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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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do not judge by mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace and joy
about
- charmedgirl
- after 4 years of infertility, IVF, and a high-risk yet successful triplet pregnancy, we thought one baby girl created the old-fashioned way would be a piece of cake; that's not what happened. we miss you paige...stillborn at 40 weeks on her due date, 9.9.07.
or so we thought...
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8 comments:
Those little reminders will keep popping up. You think you will have gotten rid of all of them, but you will find a scrap of paper in your purse months later with a list of baby names to choose from, or what happened to me... you will put on a winter coat and find a pack of tums and a pre-natal vitamin in the pocket. And it stings. Badly.
I'm sorry.
I am so sorry honey. I know these little bits and pieces are difficult. For me, I just try to see them as little hellos from my lost son... but sometimes they are just enough to break me down...
I hope that at least once, sometime soon, you'll find a crumb that makes you smile instead of hurting you.
How funny and ironic that your team topped the league. Well at least you can say 2007 wasn't all bad ;o)
I find stuff too. I hate it. I have had to go through my bookmarks and deleted appropriately, also unsubscribed from a number of maternity/parent crap stuff. I have received emails from a few of these which I took great delight in replying to and demanding they again remove me from their mailing lists. I used the magic words, you should have seen how quick their responses were.
I am so pissed at my 'independent midwives' and your post has got me angry about them all over again. The money thing, that's what made me think. I can't be bothered to go there today but I'm pissed at them.
Maybe that's why we've been going hell to leather redecorating. Maybe I just don't want the house to remind me of anything. It's a new house as far as I'm concerned.
Maybe I'm just becoming bitter and twisted. At times it feels like it. I
Crumbs is a good name for the reminders. Everday, several times a day, I'm given a crumb and it's like he dies all over again in my mind. I relive his death and my loss over and over and over again everyday. How does one not go completely in-f*cking-sane? And the expectation is that we just bottle it all in because the grief must end at some point, right? We can't be completely consumed by our loss indefinitely, can we? But each day, we get crumb after crumb after crumb. Those around us just want us to sweep them under our proverbial tables, and I just want to keep mine there, for everyone to see and acknowledge...
I find that I get hung up on the little things sometimes too. It's something small I can focus my grief or rage or despair or whatever on because the big stuff (you know the whole deadbaby thing) is just too overwhelming to contemplate sometimes.
So with money you won on the football pool, maybe you can buy yourself a spa day, at an ADULT spa, no pregnant women or babies allowed.
Maybe turn this whole thing all around and use it to make yourself feel better?
maybe this happens later or maybe it never happens for some but now two years later i HOARD those crumbs. i am desperate to find the metal circles that came in my babies' boxes of ashes. i am afraid they are gone and thinking about that kind of unglues me. its not that i think any happy thoughts when i see the crumbs, its just that's all i have. but i remember bitterly deleting all the weekly baby emails and shit like that. this year my mom sent me another ornament for the tree for charlotte and it kind of pleased me. maybe put some of the reminders away somewhere so you'll have them should you become desperate for them someday.
The painted ceiling sounds amazing. Post a pic, if it doesn't hurt too much.
I know, there are so many reminders. All around us. I find them all the time, though I was sure I had banished them all from the house. Didn't work out that way.
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