Hello blog world.
It's me - Kristin.
I've missed you.
I have so much to write about.
My Snowflakes are one! I can hardly believe it.
We still aren't sleeping over here. Which may or may not be contributing to my lack of posts. I think if you took the last three nights, my husband and I may possibly have hit a combined total of five hours of sleep. It's exhausting. I'm not entirely sure why the babies are so off their usual 1-2 feedings a night schedule, but they are.
Let's see... what else?
My little Snowflakes are now 20 and 21 pounds, which explains why my knees pop when I carry them up and down the stairs! Bubba is talking up a storm saying "hi," "momma," "dadda," "hi dadda," and "all done!" Squeaks surprisingly is not one for making small talk, lots of noises and squeaking but only a few words - "hi," "mom," and "dadda," but she has been getting busy walking - she takes six to eight steps when she feels like it, then goes days in between when she doesn't.
Writing has been keeping me busy, busy, busy - or I should say attempting to write has been keeping me busy, busy, busy. I am in a mad dash to complete editing my novel in time for a writer's conference coming up this spring, although 'mad dash' may not be the right term because most nights, by the time the babies are put to bed and I sit down to type, I realize I am too tired to formulate coherent sentences and I give up. In fact, right now, I'm giving up. The babies are napping. I think I should be too.
Till next time...
Showing posts with label random mutterings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random mutterings. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
On Being Human - In Under 200 Words
If I come across one more story or cruel comment attacking The Duggars and Santorums for how they handled the impossible situation of losing their babies, I am going to scream.
There is something very wrong with a society that places time and age qualifications on when a child is "worthy" of the love and grief of its parents. I am beyond fortunate that I had a month with Peyton, but you can bet your life that if I had lost her after six months in my body, or two hours on this earth, I would have loved and missed her no less.
I don't give a flying fig where anyone sits on the religious/political spectrum. To me this is simply a matter of showing a basic level of decency to a fellow human being. When you alter the amount of compassion that you show a person who has suffered the worst kind of loss, that of their child, simply to discredit their political or religious views, you have sort of missed the point on what it is to be human.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Counting Blessings in the Dark
There was a storm.
A big storm.
It hit our area the Saturday before Halloween.
A tree fell on our house.
Then another.
Large branches damaged our deck.
Landed on our car.
One of the trees that fell ripped the power lines out of our house,
and we were left in the dark.
NINE days later... We are still there.
The hotels in our area were booked immediately. Then most of them lost power, too, and people were left paying to sit in the dark and the cold.
The first few days we "toughed it out."
Poured water in the toilet to flush.
Ate food packed in snow.
Slept huddled in one bed in 20 degree weather,
trying to keep our Snowflakes from freezing.
Then a friend offered up a room at their house.
They had a generator that could power one space heater.
They used it in the guest bedroom to keep my little family warm,
while they slept in the cold.
Can you think of a more selfless act?
By Wednesday, with no end to the outage in sight, we headed out to stay with family who had gotten their power back, and have been there since.
Twice we were told our power was restored, and we packed up and headed home,
only to find it had not been.
The house was cold and dark.
Every tree in our yard had been destroyed.
It was pretty disheartening.
Yet moments like these make you realize just how good we've got it.
Yes, we complain about things like the price of oil (nearly $4 a gallon where I live, and the only way to heat our house)or about paying $5 a gallon for milk, but we generally don't have to worry about staying warm. Or having the lights on. Or our next meal.
My family struggles, as we all do these days, with our finances. I clip coupons. Worry about paying certain bills. Sacrifice to make ends meet. But our basic needs are always met. Even in this storm I knew the power would EVENTUALLY return. Life would EVENTUALLY go back to normal. That knowing, is itself, a blessing.
Over the course of the last week, I have learned that the friend of a friend died in pregnancy - leaving her husband without his wife and child. I learned that a very special baby that I have been praying for and have come to care so much about, is in all likelihood going to lose his battle.
These are REAL problems.
Yes, my property has suffered significant damage.
Yes, we have lost all of our food, and had to make it through some uncomfortably cold and damp nights.
Yes, we waited in line over an hour for gas - have been kept in the dark for nine days - and even lost our pet fish to the cold.
But my family is together.
And healthy.
And safe.
We have the love of family and good friends who were willing to take us in.
So I am counting these blessings.
Even in the dark I can see that they are what truly matter.
A big storm.
It hit our area the Saturday before Halloween.
A tree fell on our house.
Then another.
Large branches damaged our deck.
Landed on our car.
One of the trees that fell ripped the power lines out of our house,
and we were left in the dark.
NINE days later... We are still there.
The hotels in our area were booked immediately. Then most of them lost power, too, and people were left paying to sit in the dark and the cold.
The first few days we "toughed it out."
Poured water in the toilet to flush.
Ate food packed in snow.
Slept huddled in one bed in 20 degree weather,
trying to keep our Snowflakes from freezing.
Then a friend offered up a room at their house.
They had a generator that could power one space heater.
They used it in the guest bedroom to keep my little family warm,
while they slept in the cold.
Can you think of a more selfless act?
By Wednesday, with no end to the outage in sight, we headed out to stay with family who had gotten their power back, and have been there since.
Twice we were told our power was restored, and we packed up and headed home,
only to find it had not been.
The house was cold and dark.
Every tree in our yard had been destroyed.
It was pretty disheartening.
Yet moments like these make you realize just how good we've got it.
Yes, we complain about things like the price of oil (nearly $4 a gallon where I live, and the only way to heat our house)or about paying $5 a gallon for milk, but we generally don't have to worry about staying warm. Or having the lights on. Or our next meal.
My family struggles, as we all do these days, with our finances. I clip coupons. Worry about paying certain bills. Sacrifice to make ends meet. But our basic needs are always met. Even in this storm I knew the power would EVENTUALLY return. Life would EVENTUALLY go back to normal. That knowing, is itself, a blessing.
Over the course of the last week, I have learned that the friend of a friend died in pregnancy - leaving her husband without his wife and child. I learned that a very special baby that I have been praying for and have come to care so much about, is in all likelihood going to lose his battle.
These are REAL problems.
Yes, my property has suffered significant damage.
Yes, we have lost all of our food, and had to make it through some uncomfortably cold and damp nights.
Yes, we waited in line over an hour for gas - have been kept in the dark for nine days - and even lost our pet fish to the cold.
But my family is together.
And healthy.
And safe.
We have the love of family and good friends who were willing to take us in.
So I am counting these blessings.
Even in the dark I can see that they are what truly matter.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Reality Check
So staying home alone to take care of the twins. Yeah...
Don't get me wrong, I mean, I LOVE being home with them. Playing with them. Hearing them giggle. Watching them grow. I love all of that, I do, but sometimes the lack of sleep, the constant wrestling to get them into their diapers when all they want to do is flip and flip and flip right out of them, their new affinity for pinching me, the nipple biting while teething, and the on-the-boob-off-the-boob-on-the-boob during feedings, it gets to be a bit much.
And then of course we have the separation anxiety because we are now in THAT stage where any time I leave the room, or their corner of the room, or the immediate area, they cry like they will never see me again. It's endearing actually, to be THAT needed, THAT wanted, but it can also be draining.
And let's not forget the screaming at ten-thousand-decibels to each other, because when you are 7 months old, that is just HILARIOUS, or the whining for something that they want, and me trying, trying, TRYING to understand what that something is, because they don't yet have the words to tell me.
Sometimes at the end of a long day it's hard not to sink into how absolutely tiring the whole stay-at-home-mommy-of-twins thing can be. But then I take a step back and bitch-slap myself, because you know what? This exhaustion. This hard work. This is everything I ever hoped for and more. I have been truly, and DUAL-Y, blessed, and even I need a reality check from time to time.
After two plus long, silent, heart-breaking years I have been graced with two HEALTHY, beautiful children.
Are they a lot of work on my own? Heck yeah they are! A lot of work. No, really... A-lot-of-work, and my life would be infinitely easier if I had an extra set of hands here from time to time, but then I remind myself, when the days feel long, and my back hurts, and I haven't peed in 12 hours or eaten more than a bite of whatever just happened to be there, that every moment, every-single-stage with them is fleeting. My babies are growing, and they are growing fast. Last night Bubba laid across my chest and I found it hard to breath. Really. He is THAT big already. And they are laughing, and sitting up, and playing with each other. They have started conversing in their own special twin way, and to watch them take in the world around them with such bright eyed wonder is a dream come true. Every day that they do something new, is another step away from the last stage they were in, and I don't want to miss any of it.
And then there is the knowing. That even though we hope to have more children in the future, there is no guarantee of that. I know my tubes are shot. I know that making them required seven-long-months of bed rest. This was no easy feat, and there is a very good chance that this is the only time I will have babies doing what these babies are doing and I don't want to waste any of it having a pity party over the fact that I got exactly what I wished for.
So yes. Staying home by myself with twins is hard. And yes, I look like a zombie most days, but I am a happy zombie. A blessed zombie. A singing-silly-songs-to-keep-them-smiling zombie. And that is just fine by me.
In the future I will rest. I will sleep. I will go out to eat. At some point in the future I will have a date with my husband, maybe even feel sexy and like a woman again (rather than a spit-up covered mom). In the future I will wear pants that are not of the yoga-pajama-sweat suit variety, I will do my hair in something other than a messy pony-tail knot on the top of my head because time allows for it, and get my eyebrows waxed. I will wear make-up. Have more time for my writing. Maybe even grab a bite to eat with a girlfriend.
In the future I will do all of those things. But not now. Now is their time, and tiring as it may be at times, I embrace it.
Don't get me wrong, I mean, I LOVE being home with them. Playing with them. Hearing them giggle. Watching them grow. I love all of that, I do, but sometimes the lack of sleep, the constant wrestling to get them into their diapers when all they want to do is flip and flip and flip right out of them, their new affinity for pinching me, the nipple biting while teething, and the on-the-boob-off-the-boob-on-the-boob during feedings, it gets to be a bit much.
And then of course we have the separation anxiety because we are now in THAT stage where any time I leave the room, or their corner of the room, or the immediate area, they cry like they will never see me again. It's endearing actually, to be THAT needed, THAT wanted, but it can also be draining.
And let's not forget the screaming at ten-thousand-decibels to each other, because when you are 7 months old, that is just HILARIOUS, or the whining for something that they want, and me trying, trying, TRYING to understand what that something is, because they don't yet have the words to tell me.
Sometimes at the end of a long day it's hard not to sink into how absolutely tiring the whole stay-at-home-mommy-of-twins thing can be. But then I take a step back and bitch-slap myself, because you know what? This exhaustion. This hard work. This is everything I ever hoped for and more. I have been truly, and DUAL-Y, blessed, and even I need a reality check from time to time.
After two plus long, silent, heart-breaking years I have been graced with two HEALTHY, beautiful children.
