Mother's Day

Tomorrow is Mother's Day.  After losing a child, Mother's Day is never the same.  The bittersweet taste burns in your soul as you celebrate the children you do have and mourn the one you don't. 

I love my boys so much and people have said I should be appreciative for what I do have.  Even implicate that my being sad is a disgrace to them, asking "aren't they good enough?". 

Missing a child you've lost, feeling like part of you is missing too, cannot be filled by any other children.  It's not that I don't love my living children with all my heart.  Doesn't mean that I'm not happy to spend the day with them.  It means that I also love my child I don't have and that part of me being a mother, part of my legacy, is gone.  I want ALL my boys with me.  I want him to be here, too. I want him to eat lunch with us and play with us and wait to meet his sister.  I want him, too. 

Those aren't feeling just reserved for Mother's Day.  Those feelings never leave the heart and mind of a mother who's lost a child.  in the every day living there are moments when you think of the child NOT with you and how different it would be if they were. 

Tomorrow I'll get up and make breakfast for my boys.  I'll Skype with my surrogate family.  I'll make cupcakes and then dinner for my mom and my brother.  And somewhere in between all that I'll go to the cemetery and be with my son, since he cannot be with me.

Mother's Day will never be the same.  There will always be someone missing.  Just like every other day, just a little more bittersweet.

Freaking the Hell Out

No sugar coating this. I'm a wreck.  I stayed home from work today. I didn't sleep at all last night and I had a migraine today and it's just getting worse. 

Today is the equivalent of the last day I felt Colton's life inside me.

So, yea, irrational, but I totally expect to wake up tomorrow and live the nightmare again.  I totally am prepared and anticipating her to die too. 

Friends keep saying "she'll be fine".  Um, Colton was supposed to be fine too.  Instead he's buried down the road. 

Doesn't help that this week is also my birthday and also Mother's Day.  Days I miss Colton even more.  Days I want him here with me. Days my heart already aches to not have him with me.  So this year it's a triple threat ... these special days + being pregnant + the same week I lost Colton = one freaked out me.

I'm just a nervous freaking mess. 

I keep thinking "If I just make it through this next week".  But ... she won't be here yet.  I still have six weeks until induction.  Anything could happen at anytime.

Yea, I know ... don't stress it... can't change it... everything will be fine... yada yada.  Everything was supposed to be fine with Colton.

I know the added stress isn't good for me.  I just don't know how to escape it.  I feel like I'm drowning in it. 

Lordamercy, please just let her make it here safe.  I cannot lose her too....

Surviving

People ask "how are you?".  The answers... Good. Well.  Getting there.  Excited.  Scared.

Truth is ... I'm surviving.  That's about it.

I'm 32 weeks now.  8 months.  I should be overjoyed and bubbling with excitement.  And, sometimes, I honestly am.  I allow myself to daydream of her beautiful face, her peaceful breath, her hungry cry, nursing her ... yes, even dressing her up and showing her off. 

And sometimes I let that glow and show.  And people probably thing "phew, she's okay!".  Reality? I'm surviving. I'm scared. 

I was 34 weeks, 2 days when I confirmed Colton was gone.  I was actually 33 weeks, 4 days when I lost Colton.

Did I mention I'm 32 weeks (and 3 days) right now?

So I'll give you one guess on my biggest emotion right now.. .. ..

I'm struggling so hard with trying to enjoy every moment, trying to focus on THIS pregnancy, and not focus I'm a week from when I lost Colton. 

This pregnancy is completely different.  She is SO active.  So much so my tummy is sore and I feel beat up from the inside out.  She is strong and busy and ... full of life.  She's big. Really big.  She's measuring over two weeks ahead. 

If this were any other pregnancy I'd be bragging about how normal and good things are. Even as I sit here typing my belly bounces back and forth and extremities poke out.  I have heartburn and sleepless nights.  I can't eat much because she takes so much room.  I have trouble breathing and my hips pop and spasm.  I'm tired.  It is - by all measure - the perfectly normal pregnancy.  I haven't gained much, I feel so ... normal. 

