Hello Goodbye

I want to punch someone

2012-02-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

" This pregnancy thing is a breeze... "

This is a direct quote from a fb status of one of my SIL's best friends. She has serious health issues that could make her pregnancy high-risk and she knows about Reid and has other friends who are infertile, yet she is posting crap like this. It just makes me so angry to see things like this, even as I sit nursing my beautiful daughter. Pregnancy is not a breeze, it's hard work physically, emotionally, mentally. It's a freaking endurance test that exhausts and terrifies incredibly strong women. It's the exact opposite of a breeze, it's a tornado of emotional and/or physical challenges and I just want to punch anyone who thinks differently.

1 Month In

2012-02-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

I totally intended to post last night, but we spent the whole evening trying to keep C.S. from yelling the house down. She would nurse for 10 minutes, sleep (on me) for 10 minutes and then wake up and start over again. I am hoping that it was just gas but we will see how she is tonight.

I feel like I have no instinct or memory of how to be a good mom to a newborn. I have done it once semi-successfully before so I expected to feel more confident this time around, but I just seem to see potential disaster in every decision no matter how small or inconsequential. I just to want to be able to feel like I am doing my best as C.S.'s mom and that feeling isn't there.

C.S. is growing and beautiful and now that her face has filled out, she looks like her brother when she is asleep. And every time I see him in her face, I want to sob and yell and scream that he never got to be a month old.

Here is C.S. in all her 1 month old glory, all 8.5 lbs of her:

2012-02-08T22:04:00.000-07:00

Will someone please tell me I'm not a bad mommy for taking drugs and giving up on natural remedies?

I have been fighting a nasty thrush infection since C.S. was about a week old. It happened when D was a newborn too so I should have been better prepared for it but naively assumed that having done this once before and checking out some breastfeeding websites was enough to prevent it. I have been trying to fight it with natural remedies, but I am officially throwing in the towel and taking the high powered pharmaceuticals. I am tired of having shooting pains after every feed and curling my toes at the start. I had an appointment with a lactation consultant today and it so so nice to see a medical professional who not only supports breastfeeding, but is also up to date on current knowledge. (There was a totally pointless appointment with the doctor covering for my GP last week.) The LC supported the natural remedies I was using and prescribed the medication I knew I should be getting. I just hope these drugs work so I can stop crying about my boobs and save the tears for my real issues.

Photos

2012-02-07T21:18:00.000-07:00

Today C.S. is 4 weeks old and we celebrated by having a newborn photo shoot with my friend E. We did one with D and still have some of the pictures from it up. We also had plans to to do one for Reid which made getting ready for the photo shoot pretty emotional for me. I know we will treasure C.S.'s pictures forever, but there will always be a set of baby pictures missing from the walls of our house.

22 months

2012-02-03T16:02:00.002-07:00

It's the first "3rd" since C.S. arrived. Having her here doesn't make it any better that Reid isn't, but it definitely leaves less room in my brain for thinking about it. I want to have come to some wise conclusion about how to deal with missing my son while loving my new daughter but wisdom is well beyond the ability of my sleep-deprived brain. I just know that there is still a Reid-shaped hole in my heart, despite the fact that there is a new C.S.-shaped piece of heart there too.

My friend sent me these flowers right after C.S. arrived.

I don't think she could have done any better. It's the perfect representation of my children and my heart.

I can't believe that it's only 2 more months until Reid's 2nd birthday. 2 years seems like forever and in some ways it has been. So many things have changed in the last 2 years. I'm trying to believe that C.S.'s arrival is the start of a happier chapter of my life (thus the new "cheerier" blog design), but I know that I still have plenty of sad moments left to go through too. I hope you will all stick around even if I start blogging about good days with D and C.S. and my attempts to be crafty in between posts about missing Reid. I still need the support of my fellow DBM's to get through the rough days and I hope to share the good days with you too.

Very brief update on Thing 3

2012-01-14T22:33:00.000-07:00

Reid is officially a big brother! Will post more soon.

Reid Inspired Craftiness

2012-01-08T21:27:00.001-07:00

Lots of pictures today. First here are some pics of the ornament I received from Akemi for the Remembering Together Holiday Swap. It's beautiful (and I don't care that it was late, I'm just happy it finally arrived) and I'm glad that I didn't totally screw up Jenni's wonderful swap so badly that I didn't receive an ornament. Please excuse the pictures without a Christmas tree as ours came down last week. (when it looked like Thing 3 would arrive on the 4th.)

With Thing 3's arrival getting closer and closer, the urge to do (or at least plan) some crafts and projects for them has arrived too. I do plan to post some pictures of the blanket, hat and booties I made while in bedrest although I'm not sure where to post them. (I do know I will wait until after the arrival because they are pretty gender specific and I am enjoying torturing some friends with the suspense). We have also bought the supplies to make wall hangings of both D and Thing 3's names for their rooms. (D is getting a set as a way to help her feel included in all the baby hoopla.) This of course made me want to do Reid's name in some way too. 9" tall letters spelling out his name in the baby room seemed like a bit too much but then I came across an idea while researching how to do the other 2 names.

I love how they turned out. D helped me paint the red background and the the blue argyle pattern is very close to the argyle pattern fabric that I used for his baby blanket. One side is uppercase letters and the opposite side is lower case letters:

This is where the blocks are going to stay for now, on a shelf in the "baby room" where I can see then while while I sit and rock Thing 3. I think they will be a perfect but subtle reminder of Thing 3's big brother.

And now I'm off to have a good cry because while making this made me happy, writing about it has made me really sad.

21 months

2012-01-03T17:29:00.000-07:00

In my head I debated on whether or not I would write a 21 months post. Then today happened and I needed to write something, sorry if it's rambling and disjointed.

I know this next little while is going to be filled with reminders of things that I didn't get to do for Reid. (that is if Thing 3 ever comes out and comes to live with us.) I had a huge cry yesterday in the shower just thinking of all the things I wish I would done for Reid after he died. Good thing I didn't get started on all the things I wish I could have done with a living child or I would still be in there crying.

There will still be lots of chances for me to say, ".. and my son would be 21 months old if he had lived." over the next little while too. I plan to take every chance I get so that a least a few people will think of Reid in the middle of the fuss over Thing 3's arrival (at least I hope there will be a baby to make a fuss over).

I really wanted to make the 3rd a less crappy day for myself by making it the day before a really good day but the universe (or whoever is in charge of fetal development) didn't agree with that plan. Not much I can do about it, but I am so fed up with having my plans tossed out the window.

