I don't know

How does one event change your life so much that 7 months later you don't recognize your life or yourself? What is this place and where I am supposed to go from here? Where did all the people that I thought I could count on go? If it was just the crushing sadness (and it is still crushing) maybe I could deal with Reid's death, but it's not. It's that my brain has been scrambled and I don't know who I am any more. I don't know what I want anymore (other than another baby) or what I am supposed to do with my life. I hate all this "not knowing".

Random stuff from the last few days

D.G.'s sister came to visit this weekend. She's great, the best part of his family really and wonderful with D. and doesn't get weirded out when I mention Reid's name. But even with that wonderfulness, I can't take more than 24 hours of having someone else around the house. By this morning, I just wanted to hide out in bed and was escaping into a book every chance I got. I just can't deal with having to be "normal" for any length of time.

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I think I am more mad at the MIL than ever. I did the very mature thing and removed her from my friends list on FB after she thought it was okay to comment on my Oct 15th picture. (Really it always bugged me that in the interests of family harmony I had to be "friends" with my MIL on FB so it felt good to do it and with D.G.'s blessing too.) D.G.'s sister may be able to accept that her mother just does things without thinking about the consequences, but that's just not okay with me.

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D.G. and I are having problems because he wants me to "try" more, try to talk to people, try to socialize, try to do things the old me would have done. This has mostly been brought on because a group of old friends are coming to town for the Grey Cup at the end of November. (It's the Canadian equivalent of the Super Bowl so there are fewer people and it's a lot colder.) It's a huge party and generally a great time and the old me would be really excited about it. The new me doesn't want to go anywhere near it. (Of course the old me would have an almost 8 month old to BF so there wouldn't be a whole lot of partying happening anyway.) Why does no one understand that to me the world is just full of potential reminders about the fact that my baby is dead? That I can't sit around and talk about "nothing" or listen to people complain about their jobs? That my days consist of either being sad/angry/miserable because my baby is dead or desperately trying to hold it together long enough to take care of D or flooding my brain with the Internet, TV or books so that I can have a break from the other two things. That I have no interest in faking okay for people who have not done anything to support me or D.G. since the initial sympathy cards/emails.

Another day we should be celebrating

Today is our ninth wedding anniversary. We got married on Thanksgiving weekend (the 2nd weekend in October for all my American readers) in my tiny, little home town. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm and lots of beautiful fall leaves. We could not have ordered better weather which is good because it's not unheard of for it to snow Thanksgiving weekend in SK.


Those two people had a pretty good run for the first 8 and a half years of marriage. Not perfect, but still good enough that on their last anniversary her FB status said something about eight great years together. I wish I could go back to last year and warn those people that things were going to change and not way they had planned. I wish I could tell them they would be very different people by their 9th anniversary.

Enough already

Okay, that's enough, it's just not funny any more. It's been six months and I am ready for the giant cosmic joke that my life has become to be over. I proved I can take it. I can survive without my baby, but I don't want to have to. Time for it to be over, to go back to Saturday April 3rd at 1:20 am and change the way things happened from that point on. There will be a squirming 20 lb boy on my lap right now, not a computer. There will be cloth diapers drying on my clothes line, not collecting dust in a basket. There will be hundreds of pictures of him on my camera, not pictures of balloons with messages for dead babies. I will be tired from getting up at night to nurse him, not from staying up late mourning him. There will be pictures up of all the friends' babies born this summer and I will be looking forward to the arrival of my first niece or nephew (please let it be a niece since none of the rest of this can be changed). There will be no talk about another baby and the giant pile of baby crap will be slowly being given away or sold as he out grows it. There will be a bay sleeping in the crib, not a box of ashes. Just make it all be the way it is supposed to be because the way it is really sucks.

It finally happened

I have been waiting for something like this to happen for months now; waiting for someone in our families to deny or at least fail to acknowledge Reid. It finally happened today. My MIL sent us an email with a submission she was planning to send in for a local history book being published about D.G.'s home town. (It's a pretty common thing for small towns in SK to publish history books, my home town did it about 25 years ago and it is WAY smaller than D.G.'s) The line about D.G. mentioned me, D and his job but not Reid. This lead to a less than pleasant exchange between D.G. and myself, a session of sobbing on the bathroom floor for me and then a long emotional discussion after D went to sleep.

