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?