2012

2012-01-02T10:41:00.000-07:00

I had plans to write a proper New Year post, but coming down with a nasty cold overnight as the calendar rolled over to 2012 nixed that plan. We actually "celebrated" New Year's this year by having a family potluck and fireworks watching party. Our community sets off the big fireworks display at 8 pm on New Year's Eve and we live close enough to the park where they do it that we can see the big fireworks from our back yard. It sounds quite festive and "normal", but it wasn't an a coincidence that the friends that were invited to joined us only have daughters (or living daughters in one case.)

The waiting for Thing 3's arrival has pretty much taken over our lives the last couple days. The feeling of being stuck in limbo isn't helped by D.G. being off on holidays and all of D's activities being on hold over Christmas. It's hard to go on about our "normal" lives when nothing is normal.(It clearly hasn't been normal since the end of October but at least we had a daily routine to follow.)

I still don't really believe that I am going to get a living baby out of all this, but I just want to be done with it. No more waiting, no more worrying about the delivery or going into labour "early". I also want to be done with all the remembrances of and comparisons to 2 years ago, the last holiday season when I was pregnant. I just want to have this baby and get on with figuring out our new life, whatever that is going to look like.

Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T21:02:00.000-07:00

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

2011-12-24T14:31:00.000-07:00

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

2011-12-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

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

2011-12-07T21:32:00.001-07:00

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

2011-12-03T08:37:00.001-07:00

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

2011-12-01T19:54:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-30T18:54:00.001-07:00

(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

2011-11-18T14:10:00.001-07:00

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

2011-11-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-03T11:39:00.000-06:00

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

2011-10-30T22:41:00.000-06:00

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...

2011-10-25T18:12:00.000-06:00

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

2011-10-24T20:27:00.000-06:00

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

These were about 18” long and they were far from the biggestones that grew. I had so much zucchini and was bringing zucchini based foods toso 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 Istopped blogging, I started socializing on a limited basis again.) I also gavezucchini away to my neighbor and some mommy friends too.

I tried out a recipe for faux crab cakes that was actuallyquite good. D and D.G. both liked it and ate it more than once. I also made atleast 4 different batches of zucchini brownies and a few monster batches ofthese zucchini-carrot-multi-grain muffins that I like to snack on. Then therewas the zucchini cranberry loaf that turned out supper yummy so I made 2 morefor the freezer. And finally a chocolate zucchini bundt cake (that used onlywhole wheat flour) that seemed to be onat 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 myfridge, I would have made them right then. I managed to wait a couple daysbefore baking these, but holy crap were they delicious. The whole pan was gonein 3 days. I would love to make them again, but I have to wait until we aregetting company so I don’t eat them all.

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

2011-10-21T22:13:00.000-06:00

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

2011-10-18T22:25:00.000-06:00

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

2011-10-15T22:27:00.001-06:00

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

2011-10-09T22:26:00.002-06:00

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

2011-10-08T16:32:00.002-06:00

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

2011-10-03T15:43:00.000-06:00

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

2011-09-18T18:35:00.000-06:00

17 months

2011-09-03T21:46:00.000-06:00

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

2011-08-19T11:08:00.000-06:00

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

2011-08-12T22:47:00.000-06:00

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

2011-08-04T23:02:00.001-06:00

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

2011-08-04T07:46:00.002-06:00

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

2011-08-01T06:10:00.001-06:00

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

2011-07-31T15:01:00.003-06:00

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?

2011-07-27T21:49:00.002-06:00

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

2011-07-21T14:08:00.003-06:00

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

2011-07-21T07:14:00.002-06:00

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

2011-07-17T22:27:00.003-06:00

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.

2011-07-16T20:42:00.002-06:00

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

2011-07-10T22:11:00.001-06:00

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

2011-07-06T21:34:00.005-06:00

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

2011-07-05T20:50:00.002-06:00

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

2011-07-03T21:58:00.005-06:00

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.

---

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

2011-06-21T22:31:00.003-06:00

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

2011-06-14T21:21:00.004-06:00

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

2011-06-12T21:35:00.007-06:00

(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

2011-06-10T22:13:00.004-06:00

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.

....

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.

....

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

2011-06-07T13:37:00.003-06:00

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?

2011-06-05T10:18:00.003-06:00

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?

2011-05-31T22:30:00.002-06:00

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

2011-05-28T21:50:00.003-06:00

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

2011-05-25T07:14:00.003-06:00

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

2011-05-21T20:52:00.003-06:00

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

2011-05-19T22:51:00.005-06:00

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

2011-05-15T22:23:00.004-06:00

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.

---

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.

---

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

2011-05-11T22:27:00.000-06:00

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

2011-05-07T20:40:00.004-06:00

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

2011-05-03T21:22:00.002-06:00

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

2011-05-02T21:56:00.004-06:00

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

2011-04-28T15:24:00.003-06:00

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.)

A Quote

2011-04-28T14:11:00.004-06:00

From Resilience by Elizabeth Edwards:

"If I had lost a leg, I would tell them, instead of a boy, no one would ever ask me if I was 'over' it. They would ask me how I was doing learning to walk without my leg. I was learning to walk and to breath and to live without Wade. And what I was learning is that it was never going to be the life I had before."

(Thanks to Brooke for reviewing this book and giving me a push towards reading it for myself.)

Craft = Crutch = Giveaway

2011-04-26T21:31:00.003-06:00

I signed up for the Mother's Day Bouquet swap, organized by the lovely Jenni. And just like the Christmas swap, when I couldn't stop with just one ornament, I am addicted again. (I think I made 7 ornaments and I bought paper to make many more in 2011.) I've already made 2 of these and started 2 more and I think there will be a few more yet.

The bouquet swap has a flower theme, but I don't trust Canada Post to not destroy a delicate parcel so I need a durable kind of project. Also my artistic skills are limited to cutting and gluing paper (as shown by the ornaments), picking colours and arranging things (honed by years of home decorating) so that further limited my options. After searching craft blogs (I wish my "me time" revolved around crafts and not grieving, there are so many cool crafts out there), I came up with a plan and here is what I sent out for the swap:

The frogs are a special reminder for the mom it went to, I hope she loves it. I liked doing it, so I did another one:

I think it will go to my grandmother, she loves teal blue and it will take care of her Mother's Day gift without me going shopping. I'm going to do a yellow one next and then another green one and I'd like to try a different blue too.

But what does this have to do with all of you? Well, in honour of Mother's Day and my 1st blogoversary (which was Sunday), I want to make one of these frames for (at least) one of my wonderful readers. I would make one for all of you, but the shipping would bankrupt me as I have no personal income right now. (D.G. graciously funds all my crafting projects.) All you need to do to win this giveaway is leave me a comment (singing the praises of my floral creations, of course) and let me know what colour you would like your frame to be (green, teal, blue or yellow). If you are in the UK, I know Mother's Day was a month ago, so it will just be really early for next year. If you are in Australia, it's just gonna be late for this year. (Heck it might be late for a North American reader, but I'll do my best.) The cut off for giveaway is Friday at midnight so that should give all my readers a chance to comment.

