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.

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.

Starts out okay but gets pretty dark by the end...

Thank you for all the complements on the shadow box. I am pretty proud of it and am glad you all like it too. (If you are moved to create your own versions, send me pictures)

Minor bit of blog housekeeping, I am tired of referring to my husband as DH. When we were younger, he was referred to as "Leash Boy" because due to a random act by a scheduling program, we had all our 1st year university classes together, so to some it appeared I was keeping him on a leash. However since that was a very long time ago (14 years, yikes) and he is now a grown man with a semi-important job, it's probably not fair to call him that. Our daughter calls him "Daddy Guy"so maybe for now I'll try D.G. (When I was home on mat. leave with her and he would come home from work, I would say "Who's that guy? It's Daddy!"and in her mind it became Daddy Guy)

Tomorrow is a big day. On top of it being Reid's 5 month anniversary, D.G. and I are going to the lawyer's office to get our wills in order (yes we are bad parents who didn't have a will for the 3 years our daughter has been alive). It should lead to some fun discussions on what happens if our whole family dies at the same time and what we want to happen if one of us becomes a vegetable. Then we need to pick up a "unbaby" baby gift for the friend I was cyber stalking while waiting for her baby to arrive (She has yet to contact us since except for the mass birth announcement email). I will meet my social obligation and send a gift but I am not forcing myself to go into a baby department or to sew baby things for anyone who hasn't been there for me. After that, the fun continues as D.G. is joining me for my second counseling session. He is apprehensive about it, at best, but is willing to go for my sake. Now I didn't book these things for Reid's anniversary on purpose, it just works better to schedule things for his Fridays off and the 3rd just happened to be a Friday this month so instead of waiting an extra 2 weeks, I decided to suck it up and get things over with. Besides we already "won" the dead baby lottery, whose to say we won't find a way to defy more statistics and have a reason to need our wills long before we should.

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.

I'm still here, just not having any thoughts worth "publishing". I am trying to work up the courage to go to a playdate on Sunday with all the moms I met when D was a baby. All of them except three have successfully reproduced a second time (and I know that's because they chose not to try). I want to see these people but am not sure I can handle it. Also I am waiting for news that one of my oldest friends has had her baby. She's got a boy in there so this one is going to hurt too. I am supposed to make her a ring sling as a baby gift but I haven't been able to get beyond hemming the fabric. Maybe it's because I planned to sew it while wearing my baby in my ring sling.

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.