how i'm doing new years

i've had a few glasses of champagne. i wanted to write a list of some sort. i want desperately to be positive about how 2008 will have to be better than 2007. the list (short) will come tomorrow.

but right now, i've been excited all night about an auction. really, stupidly, wide-smiled excited. i think if i can be excited about something, go with it. good, but i'm also worried about retail therapy, but i'm such a financially paranoid person...i guess it can either be a normal good thing or go woefully out of control.

i'm not gonna overthink it.

I WON MY BRACELET!!!!! and that's awesome right now. sure, i've also won a rooster pin (love roosters), another really huge pot metal bracelet, another vintage leaf/amber/huge bracelet, and a vargas ring, but who's counting. hey, there were 23 other bids on this here beauty!

oh, ebay. i resolve to quit you. soon.

but for now, YAY!!!!!!!!

crumbs

i tried to order birth announcements when i was about seven months pregnant. the website was having a big sale, and i wanted to take advantage. plus, if i already had them ordered, once the baby was born i could just send in the info, and maybe, possibly, get them mailed out before the kid turned one.

along with my order i emailed the obligatory, "just in case, can i get a refund on these if something happens?" it seemed so ridiculous at the time. but, well, joke's on me! HAHAHA!

they wrote me back saying it was too early to order; they need to close out orders within three weeks. they cancelled the order. (i wonder how many refunds they've given because of dead babies.)

i spent hours looking for the perfect announcement. when i got home from the hospital, i remember deleting the link from our favorites list.

*************

i secured a labor assistant with a $100 deposit for her services at my labor/birth. when the baby died, i asked her for the money back. she told me she would send it when she could; she didn't know when that would be.

i don't care about the money, but it bothers me and i'm not sure why. i don't even know why i felt the need to ask for the refund. i must admit i'm mad about it.

*************

when we purchased this house, i spent two weeks painting the entire thing. i painted the kids' room with navy blue on the ceiling and a twilight blue on the walls with plans on painting murals of a moon and stars and trees and bugs and night animals.

husband made a point of being annoyed the entire, i don't know, year and a half, about the "strange" colors and lack of murals that would force the colors into making total sense. whatever.

when i was 37-38 weeks pregnant, i painted the murals. i excitedly thought this excess of energy was my "nesting" period (HAHAHA!!!!!). i sat on the computer and copied all of our astrological constellations to paint into the sky.

i just remembered a few days ago that what would have been her sign stares at me from the kids' ceiling.

*************

husband is watching an "historical" game of american football tonight. it is supposedly the first time in a billion gazillion years (i think maybe he said something like 35) since a team has gone undefeated in the NFL.

about fifteen minutes ago, he yelled to me from the other room.

husband: "HEY HONEY...remember that fantasy football thing?"
me: "yeah?"
husband: "charmedgirl mama and the incubators won the whole thing!!"


fuck me.

ahhh, those zen buddhists

"they say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. everybody can see that. but only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well-- the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from the nothingness to maturity. in this respect, say the zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it is born."
quoted from elizabeth gilbert's "eat pray love"
italics, boldface, and lack of proper capitalization- charmedgirl


i read this, laying in bed, after i hung my dead baby's acorn ornament on our tree. coincidence? of course it is...but there it was, in my face, nonetheless.


at first reading, i thought of the baby that grew inside me, that little acorn of herself; and the tree, the life she would never lead, the woman she would never be.


i started this post days ago. i think before the weekend, even. my point in all of it was that i realized that I AM the tree, I AM who is to be born at this point. I AM the force that will pull my future self into existence. NOW is the time.

because shit, i couldn't do it for my kid, but i guess i should do it for somebody.

the only problem now is, all i want to do is smash that fucking acorn into a gazillion pieces. and then i want to stick the shards into my eyeballs.

i dreamt last night that i was pregnant; that made me happy in the dream. i am thinking about it again. i am spinning madness in my head.