And just because I want to continue bragging up my (limited) crafting skills, here is a picture of the yoga bag I sewed last weekend. I love the fabric. (For any babywearers out there, yes, I love it because it reminds me of a Didy Ellipsen.)

Trying to be positive for a few minutes

2011-04-26T10:09:00.003-06:00

The snow here has finally almost completely melted. (There are shady spots where the snow will still last a few more days but they are easy to ignore.) This weekend we noticed that a little bit of spring had finally come to our yard.

The tulips seem to have survived the late snow, hopefully they will bloom in time for Mother's Day.

2011-04-25T22:54:00.002-06:00

Survived Easter weekend, but only just barely. D.G. had today off (yes he has a union job) so it was still Easter weekend for us. I did however get a break in the middle of the weekend, when D.G. took D on a day trip to his aunt and uncle's farm to see his sister. I had almost 12 hours completely to myself which hasn't happened in probably the last 4 years. (D.G. has never taken D further away than to the swimming pool for a couple hours on his own.) I watched TV non-stop, ate junk food and even finally sewed myself a new yoga mat bag. Being by myself is just so peaceful, and being alone without a giant to do list is even better. Of course all that peacefulness was wrecked by the arrival of AF Saturday evening. (And now I should ovulate right on Mother's Day when I will no doubt be sexy as hell with my puffy red eyes and snotty nose.)

D.G. and I finished off the weekend tonight with a long, upsetting, emotional and ultimately pointless discussion, although we did avoid an outright fight. The only thing that was accomplished was that I feel more isolated and loser-y than I did this afternoon when I was feeling sad and lonely but could still stop myself from outright crying in public. (Yes, loser-y is a word, I've been using it since 1998.)

Let it be over soon

2011-04-23T07:46:00.003-06:00

I just want Easter over with. I'm sick of seeing all the plastic bunnies and pastel baskets, it just makes me angry. All of it, the secular and the religious, just makes me mad. My baby died last Easter and for some reason this holiday is making me feel much worse than the actual anniversary of his death. Maybe it's because most people don't have a clue that I am seething with anger inside right now. I want nothing to do with Easter and unlike Christmas, I'm not even making an effort for D's sake. I am just barely tolerating the things that our families do (which is mostly sending parcels due to the distance) but I wish I could just banish it all from my life.

You know things are bad when...

2011-04-20T21:29:00.002-06:00

...you are almost grateful that your water heater is leaking.

Today was a disaster. I would tell you the whole awful drawn out story, except my arm hurts too much to type properly. (Merry's hot water bottle is getting a thorough test run tonight.) To sum things up:

- Our water heater started leaking some time last night.
- I had to make 3 trips to the hardware store before I got the damn thing fixed.
- I spent close to 2 hours today standing in cold water.
- My arm is super sore from a combination of using a pipe wrench and wringing out wet towels.
- I was surrounded by perfect looking mommy clones all pushing babies in strollers at D's first dance class today. (The water heater gave me an excuse to get away from the clones.)
- I had to listen to my daughter say to one of hew new friends, "My baby died, did your babies die?" for the first time. (I know the mom of this little girl so no adults freaked out at this question.)
- I was close to tears for most of the day which made me too tired to do much more than be a lump at yoga class.

Small bright spots:
-Our next door neighbor is amazing and saved me from dragging D to the hardware store on trips 2 and 3.
- I did fix the leak without calling a plumber, (go me!) and nothing important got destroyed.

So tired, must sleep now.

I've created a monster

2011-04-17T15:33:00.005-06:00

I received some wonderful gifts for Reid's birthday. However, I will only subject you to my amateur photographic efforts for two of them because while they brought me so much comfort they also had an unexpected side effect.

Lareina gave me a sculpture from Midnight Orange.

I bought myself a present, one of Merry's dragons. (Merry also sent me a gift, but the hot water bottle and cover are not nearly as cute and they arrived together so really it was one big box of gifts.) Gaffer is as cute in person as he is in pictures, but since you are not here, you'll have to settle for a picture:

Now both these presents arrived swaddled in bubble wrap so that they could survive international shipping. When I unwrapped them, I made the mistake of leaving the bubble wrap on the kitchen counter. And what do you do with bubble wrap when you are a kid (or a daddy)? You pop it, of course. And now I have addict on my hands:

D will literally sit there popping bubble wrap for 15 minutes at a time. She will turn down offers to do her favorite activities, reading a story and playing ponies, in favour of popping bubbles. I had hoped to save some of the extra wrap for mailing my own parcels but it looks like it will all be sacrificed to the popping monster.

Extra crazy

2011-04-16T22:33:00.003-06:00

My eyes are sore from too much screen time tonight*, but I need to vent so here I am at 10:30, still up while the rest of the family sleeps.

D.G. and I are going through a rough patch. It seems like everyday that he doesn't work we end up arguing and/or fighting by noon. We also seem unable to avoid having these arguments in front of D which makes me feel horribly guilty on top of the crappy feelings from fighting with D.G. There's no one thing causing the problems (although D.G. would probably say that it all comes back to me being a mess) so it's not like we can just avoid one thing and avoid the conflict. I am sick of being upset but I just can't hold back when he does or says something that bothers me. Maybe it's the depression combined with PMS that's pushing me over the edge constantly (isn't that a great combination?) or maybe I'm just more nuts now because it's April and I'm trapped in the days between April 3rd and Easter and it keeps f-ing snowing.

*I was "working" not slacking off playing Soli.tare. The Faces of Loss site has moved to Word.Press and there are these random spaces that keep showing up in my blogroll that won't go away no matter what I do. Grrr.

Well, something sure is frozen over

2011-04-14T14:24:00.006-06:00

No kidding, this is what it is like here right now. (Yes that's snow on that wind shield.) We are under a snowfall warning. The tulips that were finally starting to poke out of the ground are buried. Hopefully they are not frozen because the bulbs came from the Walk to Remember last fall and I was really looking forward to them blooming sometime around Reid's birthday. Right now we will be lucky if they bloom before the end of the month.

