Am I crazy or are they?

If you were lucky enough to get to bring home a real live baby and everything was "normal" and you got the point where you were making baby announcements, why the hell would you ever chose photos of the baby sleeping, i.e. with its eye's closed? Does this bother me just because I am a DBM and associate pictures of babies with their eyes closed with dead babies? Sure,you should take pictures of your kids while they are sleeping (I did it a couple weeks ago when D fell asleep while her dad yelled at the TV during a football game.), but why would you pick those pictures for a birth announcement? And it's not like one of those Anne Geddes elaborately posed photos, it's just a regular close up photo of the kid's face. I don't know if I am just reacting as someone who only has pictures of her son with his eyes closed or it's just that I am pissed at the mom of this kid (more on that later) but really, would anyone else be bothered by this?

Baby, it's cold outside (and inside and all around me)

This is what I woke up to on Monday morning. I took the picture this morning because I was too lazy to make myself go out into the snow yesterday, so obviously the snow is still here. Now it's not really that shocking for it to snow here before Halloween, but that doesn't make it feel any warmer.

I am officially now at the point of grieving where even the people who are supposed to support me the most, my husband and my mom, don't understand why I am still this sad. Yay, another Dead Baby Mama milestone instead of a living baby milestone. Whoo-hoo.


Edit: I live in Alberta, Canada. But I was watching the news last night and they were talking about all the snow in Washington state so it isn't just western Canada getting early snow.

Going for a Walk

Today was the Walk to Remember here in Edmonton. It was a beautiful sunny day, the best you could possibly wish for in October in northern AB. I was so happy to see that they had invited Kate Inglis back to speak again. (I just found her amazing words from last year in the Stirrup Queens Creme de la Creme of 2009 list a few days ago.) I even worked up to the courage to walk up to her and say thank you for Glow In the Woods. Is it okay to be a DBM blogger groupie because if it is I will be her groupie. She was very kind and didn't freak out when I walked up to her and started crying before I could even get the words "Thank you" out of my mouth. Overall it was a good day and it felt good to be able to include D in an event for Reid.

Here are some pictures from today:

The note I wrote to Reid




The sidewalk of names




The name we were looking for

Our balloons on their way

Tomorrow, which starts in 87 minutes, will not be such a good day. Many times today I thought "6 months ago, I was ... so happy, so pregnant, so clueless, so not the way I am now."

The big race

"...baby-making shouldn’t be a race." from the lovely and wise Julie, mom to Jon Evel.

In my head, I know that this true, it shouldn't be a race, it should be about what is right for D.G. and me and even D. But it feels like a race against so many opponents. A race against time because my eggs aren't getting any younger and because the age gap between D and any living siblings keeps growing. A race against fear because now I know how bad things can go in a heartbeat ( or non-heartbeat in my case). A race against bitterness and anger because the pain I feel every time I see someone walking around with the baby/family I thought I would have has to be corroding my internal organs including the reproductive ones. And even a race against the other DBMs because as they start on the path toward a living child, I feel like I am being left behind here in the middle Dead Baby Land all over again.

Every day I feel like I am losing the race by a little bit more. Like the finish line is further away instead of closer.

What's a DBM to do?

Welcome to the first official blog post written on my fancy-schmancy new laptop. Thanks to my mushy brain and inability to make decisions, it took me over a month to finally decide what I wanted and actually buy something. But now that I have, it's pretty fabulous (I bought a VAIO 15.5" with a Core i3 just in case any other DBM's are closet tech geeks). It is a vast improvement over the old laptop (now D.G.'s exclusive gaming machine). Now D.G. and I have another way to be in the same room and not actually speak for hours on end.

Reid's 5 month anniversary did not have big surprises. I survived the appointments with the counselor and lawyer with the socially acceptable amounts of crying (lots and none respectively). It was kind of weird having D.G. at the counselor's with me but at least now they have met and I know that D.G. will come back if I need him to. I now get to add panic attacks to my list of symptoms as this was how the therapist labeled my description of my reaction to coming home from vacation. We also got a phone call from my pregnancy gp, Dr. K. She wanted to let me know that while the autopsy still hasn't been finalized, (seriously 5 months?) she has managed to track down the name of the pathologist working on the report and is going to try to find out what's going on this coming week. She also told me that she thinks about us on the 3rd of every month and still feels sad (She's had other patients lose babies but never quite like us). I still think Dr.K is great and will be calling her office as soon as there are two lines on that stick.