1-my sister is pregnant, due three days after p@ige was born dead
2- just about the same moment she was peeing on the glorious stick, blood was starting to come out of my, well, you know...
3-i called to set up my IUD appt, and OH! they don't do that particular IUD right now! I JUST WAITED almost FOUR MONTHS to get my period since my baby died, and now i can't even get the fucking birth control??
4-husband was notified the friday before christmas that he was being punitively transferred out of his precinct; only the mayor himself can overturn it, and although many owe him favors, none are the mayor (this is a very long story, the abridged version of which is simply, THIS WHOLE THING IS BULLSHIT)...he's not very upset about it, because (in his words), "my baby died this year, who cares?" which kills me.
5- my baby is still dead

i don't want to clean my house. i don't want to write. i suddenly want to get pregnant again right now. i don't want to answer my phone. i want to sleep all day and not see another living soul. i hate myself and i hate what is happening.

oh, and i think i decided i'm going to see an attorney. i probably shouldn't just put that out there like that, but whatever. i am starting to think my pregnancy wasn't managed properly. that is making me very angry, and for once, at someone other than myself.

oh, 2008, please be better.


edited to add: soulmate friend just called to tell me the baby is being admitted to the nicu under SIDS observation and testing...2007, you are the year from hell.

where the fuck do i start??

i thought i would try denial for xmas. it was working, it really was. i was shopping, wrapping, cooking, planning, playing xmas music all the while.

deadbaby? WHERE? i'm no dead baby mama!

there were times i felt it, but i pushed it back. i just didn't want to be that person, upset for the holidays. and i was ok! i really was. for the most part. except i started thinking of her face alot. it's almost like the more i pushed it out, the more realistic it became.

then, today. my sister took a pregnancy test (at my urging; what? i need to knowwwww thingsssssss). she's pregnant. due date?

september 12th. 3 days after the anniversary. 1 day after the cremation.

am i going to lose it now? am i going to lose it next year?

HOLY SHIT.


ps- i missed all of you so much. i'll be trying to get to you all very soon, but husband is home and gets antsy if i'm on here too long...but i hope you all are holding up...i'm thinking of you!!!!!

back in the weeds

i think the whole thing with soulmate baby is finally hitting me.

i'm thankful that i can always have good, strong feelings about thea's arrival. i was actually happy for a few days, and it's good to feel that close to another human being. i think losing a baby might be the loneliest thing in the universe.

but i think i have crash-landed back to earth. a few days ago i noticed myself eating randomly. that is a big sign for me. i wasn't hungry, but i was ravenous. in my life, that means i am having feelings i don't want to acknowledge. that hasn't happened since p@ige died; i think i have been feeling more than i ever have in my life about my dead baby, and in a big way, it's been all about the pain connection to a baby i can never have. so, i was surprised to be asking myself the old question: what is it you don't want to feel?

on the surface, i don't feel much. i don't feel envious, i don't feel angry. i've cried a few times, once tearing up in the store buying ornaments, the other times crying when fellow bloggers recognized p@ige in their remeberances. but the feelings behind the tears are mere shadows of what they used to be.

is my pain going underboard? has my brain decided it's become all too much for me to continue bearing? am i now to begin fighting my old coping mechanism of the stuffing down and purging of feelings with compulsive eating and restricting?

WHAT THE FUCK?

this is becoming interesting, for today. a new stop to add in the round and round of this shit.

ornaments FOUND

i knew i didn't want anything obvious. there were a couple of times i picked up something girlie, once even a funky hot pink one, which would have been cool, because i felt she was going to be a feisty one. but none of them were right. i just kept thinking i would know when i saw it.

the little acorn behind p@ige's is a gift for my sister, who lost her pregnancy at about 8 weeks this past summer. i'm not sure how much she's allowed to show her sadness about it; it's almost six months past and people have pretty much dismissed it already. but i know she's scarred badly. she is scared shitless to get pregnant again, even though it's the thing she most wants. she decided out of the blue to go to graduate school in january, and i think it's because it will naturally put off questions of when she'll try again.

our acorns. eerily relevant, yet totally mysterious.

perfect.

untitiled post

this post- empty of words, with just this photo in the stark white- has been sitting in my posts list as a draft for...i don't know...over a week. i thought of this picture when i saw heather's ferma il tempo post.

i don't even know what to feel about this. in retrospect, i am so angry at that pregnant girl. i was irresponsible. i was selfish. i was wracked with stress and anxiety about my future guilt. i was MISERABLE.

but i have to be honest and say i hated being pregnant. this photo was taken in august (check out the sweaty armpits, people) and it was just gross. and at the time, i knew it was ok to hate it...that it's normal to hate being pregnant. cause being pregnant sucks.