Spring cleaning begins

2011-04-13T13:37:00.003-06:00

D.G. and I started clearing stuff out of our basement this weekend. It is spring technically and I thought there was some magic way to rearrange the furniture that would give us more useful space. It turns out that we can only have a slightly less awkward arrangement at best but it's still an improvement. Our basement is currently filled with a mixture of furniture that has been deemed too ugly to be upstairs, various boxes of junk we have collected, all of D's toys that are too big, too noisy or too annoying to be in the living and all the baby things that I thought I would be able to get rid of by now. We decided to get rid of a few pieces of furniture (thank you Fre.scycle) and move some of the baby things into the closet of the "baby room" upstairs (really, there's no reason not to fill up the closet with the bassinet and car seat, not like we will be using any of it any time soon, if ever) and rearrange the rest. We still have to go through all the boxes of junk but we will see when that happens. For now I have a sewing area and D has a few more square feet of space to fill up with toys. Of course I again had to face the fact that it's been over a year and I still have no idea when or if I'll ever get to use all those baby things again. Sometimes, I just wonder if I should sell it all and then the spite gods would make sure I got pregnant because it would so damn inconvenient to have to collect it all again.

Runaway Baby

2011-04-11T21:12:00.003-06:00

We recently took The Runway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown out of the library for D. We have been reading Goodnight Moon to D since she was born so I thought we should read her the other classic M.W.B. book. I know some people think The Runaway Bunny is creepy because the mother bunny won't let her son have any freedom (I believe one blog I read referred to the mommy bunny as a stalker mom) but it makes me sad for all the obvious dead baby reasons. I read it and think, "Why didn't I get the chance to convince my son that he should just stay with me?" I can make ridiculous promises/threats about what I will do to stay near my child. What if I had the chance to tell Reid how much I wanted him to stay with me? ( I mean telling him while he was alive and in my arms, not sobbing it out to an empty room after he died) Would I feel "better" if I felt like I got to try to keep him here instead of him slipping away before he was even born?

Using pretty pictures to distract you from the lack of content

2011-04-09T22:19:00.001-06:00

My brain is still to lethargic to create coherent thoughts and now my arm is too sore to type properly too. (I finally got in for the touch ups on my tattoo. Must have thought something would go wrong or I would have canceled the touch up appointment the day after the BFP.) I am still here though so I'll dazzle you with some photos I took at the conservatory last Sunday. There was a whole area dedicated to daffodils and tulips for spring and I had never seen so many varieties of daffodils before. We tend to just plant one-tone yellow or yellow and white daffodils here in the great white north. These were all so pretty and of course made me think of Freddie and Merry.

Inertia

2011-04-07T20:55:00.002-06:00

I have taken way too many physics classes in my life, one of the dangers of becoming an engineer. (Although it does allow to me get all the science jokes on BigB.angTh.eory which D.G. and I love and never features babies because most nerds can barely speak to girls, let alone get close to a girl enough to get one pregnant.) I understand that once a body comes to rest, it takes force to get it moving again. Well, I have definitely come to rest. I don't want to do anything, deal with anything, think about anything. I would be perfectly content to just take up residence in my bedroom with my laptop and the TV for company. Forget about working out 4 times a week they way I was before the fake pregnancy. Forget about trying to reach out to people who I haven't been able to talk to for the last 6 months. (Good thing I got my haircut and went to the dentist before I lost all forward momentum because they were necessary even if I was miserable during both of them.) I don't want to put away the luminaries we made for Reid's birthday. I don't want to look at the cards we did receive or think about the ones we didn't get. Ugh, I don't even want to think about how much force it's going to take to get me moving again.

Now it's a pity party (and I've run out of cupcakes)

2011-04-05T22:03:00.003-06:00

I'm not just tired anymore. There is a serious amount of feeling sorry for myself going on. Not so much about Reid not being here, mostly about not be able to get pregnant. (well pregnant with a viable pregnancy if you want to get technical). A couple from my support group whose daughter died 10 days before Reid are being induced tomorrow. Their plan for trying again was to just wait and see what happens. I mean it's great for them, but it hurts to watch.

I now know there is a kind of waiting that is crappier than the normal 2ww, waiting for your cycle to restart after a blighted ovum, miscarriage or other false start. I have no idea when things will happen but I was told there is no reason to wait to try again so I am going nuts waiting for some sign from my body. I am determined to not miss whatever tiny window might be open.

---

While I am bitching and moaning, I might as well get some other stuff out of my head too. We were surprised and touched by thoughtful gestures from family and friends over the last week (will post about that when I am feeling more positive) but right now it's the people who didn't do or say anything about Reid's first anniversary who are on my mind. We didn't here anything, not anything at all, from any member of D.G.'s family. Not his mom, not either of his sisters, not his dad. I know Hallmark doesn't make a card for this occasion but really wouldn't you think that you should say something to your son/brother around the time that his child should have his first birthday? Urgh, it is getting harder by the day to tell myself that I should make an effort to have a real relationship with these people for D.G. and D's sakes.

Tired

2011-04-04T21:14:00.002-06:00

I have so many things to post, but I am just exhausted. The closest thing to describing how I feel is hungover. Too many cupcakes, too many emotions and not enough sleep have left me wishing I could have stayed in bed all day. (not an option with D though)

Everything that we could control yesterday went as well as we could have hoped and as everyone says when the anniversary is over, the anticipation is worse than the actual event. Too bad knowing that doesn't help make the lead up any easier.

Reid's First Birthday

2011-04-03T23:07:00.004-06:00

Preparations for the birthday celebration started on Saturday afternoon when we decorated luminaries. I admit I did most of the them but D and D.G. both helped too. We lit them just before D went to bed so she could see them all lit up and we kept them burning until just after the time of Reid's delivery 1 year ago. It was very hard watching the clock move toward 1:24 am, but it felt right to be awake for that time.

We woke up at the usual time, re-lit 2 of the luminaries and as promised, ate chocolate cupcakes for breakfast. D sang Happy Birthday to Reid all by herself and it was so sweet, I barely held it together.

We spent most of the morning doing random things around the house and then got dressed and went for lunch at the conservatory in the city. Right now indoors is the only place where you can find live flowers around here but luckily for us it wasn't too busy. We took many pictures of the amazing plants and flowers and D enjoyed being able to run around without a jacket and mittens on.

We came home and had a little rest, then went back outside to enjoy the sunshine. We released 3 balloons from our very snowy backyard and watched them until they disappeared into the sky.

For Reid, our little boy and baby brother. We love you and miss you so much and hope that wherever you are, you know that we carry you with us always.
Love, Mom, Dad and D.

It worked out that tonight was the monthly support group meeting, so while D.G. and D. hung out at home, I took cupcakes to share with some more of the lovely women who have helped get me through the last year. There were tears and laughter (actually, there was lots of laughter considering why we were all there) and it was a good way to end the day.

