Solitary in Sanity

This post wasn’t quite finished – but I felt any further explanation would have just rambled on. I planned on coming back to it the next day, but then it finally happened. I fell in love with my Lu. It was as if coming to the realization that my miscarriage was the reason I wasn’t connecting with my new puppy allowed it to happen. I talked it out with Jim, typed it all up, slept with the issue on my mind and woke up to finally accept this little cutie as my own.

Just because my baby died doesn’t mean everything else around me will (including Jim when he drives in the rain. I seriously kept him from going out one day because it was pouring and I had a bad feeling). Lucy is here, she’s adorable and sweet, and she’s mine. Just as JJ is my handsome little boy, she’s my pretty little girl. I love her and I know that she isn’t going to leave us for a very long time.

—–

Yesterday Jim asked me if I realized how different our lives would if I was still pregnant. Well, duh. He went on to explain that if I we hadn’t lost Lemon, he wouldn’t be starting grad school and we wouldn’t have Lucy. I asked him if he’d trade those things to have Lemon back.

“Of course I would, but these are two great things we have and one day soon, when we have our baby, we won’t be singing the same tune.”

I know that he’s right. Just hurry up, one day soon.

A Necklace for Lemon, that was written for inclusion in the Pregnancy Loss Week Blog Carnival, is now up at Fertility Flower. During the week of August 23-27, 2010 the site will be featuring articles, posts and artwork about pregnancy loss.

Reading all of the stories shared so far, and coming across the blogs of women who have experienced losses of all shapes and sizes has been wonderful.

I am so grateful to Kimberly for putting it all together.

Thanks Kimberly. You rock.

Moments ago, I realized what the hell it is between Lucy and I. Before I begin: yes I know she’s a dog. I treat my dogs like children. If you have a problem with this and you have dogs, I feel sorry for them.

The moment I laid eyes on JJ, I cried. I was immediately attached to him. I fell in love instantly. When I met Lucy, this didn’t happen. My heart didn’t melt, the tears of joy didn’t flow. I told myself it was because of the different circumstances. I met her and her sister at her foster mother’s home. We had to decide which of them we would take home and we were sort of being interviewed. Days passed…well at this point 9 days have passed and I just don’t feel completely in love or totally connected.

She jumped off the couch last week (so brave!) and cried a little bit. Her eyes were closing and I was so, so scared. I thought she could have gotten a concussion. I put her tiny face up to the air vents and I kept her awake by talking to her. It was just before we were headed to bed, so after I put her in her crate, I went and woke her up three times over the course of the next hour. I Googled and Googled information about puppy head injuries. The thought of losing her shook me up. I thought to myself, this is love. I finally fell in love with Lucy.

Though still, nothing,

A few days ago, she jumped out of my lap and hit the floor again (I swear I’m a good puppy mom, she’s just a hell of a lot braver than JJ ever was). Once again, I freaked out. She was fine.

Nothing.

More than a few times, I’ve caught myself thinking about her dying. The groomer told me her ears were dirty and that she’s scratching at them too much. I made a vet appointment. Google “can dogs die from an ear infection.”

It just hit me.

I’m not connecting with her. I frequently have thoughts about her dying. Lemon. Duh, Lemon.

because my midday emails express just what i’m feeling, just when i’m feeling it, i’ve pasted one from Tuesday below. today, i got a hair cut, left the house for a meeting with clients and things were much,much better.

Each day things get worse, not better. Like with death they say time heals you…but with this, the longer I go without being pregnant, the worse it gets. I cry at the sight of babies, baby things, pregnant women. I know I will have a baby one day, but that doesn’t help my philosophy of getting through today. It hurts today, I don’t care about tomorrow or 10 months from now.

I’ve been crying every night since Thursday. I comforted myself by saying it was only at night, I just need to keep busy with work, dinner and reading during the day/evening. Well I started crying before and my heart was pounding so much I was afraid of a panic attack. So I laid down and fell asleep.

I’m waking up early, exercising, eating right, keeping busy with work, trying to stay positive. Nothing is helping to ease the sadness.

I’ve run out of tools in the toolbox.

—

I need to get back here.

This post was written for inclusion in the Pregnancy Loss Week Blog Carnival. Please join us at Fertility Flower for the week of August 23-27, 2010 where we will be featuring articles, posts and artwork about pregnancy loss.

What actions did you take to memorialize the lost child/children?

We nicknamed our first baby “Lemon” before we even knew we were pregnant. I wrote Lemon, come to us! on the chalkboard wall in our kitchen. Jim drew a lemon and added eyes and a mouth. We were absolutely ecstatic to find out that Lemon did indeed come to us that month. I discovered we were pregnant on April 24, 2010. As soon as I saw that blue cross appear, I started laughing out loud. I was giddy with joy. As for later on, the truth is, I spent much of my pregnancy totally worried that something would go wrong. At 11 weeks, 1 day, we found out that something had gone terribly wrong for Lemon. He or she just wasn’t prepared for this journey with us.

We allowed ourselves two days to grieve and all in all, recovered from the loss rather quickly. We knew that in order to move on and start trying to conceive again, we would have to adopt a postive outlook and regain hope that we would become parents soon. Though I knew this did not mean that I wouldn’t think about the life we created every day. Moving on and forgetting are not one in the same.