but now i know that baby inside me, inside that big round belly, DIED. does that change the reality of how i felt in that photo? you may look and think it's such a beautiful moment, with my girl E kissing her baby sister...but it's totally staged. they were fighting like crypts and bloods over that sunflower plate mere moments before.

now i know that she died, how do i feel about these pregnancy photos? i feel like they should be in a photo album stored in an alternate dimension. sometimes, when flipping through the hundreds of other family photos, i catch a glimpse of one of these and for an instant, think, "oh yeah. i was pregnant." what the fuck?

i wish i could say i want to freeze time. i do, however, wish i could go back and do things differently. (NO SHIT.) i wish my body would have given me some other sign something was wrong (would you like some pre-ecclampsia with that pint of ice cream? why, yes!) that would have necessitated me getting my big fat ass to a hospital for a c-section with a doctor BEFORE she died.

where i find myself now is desperate; desperate to get this weight off. desperate to move farther and farther away from that pregnant girl in the photo.

desperate to be someone other than her.

perspective

my last post about soulmate baby and your comments got me thinking.

why did i do that? why, after three months of living with a dead baby, did i go to witness another woman's normal delivery of a live one? HOW?

i am certainly not a martyr or a masochist. FAR from it. but i decided, when my baby died, to face everything that came my way. i have enough shit to deal with from my past that i don't need more of it to kick my ass during my next crisis. but more than that, this is soulmate friend we're talking about here.

she's shown me what it is to truly love someone unconditionally. over the years (22 of them, actually), as many times as i've tried to break up with her, she never let me. as many times as we've done each other wrong, we've always worked it out. she's taught me about generosity. she's been there for me physically, mentally, and emotionally. i could always depend on her, even when i wasn't so good at it (i wasn't exactly raised that way). she's mothered me in many ways; protected me. she's my soft place to fall, a comedic genius, and one hell of a drinking partner. men have, at times, taken some attention away from one another (you know, that first six months)...but we're always the ones left standing. dare i say, if it wasn't for each other, i highly, seriously doubt either one of us would have very good marriages. i don't think there's a man alive who could give the same emotional support or outlet. they're off the hook, you could say.

when p@ige died, she was at the hospital with me for two full days, six months pregnant. we talked about it for the next three months, and i was at the hospital when thea was born. as crazy as it may seem, our friendship transcends all of it. those hurts and rules don't apply.

when p@ige died, she told me she wished it happened to her and not me. she would rather go through that pain than see me do it. and i believe her. she's used to pain; her stepfather abused her in every way imaginable from the age of 3 to 16. i can't begrudge her an easy reproductive life...it's the only thing that HAS come easy to her.

the funny thing is, as much as it may seem like i inflicted all this emotional hardship on myself (even in the name of future mental health), it's been quite the opposite. especially having gone to the hospital for her labor and delivery. i'm not very much into the "strong" or "brave" thing anymore...i used to take it as a compliment, but it's a pretty shallow comfort these days. i could actually, in retrospect, see my being there for her as a totally selfish act.

i wrote about that soul-swapping moment during her labor, but i need to elaborate. i think that there are certain, fleeting moments in our lives that open some kind of portal straight into our souls. being an atheist, i don't exactly agree with the conventional meaning of "soul", but i certainly believe that we all have one; energy, perhaps, would explain it better. SOMETHING HAPPENED during those moments, to both of us. we shared energy like only a real looney-tune would explain it in words. she told me later that she felt SO MUCH PAIN (emotionally), more than she'd ever felt in her life, and that's why she started to cry. i felt her fears about this new baby- about post-partum depression, even about birthing her. we became one.

what the FUCK??? i'm no new-age, psychic-energy wackadoodle. but i know something happened.

since the birth, which was monday evening, i've felt more normal than ever. i've cried for my baby, but the pain isn't the same. maybe that'll change, maybe it won't. but i can't help but think i released some of it during that moment. and she, miraculously, is feeling much less depressive than she expected.

i don't think there's any way to explain it that won't sound completely CRAZY. and also like wishful thinking. and even like desperation. but i do know that i'll never fully understand what happened.

but right now, i like this mystery. today, i'll take a little healing from an unlikely circumstance.

