Kittymomma's Adventures

“How are you?” is the hardest question in the world right now. I draw a huge blank whenever anyone asks me. My grief counselor, my physical therapist, my brother, my sister. Nada. I just don’t know how I am a lot of the time.

I guess I am baffled by life’s cruelty. I am in disbelief that this is my life.

Sometimes I feel locked away from my feelings. I go around people and I act normal, but it feels strange. I can’t make conversation. I don’t know how to be.

As of last night and this morning, I honestly am not happy for anyone who is having a baby right now. I know several people who are having babies in the next few weeks and I am not happy for them right now. When I am at my best I can feel indifferent about it. Kind of. It’s not that I want anything to go wrong. God forbid. No way do I want them to go through the same pain I am going through. I just want everything to do with babies to be suspended for awhile. I know that’s impossible, but I just need all of it to stop.

The woman on the email list who sent out an email asking for second-time moms to share their birth experiences – it causes me pain every time I see a response to that pop up in my inbox. Every. Time. My second child is dead and I am no longer pregnant as of last week. Double whammy. Thanks for that.

I feel completely left out of life right now. I no longer have a baby and I will not have one next February/March. And the cruel, nasty kicker is that I still look and feel pregnant. I still get morning sickness. I still have to wear maternity clothes. And I don’t care about any of the perks of not being pregnant, because I am SUPPOSED TO BE PREGNANT. I had my long-anticipated glass of wine. It wasn’t as good as I remembered it being. It was pretty fun eating sushi the other night (and it was definitely wonderful to have a date night with my husband), but I can take it or leave it. (The sushi, not the date night.) I am supposed to be pregnant. Well, actually, I am supposed to have a healthy 18-month-old daughter right now, but let’s not pick at that wound at the moment.

I keep touching my belly. I keep taking excessive care to protect my stomach and to make sure I wash Max’s and Angus’s meds right off my hands. It doesn’t seem like anything happened sometimes. Honestly, I feel creeped out by the fact that the D&C was done while I was asleep. Because I know how the procedure goes. And I hate the fact that something like that was done to me while I was asleep in an OR full of strangers. I hate that there wasn’t an option to see the baby. That there probably wasn’t anything recognizable to see. That there was no way for me to find out the gender. I still wanted to know. I feel somewhat violated. I went to sleep pregnant and woke up not, but I didn’t experience any of the in-between. I’ve had very little discomfort since. How am I supposed to process that? How am I supposed to fully believe I’m not pregnant anymore? It just does not seem like anything happened.

It doesn’t help that my back has been worse than ever since the procedure. This time my back is messed up when I’m not pregnant. It doesn’t help that my doc doesn’t want me to do my physical therapy or my treadmill time. So, my back is messed up and my uterus is messed up and my hormones are in an uproar and I still feel pregnant. I can’t stand to have my son crawl on me or be rough with me in any way. I feel a desperate need to be alone sometimes. Then, the second I drop him at school or my husband leaves the house with him, I can see again that he is the most beautiful creature in the world and I suddenly can’t bear to be away from him. It seems like I can only appreciate him when he is leaving or asleep right now.

I am supposed to be “taking it easy”.  I can’t exercise. I can’t do PT. I can’t have sex. I can’t take hot baths. But it is still ok for me to take care of a four-year-old all day every day by myself apparently. That shit is messed up. “Taking it easy” apparently means cutting out everything I do for self-care or to give myself a break during the day.

Try as I might, much of the time, all I care about is having another baby. All I care about is that my baby is dead and I am no longer going to have another one.  I hate this waiting period until I get to wait in fear again. I want to know what is going to happen. If I’m going to have to go through another first trimester and grit my teeth through the fear and anxiety of the first 12 weeks until we get through the worst risk of miscarriage, I just want to get on with it. I am supposed to be pregnant. I am used to being pregnant. I want to move forward and know what is going to happen. I want my family. I want my life back. I want my son to have his companion back. I don’t want him to be the oldest kid spaced far away from younger siblings. I don’t want him to be an only child. I don’t want the only children around us to be getting younger siblings while he is back to being an only child. I don’t want any of this.

Maybe I finally have an answer to the question – at least for this morning. I dislike my doctor. I am not happy for anyone who is pregnant. I want to be pregnant again. I want my daughter back. I want the whole world to shut up and stop being so damn insensitive.