Yet I cannot shake the black cloud, the knowledge that at any time something can change.

I am seeing my doctors weekly now.  I'll have both an ultrasound and doctors appointment every week.  We'll check her placenta, cord, fluids, breathing, organs ... heart.  Will it reassure me? Yes.  For that moment.  At any moment things can change ...

I really TRY not to live in the what-if's but it's much harder when the what-if's have become reality before. 

I want to be happy. I want to believe she's going to come kicking and screaming into this world in just a few short weeks.  I want to believe she is mine to keep. 

Until then, though, I will keep surviving.  I will keep moving forward until ... Well, until.

The Abyss

Sometimes during the grieving and healing process we have revelations and realizations that help us to better understand and express how we feel.  I had one of these "ah-ha" moments the other day and am sharing in hopes it might help others understand, too.

People ask what the pain feels like, when it really hits.  This is the best I can explain it...

Labor and delivery is an experience like no other. There are emotional phases of the process that occur in sync with the physical process.

While laboring there is such an intensity. Anxiety and anticipation fuel adrenaline and drive the whole process.  There is excitement and nervousness.  A whole new world is approaching.  A new life is joining the family, a new challenge, a new reward.  A new hope, a new fear. 

The delivery process is surreal.  The pain is intense, the desire to hurry through and meet the baby fuels every second and every push and every pain.  The reward at the end is worth it, drives it, generates an energy that's immeasurable.

Then the baby arrives.  At that point it doesn't matter if you've been in labor two days, two hours, not at all ... doesn't matter if you pushed for hours, minutes, or are delivering via c-section.  The moment the baby escapes your body is surreal.

In that moment everything shifts.

You're left in the anticipation and anxiety of the long awaited arrival of your child.  All the anticipation intensifies.  Your heart is beating so hard in your chest it may burst.  Time stops. 

You can literally hear every sound.  The tick of the clock reverberates.  Everyone is holding their breath.  Everyone is watching a listening for the baby to welt out their first cry and announce "I am here!".  Seconds feel like minutes, minutes like hours...

When that first cry happens the rush of love and joy brings the room to tears.  All the anticipation, fear, nervousness flees and pure bliss fills every soul.  The sound of the cries is the sweetest of all sounds, the reassurance of new life, new hope, new love.  Life paused for just a moment, and restarted with an intensity and renewed life inside you that you never knew could exist.

So imagine that suspension of time never being broken. Imagine that cry never comes.  You're trapped in that abyss between the excitement and anticipation of labor and that release and joy of new life.  You're just stuck.

When labor hit hard with Colton and it was time to push I actually forgot for a moment that my son was already gone.  The adrenaline kicked in, the anticipation of seeing him overwhelmed my heart, and my only focus was meeting him.

So he came out and my doctor held him up for me to see and I started at him, waiting.  I honestly looked at him in dumbfounded wonder.  Why wasn't he crying?? Why wasn't he moving?? I was perplexed.  It took what felt like minutes, but was probably seconds, for it to settle in that he was dead.  That I would never hear his cry.  That I'd never see him move.  I'd never feel his breath.  I'd never  nurse him or change his diaper ...

When that cry never comes the release, the joy, never comes.  All that is left is the tick of the clock. The silence of the abyss.  The silence.  The gap between what was and what was supposed to be.

When it finally settled in he wasn't going to cry I just thought "what now".  I still haven't figured that out. 

Life does go on. But living doesn't.  While one foot goes in front of the other, and work and parenting and day-to-day continues, part of you is stuck.  Still stuck in that abyss.  A part of you is left there, in that lost space. 

People sometimes say "a part of you died" when you lose a child.  I believe it's in that moment, in that space, where that part stays. Where part of you is lost and will never rejoin you.  Part of your soul is forever sucked in the abyss between labor and love.  Lost in loss.  Never to breath again, never to exist ... just like the child that never cried and broke the abyss.

