Mi Isla Sola

So… tim told on facebook.. Ugh.. I hate that it’s ‘out there’ now.. we have some mutual friends, and I’m just crazy enough to hope they don’t comment on my facebook too.. I don’t know why, it’s as if I think once every sphere of my life discovers I’m pregnant again, the baby will be taken away from me. Once I’m at my most vulnerable, fragile and open to scrutiny, it’ll all be squashed for everyone to see. Part of me does want to tell.. Get it done, out of the way, etc.. It probably wouldn’t be as bad as I think, it never is.. but I can’t bring myself to do it..

However, here, in the secret world of blogging, where the baby thieves don’t know me, I can talk about it.  Today (Sunday) is 16 weeks. I *think* I feel something… I think I feel flutters, little tumblings… obviously,  I can’t be sure, but wth, it doesn’t hurt to think it might be, right?  I’m getting a bit anxious about the 18 week ultrasound.. I am really hoping to find out the sex.. I am thinking if it’s a boy, I will have some sadness, and renewed grief to work through… the loss of a daughter forever, and another chance at one.. I know it probably sounds terribly selfish to hope for one or the other after all we’ve been through. I read an interesting blog the other day (sorry, I can’t credit, I can’t remember where I read it) that in a sub pregnancy, you lose the right to have a preference. It sounds greedy, and you should take what you get. Like someone complaining at the food bank or something. The whole ‘be glad you got anything at all’… I feel guilty when I express that I’d like a girl this time.. Non-loss parents don’t have to endure this, and it baffles me why we do…  It is true, I’ll be thrilled with a boy too, it’s just that I’dlike another opportunity to raise a daughter. Am I really so horrible for that? Honestly, I don’t think so.

Today I read a post on fellow bereaved moms blog.. she has recently given birth to her rainbow baby. Her delivery went exactly as I have imagined mine will go for months. Hands strapped down (though we did avoid this with Isla, and I didn’t ‘freak out’ when I knew something was wrong, so I don’t know why they need to do this, really.), almost panicky with anxiety for that short time when they stop monitoring to deliver… feeling pressure, holding Tim’s hand, both of us not even able to speak, so much riding on this single moment in time. Fate sitting there like a ball, teetering on the tip of  a mountain, just waiting to decide which way to fall. I can barely bring myself to hope for a living breathing, crying baby at the end of  this. Though I have Evan, and know what it’s like to deliver a live  child, I will say it is absolutely not the same as having a rainbow baby. There was never the ‘possibility’ in my mind that things could go wrong. My biggest grievance was that he was born via c section, and how I had ‘failed’ my son, my body.  Amazing how quickly our priorities and outlooks change. Reading that other mom’s birth story, and how she held her newborn son rocked me deeply. Birthing my sub baby is something I try not to think about a whole lot, partly because I still have doubts we’ll even get that far, and I don’t want to tease myself. Partly because I can’t handle dreaming of something so fantastic, just to have it snatched away from me again… I just can’t wade into that much hope. It’s like dreaming all day of winning the lottery, then remembering how broke you are, and how you actually don’t have much at all. It’s not a great analogy, but it kind of conveys what I mean. Anyway, I am thrilled for K@lakly, and feel an outpouring from my heart I didn’t know possible for a woman I’ve never met. Her story is a reminder that good things do happen, even after tragic ones, and it is possible to experience pure joy and gratitude again in life. I hold tightly to this hope, and I hope I can hold it til May.

