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).

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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.