Now that I can finally stop researching laptops, I need a new obsession. For the last week, I have been getting the urge to do something "crazy". Mostly I think it is just the normal female urge to change something on the outside to symbolize the changes on inside. Besides, I don't have the energy to do anything truly crazy these days and I have a 3 year old who has to come along on most of my adventures any ways. I don't want to cut my hair off (it takes way too damn long to grow out) and I don't want to color it because my natural color is so dark that it would take way too much effort/money to maintain. I already look like crap 90% of the time, I don't need to add roots on top of the pasty skin and huge dark circles. I am willing to consider a tattoo but D.G. did point out that I spent over a month researching a laptop that just sits in the house and I'll have for a few years tops, so it could take me years to chose a design and artist for something like a tattoo. Any ideas out there for what a indecisive DBM can do to be crazy without being too crazy? I don't want the husband to start looking up crisis hot-line numbers, I just need to "do" something.

Bad and Good

I had one really awful day while we were away. I spent an entire afternoon crying my heart out. It was like everything I had been holding in for the first 5 days of the trip just built up and poured out. And it wasn't that I had to deal with anything extra horrible during the trip, no one was pregnant and I didn't have to see any babies close to the age Reid would have been. One of the other couples we were with had a miscarriage a couple months ago and is dealing with secondary infertility. I talked about Reid when ever I wanted to and no one looked freaked out (if they were, they hid it well and that's just as good). The worst thing I had deal with was seeing D play with Baby S (who is almost walking and not technically a baby anymore but that's what everyone calls her). D would make faces and fuss over Baby S and every time my heart just broke because it should be Reid that she is playing with. D is so ready to be a big sister and now who knows if she will ever get to be a big sister to a living baby.

So back to my awful day, I ended up by myself on the beach (the cabin had it's own private beach). The wind was so strong that I probably would have had any beach to myself that day. At least once, I cursed the damn lake for being too shallow. It was not a fun time on the beach that day, but I did get something out of it. As DBM's frequently do, I wrote Reid's name in the sand.


Northern SK beaches do not have big stretches of damp sand for writing names, besides I had a plan. Last night I turned the picture into this:


I kept all the rocks that were used to write his name and brought them home to put in the shadow box. (See, I didn't just have bad ideas while sitting on that beach) I don't know where its permanent home is going to be yet, but it's the first picture related to Reid that I have framed and I want it to be where everyone can see it.

Fun's over

I am back at home after a week of vacation and my brain is so full of things that I need to get out here. I hope that I can coax them out one at a time over the next few days. Last night I was too tired to even look at the computer. I crawled into bed at 8pm and went to sleep.

Nothing really momentous happened while I was away. I ate too much, I drank too much and didn't sleep enough. (the not sleeping is due to D's inability to ever sleep past 7am even when on vacation and utterly exhausted from running around with 2 other 3 year olds.) I went for my first post-dead baby pedicure which was lovely and didn't involve any crying (surprisingly). I also spent lots of time spoiling my friend's 1 year old daughter. I think I could do that because: 1) she is a "she" and 2) she was conceived before we even started trying to have a 2nd baby so she is older than our second child could have possibly been. Hopefully that doesn't change as time passes as she is such a sweet girl (like her mommy). Here we are hanging out in the lake. (The boat effectively hides the very icky flabby belly that no amount of bathing suit can hide.)

Time to run away again

And now it's time for the vacation I have been both looking forward to and dreading. Looking forward because it's a vacation, duh, and I will get to spend time with my most wonderful friend who remembers all Reid's anniversaries and her great kids. Dreading because when we planned this vacation, it was January and I was pregnant and I was sure I would have a 4 1/2 month old baby along with me. It never occurred to me that it could be any different.

P.S. Love to all the DBM's who will be marking anniversaries in the next week. I'll be thinking of you.

Compulsive researching

I am a compulsive internet researcher. I can't buy anything without spending hours online trying to find the best product for me or DH or D. When DH wanted to make himself "better" coffee, I was the one on the coffee snob forums even thought I NEVER drink coffee. When DH thought we should get a DSLR camera, I was the one reading photography blogs. I cannot buy anything worth more than $99.99 spontaneously, I must google it first to see if anyone else likes it, hates it or can't live without it.

