Apples in the deep freeze

Apparently I need to be supervised right now. I have been trying to keep myself busy since getting the news on Tuesday because the breakdowns that happen when I let myself slowdown are not pretty. (Think sobbing uncontrollably on the nearest available horizontal surface.) I have done a whole lot of laundry and cleaning that I had expected would just pile up for a while. I even baked a huge batch of muffins and washed the dishes this morning. Then I went to put some of them in the freezer and discovered the 6 lb bag of apples I bought at Cos.tco Monday night. I tried smashing one of them on the patio outside (could frozen apples be a stand in for cheap dinnerware?) but it only cracked in half so it wasn't very satisfying. I put the apples in the freezer before I even found out that there was no new baby so what kind of things could I have mixed up since then? At the very least I expect D to find a stack of D.G's underwear in her t-shirt drawer. Hopefully nothing more valuable than a $6 bag of apples gets ruined.

Add me to the list...

...the list of women who thought they were getting another chance at this baby thing and then had that chance taken away too.

See, I got a BFP just over 2 weeks ago but wasn't ready to share the news, partly because I was in shock and scared and partly because I didn't want to take the focus off Reid's 1st anniversary. He doesn't get a real birthday but I still wanted his day to be about him, not about a new baby. I was happy to finally be pregnant and I started to make appointments and plans. I had just under 2 weeks of thinking that come November I might get to bring home a live baby. I started to feel queasy and peeing like crazy and I could smell things a mile away. Then this past Friday, I started spotting. Saturday, it turned into blood flow that lasted until Monday afternoon. When the bleeding slowed down I thought maybe things would be okay, maybe I lost a twin or the placenta was growing close to my cervix. I never had any cramping and didn't pass any big clots and overall there was less bleeding than a normal period. I got in for an U/S this morning and there was no sign of a baby anywhere. (There was a very VERY thorough internal scan, woo hoo.) Luckily (ha ha), the U/S clinic is in the same building where Dr. K was working that day so I was sent downstairs to see her and get the official word. (The radiologist is going with blighted ovum.) I did get a hug along with the paperwork for a hcg series. I guess now it's all over except for the crying and the blood tests.

I "knew" that this was a possibility, I mean I saw the same kind of thing happen to too many people especially over the last couple weeks, but I thought I would be one of the ones who somehow snuck through and made it out with a live kid this time. The universe is definitely not on my side. Who "loses" another baby the week before the first anniversary of their full term stillbirth, even if it turns out that that baby only existed in my head?

Condsidering cutting something else

I bought a keepsake box a few days ago. It's mostly black with red gerbera-ish flowers on it. Probably was never intended to hold anything like a baby's ashes, but that's what I'm going to use it for. The gerbera box fits the box that holds Reid's ashes, the clothes he was supposed to wear home and the blanket I made for him, but just barely. The lid just barely closes because I made the blanket big enough to swaddle a 3 month old, just in case he liked that sort of thing (his big sister did). Of course he never got near that blanket because it never came into the hospital, but it is still his blanket. Am I a horrible mom for even considering splitting the blanket to make it fit better?

If I split it into 4 pieces, I can put one in the gerbera box with Reid's ashes, keep one for me to hold onto when I'm having a bad day and maybe the other 2 pieces can be incorporated in a new blanket, someday, maybe, if things ever work out.

The odds of things working out seem pretty low though as it seems every other day brings news of another DBM losing their subsequent pregnancy. So much love to you all.

Another kind of waiting (that I don't like)

I seem to have developed on obsession with my hair (after not thinking about it enough for the last year). And while I do need a haircut, I'm pretty sure that I'm using it as an distraction, a way to avoid thinking about the milestone I am about to hit. (One year of DBM-hood does seems to a milestone you hit, not something you pass by.) Do I really want to change myself in someway to mark the 1 year anniversary or just avoid thinking about the 1 year anniversary altogether? I wish I could separate these things but they are intertwined in my head.

I started dreading the 1 year mark a couple months ago but now I just want to get to the other side of it. The pressure to somehow make it special and meaningful combined with the uncertainty about if or how the majority of people in my life are going to recognize Reid's "birthday" just doesn't sit well with me. I just want it to be that day already so I can do whatever I will do and deal with the reality instead of the possibilities.

Mar 19

My parents were in town for a few days so things were busy around here. D loved having them here to constantly entertain her and rarely, if ever, say no to her requests for more stories, more songs or more colouring. They left Friday for holiday on the West Coast and will return next Saturday in time for my niece's baptism next Sunday. Not sure about how that's going to go seeing as the SIL's many relatives are a very fertile bunch and I don't really want to spend the afternoon explaining the absence of my second child, one week before the anniversary of his birth/death. I'm going to avoid thinking about it as long as possible. (That's also been my strategy for dealing with work, still on unpaid leave, and my doctor told me it sounded like a good way to deal with it to her.)

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D is now done all the activities I signed her up for this winter and now we have a break for the next two weeks. The timing is less than ideal for me as I really don't need to be sitting around with no reason to get of the house in the two weeks leading up to Reid's birthday/anniversary but no one asked me when they should schedule spring break this year. I still haven't decided exactly what is happening to mark Reid's day, but it will be pretty low key.

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The impending anniversary is forcing me to admit a few things too. I can finally admit that I "need" a hair cut, but I still can't make myself go to my hairstylist, P, even though she cuts D and D.G.'s hair too so I have seen her many times in the last year. I am tempted to walk into a random salon and just get my hair hacked off, but I don't know where to go and I am afraid of hurting P's feelings because she would definitely be able to tell that I got it cut the next time. Is it weird that I think maybe I need to get it cut before the anniversary to symbolize starting a new year without my son?

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Still don't know what to do about M, but I am trying to figure something out so I will take that as progress.

Issue #2, Part 2

Well now I know that reason why I didn't just throw in the towel and completely give up on my friendship with M even though parts of me definitely wanted to, to save me a butload load of guilt.

Monday a letter arrived from M addressed to D.G. I was a good person and did not open D.G.'s personal mail, but I had to hide it so it would not torment me. D.G. finally read it Tuesday at work and brought it home for me to read too. M lied to D.G. on the phone last week when she said things were fine. It turns out that M is probably as messed up as I am, but possibly more in some ways. Without going into too many details, she ended up with severe post-partum depression, her husband got hurt and then lost his job (I knew about the hurt part) and is still unemployed so they are broke and their marriage is on the rocks too.

I know that it's impossible to reach out to other people when you are in the middle of a major depressive episode. The fear of being rejected completely outweighs the potential benefits. I also know that D.G. and I had over 13 years together before we lost our son and I got depressed, including a previous depressive episode, so we have a big foundation to work from if we are going to continue to make it through this. M and her husband have only been together for the last 3 and a half years and this is the first major challenge they have faced together. (Not that 3 years together isn't enough time to build a strong relationship and not that 13 years together means you can get through anything.) So I now understand at least part of why she wasn't there for me after she had her baby and no longer had to avoid thinking about me in order to not freak out about the possibility of her baby dying.

I guess this means the ball is back in my court now. If only I had the smallest clue about what I am supposed to do now.