2 hours left

2011-04-02T23:24:00.000-06:00

Two hours left until the exact time of Reid's "birth", 1:24 am April 3rd. Cupcakes are iced and waiting for breakfast tomorrow morning. (If you can't eat cupcakes for breakfast on your dead baby's birthday, when can you eat cupcakes for breakfast?) Candles are lit and many photos of said candles have been taken. I decided long ago that I would be staying up until at least 1:24 am tonight but didn't really plan for what I would do while waiting for 1:24 am so we've ended up watching various re-runs since D went to bed. Really, today has been a hard enough day as it is, I didn't need to make it more difficult by sitting in the dark and crying.

There will be many more pictures to come, too bad none will feature a sweet little boy smushing cupcake in his hair, but for now, this should cover where we are tonight...

For Freddie

2011-04-02T15:40:00.003-06:00

Not funny

2011-04-01T09:42:00.002-06:00

Not a fan of April Fools here. Last year, I thought it was be so funny if I had my baby on April 1st. I imagined how I could mess with all my family and friends about baby's arrival or gender. Of course then Reid died less than 2 days later. April 3rd is just too close to April 1st to not be linked in my mind: "You thought you were going to take home a live baby, ha ha, the joke's on you." And then this year: "You thought you could actually get pregnant, ha ha, fooled you again." I am seriously afraid of this time of year now. Next year I may ask to be placed in a medically induced coma from mid-March until the evening of April 2nd. What little mental health I have left needs to be preserved, I just have to find a doctor to agree with me.

Apples in the deep freeze

2011-03-31T14:21:00.003-06:00

Apparently I need to be supervised right now. I have been trying to keep myself busy since getting the news on Tuesday because the breakdowns that happen when I let myself slowdown are not pretty. (Think sobbing uncontrollably on the nearest available horizontal surface.) I have done a whole lot of laundry and cleaning that I had expected would just pile up for a while. I even baked a huge batch of muffins and washed the dishes this morning. Then I went to put some of them in the freezer and discovered the 6 lb bag of apples I bought at Cos.tco Monday night. I tried smashing one of them on the patio outside (could frozen apples be a stand in for cheap dinnerware?) but it only cracked in half so it wasn't very satisfying. I put the apples in the freezer before I even found out that there was no new baby so what kind of things could I have mixed up since then? At the very least I expect D to find a stack of D.G's underwear in her t-shirt drawer. Hopefully nothing more valuable than a $6 bag of apples gets ruined.

Add me to the list...

2011-03-29T11:58:00.002-06:00

...the list of women who thought they were getting another chance at this baby thing and then had that chance taken away too.

See, I got a BFP just over 2 weeks ago but wasn't ready to share the news, partly because I was in shock and scared and partly because I didn't want to take the focus off Reid's 1st anniversary. He doesn't get a real birthday but I still wanted his day to be about him, not about a new baby. I was happy to finally be pregnant and I started to make appointments and plans. I had just under 2 weeks of thinking that come November I might get to bring home a live baby. I started to feel queasy and peeing like crazy and I could smell things a mile away. Then this past Friday, I started spotting. Saturday, it turned into blood flow that lasted until Monday afternoon. When the bleeding slowed down I thought maybe things would be okay, maybe I lost a twin or the placenta was growing close to my cervix. I never had any cramping and didn't pass any big clots and overall there was less bleeding than a normal period. I got in for an U/S this morning and there was no sign of a baby anywhere. (There was a very VERY thorough internal scan, woo hoo.) Luckily (ha ha), the U/S clinic is in the same building where Dr. K was working that day so I was sent downstairs to see her and get the official word. (The radiologist is going with blighted ovum.) I did get a hug along with the paperwork for a hcg series. I guess now it's all over except for the crying and the blood tests.

I "knew" that this was a possibility, I mean I saw the same kind of thing happen to too many people especially over the last couple weeks, but I thought I would be one of the ones who somehow snuck through and made it out with a live kid this time. The universe is definitely not on my side. Who "loses" another baby the week before the first anniversary of their full term stillbirth, even if it turns out that that baby only existed in my head?

Condsidering cutting something else

2011-03-25T21:30:00.003-06:00

I bought a keepsake box a few days ago. It's mostly black with red gerbera-ish flowers on it. Probably was never intended to hold anything like a baby's ashes, but that's what I'm going to use it for. The gerbera box fits the box that holds Reid's ashes, the clothes he was supposed to wear home and the blanket I made for him, but just barely. The lid just barely closes because I made the blanket big enough to swaddle a 3 month old, just in case he liked that sort of thing (his big sister did). Of course he never got near that blanket because it never came into the hospital, but it is still his blanket. Am I a horrible mom for even considering splitting the blanket to make it fit better?

If I split it into 4 pieces, I can put one in the gerbera box with Reid's ashes, keep one for me to hold onto when I'm having a bad day and maybe the other 2 pieces can be incorporated in a new blanket, someday, maybe, if things ever work out.

The odds of things working out seem pretty low though as it seems every other day brings news of another DBM losing their subsequent pregnancy. So much love to you all.

Another kind of waiting (that I don't like)

2011-03-22T15:43:00.002-06:00

I seem to have developed on obsession with my hair (after not thinking about it enough for the last year). And while I do need a haircut, I'm pretty sure that I'm using it as an distraction, a way to avoid thinking about the milestone I am about to hit. (One year of DBM-hood does seems to a milestone you hit, not something you pass by.) Do I really want to change myself in someway to mark the 1 year anniversary or just avoid thinking about the 1 year anniversary altogether? I wish I could separate these things but they are intertwined in my head.

I started dreading the 1 year mark a couple months ago but now I just want to get to the other side of it. The pressure to somehow make it special and meaningful combined with the uncertainty about if or how the majority of people in my life are going to recognize Reid's "birthday" just doesn't sit well with me. I just want it to be that day already so I can do whatever I will do and deal with the reality instead of the possibilities.

Mar 19

2011-03-19T22:00:00.002-06:00

My parents were in town for a few days so things were busy around here. D loved having them here to constantly entertain her and rarely, if ever, say no to her requests for more stories, more songs or more colouring. They left Friday for holiday on the West Coast and will return next Saturday in time for my niece's baptism next Sunday. Not sure about how that's going to go seeing as the SIL's many relatives are a very fertile bunch and I don't really want to spend the afternoon explaining the absence of my second child, one week before the anniversary of his birth/death. I'm going to avoid thinking about it as long as possible. (That's also been my strategy for dealing with work, still on unpaid leave, and my doctor told me it sounded like a good way to deal with it to her.)

---

D is now done all the activities I signed her up for this winter and now we have a break for the next two weeks. The timing is less than ideal for me as I really don't need to be sitting around with no reason to get of the house in the two weeks leading up to Reid's birthday/anniversary but no one asked me when they should schedule spring break this year. I still haven't decided exactly what is happening to mark Reid's day, but it will be pretty low key.