I searched Etsy for something special to commemorate our first baby. I chose a delicate little necklace with a yellow, lemon-shaped crystal. I fell in love with the lemon necklace because it’s such a simple piece – that for me – carries significant meaning. Its top comes to a point and I often find myself shoving my finger down onto it. This hurts for a moment and it sort of pulls me up out of any momentary slump I’m in; mostly because it reminds me of the real pain felt when I looked at an ultrasound screen on June 15th and read “heartrate __”

For a short time, our hearts beat together in the same body. That honor was taken away from me all too quickly. Now this lemon sits just inches away from my heart and helps comfort the aches caused by the longing for an opportunity to nurture a life once again.

is it completely insane that i wrote all of this? i worried from day one. did i know?

This was a rough weekend emotionally. I know I’ll be pregnant again one day, but each day is a constant reminder that I should still be pregnant. I leave the house and it seems like every women is pregnant and every person is toting an infant. We spent a lot of time in my husband’s hometown this weekend. I have this enormous guilt about letting everyone in his family down. And of course I know they don’t feel this way and maybe there is a better term that is escaping me…but they are such an amazing family and they were so overjoyed to learn we were expecting. In their family, it was like we were all pregnant. Jim is the oldest, was the first to marry and we were going to have the first great-grandchild. If I was the bearer of all that joy, then I was the reason it all went away. The reason why talk of babies used to be fun (when are you guys going to have a baby? we could really use a baby around here, you know!) and now it’s awkward and almost forbidden.

On Friday we were out with my inlaws and I turned around to spy the tiniest infant crying hysterically. My eyes welled up with tears. I thought my mother in law witnessed this and then later, while we were standing over her shoulder making fun of the Fingerhut catalogue she was reading, I noticed that she purposely double-turned the page to skip over a two page spread on baby items.

Yeah, 7 months of trying and one miscarriage and already I’m that woman.

It has been a month since we found out we lost our Lemon. Today’s date on my calendar is marked with a 15, how far along I would have been. Luckily, I only marked through July, so I won’t have to look at those numbers next month – especially 20, the halfway point. I cried today for the first time in a while. I know it will happen, I’m just tired of waiting. Unfortunately I am growing increasingly resentful towards complaining mothers, moms-to-be and those who were given a baby they weren’t even planning on. I guess this is something that will only get worse over time. The longer I go un-pregnant, the angrier they will make me. At the same time, I was comforted by this post (via ComaGirl). Looking back on her TTC process, Nichole from In These Small Moments says:

“Looking back, I realize that those months of trying made the joy of having this amazing baby girl even sweeter.

She was worth every single moment of effort and I will be ever grateful for her.  I learned so much about myself, about Craig, and about patience.”

That’s something you can’t get without a whole lot of trying.

Each month, as I wait for my period to skip me, I am bonding with the little life that could be inside of me. We even came up with a funny name for the next one. It’s a cute one, with a sweet story. Hopefully I can share it with you soon.

I know I promised more from this story, but I can’t create anything that’s worth anything these days. I am carrying on, but find my heart filled with incredible sadness each day.

I had to hide all pregnant friends on Facebook. I can’t stand hearing good news from the happy ones or the complaints from the miserable ones.

I am finding that like drinking, I have to take this one day at a time. A thought about a future event makes me remember, i was supposed to be 18 weeks by then. When Comcast tells me that my promotional package ends on January 5th, I have to quickly tell the man that I must hang up. two days after my due date. A mention of Jim’s 30th birthday reminds me that he always wanted to be a dad by 30 – and he won’t be.

During the next 6 months there are going to be constant reminders of where I should have been in my pregnancy. And while people try to comfort you with thoughts like you’ll be parents someday. there will be another baby – i want to shout BUT I WANTED THAT BABY. THIS JANUARY. I HAD A BABY ALREADY. I WANT THAT ONE.

June 20th 10:25pm

this sucks.

With this experience, I have found religion. Post miscarriage, I believe. I believe in my body. Allow me to explain.

You may know I’m a bit of a natural, for lack of a better term. I’m not a full on vegan, composting, bike to work kind of gal, though I do help the environment by working from home – wink. I practice a fairly healthy lifestyle. I believe in eating food with the fewest possible ingredients, looking to my diet before consulting a doctor about an ailment, breathing deeply when I’m feeling overwhelmed, taking a walk before taking an advil, saying no to a plastic bag whenever necessary. Along the same lines, I am very passionate about natural childbirth. We planned on a birth center birth, in an effort to avoid unnecessary medical interventions during labor and delivery. So when we got the news that our baby had stopped growing at 7 weeks, I immediately knew which option I’d go with. The OB at the hospital that my midwife sent me to after observing that my uterus was not where it should be, said I had three options. (that sentence is weird, i’m over it) She said I could 1.wait it out, and that there was no harm in doing so, as my body will do what it has to. 2. Have a D&C. 3. Take some pill to induce the miscarriage. Clearly, I went with option one. I have a history of cervical issues and I did not want anyone manipulating it further.  I also didn’t want any procedure holding up our efforts to try conceiving once again. Going the natural way means you can get back to bed that much quicker.

With this information and newfound sadness in our hearts, we came home on Tuesday night and grieved. Together, we spent the following day grieving, crying, trying to make each other laugh, getting angry and at last, talking about our future as parents. Knowing that we couldn’t stay in the house any longer, we decided to head to the beach on Thursday. Jim is not a fan of lying on the beach, but was excited to show me around the boardwalk where he spent his summers as a kid. We laid on the beach and had lunch, then we packed up and strolled the boardwalk. We both got a little of what we wanted. We were happy, smiling, and healing with the help of some old fashioned vitamin D.

That night before I got into bed I started cramping pretty badly…

and with that I’ll stop. more tomorrow.