 days and was rewarded with finding this necklace although I could have bought at least a dozen that didn't go with the dress. Internet shopping is so much more pleasant than real-life shopping. No getting dressed, no internal comparisons with other shoppers that leave your self-esteem at microscopic levels, no dealing with sales people and no unexpected baby sitings.

My 15 months is someone else's 1 year

Sending love to Missy on Chai's first birthday. I have been thinking of you all day and I hope that all of your plans turned out beautifully. I am still searching for the perfect wind chime for my garden to remind me of you and Chai and I can't wait to hear them outside my window.

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We've been home for nearly a week and I've just been in this really weird place. I'm trying to just avoid thinking, about anything, altogether. Today mark's 15 months since Reid died and by now he should be this walking, talking little person. I still wonder what he would look like and what his voice would sound like (and what it would be like to be a relatively normal person. Seriously I don't really remember. It's like everything that happened before Reid happened to someone else.) I just want to survive the next couple months until D goes back to preschool and I can go back to my semi-comfortable routine where I hide from the world most of the time and suffer no guilt about D not having enough time with other kids.

Road trip

Just a quick note to say we're on the road, visiting my parents and then some friends. I'm sure I'll have some things to say when this is all over, but for now all my energy is being spent helping my mom pack up the house I grew up in. Love to you all.

(and b, I'm waiting for your good news)

Garden progress

Here is the site of the future "Reid ----- Memorial Garden". The trees are Tartarian maples and will develop red seed pods this summer and of course the beautiful red leaves maples are known for in fall. The one lonely plant is a hosta that I saved from the mess this area was before the new tress were planted. There are also some daffodils that I tried to save, but I won't know if it worked until next spring so I might buy some bulbs just to make sure I have daffodils next spring.



These three will be moving to a corner of Reid's garden shortly. We received them almost 10 years ago as a wedding gift and while we were a family of three (who weren't missing any family members) they were just right. Now, they are a reminder of what we aren't. I have my mom on the look out for more of the little birds. I want one for Reid now and hopefully someday there will be a need to buy a third one.

Right Where I Am: 1 year, 2 months and 10 days

(This is a very late entry to Angie's amazing Right Where I Am Project. Grieving has done wonders for my ability to procrastinate.)

I've had weeks to think about this but I'm still not exactly sure where I am in my grief these days. I still love and miss my son desperately, but that isn't going to change, ever, and I'm learning to live with that. At the very least, I've accepted that I need to learn how to live with it and I think that's a positive step. What I haven't figured out is who I am now and how I should relate to the rest of the world. The grieving process for the "old me" is even more complex than the one for grieving my child and the majority of this post is about me, not the son I lost.

I had to look at the ticker on my blog to see exactly how long it's been since Reid died. I stopped dreading the arrival of every Friday evening a few months in, but for the first couple months just the mention of Friday was enough to send me off the deep end. I remember that the 3rd of each month is an anniversary, but I no longer feel bad if I have do something more than get dressed and take care of my daughter that day.

I still cringe every time I see a family a with 2 or more young children. The closer the family is to the one I thought I'd have, the more painful the cringe is. I know some of those parents have gone through tough times to create those families, but I also know that the vast majority were able to do it without much effort at all and I hate them for it. (It sounds awful but I really do feel a rush of hatred and anger towards these random people. Once I'm away from them, it fades away but the feelings still show up.) I also still feel pain every time I see a pregnant woman. Whether that comes from missing Reid or the frustration of not being pregnant again, I can't say.

I have definitely been seriously depressed in the last year and had some very low points. I think my baseline emotional level has been reset to something sadder and darker than before so it takes a lot less to make me really upset and a lot more for me to be any kind of happy. I think I've gotten pretty good at faking something close to "normal" when out in public but I don't know for sure because I don't spend time with anyone who I could ask, "Do I seem like a normal person?". I still find the faking it exhausting so I pretty much avoid any social contact that I can.

After right Reid died and I recovered from the c-section, I actually spent quite a bit of time with a few friends. Then I was away for a couple weeks and noticed that if I didn't initiate the plans with these people, no invitations came my way. It felt like they had just been saying yes because they felt bad for me, not because they wanted to be with me, so I stopped calling them. Nearly all of my local social circle was people I met through mom's groups after my daughter was born and nearly all of them had babies just before or just after Reid died. There was no way I could make myself be around these people and their children in the early days and now I feel like I have nothing in common with "normal" people. Being around them would be more awkward and painful than anything else. I don't socialize at all and I don't know when I will even want to try.