---

The impending anniversary is forcing me to admit a few things too. I can finally admit that I "need" a hair cut, but I still can't make myself go to my hairstylist, P, even though she cuts D and D.G.'s hair too so I have seen her many times in the last year. I am tempted to walk into a random salon and just get my hair hacked off, but I don't know where to go and I am afraid of hurting P's feelings because she would definitely be able to tell that I got it cut the next time. Is it weird that I think maybe I need to get it cut before the anniversary to symbolize starting a new year without my son?

---

Still don't know what to do about M, but I am trying to figure something out so I will take that as progress.

Issue #2, Part 2

2011-03-16T22:18:00.004-06:00

Well now I know that reason why I didn't just throw in the towel and completely give up on my friendship with M even though parts of me definitely wanted to, to save me a butload load of guilt.

Monday a letter arrived from M addressed to D.G. I was a good person and did not open D.G.'s personal mail, but I had to hide it so it would not torment me. D.G. finally read it Tuesday at work and brought it home for me to read too. M lied to D.G. on the phone last week when she said things were fine. It turns out that M is probably as messed up as I am, but possibly more in some ways. Without going into too many details, she ended up with severe post-partum depression, her husband got hurt and then lost his job (I knew about the hurt part) and is still unemployed so they are broke and their marriage is on the rocks too.

I know that it's impossible to reach out to other people when you are in the middle of a major depressive episode. The fear of being rejected completely outweighs the potential benefits. I also know that D.G. and I had over 13 years together before we lost our son and I got depressed, including a previous depressive episode, so we have a big foundation to work from if we are going to continue to make it through this. M and her husband have only been together for the last 3 and a half years and this is the first major challenge they have faced together. (Not that 3 years together isn't enough time to build a strong relationship and not that 13 years together means you can get through anything.) So I now understand at least part of why she wasn't there for me after she had her baby and no longer had to avoid thinking about me in order to not freak out about the possibility of her baby dying.

I guess this means the ball is back in my court now. If only I had the smallest clue about what I am supposed to do now.

One week from spring (yeah, right)

2011-03-14T13:58:00.004-06:00

Everyone has been posting about the arrival of spring and it actually makes me laugh because this is what my backyard looks like:

No,we don't live inside the Arctic circle, but we have had record snowfalls this winter and the temperatures have stayed stubbornly below zero so very little melting has happened. The snow in the middle of the yard where nothing has been shoveled on to it is probably 30" deep so there's no way there will be more than a few tiny patches of lawn visible by April 3rd. I have started having these ideas about being outside in the backyard surrounded by luminaries at 1 am on April 3rd to mark the time when Reid was born, but it looks like that could be a seriously chilly way to mark Reid's birthday.

On to my next issue

2011-03-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

I feel like I have to write something today because by this time tomorrow I should be a hormonal crying mess. (AF should arrive today and I have no hope of the other outcome.)

---

I did get an email back from "Reed's mom" last week. She said she was sorry that their choice caused me more pain and that she would respect my wishes regarding future Christmas cards. Really there isn't anything that she could do to fix things, but I am glad that I got my feelings out and that she seems to have heard me. I guess that's the end of that.

---

So what did happen after my yoga class on Wednesday? Well first I have to explain some history. (I will try not to ramble but this is going to be long so I apologize now.) I wrote about M here and a few other times while I was cyber-stalking her, waiting for her to announce her son's arrival. She also is the person who sent out the baby announcements with pictures of her son sleeping. (Definitely a sign of things to come as far as her level of understanding goes.)

M is (maybe "was" is a better term right now) one of my oldest friends and a distant cousin as well so our families are also intertwined (which means my mom has also pressured me to make nice with her too). She was pregnant when Reid died and after the end of April, I didn't hear from her until the end of June when she was about to start her maternity leave. She wanted to come see me and after thinking about it and deciding it would be easier to meet her son if I saw her first, I emailed her back. I never heard back from her. In fact I heard nothing until the mass birth announcement email and then nothing again until the end of October when she emailed and made excuses about why she hadn't contacted me for months but wanted to come and bring her son to meet me. I wanted to send a huge email about how hurt and angry I was, but D.G. convinced me that I should take a more neutral stance, so I just replied saying I was hurt and wasn't in a place where I could or should make decisions. M replied back that she knew she had screwed up (and that's the closest she's come to apologizing but it was still qualified with excuses) and that she was still there for me.

Then fast-froward to December when we got a Christmas card featuring more baby pictures and no mention of Reid. After that, there was nothing until the week before my birthday, when she called (I let the machine get it) and left a "breezy" message about not having seen each other for a year and how we should talk soon. There was no way I could talk to her and I definitely don't want to play "pretend things are all okay" so D.G. promised to call her and explain where I was. (D.G. has known M as long as he has known me.) However, D.G. is a champion procrastinator so no calls where made. Then I got an email that was so insensitive that it deserves it's own post and I reminded D.G. about calling but he still put it off. And then while I was away visiting my niece last weekend, I got a text from M that I ignored too. (I am not a regular texter, I send about 2 a month so it's not the way to get a hold of me). Wednesday night when I got back from yoga and was feeling all emotional, I ended up giving D.G. a hard time about not calling M and he got all pissed off at me and finally called her just to spite me. He got her voicemail but that only bought him a half hour until she called back. Turns out he was hoping that I would just forget about his promise and eventually just miss M enough that I would be willing to play "pretend things are all okay". He is such a typical "don't talk about your feelings" man sometimes.

When she called back, I ran for the bedroom and turned up the TV so I wouldn't hear his side of the conversation. He also took the phone downstairs so he could talk as loudly as he wanted without me or D hearing. (D was in bed by this time, but you never know when a 3 year old will wake up to go potty.) They talked for over an hour and by the time D.G. came to bed, it was obvious he had been crying while on the phone with M. I'm not sure what all they talked about but he said he made it clear how hurt I was by her lack of contact and by her pretending things were fine and we had just lost touch. Apparently she realized how insensitive the email was but somehow sending another to apologize just didn't occur to her. He said she wants to do better at being supportive but just didn't know how so she focused on her own issues. (And I can admit some bad things have happened to her family in the last 6 months, but nothing on the scale of dead or dying baby or other close family member). D.G. asked her why she doesn't talk to our mutual friend R who has been very good as supporting me despite having no first hand DBM experience. M and R see each other regularly so I can't understand how one understands so much and the other so little. I don't know what's going to happen now, but apparently the last attempts at communication were part of her plan to contact us once a week so I should have until next week until we hear from her again. I guess what I do will depend on how much of a hormonal crying mess I am.

(If you made it through all that, thank you. I have needed to get this out of my head for months but it never felt like I could explain things right until now.)