in retrospect, i've gained way more than what i gave to be there for her.

soulmate baby

well, it happened.

long story short, soulmate friend's water broke around 5.30pm on monday. labor started at about 6.30pm, and soulmate baby was born at 10.53pm. a girl. mom and baby doing fine. the end.

long story long...starts and ends at the same place, with a universe in-between.

she called me around 5.30pm to ask me if i thought liquid running down her leg was her water breaking. um, yeah, silly! i made my calls for babysitting and met her at the hospital. during the hour drive, i thought about what was ahead for me. there was fog and mist rising from the road as it was getting dark, which reminded me of my drive from hell the night i found out about dead baby. great.

upon arrival at the hospital, i joined her aunt, cousin, and daughter in the waiting room. this hospital allows only two visitors at any given time, so we all took turns going in and out to see her. my first turn in to see her...was like walking into the x files. the room was dim, and we looked at each other with hours of conversation in our eyes but talked bullshit. i tried to ignore the constant beating of the baby's heart on the monitor but it filled the room like concrete. i was planning a homebirth, so didn't get the pang of, "this should have been me," but the live-baby heartbeat part, just a little, yeah.

my last time in to see her before the baby was born, she grabbed my hands. she was starting to get to a hard part in the labor (they tried an epidural five times and couldn't get it right). i came in real close to her, talked to her, and we locked eyes. it was the deepest thing i've ever experienced. it felt like...like soul-swapping. she went from 6cm to ready to push within those few minutes; she told the nurse she was going to push the baby out, the nurse kinda laughed, and the doctor came around to check her. YEP, ready to push. she was crying at that point, and she didn't want me to go but i knew i had to leave and get her mother. goddamn fucking familial obligations. three minutes after i left the baby was born.

when i got back to the waiting room, i broke down. strangely, not because of dead baby (for the most part). i just didn't want to leave her, and i knew she didn't want me to leave. and fucking shit, wasn't i just fucked out of another life experience? her aunt was out there, let's call her stoic aunt. not a big deal, she being stoic. but there were other people in the room and she kept trying to get me to walk around and stop crying. soon soulmate husband came out to give the news and held me for a while while i cried. i saw the video he took, and cried some more (yeah, that time was definitely for dead baby).

time to go back in. THE moment. the live-baby moment. soulmate friend asked everyone to leave, and i held the baby. it was...fine? really, it was. i felt love for her. it was nice.

i was still reeling, though, from the whole thing before the birth. what the fuck? i felt so cheated! so i talked to soulmate husband and asked him if i could stay the night with her, who told me the most important thing to him was if i could heal a little. (who are we kidding? if he stayed, you know he would just watch tv and fuck around with his iphone, pissing her off immensely. and i know he was happy when he saw the tiny pull-out chair.)

we talked the whole night. about everything- the labor and delivery, my dead baby, her live one, and her upset about not nursing (she has to go back on meds) and how she didn't get the first moments with the baby (temperature issues). the best part, though, was that everyone who came in- from doctors to nurses to janitorial staff- who congratulated her on her baby and asked who i was, heard about my triplets AND my dead baby. i told her that it meant alot to me that she talked about p@ige when, many times, i am reluctant to (i have the urge to tell EVERYONE, but rarely do; what for, anyway?). she said, "i could never not include her. you have four kids, and your last one passed. that's it." i cried. it was the first time we were in a social situation together (if you can call it that) since my baby died, and she did and said the exact right things...even during labor and immediately post-partum. well, like i named her, soulmate friend. i spent the night caring for her, and i couldn't imagine doing anything else.

i am so glad i went to the hospital. i am so glad i spent the night. i am so, so glad i held the baby right away. when i got home, i felt a little normal again (in an actual normal kind of way, not a numb, denial kinda way). I AM SO GLAD IT'S OVER.

happy birthday, the0d0ra anne. i wish for you all the good things in life. and when not so good things come your way, i wish for you a soulmate friend.
i love you.

you probably don't want to read this

i have never been less self-confident in my life.

i haven't posted for days, and not from lack of things to write. it's more from feeling in a place of total hypocrisy. it's about the fact that i have children.

