Done messing around

At least for now. I love the font on the header and I only tried it because it was the first alphabetically in the font list in Photoshop. I just wish I could re-design my life as easily as my blog.

New look

Playing around with new settings for my new computer has inspired me to play around with my blog template too. I still need to work on the header but D.G.'s computer has Photoshop so it will have to wait until he's back at work tomorrow. Yeah, it's a pretty dark theme, but it suits my mood more days than not.

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.

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.

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.