The result is that D.G. says he's "OK" with mentioning Reid as long as I am the one to tell his mom. I really want Reid to be mentioned and besides it's a history book, there should be plenty of families with mentions of dead babies over the last 100 years. (If there isn't then, it's not like I have to be there to get weird looks for daring to break the taboo.) However, I don't believe that D.G. is really OK about it. I do believe that he could put it out of his mind and forget about it, but that's not the same. Which should take priority, my need to acknowledge Reid or D.G.'s need to avoid reminders? We are such different places when it comes to grief. (The long emotional discussion revealed just how far apart those places are.) I don't want to hurt him, but I hate the idea of ever pretending that Reid didn't exist.

They really are gone

I have been out of contact with most of the real world for three weeks and not shockingly, only a handful of people have tried to contact me (yes, L, I know I owe you a phone call and I am working up to it). I know I shouldn't be surprised but I am still hurt to see that no one else cares enough to check in a see if I am okay. I have been in Dead Baby Land long enough to know that the loss of friendships is an extra bonus that comes with babyloss. I think that almost all of my friends sent emails and cards when Reid died and I felt very supported, but now, 5 months later, the vast majority of these people have not been heard from since.

I don't think that it should come as a surprise to anyone that someone whose baby died might still need support 5 months later. I also don't think that it would be that hard from some of these people to send an email, they aren't the ones who are broken inside. They have normal lives (and in many cases living babies) to go back to after they make a tiny side trip into Dead Baby Land to check on me. I am the one with the dead baby and the lost dreams and I live in Dead Baby Land full-time. I am not going to drag what's left of me over the edge to Dead Baby Land and try to flag them down as they go about their normal lives. It's time for me to get used to the fact that most people who used to be in my life can't or don't want deal with my loss. Yeah, it's "nice" if they are thinking about me, but that doesn't do shit for me if they aren't willing to brave a little bit of Dead Baby Land to let me know that. It's time for me stop expecting that one day one of these people is going to call me up and ask how I'm doing. It's time for me to stop wasting my time and tears on them. I have made it this far with just the illusion of their support, now it's time to give up the illusion and keep moving on.

Can't think

My brain is fried. I don't know why it's happening now, but I can't focus, can't concentrate, can't remember why I walk into rooms, can't remember to do things that I normally do everyday. D's birthday is on Monday and I have remembered to invite the guests to the party(yeah me), but I can't seem to make plans for food or activities. I can't remember to return phone calls which is not good right now. If my phone didn't beep at me, I wouldn't remember appointments.

There have been lots of "who am I" posts on everyone's blogs in the last week or so. I keep thinking that I should join in too, but there's a problem, I don't know who I am these days. I spent so much time planning what life was going to be like once I had a second child, now that those plans have been tossed out the window, I don't know what's left out there for me. (Besides being a Dead Baby Mama, that one I know I'm stuck with.) I have a great kid to be a mom to and a great husband, but they aren't supposed to define "me" and I don't know what does anymore.

I want MY life back. I want to be "normal". I want to be happy to run into people I haven't seen in months (Of course if I had my life back I probably would have seen these people months ago.) I want to be able to love babies again. I want to not have to literally flee the room when people show up with babies (to an event whose rules said REGISTERED CHILDREN ONLY - MAKE OTHER ARRANGEMENTS FOR YOUR OTHER CHILDREN) I want to not have to worry about having a break down in the kids section of the library and scaring small children.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Why do people keep trying to make me decisions right now? Yes, to the the general population I appear to be doing okay, but inside I am a big seething mess. All it takes is a birth announcement to let the seething mess out. I have 2 days left to decide if we should keep D in the preschool we had registered her in back in March. She wouldn't start until September, but we have to start paying now if we want the spot. I still want her to go to the preschool, but if I go back to work, we would have to pull her out. I don't want to go back to work and I am not ready yet, but it would make financial sense to do it if for no other reason than to get benefits if we manage to get pregnant again. Ugh. I hate thinking about this stuff. It just reminds me of what should be happening now in that life I had planned.

Nail polish

I have attached an irrational significance to some completely insignificant things since Reid died. The most visible one is the nail polish on my toes.

Going for a pedicure was one of the things I did the week before Reid died. One last chance to relax and pamper myself before I became a very busy mother of 2. Now I look at it as one of the last things I did when Reid was still alive. Even though my feet look horrible, I won't even consider taking the nail polish off my toes. (I have managed to trim my toenails so polish has disappeared that way). The purple is all but gone from toes 2 to 5 so all that's left is the polish on the big toes and that is half gone. It's like my own biological calender of how much time has passed since Reid died. Maybe by the time it's completely gone, I'll have started to figure out where I am supposed to go from here.