Apart from a couple people who have made special efforts to keep in touch with me, I have also lost touch with most of my long distance friends as well. Their lives just moved forward and a "hey, how you are doing?" every 6 months doesn't exactly make me feel loved and supported, despite having known some of these people for most of my life. I am angry with some of them but as the anger fades, I just can't be bothered to try to reconnect with these people. They weren't there for me in the worst time of my life, I don't need them in my life. It seems that I am the classic example of the person who lost their child and lost of most of their friends too.

I definitely haven't put much effort into physically taking care of myself since Reid died. I know I dress like I need a fashion intervention, but don't care enough to do any better. I went an entire year without cutting my hair. I wish I could say I was observing some kind of mourning custom but really I couldn't face an hour of social interaction so I just didn't get a hair cut. Not cutting my hair was actually one of the few minor good things about the first year after Reid died because I finally managed to grow out my bangs. (Got to find the good wherever I can these days.)

Right where I am now is a confusing place. I don't cry everyday but that's mostly because I've figured out what I can and can't handle and I rarely let myself be pushed out of that comfort zone. Of course not everyone in my family thinks that this zone is a good place which causes more friction as time goes on. Really though, I am the only person who is living my life and when I'm ready for something different, I'll find a way to make it happen. I've found a way to survive this long, thanks in large part to the wonderful women in the on-line babyloss community, so I have to trust that I'll figure out how to keep on surviving and maybe even one day start living again.

What I've been doing

Work continues on Reid's garden. The new trees are planted and most of the old weeds/plants are gone. I have to replant some plants I tried to save and figure out what else I am adding for plants. I also need to need to do some shopping for garden "accessories" but that should probably wait until fall when things go on sale and D.G. has forgotten how much all the trees cost. I promise I will try to take some pictures this week.

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I've moved on from books solely about grief, to memoirs about getting through shitty times. I read both of Michael J. Fox's books about his life since his Parkinson's diagnosis. (Both good books, especially to a Canadian who loved Family Ties, but I am petty enough that I envy him his family of 4 kids. I know I'm a mess.)

I finished a really interesting book this week, Lonely. It's based on the author's own experiences with loneliness. I know about the nicest thing my own behaviour in the last 9 months could be called is anti-social, so I thought that any loneliness I felt was mostly self-inflicted. There were a lot of interesting points about the way the depression and loneliness can coincide, but that they are separate ailments that need different treatments to over come. Clearly I can't say the the entire book reflected my experience as the author's life is very different from mine, but I definitely had a lot of moments where I recognized myself in the story.

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As for what else I've been up to, really not a lot. I think I found a dress to wear to my cousin's wedding. I made a frame for my dad for Father's Day and have plans to help D make on for D.G. and to help D.G. make one for his dad. D only has one more week of preschool left and then somehow I have to figure out how to get her some social interaction that doesn't feel like torture to me. And cooking has been feeling like torture to me because I can't figure out what to cook for "summer" meals and it's too soon to let whatever is ready to eat from the garden/farmer's market decide what we should eat.

They're everywhere

I have one of these. The stroller is in the rafters of the garage because we got tired of tripping over it and there's no one here who needs a stroller. The car seat is in the closet in the "baby room". Clearly I have no use for it, but why the hell is it suddenly everywhere? The grocery store, the library, and the park. There are 2 at D's dance class. We bought the damn thing over 4 years ago so why are there more around now than when we were happily using it?

Is anyone else surrounded by other people using the same things you had for your baby?

It's June now, right?

I think I might finally be warm again. I spent Friday volunteering at the golf tournament fundraiser that my support group holds every year. (Last year when we golfed it was sunny and warm.) It was cold and rainy and windy and I was only prepared for the rainy part, not the cold part. Then D had a soccer game on Saturday morning and it was still cold. It was frickin' 5°C Saturday morning (41°F for the SI impaired readers) so I wore my winter jacket and long underwear. I didn't have time to dig out my mittens so my hands froze and it took hours of cuddling with my hot water bottle to get warm (I love you Merry.)

I don't know where I've been for the last few days. I barely read any blogs, I definitely wasn't writing anything. (I want to both read all the posts and write my own contribution to the Right Where I Am project but it hasn't happened yet.) I closed myself in my room and read all the non-Right Where I Am posts in my reader this morning but there were only a few comments written. (Sorry ladies I know I suck.) It's not like I spend all my time watching TV since all the season is over and hockey is down to the finals so there's only been 2 games in the last week. Time just seems to be slipping away from me.

Normal?