Are they a lot of work on my own? Heck yeah they are! A lot of work. No, really... A-lot-of-work, and my life would be infinitely easier if I had an extra set of hands here from time to time, but then I remind myself, when the days feel long, and my back hurts, and I haven't peed in 12 hours or eaten more than a bite of whatever just happened to be there, that every moment, every-single-stage with them is fleeting. My babies are growing, and they are growing fast. Last night Bubba laid across my chest and I found it hard to breath. Really. He is THAT big already. And they are laughing, and sitting up, and playing with each other. They have started conversing in their own special twin way, and to watch them take in the world around them with such bright eyed wonder is a dream come true. Every day that they do something new, is another step away from the last stage they were in, and I don't want to miss any of it.
And then there is the knowing. That even though we hope to have more children in the future, there is no guarantee of that. I know my tubes are shot. I know that making them required seven-long-months of bed rest. This was no easy feat, and there is a very good chance that this is the only time I will have babies doing what these babies are doing and I don't want to waste any of it having a pity party over the fact that I got exactly what I wished for.
So yes. Staying home by myself with twins is hard. And yes, I look like a zombie most days, but I am a happy zombie. A blessed zombie. A singing-silly-songs-to-keep-them-smiling zombie. And that is just fine by me.
In the future I will rest. I will sleep. I will go out to eat. At some point in the future I will have a date with my husband, maybe even feel sexy and like a woman again (rather than a spit-up covered mom). In the future I will wear pants that are not of the yoga-pajama-sweat suit variety, I will do my hair in something other than a messy pony-tail knot on the top of my head because time allows for it, and get my eyebrows waxed. I will wear make-up. Have more time for my writing. Maybe even grab a bite to eat with a girlfriend.
In the future I will do all of those things. But not now. Now is their time, and tiring as it may be at times, I embrace it.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Life Lessons Peyton Taught Me
No amount of time with someone you love can ever be 'enough' time.
Big changes come in small packages.
It is possible to love someone so much that it hurts.
Life isn't fair.
Appreciate everything you have right now, in this moment.
You are not the same person you were before loss.
That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Empathy is a gift.
Good people get hurt.
Bad people also get hurt.
No one is immune to it.
Some situations truly are impossible.
Right or wrong, a mother always blames herself.
When you least expect it - grief sneaks up on you.
There is no shortage of grief in this world.
There is no shortage of beauty in this world.
Begrudging someone for having it easy will not make your own path any less difficult.
There are no guarantees in this life.
Sometimes those who should - don't, and those you never expected to-do.
Focus on the do-ers because a friend who won't walk with you in sorrow, doesn't deserve to dance with you in joy.
Keep trying, or keep dying - the choice is yours.
Laughter is good medicine. It is not a betrayal.
Sometimes our greatest strength is in our willingness to show weakness.
Parenthood is a privilege.
Grief is personal.
It is also never ending.
The grieving don't owe anyone an explanation.
Find a reason to be thankful every-single-day, even if just for the fact that you made it to another day. It will sustain you.
Find a way to be creative every-single-day.
It, too, will sustain you.
You can deal with the emotions of your loss now, or you can deal with them later.
Either way, you will have to deal with them.
There is no shame in embracing the pain.
A tiny life can have a huge impact.
You are a work in progress.
Embracing your blessings is not the same as moving on.
There are times when you have to stop doing something to someone in order to do something for them.
Death is no match for love.
You are stronger than you think you are.
You are also weaker than you would have imagined yourself to be.
The end of your world is not the end of THE world.
The world will keep turning.
Only you can decide how long to stand still.
You can never go back to the way things were.
Gone does not mean forgotten.
Little does not mean insignificant.
There is no 'right thing' to say.
That doesn't excuse saying nothing at all.
You can't let death keep you from living.
Every experience, even the most painful ones, bring beauty in some form.
****
A side note: As a way to honor her third birthday, I have entered the Reader's Digest "Your Life" Contest with an entry about my experience mothering Peyton. The voting is open until November 1st, and you can vote once a day. It would mean a great deal to me to get Peyton's story in Reader's Digest. Can you please help me out by visiting this link and casting your vote for my entry. Thank you so much!
Big changes come in small packages.
It is possible to love someone so much that it hurts.
Life isn't fair.
Appreciate everything you have right now, in this moment.
You are not the same person you were before loss.
That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Empathy is a gift.
Good people get hurt.
Bad people also get hurt.
No one is immune to it.
Some situations truly are impossible.
Right or wrong, a mother always blames herself.
When you least expect it - grief sneaks up on you.
There is no shortage of grief in this world.
There is no shortage of beauty in this world.
Begrudging someone for having it easy will not make your own path any less difficult.
There are no guarantees in this life.
Sometimes those who should - don't, and those you never expected to-do.
Focus on the do-ers because a friend who won't walk with you in sorrow, doesn't deserve to dance with you in joy.
Keep trying, or keep dying - the choice is yours.
Laughter is good medicine. It is not a betrayal.
Sometimes our greatest strength is in our willingness to show weakness.
Parenthood is a privilege.
Grief is personal.
It is also never ending.
The grieving don't owe anyone an explanation.
Find a reason to be thankful every-single-day, even if just for the fact that you made it to another day. It will sustain you.
Find a way to be creative every-single-day.
It, too, will sustain you.
You can deal with the emotions of your loss now, or you can deal with them later.
Either way, you will have to deal with them.
There is no shame in embracing the pain.
A tiny life can have a huge impact.
You are a work in progress.
Embracing your blessings is not the same as moving on.
There are times when you have to stop doing something to someone in order to do something for them.
Death is no match for love.
You are stronger than you think you are.
You are also weaker than you would have imagined yourself to be.
The end of your world is not the end of THE world.
The world will keep turning.
Only you can decide how long to stand still.
You can never go back to the way things were.
Gone does not mean forgotten.
Little does not mean insignificant.
There is no 'right thing' to say.
That doesn't excuse saying nothing at all.
You can't let death keep you from living.
Every experience, even the most painful ones, bring beauty in some form.
****
A side note: As a way to honor her third birthday, I have entered the Reader's Digest "Your Life" Contest with an entry about my experience mothering Peyton. The voting is open until November 1st, and you can vote once a day. It would mean a great deal to me to get Peyton's story in Reader's Digest. Can you please help me out by visiting this link and casting your vote for my entry. Thank you so much!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Do I Laugh Or Do I Cry?
My house hates me.
Don't look at me like that - it's true.
When Peyton died, our seemingly perfect house had over $40,000 worth of unnecessary repairs come up over the first six months to a year of our grieving - talk about an expensive distraction.
Now, here I am, hugely pregnant and on bedrest, and our house has decided to turn on us again.
Honestly, at this point I no longer know whether to laugh or cry.
Yesterday morning I woke up to an odd sound. In my slumber filled haze I thought it was the dog licking something - herself, some furniture, something she had picked up off the floor. "Be quiet Charlotte," I muttered into my pillow, but the sound persisted. When I opened my eyes, I was astonished to find that the sound I heard was water dripping into the room from above our window casing. We live in the northeast and have had a TON of snow and ice in the last month - apparently yesterday our roof decided it had had enough.
I called hubs at work in a panic because there was water everywhere, and I am on bedrest, and what the heck am I gonna do about something like that? He came home and raked what he could off the roof (which, while it was a valiant effort, was kind of useless against the 8-12 inch thick ice pile-up that we have going on up there) and to both of our surprise, the water stopped.
Phew!
I had had an NST scheduled for the morning, and I asked hubs if he needed me (what I thought I was going to do, I couldn't tell you) and he told me he had it covered, so I headed off for the hospital. We were predicted to get a major storm, but luckily it was supposed to be clear until well after my appointment. I arrived at the hospital and wouldn't you know, they put me in the bed RIGHT NEXT TO that same woman from last week... the one with the junk food and the soda and the healthy babies - what are the odds? They did a BP check, overall pretty good though a little high, I am assuming from the stress of my house revolting against me, and hooked me up to the monitors.
The nurse asked how my morning was going, and I told her about the leak, at which point she told me a horror story about it happening at her mother's house, and how it did super extensive damage, and blah blah blah. She then told me to not go into the attic to check it out (like I was gonna do that anyway) and that if it started again, to let someone else deal with the leaking water. Well that is sort of hard when you are home alone. I mean if there is a new leak that pops up, I can't just let it pour in without going over to stick a bucket under it or something.
After scaring me about all the crap that could be in our leaking water, and all the damage it could do and dollars it could cost, the nurse asked where the babies were, and I told her. She tried for a while but couldn't get a heartbeat on Baby A. The nurse kept leaving me and saying how strange it was that it wasn't monitoring, and then she would come back, contort me into some strange position where I had to hold this pad with one finger and that pad with another and I couldn't get to my ginger ale and boy did I want that ginger ale...
What may come as a shock was how unconcerned I was through this whole process. The snowflakes had been so incredibly active all morning and I think that is why. Sometimes my little baby boy A likes to hide from the NST pad so knowing this helped too.
Well an hour went by - then two, and still nothing but spotty recordings of his heartrate 99-200-154-96-202 like that it went on and on. I heard the nurse mutter something about "go see if you can find those twins" to another nurse, and a new woman appeared. She wheeled over the ultrasound machine, found the two babies and figured out the big mystery - both of the snowflakes are now lying transverse (horizontal!) Baby A has been head down and low for months, where as B will flip from vertical head down to transverse from time to time. I guess A got sick of having B sitting on his head, so he flipped too!
I have to admit, I was really frustrated and disappointed by this discovery.
I know it sounds silly to be upset over this but I really REALLY want to VBAC these babies. The nurse gave me some bullshit about how whatever the doc chooses I should be happy, and I wanted to scream because not for nothing, I know many women have c-sections without any issues, but my c-section with Peyton caused me MANY issues, not the least of which was robbing me of my fertility, so I am really not walking lightly into having another one like it is no big deal.
I am a realist, I know the possibility, and maybe the probability even, are there that I will have to c-section these babies, but that doesn't mean I am not wishing for VBAC. C-sections limit the number of children you can have, and we have always wanted a large family. I just don't think that unless you have had a c-section to bring a child into this world, and then lost that child, that someone can fully understand. It was also because of my c-section that we had to wait a year to start trying again, and another 6 months after that to discover I even had an infertility issue... so now that I am beating a dead horse here... let's just say I don't want one. I may need one, but I certainly don't want one.
Once the babies were found on ultrasound, my NST went a lot more smoothly. They checked my fluid, which they told me was wonderful, and sent me on my merry old way. I came home to find hubs working like mad at trying to get ice off the roof to no avail. I usually feel pretty grown up but I have to say, when things like this happen with our house I feel like a kid who is in over her head.
So after a long (and exhausting for hubs) day, we moved back into our bedroom last night- finally! We have been staying in the guest room for about a month - since the infamous mercury incident - and the water dripping in the guest room was just the motivation I needed to get out of there. I had been holding off, since we had put in new wood floors in the bedroom and I wanted to give them time to off gas, but I figured a month was sufficient.
Well, to say last night was a sleepless night would be an incredible understatement. For whatever reason I was nauseous all night, and kept getting up to deal with morning sickness. At about 4AM, I finally closed my eyes and kept them shut, but wouldn't you know... 7AM I woke up to new drips - IN OUR BEDROOM! UGH!
Ty Pennington where are you!?