My mom keeps asking when I’m going to officially ‘tell’ everyone I’m pregnant again. I’ve maintained from the start that I’m not ‘officially’ going to. It will be a word of mouth thing, that gets around via other people’s mouths. Tim and I have told the people who matter most to us; those most supportive in our loss, those we are closest to, and those who understand how very difficult a sub pregnancy is. My aunt and uncle, who I was pretty close to growing up have found out, via their daughter, which was how I ‘d hoped they would. They called my mom, and asked how I was, and then stated that ‘they knew I was pregnant’… I don’t know the tone, but I sense they’re hurt and maybe a little miffed that they had to find out from my cousin rather than me, or my parents. I don’t know how to feel about this. On the one hand, tough shit. It’s not exactly time to spark up cigars, you know? There’s nothing to celebrate yet, and yeah, breaking big news like this is a means of celebration. I’m not ready for that kind of fanfare. So, I feel justified in my rationale, yet, I feel guilty too. They are my favourite aunt and uncle, would not be ‘weird’ about it, so maybe I should have told. Now there’s going to be an awkwardness around it. I want to resolve it, but I don’t know what to say… maybe just that it’s weird for us, it’s not quite ‘celebratory’ news for us, and I hope they understand our reluctance to share…. if they can’t, well, it’s out of my hands, right? (right?) I wish I didn’ t have this personality of the oldest child.. responsibility and guilt.. hand in hand..  whheee! Family dynamics are so fun!

Today for the first time in quite some time, I broke down. I think sometimes it gets too easy to avoid pain and grief, once you become an expert at living with it, as I have. Today, I stumbled upon some youtube videos and that was it. Fully in the pit. Missing my daughter like I haven’t in months. Feeling that absence that reminds me of how forever this is, and how I will always miss her and she’ll never come back. This longing is permanent. It’s my link to her, it’s all I have. That still suffocates me sometimes…

It amazes me how I can sit here, pregnant, and still hate pregnant women. I thought for sure once I was back on ‘this side’ of pregnancy and living fetuses, I would be at least somewhat happy about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for another shot at motherhood, but I’m not ‘fixed’ or ‘better’ now that I am pregnant. It’s actually even lonelier in some regards. The pregnancy magazines are a bloody joke. “Colours for the nursery”  “How to reduce stretch marks” “naming your baby”..  How about “trying not to keep thinking your baby has died inside you” or “dead babies 101″ .. . I cannot even relate on the simplest level with these inane articles. I can’t talk with pregnant women whose biggest fear is having a csection, or labour pains… I just can’t do it. I wish there was a sub preg group here, because I’d be there in a flash.

Today was a horrible, horrible day. I had an appt. for a pap.. before all that, she just did a quick check of hb… the nurse practitioner learning aside her tried first… he couldn’t find it.. Doc tried next, she couldn’t fine it either… So, onto the portable ultrasound machine… No dice…. no hb, no movement.. I start thinking this has actually happened again. Holy shit, it’s happening again… Just as I’d always said.. ‘babies die and we don’t even know it until ultrasound..’ and here it had.. so, rather than freaking out, though I’m sure she was, on the inside, the doc called down to the US dept, and got me in for an emerg us..She actually has to pull me up from the table, and help me down. I am numb, and feel outside of my body. How dare I even hoped I might be so lucky. After a torturous hour chatting about the most inane things with the practitioner, we got in and the dr came too. 5 of us in there.. crowded, but wtf, I didn’t care.. I just wanted her to verify the death, and move forward.. d&c, whatever’s required..  So, ultrasound starts…. no movement.. no hb.. quiet… everything’s quiet… holy shit, I’m actually numb.  So, they decide to do a trans-vag.. Wow, do those ever suck. So..up goes the want, and I have to say, this is the most amazing resolution I’ve ever seen on a 2d scan. I must be reallllllly fat!  Head, check.. body, check.. hb……………………………………………………nope. movement……………………………………nope. So I look over at tim and shake my head like “nope, it’s gone”… and I actually truly believe it. In fact, I feel strangely in control, absolutely certain I can handle it, and know what to expect. Suddenly everyone kind of points at the screen and sputters some sounds and noises… they’ve found the heart! Then it’s gone again… I ask if they’re SURE. Tech won’t say for sure, and I tell her to hurry up and find the hb so I can cry.  Then it’s found, for real. She gets a bpm of 144. I actually don’t cry. I am calm, and angry at this bean for being such an asshole. HOW DARE I be thrust into this again.. sure, only at 15 weeks this time, but still, it’s all too familiar. Oddly, I am quite impressed at how I handled the whole thing. While waiting, we discussed who would tell whom, how long we’d each need before trying again, how we’d tell Evan, etc…