I burned myself today. A nice second-degree one right on the knuckle of my right thumb from the wind guard on the side of our BBQ . I got it while flipping the pork chops I was making for supper. It's the most normal "old me" thing I have done in months. I used to burn myself while cooking or baking on regular basis, mostly because I was in a hurry and/or trying to do too many things at once. I usually had a healing burn or very recent scar on my hands/arms most of the time. Am I supposed to be happy that I burned myself because it's a recognizable part of who I used to be?

I don't need this crap

This post is one long, long rant. I just need to get this off my chest since it has been upsetting for the last 3 days and was made even worse this evening. Let the ranting begin....


How did my daughter end up with such an asshole for an uncle? I can deal with having an asshole for a brother, but I'm a grown up. She's three and completely lovable, she shouldn't have to put up with that kind of shit. My brother still has never acknowledged Reid or his death or our loss or anything close to it, (I know that the donation that was made in his memory for his 1st birthday was completely the work of my SIL.) but it appears that he is aiming to make that seem like good behaviour.

He has some long time grudge he's holding against me. No one (me or my mom) knows what it actually is just that it is old (either back to the end of high school or the beginning of university which is at least 11 years ago.) I will admit I wasn't very supportive of him when he went through a rough period, but at least I acknowledged his issues. And I was a typical 19-20 year old, self-absorbed and pretty shallow. And we had plenty of arguments when we were forced to share portions of a house and a car in university but there is no big unforgivable incident (at least that I can remember) . It took him a while to get it together, but he currently has a lovely (too good for him) wife and child and just a got promotion at work so it's not like his life was destroyed by whatever he thinks I did. (And I would like to think I would know if I had done something life destroying.) I thought we were getting along pretty well when I first moved here. He had lived here for a couple years at that point. He seemed to be completely in love with D for the first couple years of her life. He and SIL moved away a 2 1/2 years ago and they still came to see D when they were in the city. I don't know exactly when the grudge became the main feature of our relationship, but it's definitely there now. I would think that by having to endure the death of a child, I would have suffered enough for him to let his grudge go, but it hasn't happened. He no longer has any patience for D and doesn't make an effort to call her or spend time with her.

There is a family wedding in their city this summer and I (stupidly, apparently) assumed that both us and my parents would be staying with my brother and SIL. After SIL came to visit last week and we talked about plans for that weekend, he got quite worked up about my heinous assumption (and other ridiculous suggestions for the weekend like getting a babysitter for D and my niece so we could all stay later at the reception.) In a very mature move, he chose to complain to my mom about it instead just calling me. My mom is overly sensitive about sibling stress because of her family history and over course she wants me to do whatever it takes to placate him. Since, I did assume we could stay there without actually asking I agreed to call him and apologize and ask nicely, mostly for my mom's sake. I still think she should have told him that if had had a problem with me he should tell me himself but that didn't happen.(but really is it crazy to assume that we would stay with my brother when attending a family wedding? They have plenty of space in their house for us and my parents to stay there.) Of course my mom picked a day when I was having a very rough time and was very emotional to call about this so it resulted in at least an hour of crying on my part.

I waited until a time (this evening) when I was calm and could restrain from making sarcastic comments about how he handled this. I also waited for a time on the weekend when I thought he wouldn't be too tired (grouchy) from being at work all day. I asked about his daughter and his day and then apologized for assuming we could stay with them and asked if we could. His reply. "Mom and Dad have already asked and T(a cousin, who has plenty of friends in the city) have asked." No, "I'm sorry" or "I wish we had more space". I tried to calmly inform him that he would be disappointing both my parents and D and that D missed him. His reply, "What do you want me say?". I said I would like it if he said he was sorry or felt bad that we wouldn't be staying there, but since that clearly wasn't the case I was going to say goodbye because I was getting upset.

So now I know why he got all worked up. He didn't want us to stay with them. You know, if it was just me and D.G., I could handle it. (In fact I might prefer it.) But how am I supposed to tell D, that she can't stay with her cousin and her uncle and auntie and grandparents? How do I explain to here that her uncle is mad at mommy for something that happened long before she was born? And how many times I am supposed to humiliate myself in the name of family harmony before my mom stops expecting me to "be the bigger person"? Why is it okay that he has never acknowledged Reid, because "it's probably hard for him" while I attended his daughter's baptism at the same time I was effectively miscarrying a baby we spent 10 months trying to conceive.


If you read all this, thank you. The only person who I feel can really vent about my brother to is my mom and she doesn't like it so I'm left with all this crap stuck inside my head.

Yard Plans

We are lucky enough to have a pretty big backyard. There's a decent size garden (for a city), 2 huge flower beds and even a big planter that was formerly a pond, but we converted it to prevent D from using it as a swimming pool. There's also plenty of space of D to run around and enough grass for D.G. to obsess over and make green so he can feel manly.

