Trying is highly over-rated

(This is a big long ramble, but I just need to get it out of my head so forgive me.)

So we are back. I saw the baby. (I held her, but only once) I tried to pretend I was normal, but could only hold it together for about 2 hours when everyone was around, so I would just hide out in the guest bedroom and read/cry for the rest of the evening. Except for the first night, when I locked myself in the guest bathroom with the lights off and the exhaust fan on to drown out the noise of everyone else talking right after supper was finished.

It was just all kinds of weird. Everyone would reply to me if I talked to them, but it felt like everyone was avoiding me. The only time I held the baby was when we first got there. After my parents held her, my dad gave her to me and I held her for about 2 minutes. My brother never asked me once if I wanted to hold her. I really felt like having a dead baby was some kind if communicable disease so they kept the baby away from me. We stayed with my aunt and uncle and my parents stayed at my brother's house. They all came to my aunt's house for supper every night we were there (D was the only one with an early bedtime) but we were never invited to my brother's house.

I guess I just have to accept that my brother having a child doesn't change the fact that he's an ass. I thought it might make him more understanding of what I have been through, but an ass who loves HIS baby is still an ass.

I barely talked to my mom during the whole ordeal and since I went to bed early the night before we left, I never even said goodbye to her. I figured she knew where I was, if she wanted to talk to me she could try, but she never did. I wonder how long I'll have to wait for the inevitable guilt-inducing phone call how about horribly I behaved during the trip.

Well at least D had a good time, apparently the dead baby taint has not been passed on to her.

November 11

I have to pack, but I need to be here more right now. Today we are going to visit my new niece and I am both excited and terrified. What if not freaking out at the sight of her was only enabled by technology and I have to run from the room before I start screaming when I see her in person? I think if I could just go see her myself it would be easier, but my whole family is going to be there and it involves driving to another city and staying with my aunt and uncle and just being away from my cave for 3 days. Uggh, this should not be stressful, I should be nothing but thrilled at the prospect of seeing my first niece.

---

A year ago, D.G. and I were packing for a few days away too. My mom came to watch D. and we spent 2 days at The Mall (It's the the biggest mall in the world and it's only 30 minutes away). We did nearly all our Christmas shopping, we ate whatever we wanted at odd hours, we rented movies and we slept in. Well he slept and I got up to pee frequently, but it was still good because we didn't have to worry about our 2 year old. It wasn't fancy but it was as close to a baby-moon as we were going to get.

When we came home, I found out that my friend L's son was stillborn. I was so shocked. I remember thinking "Full term babies don't die these days." How could that happen? (My cousin also delivered her son 11 weeks early that week and he didn't make it either so it was not a good week.) I was at 17 weeks and just wanted to wrap my arms around my belly and shield my baby from all this bad news. It was so sad for L, but something like that couldn't happen to us. Ha ha, the joke was on me because 5 and 1/2 months later, it did.

Anyways after all this rambling, today should have been L's son Kaelen's first birthday. If you have a spare moment, please stop by her blog and remember with her. (And yes it was me that gave her the gift.)

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?

A surprise

I sort of keep a list in my head of the things I am going to blog about next. Today it was going to be about my appointment with the counselor yesterday and the email I got last Tuesday, but that's not going to happen now.

This morning D.G. and D scooped out the guts of the 2 giant pumpkins they are planning to carve for Halloween. After D decided to sample some of the pumpkin guts and seeds, I decided that maybe I needed to gather up the seeds and roast them so D could eat them properly. That lead to me being up to my elbows in pumpkin guts when the phone rang. (D.G. was conveniently in the bathroom for the entire time.) I decided to let the machine get it, something I frequently do these days, and I got a big surprise when my brother left a message.

I am an aunt and the universe decided to spare me the knife to the heart because it's a girl. Yes, the baby arrived early. (She was due November 25th) We called them back right away for the details. It sounds like my SIL's doctors were worried about something because she has had intermittent bleeding for the last few weeks and decided to induce her at 36 weeks. (To me that sounds like they were worried about placenta previa but I will have to find out from my SIL later.) Everybody is fine though and my niece weighed in at 7 lbs so she would have been big like D and Reid if she had stayed in there a few more weeks.

For right now, I am not totally okay but as I told D.G., I am less not okay than I could have been. I hope that I can find a way to be okay and be happy about her and even be in the same room as her before she turns 1.

Drowning

Yesterday was the worst day I have had in months. I cried on and off all day despite the fact that I was home with D. It seems like the pregnancy announcements are pouring down all around me, while I got another BFN yesterday. I feel like I am drowning. My support group and the on-line baby loss community were my life lines, now they are the source of the flood waters.


"It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand. "

That about sums up how I feel. What is the point of ttc if you don't hope that it will work? I can't pretend that I've got something else more important going on in my life than trying to have a baby. I can't pretend that I'm okay if it doesn't happen this time. How am I supposed to survive what promises to be a painfully awful holiday season without some little speck of hope that maybe I could have the only gift I want, a non-dead baby?



(The quote is from John Cleese in the movie Clockwise. I read it somewhere online in the last while but couldn't remember where.)