Hubs was outside shoveling, and looking mighty exhausted by it - poor thing! The storm we got last night was very wet and heavy, and I could see that each shovel-full was making him wish he had stayed in the midwest, rather than move up here to all this snow and mess to marry a northeastern girl!
I peeked my head into the guest bedroom to see how the dripping was going in there, and what had been a controlled drip into a bucket, had spread overnight into a splattering mess! Hubs came in and I gave him the bad news about the leak getting worse, and he headed back out, head down, to re-roof rake the roof! After that, he put more plastic and buckets and towels down in both bedrooms, and looking defeated, headed for the shower.
"We are gonna laugh about this someday." I called to him from the bottom of the stairs.
"About what?"
"About our house deciding to fall apart over the last month of this pregnancy. About not being able to get anything ready in time because of it. About all of it."
"We are?"
"Yes. We are."
"But not today," he grumbled.
"No," I admitted, "not today. But someday."
Don't look at me like that - it's true.
When Peyton died, our seemingly perfect house had over $40,000 worth of unnecessary repairs come up over the first six months to a year of our grieving - talk about an expensive distraction.
Now, here I am, hugely pregnant and on bedrest, and our house has decided to turn on us again.
Honestly, at this point I no longer know whether to laugh or cry.
Yesterday morning I woke up to an odd sound. In my slumber filled haze I thought it was the dog licking something - herself, some furniture, something she had picked up off the floor. "Be quiet Charlotte," I muttered into my pillow, but the sound persisted. When I opened my eyes, I was astonished to find that the sound I heard was water dripping into the room from above our window casing. We live in the northeast and have had a TON of snow and ice in the last month - apparently yesterday our roof decided it had had enough.
I called hubs at work in a panic because there was water everywhere, and I am on bedrest, and what the heck am I gonna do about something like that? He came home and raked what he could off the roof (which, while it was a valiant effort, was kind of useless against the 8-12 inch thick ice pile-up that we have going on up there) and to both of our surprise, the water stopped.
Phew!
I had had an NST scheduled for the morning, and I asked hubs if he needed me (what I thought I was going to do, I couldn't tell you) and he told me he had it covered, so I headed off for the hospital. We were predicted to get a major storm, but luckily it was supposed to be clear until well after my appointment. I arrived at the hospital and wouldn't you know, they put me in the bed RIGHT NEXT TO that same woman from last week... the one with the junk food and the soda and the healthy babies - what are the odds? They did a BP check, overall pretty good though a little high, I am assuming from the stress of my house revolting against me, and hooked me up to the monitors.
The nurse asked how my morning was going, and I told her about the leak, at which point she told me a horror story about it happening at her mother's house, and how it did super extensive damage, and blah blah blah. She then told me to not go into the attic to check it out (like I was gonna do that anyway) and that if it started again, to let someone else deal with the leaking water. Well that is sort of hard when you are home alone. I mean if there is a new leak that pops up, I can't just let it pour in without going over to stick a bucket under it or something.
After scaring me about all the crap that could be in our leaking water, and all the damage it could do and dollars it could cost, the nurse asked where the babies were, and I told her. She tried for a while but couldn't get a heartbeat on Baby A. The nurse kept leaving me and saying how strange it was that it wasn't monitoring, and then she would come back, contort me into some strange position where I had to hold this pad with one finger and that pad with another and I couldn't get to my ginger ale and boy did I want that ginger ale...
What may come as a shock was how unconcerned I was through this whole process. The snowflakes had been so incredibly active all morning and I think that is why. Sometimes my little baby boy A likes to hide from the NST pad so knowing this helped too.
Well an hour went by - then two, and still nothing but spotty recordings of his heartrate 99-200-154-96-202 like that it went on and on. I heard the nurse mutter something about "go see if you can find those twins" to another nurse, and a new woman appeared. She wheeled over the ultrasound machine, found the two babies and figured out the big mystery - both of the snowflakes are now lying transverse (horizontal!) Baby A has been head down and low for months, where as B will flip from vertical head down to transverse from time to time. I guess A got sick of having B sitting on his head, so he flipped too!
I have to admit, I was really frustrated and disappointed by this discovery.
I know it sounds silly to be upset over this but I really REALLY want to VBAC these babies. The nurse gave me some bullshit about how whatever the doc chooses I should be happy, and I wanted to scream because not for nothing, I know many women have c-sections without any issues, but my c-section with Peyton caused me MANY issues, not the least of which was robbing me of my fertility, so I am really not walking lightly into having another one like it is no big deal.
I am a realist, I know the possibility, and maybe the probability even, are there that I will have to c-section these babies, but that doesn't mean I am not wishing for VBAC. C-sections limit the number of children you can have, and we have always wanted a large family. I just don't think that unless you have had a c-section to bring a child into this world, and then lost that child, that someone can fully understand. It was also because of my c-section that we had to wait a year to start trying again, and another 6 months after that to discover I even had an infertility issue... so now that I am beating a dead horse here... let's just say I don't want one. I may need one, but I certainly don't want one.
Once the babies were found on ultrasound, my NST went a lot more smoothly. They checked my fluid, which they told me was wonderful, and sent me on my merry old way. I came home to find hubs working like mad at trying to get ice off the roof to no avail. I usually feel pretty grown up but I have to say, when things like this happen with our house I feel like a kid who is in over her head.
So after a long (and exhausting for hubs) day, we moved back into our bedroom last night- finally! We have been staying in the guest room for about a month - since the infamous mercury incident - and the water dripping in the guest room was just the motivation I needed to get out of there. I had been holding off, since we had put in new wood floors in the bedroom and I wanted to give them time to off gas, but I figured a month was sufficient.
Well, to say last night was a sleepless night would be an incredible understatement. For whatever reason I was nauseous all night, and kept getting up to deal with morning sickness. At about 4AM, I finally closed my eyes and kept them shut, but wouldn't you know... 7AM I woke up to new drips - IN OUR BEDROOM! UGH!
Ty Pennington where are you!?
Hubs was outside shoveling, and looking mighty exhausted by it - poor thing! The storm we got last night was very wet and heavy, and I could see that each shovel-full was making him wish he had stayed in the midwest, rather than move up here to all this snow and mess to marry a northeastern girl!
I peeked my head into the guest bedroom to see how the dripping was going in there, and what had been a controlled drip into a bucket, had spread overnight into a splattering mess! Hubs came in and I gave him the bad news about the leak getting worse, and he headed back out, head down, to re-roof rake the roof! After that, he put more plastic and buckets and towels down in both bedrooms, and looking defeated, headed for the shower.
"We are gonna laugh about this someday." I called to him from the bottom of the stairs.
"About what?"
"About our house deciding to fall apart over the last month of this pregnancy. About not being able to get anything ready in time because of it. About all of it."
"We are?"
"Yes. We are."
"But not today," he grumbled.
"No," I admitted, "not today. But someday."
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Just * So * Exhausted
Since starting this blog in May of 2009, I don't think I have ever gone this long without a post. I cannot appropriately put into words the whirlwind that has been these last two weeks, but here is the Reader's Digest version. The important things to note are that the Snowflakes are fine (I am 30 weeks along now) and things are hopefully going to improve.
(Pardon any typos or incoherence, I am exhausted...)
WED. 12/22 - I woke up to the smell of gasoline in my house and thought it was from some generators being used outside to cut a neighbor's trees down. I left the house to rest at a local friend's, just to be on the safe side until hubs got home, and returned later to find that our house had completely filled with even stronger fumes. This, of course, completely freaked me out because there are links between gas fumes and cancer and you know where my mind was going there...
It turns out our snowblower had cracked overnight in the garage, spilling gasoline. I was not able to return home for several more hours as we had to air the house out, windows open (it was about 15 degrees out at the time.)
This day was also a day hubs was supposed to meet with my mother and bring some Doing Good In Her Name donations to one of our local hospitals. We called my mom to let her know that hubs was on his way, and she informed us that she had a stomach flu and was too sick. We also decided at this point that Christmas would have to be postponed until she felt better. Not able to go back in the house, and unable to go down to my parent's to escape the fumes, hubs and I went for a drive to kill some time which was hard because I was very uncomfortable. When we were finally able to get back into our house, I received word that my cousin Erica's daughter Faith had lost her battle at 2 years and 2 months old to congenital heart disease. The news was devastating.
FRI. 12/24/10
Hubs was getting out of bed and accidentally knocked over a lamp in our bedroom breaking a light bulb. Big deal, you might say, but unfortunately it turned out to be one. We had used one of those new CFL energy efficient squiggly light bulbs in that lamp, and what neither of us knew, is that when you break one there is an 11 step cleanup process required by the EPA to rid your house of dangerous mercury vapor. Of course I was sitting right there when the light bulb broke, and neither of us knew until I googled it, that we should have immediately evacuated and ventilated the room before starting cleanup (Hubs had gone about gathering the broken glass the old fashioned way.)
Per instructions by poison control he cleaned up the mess, but we were told then that because it had been broken on carpet, there would be no way to fully clean the mercury without removing our wall to wall carpeting and replacing it... GREAT. I am all for saving the environment - I donate to land groups. I recycle. That being said, there are no words for how pissed off I feel at the expense that we have had to undergo this last week over a broken 50 cent light bulb.
I called my OB and informed him of my exposure to the mercury vapor, and he told me to come in a few days later to have my blood mercury levels checked to be sure the babies hadn't been harmed.
SAT. 12/24 -Christmas postponed due to mom's illness. Our family celebrates Christmas Eve, so this was a real bummer. Hubs and I spent two sleepless nights in our guest bedroom. I always thought this bed was fairly comfortable, and maybe it is normally, but when pregnant with twins, it is just not getting the job done.
SUN. 12/25 - Merry Christmas. Headed down to see my parents and some family friends, and to get away from my mercury biohazard house since I wasn't allowed to go into my bedroom still. The state's EPA had recommended pregnant women staying away for "several days." We had a nice Christmas Day and finally a good night's sleep.
MON. 12/26 - Hubs left me at my parent's house and headed back to ours with my brother in law to move all the furniture out of our bedroom and rip up the affected carpeting. They came back to my parents house that evening and our family ate spaghetti and meatballs (the kind of meatballs you get in a bag from your grocery store). Not me, I ate spaghetti - no meatballs. Same goes for my sister. This is relevant. Hubs started to not feel too well overnight.
TUES. 12/27 - Hubs wakes up non stop vomiting. Can't hold anything down. I go downstairs to find my brother in law, niece, and nephew, all of whom ate the same thing, are also non stop sick. My sister has a broken leg, so she sort of had her hands tied being stuck on the couch, and my parent's weren't home (my mother had a funeral to attend for a former co-worker.) I did my best to help out, and most especially to get help to hubs, but as you all know I have been on bedrest for four months, and so every trip up and down the stairs is agony.
I called the doctor who tells me I have to get hubs to the ER. I have no way to do this on bedrest, and try to reach my parents. No luck. Hubs continues to be violently ill. I start leaking what I believe to be fluid. My niece starts projectile vomiting. My brother, who is trying to get his strength to drive hubs to the ER can't move, and is laid out on the ground like a wounded soldier.