Our backyard is looking very different right now. Mostly it looks really naked. (The fence painting on the weekend is next to unnoticeable since we kept the paint colour the same) We had 2 dying birch trees in our back yard. One of then has been cut down and the other should come out today along with the stumps. Last Sunday I went and spent a butt-load of money on 5 new trees and a couple new shrubs and having them professionally planted. I am a little scared by how much money I've spent. Not that we are broke, but more that I'm afraid something else catastrophic will happen and we will need the money for necessities not landscaping. The only thing that is letting me spend the money is that I'm planning to turn one of the areas where the new trees are being planted into the " Reid ----- Memorial Garden". The plaque might just be in my head, but that's what it will be. Hopefully the new trees will be planted in the next week and it will not look like a sadly neglected mess.

May Long

It's Victoria Day here in Canada on Monday (as in Queen Victoria) and Canadians celebrate the current Queen's birthday by spending a long weekend doing yard work, going camping, drinking beer on patio or a combination of all three. Being a depressed, anti-social mom to a preschooler, who is also ttc, means that my options are limited to yard work. Luckily we do have a yard. We spent most of today painting our fence and preparing to have 2 dying trees removed from the back yard. D loved painting with us and actually can slap enough paint onto a fence to help a little bit. It was hard work (my arms and hands are whining, loudly) but we spent the day together as a family and if the world had ended today as predicted by some, then really, it was a pretty good way to spend my last day.

Tonight at supper we were trying to explain to D that she is our daughter. (She is working on understanding relationships beyond who is a mommy or daddy to a specific child.) She seemed to understand that she is my daughter but then she said "Daddy is your son". I corrected her and said that Daddy is my husband (even though there are times when he leaves clothes all over the floor and I feel like his mother) and Reid is my son and we went on to talk about how everyone is somebody's son or daughter, even when they are babies and when they are grown up. The topic changed a little but then she suddenly said,

"I promise to to not die Mommy and Daddy, not ever, ever, ever."

What could I say, except for, "I really, really hope not sweetie." I can't tell my 3 year old that everyone dies someday, I can't scare her like that. She already knows that babies die, I don't want her worrying about mommies and daddies dying too. I'm sort of proud that she is already kind enough to not want to make us sad the way Reid's death has, but really she shouldn't know about of any of this at all.

fake

Remember back when you were first starting to deal with losing your child (or maybe you are just going through this right now) and the advice you got was "fake it til you make it"? Well, it feels like I've gotten really good at faking it, but I haven't made it at all. The veneer over the mess has gotten so thick that I have 2 new problems: 1) "everyone" thinks I'm "okay" when I definitely am not and 2) the mess is trapped inside and I can't let things out even when I want to. (Hence the lack of posts here.) I took D to a park on Wednesday and of course the place was crawling with babies, bellies and moms with multiple kids. Inside I was seething with rage and kicking myself for going to that particular park, but nothing would come out, not even once we were at home and safe from all the triggers. I hate having all these emotions swirling around inside me all the time without having any way to deal with them. It seems like the only time the emotions can escape is during yoga class when I'm supposed to be relaxing and really it doesn't seem like dealing with my emotions once a week is a healthy thing.

Last week

I am still waiting to get my comments on my last post back. It was so weird that while Blogger was down, I wanted to post and as soon as I could post, the urge went away.

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Mother's day (a week ago already) was a very low key event. I managed to make the required phone calls to my mom and grandmother, but didn't talk to anyone else. I hung out in bed and read most of the morning. We went out and had ice cream for lunch. D.G. got me red gerbera daisies and helped D to make a picture frame for me. (It features a little more glitter and a few more happy face flower stickers than I used on the ones I made, but it's still has a place on my dresser next to our wedding pictures.) D.G. also made supper and then D and I watched part of Cinderella (one of two real movies she will watch) and I painted our toenails.


It was a vast improvement on last year, that's for sure.

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This past week I should have had the NT scan and been almost done the first trimester, you know, if I had stayed pregnant longer than 2 weeks. It has caused more than a few twinges in the last few days, but they are just a few more "should have"s on the giant pile of "Reid should have been"s that I try not to look at too often.

A minor epiphany in yoga class

I was in my yoga for grief support class this afternoon, trying to relax into savasana, when I got hit with a realization. I know I've said or felt things similar to it before, but it was like it was dawning on me for the first time. I had been feeling less than great all class because the instructor started the class by asking us to chose an "intention" for the class, a feeling that we wanted to be our own internal theme for the class. Of course I couldn't chose one because I can't set any type of goals for my self. Then as we were laying there in the final relaxation portion of the class she mentioned the intention again and suddenly this "new" truth was in my mind.