Yoga class

2011-03-10T14:21:00.004-07:00

I had my first Yoga for Grief Support class last night. As expected, I cried a few times. The physical part of the class was okay. I did expect that there would some type of introduction where we all said why we were there, but there wasn't so when my brain wandered away from my body, I was speculating about who all the other women in the class were grieving for. Just by age, I would guess that most of the other people there were widows or moms who had lost adult children.

One of the hardest part of the class for me was the beginning relaxation exercise. I realized that I haven't let myself totally and completely relax since Reid died because it feels like tension is the only thing holding me together. If I let myself relax completely I will fall into a million tiny pieces. The other hardest part was a pose where we were just standing on our mats (tadasana, for any yoga practitioners out there.) We stood there and slowly adjusted our bodies until we were standing with perfect posture, the way you would if you were a proud, happy, confident, well-rested sort of person. Then we were told to let ourselves slump back into our "normal" posture and I realized how far my "normal" way of standing is from tadasana. Of course who could expect to feel proud of themselves or their body when their baby died inside them and then that same body refuses to get pregnant again and you have been depressed for months. Of course there isn't a damn thing I can do about the first two things either. Not exactly inspiring thoughts to meditate on.

I am glad I went to the class and will have no problem going back next week, but I am still a big mopey mess today. (I exchanged my pajama pants for sweat pants to take D to preschool this morning and that's as far as my getting dressed went.) I haven't been this down in weeks but I don't know if it's a side effect from the class or from what happened when I got home. More later, but I promise it's nothing really earth shattering or exciting so no need to worry.

What happened while we were away

2011-03-09T13:43:00.003-07:00

The trip was okay. Mostly what I feel now is exhaustion, partly from not sleeping well and partly from being away from my comfort zone. My niece is very sweet and it was nice to spend time with her. I even wore her in the sling that was supposed to have been for my baby and only almost cried once. Of course she has no problems with me whispering to her about how she makes me miss her cousin even more. My brother is messed up, but everyone just makes excuses for him because it's because of his work. Seriously the way he acts most of the time, you would think it was his baby who was dead. I feel awful for my SIL because she is the one left at home while he is working 14 hour days and she is the one who has to put up with how critical and sensitive he is when he gets home.

A few good things did happen:
- I got to see my university roommate and her husband (who are babyloss parents, inexplicably infertile and in the process of adopting). It nice to talk to her because I don't have to sensor myself about dead baby talk and she doesn't try to tell me that we "just have to relax and keep trying" because she knows that doesn't help.
- I also got to visit my friend R (who sent my this rattle for Reid back in June). We didn't get to have the playdate we planned because her son has chickenpox and we didn't want to risk exposing my niece to it, but the two of us went for coffee. We had a really good talk which included both of us crying in the middle of Starbucks. I also went to her house and met (well, saw) her son which was good cause he's cute and hard because it made me think about what Reid could be like right now. After I got back to my brother's house, I had a huge cry but it felt good to let things out right away. Being with R, also reinforced that I have to deal with my issues with a mutual friend, but we didn't get a chance to talk about her while I was there. R is one of the few people who knows us both so I don't have to explain our history. Hopefully I can work up the motivation to call R soon to start figuring things out.
- My SIL actually asked me what I wanted people to do for Reid's "birthday" next month. Just the fact that she asked made me so happy, because I didn't think that anyone would. Of course I didn't know exactly what to tell her, but did manage to come up with a couple ideas. She also complemented my tattoo, which surprised me because she is pretty traditional, but maybe it was because my brother was not around (which given how grumpy he is, was a good thing)

Time seemed to move fast while we were away. Now I am back to just marking time until AF is supposed to show up this weekend. My hopes keep trying to go up, but I have to claw them back down. Really what are the chances that the month before Reid's 1 year anniversary would be the month that I finally get pregnant?

Away

2011-03-05T21:52:00.003-07:00

I got sick of sitting around waiting for the 2ww to be over so I decided to take off for a few days. D and I drove down to my brother and SIL's for the next few days to hang out with my niece and see a few carefully selected people. I just needed to get away from home and taking temps and FF, who gave me a free VIP preview so now I know exactly when I would be due if this cycle actually worked (which I doubt it will). We left D.G. at home so he could sleep in and play video games all day tomorrow. (He hasn't had the chance to do that since June so it's a break for him too.) You can expect a report on the visit on Tuesday night when we get home to D.G. and my laptop.

Done and done

2011-03-04T00:02:00.003-07:00

I finally sent the email on Tuesday night. (yes, the one I started planning to write 2 weeks ago.) I wrote it over the weekend and then it took me until Monday took ask D.G. to read it (only to discover that he had already read it because it was just sitting in the Draft folder the whole time.) I didn't send it until Tuesday night just to be sure I really wanted to still do it. I haven't gotten any sort of reply, but that maybe that's because I sent it to her hot.mail account instead of replying to the birthday message she sent via FB. I don't know why, but I can't do anything serious or confrontational on FB, maybe I am afraid of private things becoming public very easily on FB. If I don't hear something from her by next week, I'll think about sending her a FB message just say there is another message on her hot.mail account. Just the act of sending the email should have been enough to make me feel better but hitting send didn't bring any feelings of resolution.

11 months

2011-03-03T14:10:00.003-07:00

So this is what 11 months is like. Well to be more precise, this is what 11 months of DBM-hood combined with 9 months of unsuccessful ttc is like. (Not that I am implying that successful ttc makes the DBM-hood better, but managing to get knocked up and looking forward to the possibility of bringing home a live baby does affect your perspective.)

I don't have any new earth shattering revelations to make on this anniversary, not that I have had any on any other anniversaries either. But the previous anniversaries felt like moving forward or away from that awful day and this one feels like I am circling back towards it. This anniversary feels like the official start of a count down to the one year mark. This my last month of being able to say that "1 year ago, I was..." and know that it meant I was happy, or at the very least blissfully ignorant of how much worse things could be. This next month is going to be hard.

In order to try to help with that, I signed up for a Yoga for Grief Support class. I do miss taking yoga classes I completely associate the studio I used to go to with pre-natal yoga. There is no way I can do anything meditative unless I'm not going to be the only person in the room crying so this hopefully will be the yoga class for me.

Love to all the other mama's whose baby's anniversary is today.