You get the picture.
This was NOT a pretty scene.
I checked on hubs who was sheet white, and decided to call an ambulance to get him. Luckily, just as I was doing this, my mother walked in the door and was able to take him to an urgent care center closer to their home. For the next two hours, hubs was given over 2 liters of fluids to replenish him. Luckily no one else needed to be brought in for fluids.
We will never know for sure what caused the illness, but I think I am staying off frozen meatballs permanently just in case.
WED. 12/28 My mom takes me to the OB to have an appointment. Both snowflakes are head down - yay! and I have my blood drawn for the mercury test. I don't know how he finds the energy for it, but hubs and my dad head back up to our house and start to install hardwood floors in our bedroom. They stay overnight.
THUR. 12/29 We attend Faith's wake. It was absolutely beautiful. The strength my cousin displayed throughout the day leaves me in awe. I am two years into my grief, and remember how those early days felt, and honestly, I don't know how she does what she does. She amazes me. The wake was beautiful but I started to have some really terrible contractions. At around 6:30 I asked my mother to take me home. By the time we got home, I started getting sick from the contractions. I took a warm shower, hoping that would ease my muscles (I figured I overdid it being at the funeral) and know the water was warm but I was freezing. I step out of the shower to find that my hands are turning blue. I am totally freezing. I crawl into bed and everything hurts - my hair, my eyes, my teeth. I spike a fever of 101 and stay there for the next two days, too sick to even attend Faith's funeral on Friday, which is devastating for me. The fever made me really sick, I couldn't keep anything down. I asked the OB if he thought it was a stomach bug and he said no, that vomiting etc is my pregnant body's reaction to the fever. He tells me he thinks that I have picked up the flu.
Again, where is that bubble for me to live in when I need it?
FRI. 12/31 & SAT. 1/1 A bit of a blur. I do know hubs woke me up to have me see the ball drop. Finally, sometime between Saturday and Sunday, my fever breaks.
SUN. 1/2 I was feeling pretty good but still unable to eat anything. Hubs headed back home to our house to try to get the hardwood floors in the bedroom and upstairs hallway done so I could come home. Sunday night I started having contractions every five minutes. I tell the babies this is not time for them to come - our house is a catastrophe - there is furniture in every room that has been moved around to make room for the hardwood floors, and we had a new washer and dryer which hubs was supposed to be able to have installed on his week off (obviously didn't happen because of the other things going on) that are taking up the center of our living room. I tell them that I am going to sleep, and if they need me to wake me up, but it would really be better for everyone involved if they could hang out a little longer.
MON. 1/3 I wake up completely surprised to find that I have not gone into labor over night. Hubs calls to say that he is finishing up the floor, and should get me by 2PM. 2 comes, 3 comes, 4 comes. At 7PM I get a call that goes like this:
Hubs: Remember that time when I sawed through my toe?
Me: You mean when we were camping?
Hubs: Yeah.
Me: Yeah I remember... why?
Hubs: Well, I did that again. Just this time with my hand. I think I need to go to the ER.
Yeah, four stitches and a tetanus shot later, hubs came to get me from my parents house. We finally got home at around 10:30PM. We went to bed in the guest room (still no furniture in the bedroom) and I didn't sleep at all. Apparently 30 weeks is when you completely cease being able to breathe or get comfortable with twins.
TUES. 1/4 Exhausted all day but hopeful that things are turning up.
TODAY - Woke up with a painful sinus infection.
I give up!
PS - A LITTLE HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: If you have been following my dear friend Birni's story at the blog All The Little Ponies, and have noticed taht you can no longer access it, please send her a note at birni@cybergal.com and she will add you as a follower. Because of some IRL drama, Birni has had to go private, but she would still love those in this community to be able to follow along.
(Pardon any typos or incoherence, I am exhausted...)
WED. 12/22 - I woke up to the smell of gasoline in my house and thought it was from some generators being used outside to cut a neighbor's trees down. I left the house to rest at a local friend's, just to be on the safe side until hubs got home, and returned later to find that our house had completely filled with even stronger fumes. This, of course, completely freaked me out because there are links between gas fumes and cancer and you know where my mind was going there...
It turns out our snowblower had cracked overnight in the garage, spilling gasoline. I was not able to return home for several more hours as we had to air the house out, windows open (it was about 15 degrees out at the time.)
This day was also a day hubs was supposed to meet with my mother and bring some Doing Good In Her Name donations to one of our local hospitals. We called my mom to let her know that hubs was on his way, and she informed us that she had a stomach flu and was too sick. We also decided at this point that Christmas would have to be postponed until she felt better. Not able to go back in the house, and unable to go down to my parent's to escape the fumes, hubs and I went for a drive to kill some time which was hard because I was very uncomfortable. When we were finally able to get back into our house, I received word that my cousin Erica's daughter Faith had lost her battle at 2 years and 2 months old to congenital heart disease. The news was devastating.
FRI. 12/24/10
Hubs was getting out of bed and accidentally knocked over a lamp in our bedroom breaking a light bulb. Big deal, you might say, but unfortunately it turned out to be one. We had used one of those new CFL energy efficient squiggly light bulbs in that lamp, and what neither of us knew, is that when you break one there is an 11 step cleanup process required by the EPA to rid your house of dangerous mercury vapor. Of course I was sitting right there when the light bulb broke, and neither of us knew until I googled it, that we should have immediately evacuated and ventilated the room before starting cleanup (Hubs had gone about gathering the broken glass the old fashioned way.)
Per instructions by poison control he cleaned up the mess, but we were told then that because it had been broken on carpet, there would be no way to fully clean the mercury without removing our wall to wall carpeting and replacing it... GREAT. I am all for saving the environment - I donate to land groups. I recycle. That being said, there are no words for how pissed off I feel at the expense that we have had to undergo this last week over a broken 50 cent light bulb.
I called my OB and informed him of my exposure to the mercury vapor, and he told me to come in a few days later to have my blood mercury levels checked to be sure the babies hadn't been harmed.
SAT. 12/24 -Christmas postponed due to mom's illness. Our family celebrates Christmas Eve, so this was a real bummer. Hubs and I spent two sleepless nights in our guest bedroom. I always thought this bed was fairly comfortable, and maybe it is normally, but when pregnant with twins, it is just not getting the job done.
SUN. 12/25 - Merry Christmas. Headed down to see my parents and some family friends, and to get away from my mercury biohazard house since I wasn't allowed to go into my bedroom still. The state's EPA had recommended pregnant women staying away for "several days." We had a nice Christmas Day and finally a good night's sleep.
MON. 12/26 - Hubs left me at my parent's house and headed back to ours with my brother in law to move all the furniture out of our bedroom and rip up the affected carpeting. They came back to my parents house that evening and our family ate spaghetti and meatballs (the kind of meatballs you get in a bag from your grocery store). Not me, I ate spaghetti - no meatballs. Same goes for my sister. This is relevant. Hubs started to not feel too well overnight.
TUES. 12/27 - Hubs wakes up non stop vomiting. Can't hold anything down. I go downstairs to find my brother in law, niece, and nephew, all of whom ate the same thing, are also non stop sick. My sister has a broken leg, so she sort of had her hands tied being stuck on the couch, and my parent's weren't home (my mother had a funeral to attend for a former co-worker.) I did my best to help out, and most especially to get help to hubs, but as you all know I have been on bedrest for four months, and so every trip up and down the stairs is agony.
I called the doctor who tells me I have to get hubs to the ER. I have no way to do this on bedrest, and try to reach my parents. No luck. Hubs continues to be violently ill. I start leaking what I believe to be fluid. My niece starts projectile vomiting. My brother, who is trying to get his strength to drive hubs to the ER can't move, and is laid out on the ground like a wounded soldier.
You get the picture.
This was NOT a pretty scene.
I checked on hubs who was sheet white, and decided to call an ambulance to get him. Luckily, just as I was doing this, my mother walked in the door and was able to take him to an urgent care center closer to their home. For the next two hours, hubs was given over 2 liters of fluids to replenish him. Luckily no one else needed to be brought in for fluids.
We will never know for sure what caused the illness, but I think I am staying off frozen meatballs permanently just in case.
WED. 12/28 My mom takes me to the OB to have an appointment. Both snowflakes are head down - yay! and I have my blood drawn for the mercury test. I don't know how he finds the energy for it, but hubs and my dad head back up to our house and start to install hardwood floors in our bedroom. They stay overnight.
THUR. 12/29 We attend Faith's wake. It was absolutely beautiful. The strength my cousin displayed throughout the day leaves me in awe. I am two years into my grief, and remember how those early days felt, and honestly, I don't know how she does what she does. She amazes me. The wake was beautiful but I started to have some really terrible contractions. At around 6:30 I asked my mother to take me home. By the time we got home, I started getting sick from the contractions. I took a warm shower, hoping that would ease my muscles (I figured I overdid it being at the funeral) and know the water was warm but I was freezing. I step out of the shower to find that my hands are turning blue. I am totally freezing. I crawl into bed and everything hurts - my hair, my eyes, my teeth. I spike a fever of 101 and stay there for the next two days, too sick to even attend Faith's funeral on Friday, which is devastating for me. The fever made me really sick, I couldn't keep anything down. I asked the OB if he thought it was a stomach bug and he said no, that vomiting etc is my pregnant body's reaction to the fever. He tells me he thinks that I have picked up the flu.
Again, where is that bubble for me to live in when I need it?
FRI. 12/31 & SAT. 1/1 A bit of a blur. I do know hubs woke me up to have me see the ball drop. Finally, sometime between Saturday and Sunday, my fever breaks.
SUN. 1/2 I was feeling pretty good but still unable to eat anything. Hubs headed back home to our house to try to get the hardwood floors in the bedroom and upstairs hallway done so I could come home. Sunday night I started having contractions every five minutes. I tell the babies this is not time for them to come - our house is a catastrophe - there is furniture in every room that has been moved around to make room for the hardwood floors, and we had a new washer and dryer which hubs was supposed to be able to have installed on his week off (obviously didn't happen because of the other things going on) that are taking up the center of our living room. I tell them that I am going to sleep, and if they need me to wake me up, but it would really be better for everyone involved if they could hang out a little longer.
MON. 1/3 I wake up completely surprised to find that I have not gone into labor over night. Hubs calls to say that he is finishing up the floor, and should get me by 2PM. 2 comes, 3 comes, 4 comes. At 7PM I get a call that goes like this:
Hubs: Remember that time when I sawed through my toe?
Me: You mean when we were camping?
Hubs: Yeah.
Me: Yeah I remember... why?
Hubs: Well, I did that again. Just this time with my hand. I think I need to go to the ER.
Yeah, four stitches and a tetanus shot later, hubs came to get me from my parents house. We finally got home at around 10:30PM. We went to bed in the guest room (still no furniture in the bedroom) and I didn't sleep at all. Apparently 30 weeks is when you completely cease being able to breathe or get comfortable with twins.
TUES. 1/4 Exhausted all day but hopeful that things are turning up.
TODAY - Woke up with a painful sinus infection.
I give up!