They said it could have been super hard to find because my uterus is already so big, (3rd preg, last one was only last year) and it’s hard to see.. I think it’s probably because I’m fat. But, I didn’t have those problems before… maybe I’m just fatter now.. Oh well, it has a heartbeat, and that’s all I bloody care about right now. For today, I’m still pregnant, and grateful for it. I wish I could have a drink.

Needless to say , we skipped all the rest of the appt, the doc was waaaaaaaay behind on her appts, and interestingly, my bp  was 164 / 85 at the start, and 106 / 70 at the end. Odd, eh?

upward, the jury is still out on….

So, this bellybean is now 11w3d old. It’s been hard to get an appointment with the dr. I want, as she’s in Mexico right now. The runner up, I saw today, as a quick impromptu visit. It was unplanned. I was there to sign some papers, and expressed to the secretary that I was feeling pretty anxious, and wondering if this bean even had a heartbeat, as all we’d had for confirmation so far is some preg tests… (I left out the part about getting my hcg done twice, off the record, by dh who works in a lab).  So she managed to squeeze me in with my runner up choice, who happened to be in the clinic that day. He is “highly recommended”… I wonder if it’s because he’s so good looking, because he didn’t have the greatest bedside manner I’ve ever encountered. I do expect a lot from my doctor, not just the physical health, but I am pretty needy in terms of my emotional health too. I try not to be, but in this instance, dealing with neo-natal death, I wasn’t willing to compromise. He did not acknowledge Isla’s death. He did not tell us he was sorry to hear about it. He rehashed what happened, clinically, without any emotion. I was nervous, shaking, vulnerable and all the other crazy attributes that bereaved parents are, and I got very little from him that would have made the appt. meaningful.  He did try to do an ultrasound, because I’m nearly 12 weeks, and my next appt isn’t until the 21st. I had an empty bladder. He couldn’t see anything. I don’t know what to think… part of me can attribute it to excess adipose tissue (yay, fat!), empty bladder, early dating, ‘portable’ us machine, not as high tech as the normal one.. all of these are possible. And, it’s also possible there is no baby. I’ve encountered plenty of women who have said something along these lines: “I found out at 11 weeks that the baby had stopped growing at 7″… so I can completely envision this happening to me. I feel a little numb, a little ambivalent, a little disbelief. I do still have quite a few symptoms, all day nausea, dizziness, my pants are tight, I feel my uterus hardening, especially when I lie on my tummy. So, I wouldn’t say I’m ‘worried’, per se, but I guess I feel kind of silly for telling Evan, for actually trying to visualize our family with another baby in it, for looking at baby stuff, no matter how secretively. I feel angry for hoping and for letting my guard down. And yet, nothing’s even been confirmed yet. So, yes, one thing’s for sure. I’m certifiable.

My grief the last few weeks has nosedived. I was doing ‘well’, so to speak, until then. I felt appropriately sad, hopeful and like I was basically doing as well as I probably should be. But now, something has happened, and I am deep in the pit. Things seem so much more intense, feelings from the first few weeks have come rushing back. The despair, the disbelief, the trauma of it all feels very close to me again. It’s scary. I think I must have been doing well before I got pregnant because I felt like I had some control (realizing, of course, that anything can happen at any time). Now that I’m expecting again, I feel a total lack of control. I have to face doctors, nurses, scales, judgement, scorn, fear, vulnerability and feeble hope all over again (the feeble part is new, used to be just innocent, run of the mill ‘everything will be fine’ hope).  I have been reliving Isla’s birth in my mind, revisiting all the turning points from the awful frantic kicking, to the words from the neonatologist ‘there is no hope’.. it’s all so painful to revisit, and I’ve done pretty well at packing that away for special occasions and pretending I’m normal. This is hard. I really want to be happy, hopeful and excited, yet everything is so clouded by sadness, grief and fear.

