They Paved Paradise & Put Up A Parking Lot

So my little snowflakes are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. Granted, I don't know how many are in there, but since two went in, and I have cramps on both sides of my uterus, I just sort of assume that they both decided to stick around.

From what I hear, FET betas tend to be on the low side, but this has not been the case for me. Yesterday's blood work was all very good, thanks to the prayers and good vibes you have been sending my way. My Beta was 9158 (I am doubling every 1.8 days instead of every 2-3 days), Progesterone 39.9 (this huge jump may be due in part to the fact that I had to double up on shots two nights ago because of a needle malfunction), and Estrogen 393. Even though my estrogen numbers look good (they wanted them over 200), the Doc is continuing me on 4 patches per day, and my 1.5 cc's of Progesterone is staying the same, too.

Next Tuesday I go in for more bloodwork (I think just estrogen and progesterone at this point) and then Wednesday is the ultrasound when I get to see my little snowflake or snowflakes.

Please keep those prayers coming!

I have been walking around for the last few weeks with the song "Big Yellow Taxi" in my head. I don't know how it got in there, and even less so how to get it out. The lyrics "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" are stuck on repeat in my mind.

Lying in bed the other morning, having woken up to those words AGAIN, I got to thinking, and it hit me - I am the parking lot.

Bear with me on this one...

Before Peyton's birth/death, when I was happy in all aspects of my life (marriage, job, self, pregnancy, family, friendships, outlook, health) my world was paradise. Though I didn't realize it at the time, it was.

And then came Peyton's birth and death, and that paradise was violently dismantled and torn down.

I became just a heap of rubble, and stayed like that for a long time - probably a year.

That was the year I didn't brush my hair. The year of daily hours long visits at the cemetery. The year I accumulated so many lines around my forehead and eyes that I aged ten. The year that every smile was a lie.

As time progressed, I slowly started to rebuild. Things around me began to rise again - "a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot", and a new foundation for my life, a life after loss, was poured like asphalt as a parking lot.

At the end of the day, I am a poor replacement for what I once was - full, blooming, beautiful. As "paradise" I was untouched, undisturbed, and naive. I was innocent. In falling, that was lost.

Sometimes I get caught up on missing paradise, but then I remind myself that I have to look to the future and see that even as a lousy old parking lot, I have come a long way from that heap of rubble I once was.

I have come a long way, and I have a long way to go.

I wanted to let you all know how much I appreciated your messages of support regarding my pregnancy fears. I wish I could say they have calmed down, but I would be lying.

There are worries that I think all pregnant women feel - analyzing every cramp. Saying a little prayer with each trip to the bathroom. And then there are other worries. Those that are born of the unique situation of being pregnant after your only child has died.

These are the worries that can be debilitating.

I keep thinking, if I did so much right for Peyton in that pregnancy, and she still was born so ill, that I have to find some way to do a hundred times more to protect these little ones. My appetite is suffering greatly because I can't help but wonder with each spoonful of food, whether or not I have done a good enough job of checking the ingredients on my lentil soup or rice mix to be sure that no ugliness like MSG has slipped in under a different name.

I can't tell you how much it irks me that the FDA allows food companies to use misleading names like "Yeast extract" for MSG on packages. Where do they get off? I shouldn't have to do a full out investigation just to know what I am putting in my body. Even more frustrating is that some of the organic products that I have purchased from the health food store, too, have these misleading labels.

I know there are some who may read this post and label me a loon who has gone overboard obsessing about what I eat, but those people (for the most part) have never had their daughter ripped from their body and then learned mere minutes later that though she was pink, and beautiful, and perfect, she had cancer and was going to die.

That being said, this place has always been a space of honest expression for me, and I would rather write what I am truly thinking and feeling, even at the risk of drawing some judgments from others, than censor what I share here.

Even I, a woman of many, many words, cannot sum up appropriately how terrifying it is to live in fear of cancer. Witnessing what Peyton went through was horrible, and ugly, and the threats of this terrible disease seem to be everywhere.

In some way or another, it seems, every item we come into contact with has had some study linking it to cancer - canned food, body lotions, makeup, deodarant, soda, household products, charred bits of meat, potato skins, the list goes on and on and on.

I am afraid.
So very, very afraid.

I used to brush these warnings off. I used to say things like, "yeah, but you would have to eat SO MUCH of it to have any effect," and then I watched chemo deplete my daughter of her immune system, and a fungal infection take over her being, and her die in my arms, and that argument lost its weight with me.

So here I sit, pregnant with two little snowflakes who I love so much, trying, trying, TRYING with all I have to be a healthy vessel and give them the best of everything so that they can come into this world healthy and happy and normal, and there are meth-heads abusing their bodies and birthing  beautiful healthy babies that they don't care for or appreciate, and I have to tell you, it just seems so, so unfair.

Why should these people be entitled to getting off scott free? Why aren't they the ones affected by infertility?

Why does it seem that all of the tough lessons of loss are only reserved for those of us who so love and want our babies?

Why?

I have been thinking about Peyton alot lately. Not that that is any different, but thinking about what she would be like as a nearly two year old, and those thoughts just break my heart for her again.

I think about dressing her up, and watching her promptly get messed up. I think about her playing with our friends' daughter, Caitlyn, born a few months before she was, and how at this age they would be talking with real words, and some bits of sentences, and have their very own bond of friendship.

I think of what it would be, to have a full pregnant belly, with big sis looking over it, and it hurts.

She was robbed.
We were robbed.

I can't imagine that any amount of blessings can every bring peace to the portion of my heart reserved solely for her.

And so I sit here and I wonder how any of this can be possible?

How I can be so petrified, and excited, and heartbroken, and overjoyed all at once?