So what's left?

In all the not so great times of my life, there was always something to look forward to help get me through them. (Almost all the times that used to be classified as "bad" have been upgraded based on the events of the last 3 months). In high school, there were summers. In university there were parties, weekends, spring-break and summer. Once I started working full-time, there were weekends and vacations to look forward to and plan for when the day to day stuff was too stressful (or too boring). I spent 16 months of my life looking forward to the maternity leave I am currently on. The plan was for me to try being a stay at home mom once we had 2 kids and I was looking forward to that too. But now that Reid is dead, what am I supposed to look forward to?

Looking forward to a day when I don't feel like total crap and don't cringe (or cry) at the sight of baby carriers in the grocery store doesn't feel like a great goal for my life. Besides, there's no set time for these things to happen. The new life plan does include another child, but there's no guarantee on when I'll get pregnant and if we'll get a live baby out of the deal, so it's probably not a great idea to use that as my "something to look forward to". Holidays, birthdays etc are just going to be reminders of who isn't here to celebrate with us so they're out too. Vacations (not that there will be many since DH burned up a bunch of holiday hours to look after me and D after Reid died) are just a temporary diversion. Going back to work after being one live baby away from being a stay at home mom is definitely not something I look forward to.

So what's left?

Home not so sweet home

I am back home after 2 weeks on the road. I am so glad to not be traveling anymore but mostly I feel like crap. It's not like I could pretend that Reid never existed and therefore never died while we were away, but there were definitely fewer reminders right in front of my face. Fewer babies and bellies around. I didn't have to walk past the "baby room" and all his things sitting in there a hundred times a day. I didn't have to be surrounded by memories of all the things I did while I was pregnant and all the things I have done to try to survive since I wasn't.

Maybe part of it is that everywhere I look there are chores that need to be done, (DH is wonderful but he definitely let more than a few things slide while D and I were away) but that shouldn't be enough to make me want to cry non-stop. It's like the weight on my chest that had eased off during the trip has all been dropped right back into place.

Itchy

It's my last day at my parents farm. It finally stopped raining but the mosquitoes are SO bad that we can barely go outside. I have many, MANY bites from just trying to get a few minutes in the sun. I really hope that it isn't this bad at my MIL's so I don't have to choose between being eaten alive and being cooped up all day.

Except for a couple trips to the grocery store in the city and the previously mentioned incident with my dad, I have been able to hide out from babies, pregnant women and most of the other things that make me cry. I never came to the farm while I was pregnant with Reid so I don't have to block out memories of hanging out here and planning to come back with him. (Of course the plans were still made in my head, but they were made in Alberta). I really wish that he was here with us and there were lots of my parents friends dropping by to meet him instead of me hiding out from all but the closest family friends. It's weird but no one other than my parents has mentioned Reid or what happened. Not even my grandmother or my mom's friend who both had stillborn children. I am not ready to bring up the subject but I thought someone might bring it up, especially my grandmother.

This trip has also been bittersweet has it may be our last trip to the farm ever. My parents are ready to retire and the farm is up for sale. I can't imagine my parents living anywhere else. (They built the house the summer before I was born and have lived here ever since.) I just hope for their sakes that it sells soon so things don't drag on forever. I live 9 hours away and can't visit that often so it really won't change things that much for me. I will just have to get used to the idea that the house I grew up in isn't my parents' house anymore and that D will likely be the only one of my children to even visit my childhood home.

Not enough

I remember when just the sight of D's laughing face was enough to fill my heart with happiness. And before she arrived, cuddling with DH on the couch was enough to make everything right in my world. Now nothing is enough to do that. Reid's death has made everything "not enough".

Not the same

I have been trying to write a new post since Tuesday night, but I can't seem to string coherent thoughts together. My brain is mush. Tuesday night I was invited to a football practice. I played touch football before we moved to Edmonton and had D. I loved playing football so I thought it would be a good way to get some exercise and get out of the house. It turns out that I am not ready physically, mentally or emotionally. My body wasn't strong enough to keep up and running with a big flabby belly was just gross. My brain couldn't remember what play I was supposed to run. My heart was a giant gaping wound. How can I care about a silly game when my baby is dead? I used to love playing sports, it was my preferred form of exercise, now I can't imagine having the mental capacity to do it. It seems like another part of the pre-dead baby me is gone. There really is no part of life that the death of a child doesn't touch, there is no place to pretend that we are still normal, nothing is the same as before Reid.