Another ultrasound, a dating one, has been ordered for me. I imagine I will get the call soon. I don’t know what to expect in terms of the tech, but I know at some point, I’m going to have to step up and stop being a wimp about all of this. I can’t expect everyone to jump on the grief train with me, and know exactly what to say, and when to say it. I will just have to accept that everyone is in their own place in the world, and their reactions to my situations are not my responsibility or problem. I just hope I can convince my heart.

So, my friend, who is around 20 weeks pregnant with her sub baby is daring to hope.. she is going to buy a few things for the baby, and think good thoughts for it. Her rationale is that if something does indeed go wrong, she’ll have something for the memory box. I think this is pretty sound reasoning, no? So, in an attempt to follow suit, I have been looking at travel systems. I desperately wish I could enjoy this activity unbridled, but I can’t. I just want to look at them, and dream of actually pushing one of my children in it. But as soon as I do, I get overcome with the what if’s, and feel angry for allowing myself to hope. How dare I endanger my soul like this again? I *know* it doesn’t matter, that thinking or not thinking of strollers won’t make it any easier if this baby dies too, but I can’t help feel panicky and scared a few minutes after doing it.

I really hope this goes away, and I adjust to the idea of having a live baby. I wonder if I’ll be 39 weeks again… petrified, unable to think of anything but urns, funeral speeches, flights for family members, etc..  I do think I’ll hold off on being too ready though. It is really hard to pack stuff up after a baby dies. The glaring reality of all that is lost is so apparent. It is so, so hard to put away diapers not worn, socks with tags attached… nursing pads, unused. So I think, should we make it that far again, I will have the barest of necessities ready, and just simply hope. How much do babies really need, anyway?

Wow. Last night was really a trip. I think the longer the lapse between my dives into the pit, the harder they are, because I am less accustomed to them. I guess this is a good, and a bad thing. I appreciate the reprieve, yet realize this means I am moving on in my grief… I don’t want to feel guilty for it. Yet I do. How can I find joy in things, and think of things other than my daughter, when she has had no chance to do so? I have lived a lifetime longer than she was allowed. It’s incredibly unfair, I feel this every day. All I can do to remedy this survivor guilt is try to do my best, I suppose. Be my best me… I do this in a lot of ways. I tend to take my time with things more than I used to. I don’t turn away from strangers, I don’t ignore people who seem like they’re in need. I don’t fear as much. My mother is a very fearful woman. She is afraid of *everything*.  Teenagers, homeless people, coloured people… all of it. I think I could have easily slipped into the same kind of existence, yet I have turned the opposite direction. Instead of shutting people out, I am letting them in. Allowing myself to feel for them, be vulnerable to them. My neighbour’s wife is dying of cancer. I have had an inexplicable urge to ask him if she might like a visitor, perhaps someone to read to her once or twice a week.. I see the little colour tv from our kitchen window, and I know she’s bed ridden. I just don’t know how to do this. We speak to the husband quite frequently, and he’s been really helpful with our renovations, and gives Evan a new dvd every week it seems. Somehow, the lemon loaf I baked him in the summer seems so flimsy now. Really, it is. It’s just food. There is no price to put on a heartfelt visit. Yet why is it so hard? Why am I so nervous about doing this? Is it so strange in our society to reach out with yourself, rather than a material object, or physical offering?  I really think this is a lof of what’s wrong with us. We just don’t engage with eachother anymore. I read several strangers’ blogs from all over the world, yet I don’t step outside and offer a chat or favour to an ailing neighbour? It just seems so weird to me. I think, after Phoenix, I will go talk to my neighbour. I hope his wife is in good enough health to still be here when I get back. I wonder how it will go… I doubt I’d have ever done this if my daughter hadn’t died. I would never have appreciated the value in a compassionate, honest visit from someone, offering just themselves, their comfort. There is tremendous value in it.