Maybe this is another reason why I am so addicted to dead baby blogs. Maybe I am researching how everyone else is dealing with their babyloss and trying to find a model of dead baby mama-hood that I can learn to live with ( since there's no chance of going to the baby returns department and telling them, "Excuse me you seem to have given me the wrong baby, I'm pretty sure that my baby was alive and this one is dead")

Now I am applying my compulsive researching powers to a new laptop which will allow me to indulge my babyloss blog addiction whenever I want without depriving DH of time playing online video games. (We clearly have very different ideas of therapy as he feels better after virtually blowing up strangers and I like hanging out with other dead baby mamas.) Now I am dividing my time between tech blogs and laptop reviews and trying to figure out if I can be happy with an 11" netbook or a 13" laptop while DH whispers in the background that I should get a Mac. (could it really be worth all that extra money?) Oh well I suppose it might be "healthy" to obsess about something not technically related to dead babies or trying to make a non-dead baby for a while.

Still mush

The feelings are still here (no danger of the anger, bitterness and sadness disappearing anytime soon) but the words just won't come. I read so many blogs, but I can't string together any comments that don't sound totally useless and lame. (but I am definitely reading and thinking of you all)

Tomorrow is my appointment with the counselor from DH"s employee assistance program. I think it will be an initial screening and I hope they have someone who specializes in grief that I can see after this. Hopefully whoever I see tomorrow at least has a clue about dealing with pregnancy loss or infant death. (With my luck it will be a 50 year old man who has never had kids.)

--
(Okay brief intermission because Family Guy is on and Brian and Stewie were singing "Everything is Better with a Bag of We.ed". For the first time ever, I wish I wasn't asthmatic so I could test that theory. Would having a dead baby be better with a bag of we.ed? hee hee)
--

We are taking D camping for the first time this weekend. It will be interesting (we will see how much any of us sleeps), but in the end I'll end up thinking that we shouldn't be able to do this because there is no way I'd be sleeping in a tent with a 4 month old. No matter what we do, it always comes back to the fact that it would be different if Reid was here. It's like a broken record in my head. Anyone want to trade records with me?

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 did it

I let myself get within touching distance of a baby boy. I didn't hold him, wasn't feeling quite like Superwoman, but I did touch him. He is nearly 6 months old, but really tiny for his age so Reid would likely be bigger than him now even though he is just over 2 months older. The only reason I could let myself get this close to a baby boy is because his mom is a Dead Baby Mama too. Her first son died at 9 months old in December 2007 so she get more than gets it. She didn't look at me funny when I teared up just looking at her son and she knew why it was a big deal for me to get close to him. It's good to know that I can see a baby boy up close and not loose it, but it sort of seems like cheating when it's a rainbow baby.

"Do you have to go there?"

Yesterday we were sitting outside watching D play with some junk from DH's tool box. She was so proud of her "new tools" and was carefully lining them up on a ledge at the top of her playhouse. I asked her why she didn't use the shelf right at her eye level. She didn't answer but DH said, "She is putting them up where no one else can reach them." I replied, "If only she had someone here that she needed to protect her things from...". DH then said, "Do you have to go there?" and I had to tell him that I don't have to go there, I am there all the time.

I live in Dead Baby Land and the "what-if's", "should-be's" and "I miss Reid's" are all around me all the time. Right now I live right smack in the middle of Dead Baby Land. Maybe someday I'll get to move to the edge or even just come here for visits but I am a citizen for life and there will always be times when I "have to go there".

Don't know what to think

So yesterday was a pretty good day. The birthday brownies that I baked turned out to be very tasty. It's what happened when we sang "Happy Birthday" that is confusing me. I stuck a candle in DH's brownies and D started to sing and I joined in and then in a blink of an eye, D was bawling. I was not shocked as she has cried at all of her birthdays when presented with a cupcake with candles. What shocked me was when she said, "I miss Baby Reid so much." I really don't know what to make of it. She has said this before but only if she saw that I was upset first. And there have been times were I suspected that she said it to try to get me to do something (It's awful that I have to suspect my almost 3 year old of using her dead brother to manipulate me, but even if she was, she has no way to know what it really means so I can't really get angry at her). And it's not like she needed to convince us to give her what she really wanted, there was a huge chocolate brownie sitting right in front of her. I even asked her again this morning why she cried and she repeated that she missed Reid. I don't know what I am supposed to do with this. I don't want D to be as confused and sad about Reid as I am. Yay, more mommy guilt coming up.

A Holiday We Can All Enjoy

Yeah for Free Slurpee Day! Finally a holiday that I can still enjoy despite my status as a Dead Baby Mama. D got to have her very first Slurpee in honor of the day and declared it "so deeelicious". Now if 7-11 could do something to improve the rest of the holidays on the calendar, I would really appreciate it.