PS - A LITTLE HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: If you have been following my dear friend Birni's story at the blog All The Little Ponies, and have noticed taht you can no longer access it, please send her a note at birni@cybergal.com and she will add you as a follower. Because of some IRL drama, Birni has had to go private, but she would still love those in this community to be able to follow along.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
I'm still here...
So I think this is the longest I have ever gone without a post. I have so much to write, so much to say. The babies are doing great. I am feeling good just tired - and while I would love to blame it all on pregnancy fatigue, I know the looming date of Peyton's birthday on the calendar has it's hand in my mental exhaustion as well.
I remember being so touched last year at this time by a post by Cara at Building Heavenly Bridges where she wrote:
Her post talked about how Grief Season comes for us, even when we don't go searching for it, and how year after year, though we wish it would, it doesn't get any easier. It was an amazing post that has always stuck with me.
Grief season hit me last week, as Peyton's due date approached, and a rush of emotions came with such force out of the blue that I felt thrown back to those early days. It was an ugly scene. Me, wrestling desperately with a guilt that I thought I had put to bed, and the time of year taunting each memory that I wish I could forget, back into my mind.
I think there is no avoiding Grief Season. Even if I banished every calendar from my home- my mind, body, and heart would feel the days coming to be: her due date, her birth date, the day she started chemo, the day the infection was discovered, the day we said goodbye, the day of her funeral. Each of these hits me with the unrelenting reality: Peyton is gone. She was destined to it before she was born. She is never coming back. Even though we wish it weren't the case, there are no guarantees in this life, and sometimes it is just so cruel.
I am trying to find balance over these next weeks and months. Next Saturday we will attempt to honor what should have been Peyton's 2nd birthday, knowing all the while that anything we try will just somehow fall short.
I am hoping to find a way to breathe through this season. I have so much to feel grateful for this year, so much love and beauty in my life right now - two amazing, miraculous blessings.
But at the end of the day it is not I who chooses how that day will feel. It is my heart, and the memories of all that she was and should have been, and try as I might, wearing a smile through the reminders of such a huge loss is hard.
She is my daughter. Always will be my daughter. And I miss her.
"Blissfully" pregnant or not, there is just no way to sugarcoat that.
I remember being so touched last year at this time by a post by Cara at Building Heavenly Bridges where she wrote:
"I can feel the hollowness reattaching itself to me.
I can sense sadness nearby readying its attack..
I can smell memory beginning its annual journey to possess me."
Her post talked about how Grief Season comes for us, even when we don't go searching for it, and how year after year, though we wish it would, it doesn't get any easier. It was an amazing post that has always stuck with me.
Grief season hit me last week, as Peyton's due date approached, and a rush of emotions came with such force out of the blue that I felt thrown back to those early days. It was an ugly scene. Me, wrestling desperately with a guilt that I thought I had put to bed, and the time of year taunting each memory that I wish I could forget, back into my mind.
I think there is no avoiding Grief Season. Even if I banished every calendar from my home- my mind, body, and heart would feel the days coming to be: her due date, her birth date, the day she started chemo, the day the infection was discovered, the day we said goodbye, the day of her funeral. Each of these hits me with the unrelenting reality: Peyton is gone. She was destined to it before she was born. She is never coming back. Even though we wish it weren't the case, there are no guarantees in this life, and sometimes it is just so cruel.
I am trying to find balance over these next weeks and months. Next Saturday we will attempt to honor what should have been Peyton's 2nd birthday, knowing all the while that anything we try will just somehow fall short.
I am hoping to find a way to breathe through this season. I have so much to feel grateful for this year, so much love and beauty in my life right now - two amazing, miraculous blessings.
But at the end of the day it is not I who chooses how that day will feel. It is my heart, and the memories of all that she was and should have been, and try as I might, wearing a smile through the reminders of such a huge loss is hard.
She is my daughter. Always will be my daughter. And I miss her.
"Blissfully" pregnant or not, there is just no way to sugarcoat that.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
And she says "baby, it's 3AM I must be lonely."
I am 10 weeks pregnant with twins and by all accounts should be sleeping as much as possible. As it is I spend my days exhausted between naps, and yet, like a dummy, here I am at quarter to four, staring at this screen because sleep has escaped me.
Insomnia.
Antonio Tabbucchi once said, "I prefer insomnia to anesthesia," and though they are not my words, I completely understand the sentiment.
The inability to sleep my way through any of what I am feeling has been a constant companion since Peyton's death. Sometimes I wish I could go numb, even if just for one night, but then I realize that numb is no closer to healed, so like Tabbucchi, I would rather live what I am feeling than mask it.
In the beginning it was flashbacks that tore me from my sleep. I would remember things in vivid detail, relive events, and analyze every decision I had made in terms of Peyton's care. Sometimes the kindest things that we can do for our children, can be the cruelest on our hearts.
Back then, even when my body would allow me to fall asleep, the guilt and grief over her passing would startle me back to my new babylost reality in the unforgiving grey hours of pre-dawn.
For months I sat awake at three AM, panicked that while I was in a warm bed, my daughter was alone in the elements at the cemetery. My mind would race wondering if she was cold, or lonely, or scared up on that hill, and I wished many a night that we had cremated her and taken her to the safety of our home.
It is cruel what the racing mind can do to a grieving mother.
Nearly two years later, I have let go of some of the anger and guilt that wracked me so heavily in those early days. Regardless though, the insomnia has not let up.
I spent a better part of the last year wondering in those hours if we would ever find ourselves pregnant again, and now that we have, the worrying has moved onto other things.
Lately my mind has been swirling around Peyton's fast approaching birthday, and just a general uncertainty about what it is that I am doing with this life. It's a strange thing to lose one's footing out of the blue, and I find that things that used to define me now feel foreign and uncomfortable.
In my past life I was always a planner, having the next five and ten and fifteen steps of this life laid out in my mind. Lying awake now, I can't quite envision what it is I am supposed to be doing to make any sort of difference or leave any sort of imprint on this world.
Countless hours are spent staring at the ceiling fan, noting its rotations as I attempt to work my weary mind through the winds and turns of confusion. By five or six AM, I give into the exhaustion and fall back to sleep knowing that the insomnia will be there waiting for me the next night.
So here I sit, now quarter after four, and no closer to solving any of these worries.
Yet still, I hold out hope.
One of these early mornings, when the sun and the moon are at equilibrium and my mind is racing through all of life's questions, a clarity will hit. One of these mornings I will have my very own "Ah-Ha moment," the worries will dissipate, and I will find my footing on this path once again.
Here's to hoping that day comes sooner than later.
Insomnia.
Antonio Tabbucchi once said, "I prefer insomnia to anesthesia," and though they are not my words, I completely understand the sentiment.
The inability to sleep my way through any of what I am feeling has been a constant companion since Peyton's death. Sometimes I wish I could go numb, even if just for one night, but then I realize that numb is no closer to healed, so like Tabbucchi, I would rather live what I am feeling than mask it.
In the beginning it was flashbacks that tore me from my sleep. I would remember things in vivid detail, relive events, and analyze every decision I had made in terms of Peyton's care. Sometimes the kindest things that we can do for our children, can be the cruelest on our hearts.
Back then, even when my body would allow me to fall asleep, the guilt and grief over her passing would startle me back to my new babylost reality in the unforgiving grey hours of pre-dawn.
For months I sat awake at three AM, panicked that while I was in a warm bed, my daughter was alone in the elements at the cemetery. My mind would race wondering if she was cold, or lonely, or scared up on that hill, and I wished many a night that we had cremated her and taken her to the safety of our home.
It is cruel what the racing mind can do to a grieving mother.
Nearly two years later, I have let go of some of the anger and guilt that wracked me so heavily in those early days. Regardless though, the insomnia has not let up.
I spent a better part of the last year wondering in those hours if we would ever find ourselves pregnant again, and now that we have, the worrying has moved onto other things.
Lately my mind has been swirling around Peyton's fast approaching birthday, and just a general uncertainty about what it is that I am doing with this life. It's a strange thing to lose one's footing out of the blue, and I find that things that used to define me now feel foreign and uncomfortable.
In my past life I was always a planner, having the next five and ten and fifteen steps of this life laid out in my mind. Lying awake now, I can't quite envision what it is I am supposed to be doing to make any sort of difference or leave any sort of imprint on this world.
Countless hours are spent staring at the ceiling fan, noting its rotations as I attempt to work my weary mind through the winds and turns of confusion. By five or six AM, I give into the exhaustion and fall back to sleep knowing that the insomnia will be there waiting for me the next night.
So here I sit, now quarter after four, and no closer to solving any of these worries.
Yet still, I hold out hope.
One of these early mornings, when the sun and the moon are at equilibrium and my mind is racing through all of life's questions, a clarity will hit. One of these mornings I will have my very own "Ah-Ha moment," the worries will dissipate, and I will find my footing on this path once again.
Here's to hoping that day comes sooner than later.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Fear
| "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." --- Frank Herbert Morning smiles like the face of a newborn child innocent, unknowing Winter's end promises of a long lost friend speaks to me of comfort but I fear I have nothing to give I have so much to lose here in this lonely place Fear - Sarah Mclachlin Do you see a theme here? I am petrified. Every day. All day. Of what happened last time. Of whether it could happen this time. Wondering what, if anything, I can do to alter destiny. I find myself praying, and praying, and praying. Even through the confusion and anger and distance I have felt towards Him these last (almost) two years, I keep praying that this won't be like it was then. Praying that these babies will grow, and be healthy, and we will be a normal family. A normal, boring, every day family, where the children come home from the hospital, and grow, and thrive. But the fear... the oppressive, suffocating, debilitating fear. It is always with me. Even through my joy and love for these babies. Even through the hopeful moments, the ultrasounds, the celebration. Even as I write this, wishing I didn't have to, wishing I was someone else who didn't know how cruel life can be... I am afraid. God, if you are listening, please protect us. Please keep these babies healthy, keep my husband and I healthy, keep those I love and care for healthy. Please allow us freedom from this dark place. Allow us our time with the sun against our faces. I have wandered through this side of the universe. I have waded through its depths, and caught myself drowning. I have pushed through what felt impossible, and survived loving and losing her. I have learned hard lessons about life, and what it is to live, and myself. I have done my time. Please God, let that be enough. I don't ask for wealth, fame, or success - but for normalcy, I stand here begging. Please. |
Sunday, June 20, 2010
You Have Got To Be Kidding Me!
So... I have been a bit mum on here about the fact that hubs and I are fast approaching our next transfer date (namely this Wednesday the 23rd.) It was heartbreaking for me to get my hopes (and that of so many readers here) up during our first cycle, and the idea of having to once again break bad news was a hard thing for me to face.
I can't tell you how desperately I want to be in the club. How desperately I want to be one of the women proclaiming that my turn at a rainbow baby has arrived. How much I yearn for a chance at a normal, mothering, life. I can't tell you how much it hurts that with every step that we take forward, another hurdle falls in our lap.
This frozen cycle has been exhausting physically (I was put on a zero sugar, carbs, or fruit diet in the hopes that low insulin numbers would increase our chances of success) and emotionally (taking testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen, each of which have a different affect on my mood and emotions.) It is for these reasons that I took a huge sigh of relief this morning when I saw that I had finished my Lupron protocol, and was moving onto the drugs that are in direct preparation for the transfer.