I am grieving for myself, not only my son, but "me" too. I lost so much of "me" when Reid died that it feels like there isn't enough of me left to make a whole person. I lost who I was and who I could have been as Reid's mom.

I cried somewhat quietly through most of savasana, although if there had been somewhere that I could have gone and outright bawled without an audience, I would have run out of class.

All the babyloss books talk about dealing with the loss of a child but where is the book that tells me how to deal with the losing myself? Where are the condolence cards for the loss of self? How the hell am I ever going to feel better? (Notice I don't ask for happy or good, just better which for me is anything better than not seriously depressed.)

Even the day before isn't fun

Today, being a DBM definitely did not make me a better mom to D. Today we had her first soccer practice. It wasn't a hardcore practice. mostly just a get together to hand out jerseys and information and meet the other parents. D.G. is the coach for D's team despite having zero organized soccer experience, but they needed volunteers and I volunteered him (with his permission). D was fine for the first part of the practice, the run around with the other kids while we waited for everyone to arrive part. She was as excited as anyone else to get her jersey and start kicking a ball, but when her daddy started actually coaching, she melted down. Just cried non-stop. "I want to go home.", "I want my daddy, he's my favorite" (not true, she's a total mommy's girl), "I don't want to play soccer anymore". I was patient for about the first 2 minutes, then my patience ran out. I didn't completely snap, but I was definitely pretty hard on her. I tried asking nicely, I tried bribing her, I resorted to threatening her, nothing would get her to stop crying and go play with the other kids. The other parents probably think I'm a complete bag but D just was being impossible and I was stressed from being around all these new people and their multiple living children. (Is depressed/nuts better than being a bag?)

I hate that I was so impatient with D at any time, but especially on the day before M-day. It makes me feels like a such a bad, ungrateful mother. Thank goodness 3 year olds have short memories, because she was fine 10 minutes after we got home. I wasn't, but she was. I am so lucky to have her here with me, but on a bad day it doesn't make it any easy to deal with typical 3 year old behaviour. Ugh.

Love to all you mama's "celebrating" tomorrow, especially to those who don't have a little set of arms to give them a M-day hug tomorrow morning.

13 Months

Do I still get to count the months? I know if Reid was here, I would say I had a 13 month old, not just a 1 year old, so I know I want keep counting the months. I miss Reid so much and sometimes I still can't believe that the baby boy I carried will never grow up and be a little boy or a big boy or a man. The last 13 months have gone by so quickly but the last 395 days have crawled by. Each day seems so long and filled with an endless number of reminders and triggers and things to just force myself to just get through, but then I can't believe how much time has passed since this all started.

I am still reading books written by other babyloss moms and by this point they all seem to have either a subsequent baby/pregnancy or some deeper spiritual understanding of the experience or even both by this point. Clearly I have neither of these and obviously have no idea how to achieve them either. (Well I understand how babies are supposed to be conceived but that hasn't made it happened.) Am I just a really slow learner or I am going to be stuck here in Dead Baby Land forever?

Back again

I'm back. I didn't spend the whole weekend pouting and nothing is any worse than it was 5 days ago, but for some reason I just didn't want to be here. I didn't even read the posts in my reader which is something that hasn't happened in the last year unless I didn't have access to a computer. I can't say why I didn't want to read or write and it's not like I was too busy doing other stuff either. (major procrastination on the Mother's Day front)

On to the important stuff. The winner of the Mother's Day giveaway is .... Dana. She has been a wonderful supporter for me and I am happy to be able to do something for her on her first Mother's Day after the loss of her baby boy, Jacob.

Thank you for all the compliments and for making me feeling better about my crafting projects (and myself).

....


Today was the first day this year when the temperature outside got above the temperature inside the house. Today was also Federal Elec.tion Day here in Canada so I took D and we walked to the polling station and then on to the park. Of course, at the park was a mom with a little girl and a baby boy. D and the little girl started playing together immediately. I'm sure the mom thought I was some kind of stick up bitch or complete weirdo since I could barely look at her and the baby boy. Thank goodness for giant Jackie O style sunglasses.

Pouting

Well now I am feeling capital L Loser-y, because only 4 people (and I love you 4) are interested in my giveaway (or they are willing to fake interest out of pity.) Seriously, I have very low self esteem these days and any form of rejection makes me freak out. Is this any more appealing? (I thought it turned out pretty well.)


This one is for my mom. My parents' house used to be bright yellow so I associate that colour with my mom. (They are also moving out of that house this summer after 34 years in it.)