Tomorrow is packing for Phoenix.. I’m excited, nervous, yet not really afraid. I would have been 3 months ago. Afraid of the crying, opening up to the pain and heartache of my daughter’s death. But, I think I can handle it. I know I can. I know I will cry profusely throughout the day, but in the evening, I will put on nice clothes, and go out for dinner with my husband, hold hands across the table, and genuinely enjoy myself. This is a trip to honour Isla. It is all about her. We get a chance to enrich our lives in some ways, bring  this richness back home with us, and hopefully apply it to our lives here. We will benefit greatly from this trip, in so many ways. It will be hard. We will have to relive things, and it will hurt. But it will also heal. And I’m grateful for the opportunity to do it with some very important people, who’ve been through exactly the same thing we have. There are no masks, no pretending, no “I’m fine”s.. just suffering, healing, learning to live again people, all together. It will be good.

Today has been threatening to turn sour. Sigh. It was bound to happen, and soon. I feel like I’m on an emotional roller coaster, and it’s going too fast.  I just want to get off for a while. I’ve felt this creeping fog since this morning… noticing that others around me are frustrated with me for being aloof, or detached, and not really caring or trying to amend it. My mind has pulled back and really taken a look at everything all together that’s happened to me in the past year. I was a mum, to one wonderful boy, and we were happily expecting our second healthy child. She came, and she went. And my life collapsed. What am I, really? I’m a shattered shell of a for-the-most-part happy person. It’s funny, I think I have come so far, and patched up my life, dealt with my grief, and healed my heart. What I really am though, is a facade. I do look pretty put together from the outside. I try to maintain my hygiene, mostly so people don’t start asking me if I’m “okay”.  I bake, and show moderate interest in current events etc. But I am a jigsaw puzzle. A cool picture when you stand back and look at it, all things fitting well; a complete picture. Yet, look closer, and I’m actually a fragmented, broken person; pieces everywhere, barely held together. Vulnerable and fragile. Not a true strong being at all. Only as strong as my weakest piece, actually. When one piece is pulled upon, the rest collapses upon itself. This is how I feel. I fall apart at the slightest threat to my fragile structure. I yearn to be the complete picture, a strong and confident unit, but it is not to be. I am weak, I am fragile, I am broken.

I still cannot believe I must live the rest of my life without my daughter. There will be no firsts for her. For us. As I am acutely aware of all the things she should be doing, like first steps, first words, first  day of kindergarten, first boyfriend, first heartbreak, and so on, the rest of the world moves on, and forgets about her. She was ‘just’ a baby who died, to them. Her existence ceases to exist beyond that.  Yet I am here, trapped in my own broken heart, aching for her, needing her here, to touch, hold and love. My arms flop uselessly at my sides, feeling resltess and unsure of what to do, searching for something to hold, some matter to fill the empty space where my baby should be.   So I smother my son. I cradle him, my enormous nearly five year old boy, and ask him if he will be my baby forever… of course, he says he can’t, and even if I had a thousand people, it wouldn’t matter, he would just keep on growing, he can’t help it.  So I weep, for having to watch him grow up and cultivate his own path in the world, independently, while I desperately just want to clutch him to me, and never let go. This is all because of Isla. Would I feel so desperate had she not died? No, I’m sure not. I was never this clingy before. Yet I can barely keep my breath when I imagine him not being with me every day; being off at school, off with friends, as he truly should be.