Not ready for spring

2011-02-27T13:20:00.002-07:00

Winter has reasserted it's grip on our city this weekend. It has snowed the last couple days, the wind is blowing and the temperatures are about to plunge back to sub -25°C again. Even with all the cold and snow, I can't deny that spring is coming. It's light outside when D and I crawl out of bed at 7:30 am and it's still light outside when D.G. comes from work and even after we eat supper. The angle of the sunlight shining into the livingroom has changed and it even feels warmer. (from the relative safety of the couch) There is no doubt that spring is coming and I dread it. I should be happy to see the end of another cold, dark winter, but instead I want it to stay cold and dark. The arrival of spring feels like another slap in the face from the universe. Nothing has changed inside me since the winter started. I am still sad, depressed, angry, anti-social and not pregnant. (No wait, something has changed, I am more bitter than I was at the beginning of winter. ) Nothing should be allowed to change outside yet.

Feb 23

2011-02-23T21:51:00.003-07:00

Not too much to report for the last few days, but the headaches are back today so I must need to unload something. The problem with ttc while grieving for me is having to put the grieving on hold during the trying part otherwise there is no way any trying would happen. So I have force myself to avoid all the sad/upsetting thoughts. That also means that I have not written any letters or emails to people I am pissed off at either.

My birthday was okay (other than the slight freakout of the last post). It was a very quiet day as we turned off the ringers on all the phones. It definitely the right thing to do as every message that was left was a totally normal birthday message. No acknowledgment of the fact that I am far from happy. D.G., D and I spent a quiet day hanging out at home (it was freaking freezing outside even for a hardened Canadian) that was not all that different from a regular Sunday except D.G. took over the cooking duties in honor of my birthday. They baked me cupcakes which were yummy and bought me more time to be lazy by myself. (thank goodness for cake mixes or my kitchen would still be a mess 4 days later.) D.G. took me out for a decidedly grownup supper. The food was amazing,as it should have been for those prices but since it was my birthday supper, I tried not to think about it. I wish the restaurant had been a bit quieter, but it probably would have been fine for someone who wasn't aiming to become a hermit.

Thanks for the birthday wishes from all my readers, I know that you all have a different definition of "happy" birthday than the rest of the world.

Seriously

2011-02-20T14:22:00.003-07:00

I was planning to not read my blog today, or even touch my computer for that matter, but I am weak and I couldn't manage to have a nap while D was napping so I got bored and opened up my laptop. (That is a terrible sentence but it's my birthday and I'll write long rambling senteces if I want to.) I opened my email and there in my inbox is a message from HER (yes, the her of the last 2 posts who I am so mad at.) And it's a "we should really chat and catch up on things" email. Oh I'd like to catch her up on a few things. I hope venting will be enough to get this crap out of my head so it doesn't consume my thoughts for the rest of the day. I was prepared to ignore the phone call from my mother-in-law who I still haven't' spoken to since she was here in October, but I didn't need to get a birthday email from HER.

Perfectly reasonable procrastination

2011-02-19T21:36:00.003-07:00

Now I will go back to putting off dealing with the anger, at least for a couple more days. I think I have a valid reason. Tomorrow is my birthday which I have been dreading for the last month because I don't want to have to listen to people saying "Happy Birthday" when I am so far from happy and since I have far too much politeness bread into me I can't yell at people about how I really feel when they they say it. Tomorrow also happens to be 6 weeks until the 1 year anniversary of Reid's death so I will have enough things to be upset about without trying to deal with the anger.

D thinks it wonderful that it's mommy's birthday so I will have to suck things up for her sake to a certain extent. I think she mostly just realizes that a birthday in the house means cake/cupcakes for her and I can get behind the dessert part of my birthday even if I want to pretend that it's just a regular day. D.G. is taking me out of supper so I have to find a way to make myself "nice restaurant" presentable. At least restaurant tables can be counted on to hide the c-section belly that I will never get rid of unless someone starts handing out free tummy tucks to DBM's. (I have to hope the lighting is ridiculously dim so that no one will see the gray hairs that I have not had cut or coloured in the last 11 months. )

Starting to work on my issues

2011-02-18T20:56:00.003-07:00

I am have so much anger locked up inside me. I have shoved the anger down so many times, but it keeps coming back up to the surface but I don't know how to deal with it. Most of the anger is directed towards people in my life who I feel have let me down in the last 10 months. Most of these people live far away from me so I don't have to worry about running into them at the grocery store, but it makes even harder to figure out how to deal with all this anger. You can't call people up and start yelling at them (because really I want to yell and scream) bcause they can just hang up on you, but I need to start dealing with these feelings before they consume me. I've tried to just let things go and basically just write these people off as not worth my time but that's not working.

I've decided that I need to do something about the "friend" who named her son Reed in November first. (All the details are here in case you haven't memorized all my posts.) Okay, that sounds like I'm going to hire a hit man. I'm angry but not quite that angry. My plan is write a short but not sweet letter saying that I'd appreciate if she took me off her Christmas card list (yes we got a Christmas card including a family picture and a baby announcement) because I'd rather not add to the stress/sadness of Christmas by reading about how her Reed is growing up, (cause he's alive) and doing all the things that my Reid will never do (cause he's dead). There may also be something about how insensitive it is to send said baby announcement to the parents of a dead baby with nearly the same name but I have yet to figure wording that conveys how I really feel.

Getting this off my chest is healthy, right? I just can't imagine that just writing the letter and not sending it is going to be enough to help me feel better. And I just can't imagine that my feelings about getting annual updates about her Reed (and her other 3 boys, yes she managed to have 4 kids in just over 6 years so she's also ridiculously fertile on top of everything else) will change so I can't see regretting sending this letter. I guess I just have to decide whether I send the pictures from the Christmas card back to her or toss them in the trash here. What would you do?

Today's drivel - Feb 16

2011-02-16T14:15:00.000-07:00

This weekend my brother (the one who has never even mentioned Reid or his death to me) and SIL finally called and invited us to my niece's christening at the end of March. I knew about it a month ago, but second hand from my mom and aunt. I was actually hoping they wouldn't call so I could pitch a giant immature fit about not being invited when my parents came to town for the christening. (The christening is being held in the city we live next to because SIL's family all lives here.) I know it would be pointless to throw a massive tantrum over this and nothing would change anyways, but that's how I feel these days. Fantasies about screaming and crying and telling of my family are competing for head space with fantasies about getting a BFP. (The live baby fantasies have been shelved for fear they will never become reality.)

---

The headaches and stomach cramps have not stopped, but now D.G. has them too it appears that it is a bug. He's a huge baby when he's sick but at least he'll stop bugging me that I need to go the doctor. Seriously what is a doctor going to do for headaches and stomach cramps besides say they are likely symptoms of stress/depressions and suggest an AD? I just have to find a way to get us both feeling better in time for this month's "fertile window". Its our last chance to get pregnant (and know that we are pregnant) before Reid's 1 year anniversary and as unsexy as I feel now, I can't imagine that I will feel any better at the end of March.