i remember being on email loops when i was going through infertility. i was in the more elite, primary infertility club. there were some groups you couldn't join at all if you had secondary infertility. i mean, how could we feel sorry for you, with your first, second, or (imagine this) third child already born? we had no idea if we'd ever have a child at all. secondary infertility? yeah, assholes...right? and i kinda, a little, felt that way, but at least not in a *no moms allowed* or *skip (pregnancy/child mentioned) posts* kinda way.

after i had them, i would still read infertility blogs constantly...still infatuated with the two lines (can't say that's changed, but now it brings excitement with bone-wracking fear). the thing is, though, i wanted to email each one of those pregnant infertile chicks and warn them: HAVING THE BABY IS GOING TO SUCK and you are going to feel like shit for being stressed, anxious, depressed...because you worked so hard for it. i wanted to tell them to be prepared for the confusion and that it was normal and ok. you wanted the baby so fucking bad, desperately even, and now you want to leave it on the street corner? normal. don't worry about it. carry on.

three live and one dead baby later, i can see the juxtaposition of emotion that dealing with any type of pregnancy or baby loss (including infertility) brings when you have other kids.

these children are driving me insane. literally. they are at the point in age (almost three) where, as a mother, i should expect them to exert constant pressure. they are testing boundaries, and are unable to control their impulses. fine. but i can't handle it right now. I WASN'T TRAINED TO BE A NURSERY SCHOOL TEACHER.

i feel like my reproductive life is a total freak show. i mean, come on! yeah, sure...i survived infertility. but the evidence will stay with me forever in the form of higher order multiples. i hate the *special* attention...and it's not always even nice. now.....see what i just wrote? shouldn't i know better, as an infertile AND a dead baby mom? YOU HAVE THREE CHILDREN, YOU ASSHOLE.

on a daily basis, i feel like i can barely handle these three. i am in serious need for time-outs just so i don't scream my lungs out at them. i think to myself (in reference to the back-and-forth of trying to decide whether or not to try to have another baby), "ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY??" yet, i SHOULD have another baby. RIGHT NOW.

and i want her so bad i want to die...but i am not even confident about that...the only thing i feel sure of. whatever that means.

what i'm trying to say is, how can i feel so terrible about not having her here when i can barely emotionally handle these kids? i feel like a total hypocrite. i am constantly, emphatically, screaming in my head, "NO MORE CHILDREN!!!" yet i am grieving my dead baby girl. yes, i already know it's normal for your kids to drive you up a wall, even when you yearn for the one you lost. but emotionally, i have no such knowledge.

like i said to coggy, on the topic of "what's worse...," i lost count a long time ago. primary infertility? secondary? miscarriage at 8 weeks? stillbirth at 27 weeks? at term? SIDS at two months? losing your first baby? your third? your fourth when you have triplets in the terrible twos?

yet i know how i would feel if i lost my first baby. i think, a little, because i know how i felt to have primary infertility. and i don't want to hurt anyone with complaints about what i feel so fucking grateful to already have...especially when i'm so screwed up about it myself. my fantasy about what that baby would have been is shattered by the daily, soul-grinding anxiety caused by these three; by the constant thought of, "oh my god, THIS SUCKS." although i do sometimes admit that maybe, just maybe, the stress of dead baby is what's pushing me over the edge. wow, you think? or would it be even worse if i had an infant to care for, too? the dirty rotten fact is that i'll never know.

i think that's the biggest mind-fuck of all for me. that i can't just grieve my beautiful dead daughter without all this other bullshit assaulting my brain. doubting myself- as a mother to the living and the dead.

i'm gonna tell you something, but you don't have to say it back

i am just not in the writing (read: feeling) mood.

the break-up with my mother is sticking, soulmate friend is probably going into labor tonight, therapy is bringing up a whole bunch of shit. husband is sick of my snapping. i am sick of being snapped at (not by husband, but by three little hitlers who think i'm their own personal cinderella). i am sick of feeling like i shouldn't say they're shits because i have a dead baby.

i'm doing a piss-poor job of commenting on your blogs, but i want to say that i love you. does that just absolutely sound like a girl who's lost her mind or what?! i've thought about it, and it's true. i love you. and thank you for writing all your mind and heart and tear jerking posts. i just can't always get myself to respond in type...mostly in fear of spitting, if you know what i mean.

if anything is getting me through this week, it's you.