I ache so painfully for her. I want her back, it is so unfair that it has beeen decided that this is my life. How can it be that I have to endure my life without her? How can any mother be expected to do this? I don’t understand. I did everything right. I ate well, didn’t drink or anything, yet my baby is taken away, while thousands, THOUSANDS of women are granted baby after baby that they really don’t want. Drug addicted, neglected babies, continuously given to these ungrateful women. How is this fair? How can I ever accept this? I cannot. Oh, my  heart. I am so sad. I feel so so incomplete. I don’t know this foreign, unnatural feeling. It is not part of of the natural human experience. It is not supposed to be this way. How can this be real? Oh god I want her back, if only for a minute; only long enough to hold her, to remember her form, her smell, her sounds, her hair, her nose, her eyes, her eyebrows, her chin.

I find I’m desperately trying to convince myself of the possibility of an afterlife, or some kind of existence beyond this world. I need to believe in something, to allow me to believe I might see her again. I need to have that.

God I miss you baby girl. I don’t know how to do this without you. I’m going through the motions. I find such little pleasure in anything. I look back on my pregnancy with you with such sadness, because it was such a wonderful time, and it is so definitely over, forever. I remember going to Nelson, Dad and Evan playing on the rocks at a lakeside while I sat at the picnic table making lunch for us. Homemade chicken salad sandwiches, fresh blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and carrot sticks. Juice boxes.  How pure, and complete it all was. I watched Dad and Evan playing, thought of you playing in my womb, and how very perfect our lives would be in just 10 weeks, how we couldn’t wait to meet you. I don’t think I’d ever in my life been so happy and content. This is what makes it so very hard to look back to that time. I realize what a lifetime away I am from that feeling now. The feeling of everything being right. What a taken-for-granted feeling that is. For all the people who complain about their cars, or their jobs, but have yet to experience true loss, true grief, there are just as many of us who have been to and remain in the depths of a hell all our own. For us, job and car complaints don’t even register. I bet many of us wouldn’t even notice them. Oh what I wouldn’t give to have my biggest complaint be an unsavoury co-worker, or an oil leak I can’t afford.  I can’t even imagine that kind of bliss.  I just want to scream.

I am exhausted. Missing my daughter wrings me out and leaves me completely unable to feel for a while. I can’t empathize, sympathize, enjoy, bemoan anything. at. all. for some time. I am numb. Just floating around, waiting… please let there be something beyond this. I need it. I need to see my daughter again, I need to hold her and embrace her, absorb her, feel her with me, physically.  This can’t be it, forever. It just can’t.

So, after all my devastation over low sperm count, it may have been for naught. I am pregnant. Weird to even write that. 5 weeks today. I was pregnant when I blew up at Tim over not wanting to pursue fertility treatments, and didn’t even know it. No wonder I was such a mess.  My CBFM gave me a peak 2 days before FF gave me a coverline, so I overrode the coverline, and in hindsight, I think FF was right. This means our last attempt that month fell nearly 3 days before I ovulated. This bodes well for a girl. I am due around the 25th of May.  How do I feel? Am I ‘fixed’? Did the positive stick change my grief? I feel … a little relieved, that the counts were at least high enough to fertilize an egg. I feel a little more confident in my body, that it’s able to produce an egg, be fertilized and then implant (hopefully) successfully. I feel scared. I’ve willingly opened my heart up to love and pain again. I feel vulnerable and if I think about it too long, I feel panicky. Eventually, this baby will have to come out.. somehow.. I know that will be a trip. Somehow the staff that day are going to have to know my story, because I will be a wreck, and they have to a)accept this without saying something stupid and b)know how to deal with me.

So, yeah. That’s the news of the day. I have hope, I have an ability to look toward the future, without forgetting my past. I feel tremendous gratitude in being priveliged to carry another baby. Every second is a gift, with the full realization that it could end at any moment. I intend to appreciate every one of those moments, and hope for the very best outcome. But I dare not allow myself to dream that far ahead yet. First, let’s make it till tomorrow.  Sleep well, little bean. Please hang in there.