Everything has been going really well this cycle. My uterine lining (an ideal at 8 or 10) was even measuring at a beautiful 15.
Like I said, it was all going smoothly.
Too smoothly.
I should have known better.
I woke up this morning feeling really tired and rundown, but for the dietary and emotional reasons stated above, was not particularly surprised. Within a few hours I was having trouble going to the bathroom, and by this afternoon, I was peeing blood.
It turns out that today, four frikkin days before my frozen transfer, my body has decided to bestow upon me my first ever urinary tract infection. I called the doctor, went in for a test, and have started antibiotics. I did all that I was supposed to do, and in short order, but the doctor has warned me that this still might not be enough.
A UTI brings about a less than ideal transfer situation for our precious embryos, and because of this, we have been warned that they may opt to cancel the transfer.
A transfer we had to wait two months to reach after the heartbreak of April's failed attempt.
A transfer that the preparation for has required daily infusions of hormones and medications with side effect warnings that, having witnessed my child's battle and subsequent death to cancer, are enough to make me curl up in a ball and cry.
A transfer that, having no more insurance, we have laid out over $6000 in cash for.
It may sound selfish, with all that so many in this community are going through right now, but I am asking - Please pray for us.
To whatever God, or being, or spiritual presence you are moved by, please pray that this infection clears up and doesn't threaten or cancel Wednesday's transfer.
Please.
This Father's Day was hard enough for my husband to keep a brave face through without having to hear this news, and it feels as if my own prayers are falling on deaf ears.
Please.
We really need a break.
I can't tell you how desperately I want to be in the club. How desperately I want to be one of the women proclaiming that my turn at a rainbow baby has arrived. How much I yearn for a chance at a normal, mothering, life. I can't tell you how much it hurts that with every step that we take forward, another hurdle falls in our lap.
This frozen cycle has been exhausting physically (I was put on a zero sugar, carbs, or fruit diet in the hopes that low insulin numbers would increase our chances of success) and emotionally (taking testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen, each of which have a different affect on my mood and emotions.) It is for these reasons that I took a huge sigh of relief this morning when I saw that I had finished my Lupron protocol, and was moving onto the drugs that are in direct preparation for the transfer.
Everything has been going really well this cycle. My uterine lining (an ideal at 8 or 10) was even measuring at a beautiful 15.
Like I said, it was all going smoothly.
Too smoothly.
I should have known better.
I woke up this morning feeling really tired and rundown, but for the dietary and emotional reasons stated above, was not particularly surprised. Within a few hours I was having trouble going to the bathroom, and by this afternoon, I was peeing blood.
It turns out that today, four frikkin days before my frozen transfer, my body has decided to bestow upon me my first ever urinary tract infection. I called the doctor, went in for a test, and have started antibiotics. I did all that I was supposed to do, and in short order, but the doctor has warned me that this still might not be enough.
A UTI brings about a less than ideal transfer situation for our precious embryos, and because of this, we have been warned that they may opt to cancel the transfer.
A transfer we had to wait two months to reach after the heartbreak of April's failed attempt.
A transfer that the preparation for has required daily infusions of hormones and medications with side effect warnings that, having witnessed my child's battle and subsequent death to cancer, are enough to make me curl up in a ball and cry.
A transfer that, having no more insurance, we have laid out over $6000 in cash for.
It may sound selfish, with all that so many in this community are going through right now, but I am asking - Please pray for us.
To whatever God, or being, or spiritual presence you are moved by, please pray that this infection clears up and doesn't threaten or cancel Wednesday's transfer.
Please.
This Father's Day was hard enough for my husband to keep a brave face through without having to hear this news, and it feels as if my own prayers are falling on deaf ears.
Please.
We really need a break.
Monday, June 14, 2010
After A While
When I was a Junior in high school, I visited my sister for a "little sibs weekend" at her college, and was introduced over a drinking game to a boy, a fellow "little sib", who for the sake of this post we will refer to as "A".
"A" and I had an immediate chemistry (or so I thought at the time) and what followed that weekend was an intense relationship that lasted the remainder of high school and into my first semester of college (which coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, was at the school that "A" attended).
If you had asked me at the time, I would have described "A" as a Prince Charming. Eleven years, and a lot of maturing and perspective later, I realize that this particular boy turned out to be anything but, and though I couldn't see it when he left, his departure from my life was one of the greatest gifts I ever received.
Shortly after our breakup (and for totally unrelated reasons) I fell seriously ill and was hospitalized with a case of epiglotitis, a throat infection that essentially shut down my airway. I was intubated, operated on, airlifted to a hospital closer to home, operated on some more, and then spent the majority of the following two months recovering.
My parents, upon receiving word of my sudden hospitalization, were forced to make what I am sure was a white knuckled 5 hour drive to be at my side at the backwoods hospital near my college. Once I had been released to recover, they asked me to transfer to a school closer to home so that my doctors could keep an eye on me, and since I had just put them through the emotional wringer, I really didn't feel I was in any position to argue. I conceded, transferring to a school only an hour away that next semester, and the rest, as they say, is history.
This past weekend, while clearing through some things in the garage, hubs and I stumbled upon two boxes that had gone unopened since our move three years ago. Inside these boxes I found a plethora of keepsakes - old yearbooks, cheerleading pictures, quotes from my favorite poems scrawled across a t-shirt. At the bottom of the box, beneath the snapshots, newspaper articles, and old report cards, neatly tucked into an envelope labeled "mail stuff", I came across two pieces of white paper, typed in 12 point font, cleanly folded, and just begging for me to rediscover them.
The first was a letter from my mother, sent upon the completion of my first week at my new school. She asked some housekeeping questions - had I seen my advisor, was I registered for all the right classes. She told me to stay focused on my work, and assured me that if I did, everything else would fall into place.
I should tell you that I now consider my mother a confidant. A friend. A rock. When I was nineteen, obnoxious, and thought I knew everything about everything, our relationship was a little different. I imagine that at the time, reading this letter felt like being nagged. Now, ten years older and marginally wiser, I hear the love and concern in her words.
I can now empathize with my mother from that time, in a way I never could before. She had just watched her daughter fight for her life (a feeling I know the horrors of all too well) and while I can't speak for her, I imagine that having seen her child go to school, have her heart broken by someone she trusted, and then battle an illness all in the span of a few months, probably made watching me leave to start at a new school a little scary. It's no wonder she wanted to keep tabs on me.
On the second sheet of white paper, my mother attached a poem that she had found in the prior day's Anne Landers column.
I can tell you with complete honesty that I don't remember receiving this note, or this poem, after that first week at my new college. I am sure I opened them, glanced quickly thinking that she knew nothing of heartbreak if she would send me such rubbish, and stuffed them away into the "mail stuff" envelope. After all, when you are a teenager with a broken heart, who wants to hear from their mother that hard work at school will make "everything else fall into place," or the words of some poet who obviously never knew your kind of heartbreak.
Maybe I was young, or just too stubborn to grasp the message that my mother was sending me. Maybe my inability to find truth in the words of the poem at the time, just speaks to how little I knew of true heart break, or the lessons that can be learned of it.
Maybe it took a loss, a true life changing loss like that of Peyton, and the depth of love that I feel for and from my husband, to make these words resonate with me, but resonate they did, and with an understanding that my mother could never have imagined when she neatly typed them up for me all those years ago.
I know that this is a space for my words.
My poetry.
That being said, today I am going to share someone else's words, because they meant something to me when I read and re-read them this past weekend, and I have a feeling they will mean something for you too. xx
After a While
After a while you learn
The subtle difference between
Holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't always mean security.
And you begin to learn
That kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes ahead
With the grace of a woman
Not the grief of a child
And you learn
To build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is
Too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way
Of falling down in mid flight
After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers
And you learn
That you really can endure
That you are really strong
And you really do have worth
And you learn and you learn
With every good bye you learn.
Veronica A. Shoffstall
"A" and I had an immediate chemistry (or so I thought at the time) and what followed that weekend was an intense relationship that lasted the remainder of high school and into my first semester of college (which coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, was at the school that "A" attended).
If you had asked me at the time, I would have described "A" as a Prince Charming. Eleven years, and a lot of maturing and perspective later, I realize that this particular boy turned out to be anything but, and though I couldn't see it when he left, his departure from my life was one of the greatest gifts I ever received.
Shortly after our breakup (and for totally unrelated reasons) I fell seriously ill and was hospitalized with a case of epiglotitis, a throat infection that essentially shut down my airway. I was intubated, operated on, airlifted to a hospital closer to home, operated on some more, and then spent the majority of the following two months recovering.
My parents, upon receiving word of my sudden hospitalization, were forced to make what I am sure was a white knuckled 5 hour drive to be at my side at the backwoods hospital near my college. Once I had been released to recover, they asked me to transfer to a school closer to home so that my doctors could keep an eye on me, and since I had just put them through the emotional wringer, I really didn't feel I was in any position to argue. I conceded, transferring to a school only an hour away that next semester, and the rest, as they say, is history.
This past weekend, while clearing through some things in the garage, hubs and I stumbled upon two boxes that had gone unopened since our move three years ago. Inside these boxes I found a plethora of keepsakes - old yearbooks, cheerleading pictures, quotes from my favorite poems scrawled across a t-shirt. At the bottom of the box, beneath the snapshots, newspaper articles, and old report cards, neatly tucked into an envelope labeled "mail stuff", I came across two pieces of white paper, typed in 12 point font, cleanly folded, and just begging for me to rediscover them.
The first was a letter from my mother, sent upon the completion of my first week at my new school. She asked some housekeeping questions - had I seen my advisor, was I registered for all the right classes. She told me to stay focused on my work, and assured me that if I did, everything else would fall into place.
I should tell you that I now consider my mother a confidant. A friend. A rock. When I was nineteen, obnoxious, and thought I knew everything about everything, our relationship was a little different. I imagine that at the time, reading this letter felt like being nagged. Now, ten years older and marginally wiser, I hear the love and concern in her words.
I can now empathize with my mother from that time, in a way I never could before. She had just watched her daughter fight for her life (a feeling I know the horrors of all too well) and while I can't speak for her, I imagine that having seen her child go to school, have her heart broken by someone she trusted, and then battle an illness all in the span of a few months, probably made watching me leave to start at a new school a little scary. It's no wonder she wanted to keep tabs on me.
On the second sheet of white paper, my mother attached a poem that she had found in the prior day's Anne Landers column.
I can tell you with complete honesty that I don't remember receiving this note, or this poem, after that first week at my new college. I am sure I opened them, glanced quickly thinking that she knew nothing of heartbreak if she would send me such rubbish, and stuffed them away into the "mail stuff" envelope. After all, when you are a teenager with a broken heart, who wants to hear from their mother that hard work at school will make "everything else fall into place," or the words of some poet who obviously never knew your kind of heartbreak.
Maybe I was young, or just too stubborn to grasp the message that my mother was sending me. Maybe my inability to find truth in the words of the poem at the time, just speaks to how little I knew of true heart break, or the lessons that can be learned of it.