(When I had hope that I could be pregnant, I felt happy for all of you out there who were. Underneath all of my pain, it's still there. I just can't feel it right now.)

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.

Not ready to be brave

I tried to be brave today. I had to return the maternity coat I borrowed from my cousin's wife last winter. I'm sure she has friends who are pregnant and could use it soon.(It's almost October and in Northern AB that means you could need a coat at anytime with next to no notice). I got the coat in February because her son arrived 4 weeks early so she didn't need it. I was outgrowing even my husband's coats and had at least another month of winter and pregnancy left to go. Of course now she has a healthy 7 1/2 month old and I have 6 months of grief.

So I spent all morning psyching myself up to go to their house and drop off the coat. And I get there all prepared to say hi, handover the coat and run before I had to see more that a glance of the baby, and of course, no one was home. I don't remember the last time I was so relieved. And that tells me I wasn't ready to be brave.

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.

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.

Back at it

My parents were here visiting for the last 3 days so it's been hard to write anything (posts or comments). When other people are here, I try to hide the bad feelings and limit the bitter, sarcastic comments. I don't know why for sure, maybe it's because I don't want to upset them or because I just know that they won't understand but it just feels like I have to hold things back. Also, only 2 people who know me in real life know about this blog, my husband (who I have asked not to read it) and my DBM pal L, who more than understands and encouraged me to start blogging. I'd like to keep it that way as I think it would only make my parents worry. Anyways the parents have left now so I can go back to being Dead Baby Blog obsessed.

I have been cyber-stalking my friend who is now about a week over due with a baby boy. I keep checking her FB status and blog for news. I know it's is going to hurt so, so bad when the big announcement comes, but I do want to know that everything is ok. I keep wondering if I will get a phone call or not. I thought she was important enough to get a phone call when Reid died, but I have feeling that it will be like the last time a close (or used to be close) friend successfully had a living baby. It will be too "hard" for them to call me before they post it on FB. In my mind people who get to bring home their living breathing babies shouldn't get to make excuses like that, they have someone to cuddle when the "hard" part is over.

(Yikes, I better prepare DH for the freak out that is coming when this baby arrives judging by how upset I am already)

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.

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.

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.

What is the point of trying?

I was trying to be a normal mom for my daughter today. I was getting ready to take her to a birthday party. (I had checked ahead to make sure that there would be no babies less than 6 months old at the party). I thought "I'll just check my email before we leave" and not knowing that there was a bomb waiting in my inbox. Yet another person is about to have baby and of course they are all perky and confident that they can make plans to do things with their baby 2 weeks from now. I almost threw up. I still made it out the door and to the birthday party but as soon as we got home and I put D in bed, I had a huge melt down on the kitchen floor.

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)

Stupid, stupid, stupid

I can't even stay away for a few hours. I went back on FB to check on friend who claimed to be having mid-life crisis (I am so glad I have at least 1 friend who doesn't have kids) just to see if I could guess what was going on and there it is, yet another baby announcement. And of course, it's another boy. And I am a total wreck again.

It's not just that I am angry and sad because Reid is gone. It' s that yet another person who was supposed to be my friend, (I even personally called her to tell her about Reid) didn't call me to tell me that her baby had arrived. (He has born over a week ago). The kid is out and safe, I don't think she has to worry about me jinxing her pregnancy anymore. This is just the kind of cheering up I needed to go with the rapid approach of the 3 month milestone on Saturday. (And my hair is all falling out as well, another gift that comes after having a baby whether they are alive or not)

More self -torture

Why do I keep doing this to myself? I keep getting bored and looking at FB and I keep getting smacked upside the head with baby crap. "We're expecting boy#4", "I'm done work for the next 13 months", "Why won't this baby come out already?", "Look how cute my baby is". I don't need to check FB, it emails me if there's a message, why can't I stop? Better yet, why can't I be the one obnoxiously posting pictures of my almost 3 month old?

Way too hard

On Saturday afternoon, I tried to be a normal person and went out to run errands without an almost 3 year old in tow, something that I should look forward to. I thought it would be no different than going out with D, but it was very different. Without D to distract me, the effort of pretending to be normal human being was overwhelming. 1 1/2 hours into my errands, I had to have a cry in the car before I went into the grocery store and 1/2 an hour after that I full out bawled as soon as I pulled back into the driveway at home. It's not like I saw anything that really upset me, it was just too hard to keep it together. I feel so awful for all the DBM's whose first child has died and have to go out in the world without the "shield" of a living child.

Fast-forward a couple hours and I was feeling good enough to go along with DH and D for ice cream (no downside to eating a huge ice cream cone to make me feel better, right?). And of course, there is a family with a little girl and a baby waiting for ice cream when we arrive. I have no idea if that baby was a boy or girl. I couldn't even get within 50 feet of them because the baby was sitting in the exact same car seat that is sitting in my basement. The same car seat that we should have brought Reid home in.

So much for a nice soothing ice ream cone.

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?

Thanks universe...

for yet another giant "FUCK YOU!". Yet another friend has delivered a beautiful perfect healthy baby BOY. Yay, another child to watch grow up and remind me of what we lost when Reid died. It's not that I didn't want her to have a healthy baby, but why couldn't she have a girl?