Coping

First of all, thanks to all my fellow DBM's who left me comments after my post this afternoon. You guys are the best. I know I could call people (like Lareina) but it's easier for me to write it out. When I use the phone, I can't undo all the years of conditioning to be calm and polite and to not hog the conversation. When I blog, I can just spill all the bad feelings out and not have to worry about upsetting anyone else.

And now here's my coping mechanism for this evening...

Not great as a long term solution, but just fine for an evening. Yes, it is a big-ass wine glass, it's left over from the pre-parent days when we drank red-wine on a regular basis. It can hold half a bottle, that's why its only 1/3 full. I desperately wanted to drink red wine for most of my pregnancy and I resisted the urge for the entire time (not that it did me any good in the long run). Now it makes me sad that I can drink as much as I want without having to worry about how long until the baby will want to nurse again, but not sad enough to not drink it at all. Hopefully this glass will be the last one I can drink for along time. Here's to getting drunk(well slightly tipsy) and taking advantage of my husband.

3 months

In 2 hours it will have been exactly 3 months since Reid died. By some lovely twist of fate, it's also 13 weeks so the anniversary is falling on the same days of the week as the actual events. It made it very hard not to spend the whole evening thinking about what happened 3 months ago. (At 5:30 3 months ago, my water broke. At 8:00 3 months ago we were driving to the hospital. )

I talked to one of my university roommates today. I must admit that we have been out of touch for the last few years (we finished university 10 years ago). After Reid died she sent me an email and told me that she and her husband had been forced to end a pregnancy at 14 weeks last year. I knew that they had had trouble conceiving but I didn't know how bad things had gotten. She called me today and we had a really good chat. Even though our losses are very different we were very much on the same wavelength. It was good to talk to someone who I have known for a long time and who gets "it". Although I hate that being dead baby mamas is what has brought us back together, I think that we are not going to drift apart again. It's nice to think that maybe a friendship can be renewed in the middle of all this crap, unlike all the other ones that seem to have been erased.

Speaking of messed up friendships, the friend whose baby announcement on FB I posted about on Thursday morning, left a message for me Thursday evening while I was outside. So I guess she did call me after all. Now I have to work up the courage to call her back. (Talk about a weird feeling hearing that message after writing that post)

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?

Another Bad Day

I was miserable today. It was the first time since Reid died that I wasn't strong enough to keep up with D and ended up letting her watch way too much TV. I knew it was going to be a bad day when the desire to be a couch zombie outweighed the bad parent guilt. Thank goodness for E, another IRL friend who is actually a DBM x 3. Her phone call wasn't enough to get my out of my pj's and out of the house but it did cheer me up enough to stop me from hiding in my room and sobbing while D was watching Sesame Street. (and it was the episode with Feist singing "1,2,3,4" which gave me a couple minutes of pleasant distraction)

While I was in SK, one of my oldest friends called and left a message. DH told me about it but I wasn't up for calling her back while on my trip. She has since sent me an email that I haven't been able to reply to. She lives about 3 hours away and is pregnant (of course) with a boy (just like everyone else I know) and due at the end of July. She is done work in a week and wants to know if she can come visit me. I just don't know what to tell her. She was supportive right after Reid died but I hadn't heard anything from her since the end of April so I was feeling pretty hurt. I do want to see her, but I don't know if I can stand to see her hugely pregnant and happy (her blog is full of "when the baby comes" and all the other things that we DBM's know aren't guaranteed just because you get to be 34 weeks pregnant). I can't decide which will be harder for me, seeing her pregnant or waiting to see her once she has the baby. I have yet to go see anyone who has had a baby since Reid died and I have really avoided baby boys of any age. Any advice for me from those who may have already dealt with friends who are "still" pregnant?

D and I survived the drive to my parents farm. (I hate Dora but she got us through 10 hours on the road with minimal complaining) I had pictured us spending lots of time outside, helping my mom in her garden and taking D for tractor rides with my dad. However it has been raining nearly non-stop for the last 3 weeks and shows no sign of letting up. And when it's not raining , huge swarms of mosquito's are circling the yard looking for anything warm blooded. So much for the idyllic week in the country. This has left me with far too much time to miss DH and obsess about everything. I haven't cried for the last few days and that seems wrong. Things happen that make me feel sad, but they don't make me cry right now. Does that mean I didn't love Reid enough or am I "too good" at dealing with his death or am I in denial/shock and in a couple weeks I'll be a basket case again? How crappy is your life when you have to wonder what's wrong with you when you don't spend the majority of your day being utterly miserable?