Maybe it took a loss, a true life changing loss like that of Peyton, and the depth of love that I feel for and from my husband, to make these words resonate with me, but resonate they did, and with an understanding that my mother could never have imagined when she neatly typed them up for me all those years ago.
I know that this is a space for my words.
My poetry.
That being said, today I am going to share someone else's words, because they meant something to me when I read and re-read them this past weekend, and I have a feeling they will mean something for you too. xx
After a While
After a while you learn
The subtle difference between
Holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't always mean security.
And you begin to learn
That kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes ahead
With the grace of a woman
Not the grief of a child
And you learn
To build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is
Too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way
Of falling down in mid flight
After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers
And you learn
That you really can endure
That you are really strong
And you really do have worth
And you learn and you learn
With every good bye you learn.
Veronica A. Shoffstall
Thursday, June 10, 2010
how? how? how?
How could this have happened?
Sometimes I can't help but get caught up in these words.
They came to my lips yesterday during an unexpected trip into Peyton's nursery. You could ask me why I entered, and I would have no answer for you. (I haven't been into her room since writing this post in early February.) I can only say that as the knob was turned and I stepped in; as I looked around at the unused baby items, the clothing, the crib, and remembered for too brief a moment what life was like at the time when that room was set up, those words came to my lips...
They came to my lips yesterday during an unexpected trip into Peyton's nursery. You could ask me why I entered, and I would have no answer for you. (I haven't been into her room since writing this post in early February.) I can only say that as the knob was turned and I stepped in; as I looked around at the unused baby items, the clothing, the crib, and remembered for too brief a moment what life was like at the time when that room was set up, those words came to my lips...
How could this have happened?
Tonight a friend stopped over, and out of nowhere, in a way that I haven't in months, I just broke down to her mid-sentence and cried.
I cried that I used to be so in control of things; that I had plans, on top of plans, on top of plans; and now feel that everything is so completely out of my control, that all I can do is collapse into how overwhelming a feeling that is. I feel like a pawn, anxiously awaiting whatever move the universe doles out for me next, and it's terrifying.
I want to be in control of my life.
I want to feel alive.
I cried that I used to be so in control of things; that I had plans, on top of plans, on top of plans; and now feel that everything is so completely out of my control, that all I can do is collapse into how overwhelming a feeling that is. I feel like a pawn, anxiously awaiting whatever move the universe doles out for me next, and it's terrifying.
I want to be in control of my life.
I want to feel alive.
Even the choice of adding to our family has gone awry. I take shots and patches and pills in an attempt to make happen what had come easily for me in the past, and it doesn't seem to matter.
I see baby items in our house and can't believe that we will ever use them. Not truly believe it. Not in a way that brings any security and comfort to my heart. After all, these things, these precious items that were hung with care, have now been left stagnant, untouched, for a year and a half.
Seeing them makes me feel like they belong to someone else. I feel isolated, left out of a world where babies happen with ease (or so it seems) to everyone but us.
I see baby items in our house and can't believe that we will ever use them. Not truly believe it. Not in a way that brings any security and comfort to my heart. After all, these things, these precious items that were hung with care, have now been left stagnant, untouched, for a year and a half.
Seeing them makes me feel like they belong to someone else. I feel isolated, left out of a world where babies happen with ease (or so it seems) to everyone but us.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to feel this way.
I have tried positive thinking, The Secret, the law of attraction. I have tried prayer, meditation. I have tried to envision everything working out, but try as I might, right now, I just can't see it, and that hurts.
As someone who so prided herself on five year plans for everything from home ownership to career moves, it breaks my heart that I can't plan five days, five weeks, or five months down the line, because nothing feels within my control. This, too, brings to mind the words...
I have tried positive thinking, The Secret, the law of attraction. I have tried prayer, meditation. I have tried to envision everything working out, but try as I might, right now, I just can't see it, and that hurts.
As someone who so prided herself on five year plans for everything from home ownership to career moves, it breaks my heart that I can't plan five days, five weeks, or five months down the line, because nothing feels within my control. This, too, brings to mind the words...
How could this have happened?
After a blood draw at my RE's office earlier this week, I, like a moth to a flame, walked to the bathroom in the waiting area to wash my hands. I did this, not because they were dirty, but instead for the smell of the soap. Pink and watery, this soap, I had discovered in a flashback of awareness, is the same institution grade soap that we used when scrubbing into Peyton's hospital room.
To anyone else it would smell like soap, but to me it smells like my child. My perfect, beautiful, brave little child who was here long enough to haunt my memory, but too short a time to remain in the memories of others.
To anyone else it would smell like soap, but to me it smells like my child. My perfect, beautiful, brave little child who was here long enough to haunt my memory, but too short a time to remain in the memories of others.
Lately Peyton has felt "surreal" to me in a way that hurts like losing her all over again.
I washed, and washed, and rewashed my hands, working the soap deep into my pores, wanting to soak it in, and then as I drove home, I held my fingers just below my nose, breathing in the memory of her, and reminding myself that she was here. She was here. I know she was.
She was real.
I was her mother.
I had a daughter once.
She was real.
I was her mother.
I had a daughter once.
It all felt so cruel to be driving away from the place that signifies my stolen fertility, breathing in the scent of my stolen child, and asking myself over and over...
How could this have happened?
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Meaning Abounds
Since losing Peyton, everything seems to have a deeper meaning, including the songs that I hear. Living on this side of the loss universe leaves me reading more deeply into them, finding connections to the lyrics in a way that wasn't possible before.
Before knowing what it was to love her.
Before holding her as she left.
Before mourning her.
I was working on my novel today, doing some boring rewrite/edit stuff, and this one popped up unexpectedly on a youtube playlist. It touched my heart in a profound way, pulling me immediately from the task at hand to focus on its message, and especially these words:
I see the "long goodbye" as mourning, and can relate to the "nearly do" because I have been stuck in a numb place where, even when I want to cry, my tears feel distant and unreachable.
There have been so many songs that have spoken to me since losing Peyton. Many of them are in my sidebar playlist. How about you? Have there been any songs that you have found to be surprisingly meaningful on your journey?
Run - by Snow Patrol
(be sure to pause the music player in the side bar before pressing play)
Before knowing what it was to love her.
Before holding her as she left.
Before mourning her.
I was working on my novel today, doing some boring rewrite/edit stuff, and this one popped up unexpectedly on a youtube playlist. It touched my heart in a profound way, pulling me immediately from the task at hand to focus on its message, and especially these words:
"To think I might not see those eyesThe significance of the first line for me is the way Peyton's bright blue eyes seemed to pierce right through me. She had a look to her of wisdom, like an 'old soul' who knew that her time was limited here, even before we had accepted or truly understood that.
Makes it so hard not to cry
And as we say our long goodbye
I nearly do"
I see the "long goodbye" as mourning, and can relate to the "nearly do" because I have been stuck in a numb place where, even when I want to cry, my tears feel distant and unreachable.
There have been so many songs that have spoken to me since losing Peyton. Many of them are in my sidebar playlist. How about you? Have there been any songs that you have found to be surprisingly meaningful on your journey?
Run - by Snow Patrol
(be sure to pause the music player in the side bar before pressing play)
Saturday, May 22, 2010
What should I say?
I spoke with a very compassionate woman today. She looked up at me with tears in her eyes upon hearing about Peyton and my infertility and asked... "What can I say? What would help?"
I struggled to answer her.
"Nothing," was the only response that felt true. "There is nothing that anyone can say."
I struggled to answer her.
"Nothing," was the only response that felt true. "There is nothing that anyone can say."
Thursday, April 29, 2010
On Karma...
"Lots of people want to ride the limo with you, but a true friend will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down."-Oprah
"My Karma ran over your Dogma."-Unknown
***
*A little disclaimer
This post talks about Karma and self blame. Please don't think, in reading this, that I think any of you are to blame for your losses, or that Karma played a role, I am just trying to be truthful here about what has been going through my own mind.
***
Up until September 4, 2008, my life had been a fairly typical one, a mix of good times, and not so good times, that always seemed to find a way to continue on in an upward trend.
Here is my life... in a nutshell.
I was a very happy little kid, and a pretty happy teenager. I was captain of cheerleading, nine times out of ten my grades landed me on the honor roll, and teachers usually commented that I was "very bright, but far too social" in my classes. When I went to college, I went through a really bad breakup with a person who was NOT good for me, and while at the time I thought it was the end of the world, later I realized that freedom from that type of a relationship would be one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given. My freshman year of college I got really sick with a throat infection that landed me in the hospital, and had me sidelined for the better part of my first semester, and when I came through that I went through this completely obnoxious phase of feeling invincible, and responded with a little period of rebellion that to this day makes me do a mental head slap, but for the most part wasn't outside the norm of what most kids do at one point or another. A year later I found a sense of direction, and went on to meet my husband, enjoy the start of a very successful career, and make plans to start a family... you know the rest.
I always felt peace with every part of my life (even my mistakes because I had learned from them) and if I had to do all over again, I always said I wouldn't change a thing, because it had been this succession of actions (both the right ones and the wrong ones) which led me to the exact moment of meeting my husband nearly nine years ago, and in the end, finding this amazing person to spend my life with was all that mattered.
There is a saying about looking at life through rose colored glasses, and I think that is what I used to do, but my ability for that seems to be another victim of this loss, and when I look back now, everything seems tainted by self blame.
Lately I can't focus on anything that represents my having any good qualities, like moments where I made someone feel loved, or proved myself to be a good friend. When I flip through scenes in my life, all I can see are moments that I might feel regret or shame over, moments where my morals and priorities were misguided, or I had been difficult or a disappointment to those who loved me, and I play through these moments wondering which one of them exactly it was that landed Karma's foot up my ass. There are idiotic moments that I used to joke about looking back on later in life, moments of being carefree and stupid that I thought would bring laughter when my life got too over-scheduled and boring. Now when I think about them I just feel dread and worry that maybe it was one of these moments that has come back to haunt me.
I am a woman.
I should have made a healthy baby.
I should be able to get pregnant.
I have failed in all these things.
Clearly I am to blame.
When in this rut, nothing is off the table for scrutiny. Not even my accomplishments.
I was always successful at work... is this a penance for being too cocky?
I wanted a nice house in a nice neighborhood, one that I could be proud of... am I paying for misguided priorities?
I like to think I have always treated people with respect... is there someone from my past who feels wronged by me?
I think you can see where this is going...
I can be very hard on myself. Brutally so. Since losing Peyton, I see myself only in the harshest light. It is a trait that my husband blames on my "Catholic guilt." I feel like maybe I have no right to happiness. Maybe Karma has deemed me not good enough.
Yesterday I got to going down the self blame road, when something suddenly called me in a different direction. It was a conversation with a friend, an amazing loving friend, where we didn't talk about anything in particular, and yet I couldn't help feeling an appreciation for all I do have.
I have kind hearted, loving, and supportive people in my life. Some of them I have known since I was a little kid, others I met when I was in college, or during work, or fall into this newer category of people that I have connected or reconnected with because of this loss. Their commitment to me has been unyielding, and it got me to thinking... would these people who I love and admire really put in the effort to stick around me if I were really such a terrible person?
