(thank you, unknown postsecret secret postcard maker)
i used to think that the moment i became pregnant (before i ever had been), i would just magically have the motivation to change my eating habits. i used to think that i would be different and whole and connected, just because they were growing inside me, or here. isn't the creation and birth of a child THAT important? THAT life-changing?
well, it is that life-changing, but not in the idealistic way i thought; apparently it's not the fantasy many think it is. oh, poor ghost of charmedgirl past...you stupid, stupid girl.
the pain of knowing where i was mentally and emotionally during p@ige's tiny existence inside me is crushing my heart. i never, ever, ever in a million years would have imagined i could be so lost and depressed while carrying a baby. so many years of infertility, so many regrets about never being able to have a single birth baby...what the fuck was i so goddamn depressed about? i wanted to fast-forward time right to labor and delivery, even though in my mind, i'd want to put her back in for lack of sleep and everything else. i was an ingrate. i neglected her emotionally. i abused her mentally (and to be honest, physically). i was a bitch of a pregnant lady.
i have to change. i have to make changes BEFORE events that-shall-at-this-time-go-unnamed happen. i am making those changes, slowly but maybe surely.
i hate to hell that i am making these changes because my baby is dead.
i hate that i am going to be *a better person* because my baby is dead.
i fucking hate that i will go on to a more realized life because my baby is dead.
i hate that i hate it, because i hate the alternative even more; i hate the possibility that my baby died and i can possibly still be as fucked up as ever.
9 comments:
I so get this. I hate that anything good, anything positive, anything at all that isn't fucking awful could ever come from my baby being dead.
I have rationalized it in my head as this...I am not making something good out of his death. I am making his life something that changed me, in a good way. I will make his legacy something positive.
I will never, as long as I live, let anyone say, ever, that he, his life or his death, destroyed us or our family. I will fight until the day I die, to let him and his tiny life, too short in days, be something that changed all of us for the better. I owe him that. If I couldn't bring him safely here, I can at least, give his life meaning beyond anything I would have imagined the day I delivered him into this world...and let him go...into the next.
I hate that my son had to die to make me a better person. He did not die for that purpose. Seriously, I am not so self-centered to assume that he was conceived and stillborn for the purpose of making me a better person. That's just shit. BUT, as he grew in my belly for 8 months, I imagined myself becoming better for him and although I did not anticipate not having him for this purpose, I'm going to do all that I can to make him proud, if that's possible. But, most of all, I want to make myself proud knowing that I took his short little life and brought meaning to it by becoming what I hoped I would have become if he was here.
Sink or swim. We have to change now otherwise it was all for nothing. I think back to that girl who just found out she was pregnant. That naive stupid girl who I want to slap round the face. The things she got herself worked up about, the way she carried on. Just so dumb. I can't be that girl again. I won't be.
Some days it's easier to feel like I want what happened to be turned into something positive. Some days I want it to consume and destroy me as testament to how massive his loss is.
I am fighting to try and be the former rather than the latter, but it's not easy. It takes so much energy.
I was just saying to my husband yesterday, that it is so incredibly sad that I can't better my health for our future babies. I can't honor my son by getting into shape and being healthier so that this body doesn't kill the next child. Why, oh why can't THAT at least motivate me? I am jealous of your motivation. Maybe my jealousy will motivate me. Something has to.
I also intoned many many times during my really shitty pregnancy that THIS WAS IT. It was exhausting, mentally and emotionally. I bled a lot (a lot). I had appointments pretty much every two weeks up thru 32w (and boy, did they do a bunch of good, eh? WAY TO CATCH A PROBLEM, GUYS!). I, too, pretty much willed my way to delivery, thanking the stars that THIS WAS IT. I WAS DONE.
I'm not sure I even want to do this again, even if things were different for me genetically, because I'm really not convinced I *could* do it better, and I did a pretty crappy job of putting up. I ate right, drank my water, but it sucked. And it's going to be a cold day in hell before I think that getting pregnant again WON'T suck.
I admire your change-attitude. (Or, change for the better attitude.) Would that all deadbabies lead their moms to that conclusion.
Look, IMHO none of this is happening because she died. It's happening because of how you choose to react to life after her death. Very different in my opinion. One implies that it was "good" for you to have this happen. The other emphasizes your free will in choosing what to do with your life (to an extent you have control, of course). I much prefer the latter.
I can't even begin to think about the person I was before all this. As I have told you many times... I don't even recognize the girl in front of me anymore.
It has made me a better person. All this grief and agony. I guess I have compassion, which I don't think I necessarily had before. But...did I NEED to go through THIS, to get there? I don't think so.
I hate this for you.
I hate all of this for all of us. What is worse is that we will never be who we were before. Yet, maybe we will be better. Which hurts worse! But as Coggy said, we have to change now or it was all for nothing. I truly believe that.
I hate that you hate it and that we all hate it too.
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