Probably not.
The idea of Karma can be a really slippery slope. It can lead us to the darkest recesses of our minds, and make a journey that is already painfully self doubting, even worse. If Karma really existed, there wouldn't be a saying like "nice guys finish last." The truth of the matter is that some of the meanest and most judgmental people out there are also those who have never had to be tested, and some of the least deserving people, find success with the most ease. Clearly, there is no Karma in that.
Don't get me wrong, I totally believe in the golden rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, but I also think that maybe I need to work on accepting the possibility that this hasn't been "done unto me" as a result of anything I have done. Maybe it has just been a run of really shitty luck that happened to someone who, like everyone else, has made some mistakes or had moments that she isn't particularly proud of, but in general, tries to be a good person.
Maybe it's time I give this person-myself, a break.
Maybe it's time I give this person-myself, a break.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
On Full Disclosure
I wish that I could write here and say that journeying through grief is an ever upward march toward healing, or that each day brings you closer to happy, or that it is possible to put things you have felt, seen and experienced behind you, but I can't - it would be a lie. Along the way there are many unexpected dips, turns, and blockades that rob you of your breath, instill anger, or throw you back a few steps in your healing. This is what happened to me last week.
I know that the tone of my last post may have upset some of you, and I really wanted to address all those who took the time to offer me advice, share stories, and post comments from various belief systems, as a means of reaching out to me regarding my current struggle. The vast majority of messages left here or emailed to me were supportive, insightful, and understanding, and for that I am grateful.
I know that the tone of my last post may have upset some of you, and I really wanted to address all those who took the time to offer me advice, share stories, and post comments from various belief systems, as a means of reaching out to me regarding my current struggle. The vast majority of messages left here or emailed to me were supportive, insightful, and understanding, and for that I am grateful.
My story is not a clean one. Hearing about infertility on top of loss makes some people uncomfortable, tired, or frustrated. On a few sad occasions, it even compels them to send a note passing judgement on how long I should be grieving, or how wrongly they think I am handling my infertility. Sometimes I wonder if in telling me that I have done something to contribute to or perpetuate my loss, it makes them feel that they can put distance between their situation, and mine. If they can feel a sense of security, looking down at me from their high perch, and actually convince themselves that they are untouchable. I assume pointing a finger is easier for some, than having to accept the ugly reality that you can do everything right, and still have things go so incredibly wrong.
Most of the people who read this blog can, for the most part, understand. Most of the readers of this blog are dealing with their own losses, or struggling with their own fertility, and it is because of these shared experiences that they have found this page. It is because of these readers that I cannot apologize to the few who have reached out to tell me that I should be somewhere else in my grief. It would be a disservice to myself, to this process, and to those who come here for a sense of validation and understanding.
I have always prided myself on being truthful here, even when my truth isn't what people necessarily want to hear from me. This blog is not a "life after loss and infertility is all rainbows and sunshine" type blog, simply because that is not where my life is right now. I of course see nothing wrong with those blogs (I hope to get there myself one day) but right now, in the thick of it, saying anything along those lines would just be lying.
There are days on this blog where I share what I feel to be some semblence of beauty revealed to me by this journey. There are days where I can feel myself doing some healing, or looking to the future feeling hopeful and optimistic. On those days, that is my truth, and therefore I write about it. On days like this past Monday, where I felt kicked down once again, where I wondered how much a person was expected to take and felt at my wits end, that is when you get posts like "Oh God."
Most of the people who read this blog can, for the most part, understand. Most of the readers of this blog are dealing with their own losses, or struggling with their own fertility, and it is because of these shared experiences that they have found this page. It is because of these readers that I cannot apologize to the few who have reached out to tell me that I should be somewhere else in my grief. It would be a disservice to myself, to this process, and to those who come here for a sense of validation and understanding.
I have always prided myself on being truthful here, even when my truth isn't what people necessarily want to hear from me. This blog is not a "life after loss and infertility is all rainbows and sunshine" type blog, simply because that is not where my life is right now. I of course see nothing wrong with those blogs (I hope to get there myself one day) but right now, in the thick of it, saying anything along those lines would just be lying.
There are days on this blog where I share what I feel to be some semblence of beauty revealed to me by this journey. There are days where I can feel myself doing some healing, or looking to the future feeling hopeful and optimistic. On those days, that is my truth, and therefore I write about it. On days like this past Monday, where I felt kicked down once again, where I wondered how much a person was expected to take and felt at my wits end, that is when you get posts like "Oh God."
It may surprise some of you to know that messages on both sides of the faith fence brought healing to my heart these last few days. Messages from those who have no faith, those who are strong in their faith, and those who have been tested in their faith, have felt this level of anger at God, and have come through.
Messages like Kelly's: "The bottom line is...I'd rather walk through it with Him than without Him."
Or Deb's: "Don't listen to me or the next person or God. Listen to you. And don't feel guilty or less of a person ever."
Quotations like Elizabeth's:"For now, let your rage flow. And above all, as the poet said, rage, rage, against the dying of the light ( I take this to mean hope.)"
Or insights like Fran's: "People don't know what God's intentions are no more than you or i do. You have every right to feel betrayed by a God who should have been there."
Each of these was sent by women standing at completely different corners of the faith spectrum, and each was sent with one goal in mind - to let me know I am not alone.
In the words of these women, and so many others, I felt validated in my feeling things that, if not shared, would have just left me to feel isolated. For the most part, even those who couldn't agree with what I had said, still expressed an understanding of where I was coming from. I received notes on FB, comments here, and via email, and with the exception of a few that stung to read, felt incredibly blessed for the uplifting openness of this community.
If there is one truth in all of this, it is that once you have lost a child (or your dreams of a child) regardless of how long you had them with you, a part of you dies. That doesn't mean you stop living or that you don't appreciate what you have. It doesn't mean you never see the beauty in life around you, or that you refuse to go on to spite the world. It means just what it means, that a part of you dies, and as that part dies off, other parts of you are born, and somewhere along the way you try to mesh the two and find your new place in a world that you never wanted to know existed, and that is not something that you can do according to anyone else's timetable. That is what I try to do here... to give a truthful account of my journey, even on the days when my account is not pretty or clean.
I am open here even when I know that what I say may make one reader roll her eyes, or another tell me to get over it. I am open, even when I know that in doing so, someone may use my words against me, or imply that any of this is a choice. I have to be truthful here, if not for me, than for the next person stumbling across this page, walking in the same lousy pair of shoes, looking for comfort and validation that while their feelings may not be something that their friends, family, or co-workers understand, under these incredibly abnormal circumstances, are understandable.
That is why I think we need to have full disclosure here. We need to be truthful, even when it can result in someone sending you a comment or an email that hurts to read. When we have been dealt the blows that we have, when we face questions and conflicts that the average person is lucky enough not to need to understand, that is when we must be the most open. How sad it would be, if in looking for validation and understanding, someone reading these blogs only found more of the same... a message that they need to brush these feelings aside, or heal according to the standards or time frame that someone else has deemed convenient.
That is why I think we need to have full disclosure here. We need to be truthful, even when it can result in someone sending you a comment or an email that hurts to read. When we have been dealt the blows that we have, when we face questions and conflicts that the average person is lucky enough not to need to understand, that is when we must be the most open. How sad it would be, if in looking for validation and understanding, someone reading these blogs only found more of the same... a message that they need to brush these feelings aside, or heal according to the standards or time frame that someone else has deemed convenient.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Just two words...
Why Me?
****
Okay, I know that no good comes out of asking these question, but you know what? Sometimes, I can't help it. It is there, behind my forced smile screaming to be heard: "Why me? Why her? Why us?"
Last night, while flipping through the stations, I came upon an episode of the show 16 & Pregnant, and I couldn't help but wonder... WTF?!?! In the episode, an overly tanned and under-matured girl was more concerned (during the 2 minute snippit of the show that I actually watched) with drama concerning her boyfriend, than the arrival of her child, and there I sat, mouth agape, wondering... how is it that I can be such an utter failure at something that comes so easily to this immature little tart?
Yes. You heard me right. A failure.
I have failed at baby making.
I COULD NOT make a healthy baby. I CAN NOT get pregnant. There is no part of childbearing in my future that won't require surgical assistance to either implant a child into my body, or deliver one from me.
I can't help it. This feeling, This sense that I have failed miserably comes out of nowhere to overwhelm me. I used to be that person who set her mind to something and got it done. What happened to her? I can't solve this. It is bigger than me.
It breaks my heart that the act of conceiving and then pushing a child out, something that so many women jokingly complain about, is a dream out of my reach. This reality crashes down over me time and time again and I can't do anything to shield myself from the pain that comes with it. I am unable to do what my body was made to do. I am unable to perform the most basic female function.
I have been left, broken, holding the bag on this one and it feels so unfair. What makes me so goddamn undeserving...
Why Me?
****
Okay, I know that no good comes out of asking these question, but you know what? Sometimes, I can't help it. It is there, behind my forced smile screaming to be heard: "Why me? Why her? Why us?"
Last night, while flipping through the stations, I came upon an episode of the show 16 & Pregnant, and I couldn't help but wonder... WTF?!?! In the episode, an overly tanned and under-matured girl was more concerned (during the 2 minute snippit of the show that I actually watched) with drama concerning her boyfriend, than the arrival of her child, and there I sat, mouth agape, wondering... how is it that I can be such an utter failure at something that comes so easily to this immature little tart?
Yes. You heard me right. A failure.
I have failed at baby making.
I COULD NOT make a healthy baby. I CAN NOT get pregnant. There is no part of childbearing in my future that won't require surgical assistance to either implant a child into my body, or deliver one from me.
I can't help it. This feeling, This sense that I have failed miserably comes out of nowhere to overwhelm me. I used to be that person who set her mind to something and got it done. What happened to her? I can't solve this. It is bigger than me.
It breaks my heart that the act of conceiving and then pushing a child out, something that so many women jokingly complain about, is a dream out of my reach. This reality crashes down over me time and time again and I can't do anything to shield myself from the pain that comes with it. I am unable to do what my body was made to do. I am unable to perform the most basic female function.
I have been left, broken, holding the bag on this one and it feels so unfair. What makes me so goddamn undeserving...
Why Me?
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Your Questions My Answers
A few months ago, I read a post where the blogger invited readers to ask questions in the comments section. She then answered them in her following post. As a reader of her blog, I got to know a little more about who it was that I was reading, and saw a sort of virtual conversation play out at she answered the questions.
Over the past 10 months I have really come to love this community. There are many bloggers who I have met here who I now consider friends, and others who I would like to get to know better. I think that is what I liked about the question and answer post, the way it created a sense of dialogue and allowed readers to get a little more insight into the bloggers whole self, not just what they had chosen to blog about on a given day.
The idea of doing this was filed away into the back of my mind that day, and sort of forgotten about, but with the sun shining, and Spring attempting to spring, I thought this might be a fun little change of pace.
So there you have it. If there is anything you would like to know, about me, Peyton, or something you have read here... just ask away!
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