The Truth

The truth is I'm scared shitless.

Being pregnant again isn't full of joy and happiness.  It's not healing a single ache or pain of losing Colton.  If anything, it's magnifying so many feelings I've blocked for so long.  I'm facing demons and pains that I didn't even know existed.  And I cannot escape them, and therefore I'm being forced to face them. 

I feel absolutely neurotic.  Here are some of my off-the-rocker-losing-my-mind thoughts::

I sometimes want to beg my doctor to take her out now.  Yes, she'd be in the NICU but she'd have a better chance there than in me.  I already failed one baby.

I have the number to the cemetery written on a pad at work.  I have more than once started to dial there number to offer a deposit on a plot next to Colton.  God forbid she die and not be buried next to her brother.

Every ache and pain I know that her placenta is separating, that I'm going into preterm labor, that I'm losing her too.  I even rushed to the doctor once already.  They confirmed ... nothings wrong.

I poke my stomach. A lot. If she's not moving, I'm panicking.

I'm terrified of birth.  Terrified.  What if she doesn't breath? What if she doesn't cry? What if she DOES??

Does Colton feel like I'm replacing him?? I only just moved all his clothes out of the dresser and I cannot adequately explain the level of GUILT I feel for it. 

Every day I feel like I'm losing my mind a little more. I find myself consumed many times by the what-if's and the what-did's. 

I know that I'm my own worst enemy right now.  I know I'm living in fear, not faith.  I just don't know how to not to ...

I am in counseling ... a lot of counseling.  And I'm comitting to blogging more about how I feel.  To help myself, maybe to help others, mostly to help this little girl.  I have three months to fix this.  She needs me, 100% of me.

If God allows me to keep her, that is...

Days turn into weeks ... weeks turn into years ...

And not a day, week, year makes the missing of my son any easier.  People say time heals, time just distances us from the day our world crashed. 

So much has happened in the last year.  Grief changes us.  It can consume us.  If we aren't careful, it can destroy us.

When I lost Colton, I didn't only lose my son, I lost myself.  Everyone thought I was okay. I was supposed to be.  That's what everyone expected.  Pick up and move forward.  There were other children in the home that needed me.  There was a life beyond the loss.  I wasn't supposed to 'wallow' in the grief.  I was supposed to move on. 

So I did.  Or the shell of me did anyways. 

In retrospect, the more I faked being okay the less okay I was.  I became more and more isolated from my friends and family.  I gave up trying to talk about Colton. I gave up trying to make others understand how I felt.  I gave up.

First I tried to replace the pain - to ignore it and 'fix' it - by replacing the loss of pregnancy with another pregnancy.  I knew I wasn't ready for my own.  No way.  But, having been a surrogate before, I thought that doing another surrogacy would be a way to fill the empty womb, see that I could carry a baby to delivery again, and give myself hope that eventually, maybe, I could be a mother again.

I matched with a WONDERFUL couple.  They were international and had a daughter already and we just clicked.  I felt like this was RIGHT.  Everything fell into place so easily and quickly.  By September 2011 I was pregnant with a baby.  I never feared this child would not make it.  I felt confident again, peaceful, and excited to have LIFE inside again.  I never realized the life was this baby's, not mine. I was still numb and lost.  Just living through the surrogacy, but not really living.

All the while I was living vicariously through the pregnancy I was falling further and further from MY family.  B and I were ... existing.  I worked, was a housewife, and was ... a lost soul.  I was functioning.  And faking it oh so well... but faking it. 

The pregnancy was picture perfect.  I gained 16 lbs total, blood pressure was great throughout, baby was healthy and happy.  On May 10, 2012 - my 33rd birthday - my water broke.  Unfortunately it was a week PRIOR to when we were going to induce, and five days before his parents were due to arrive.  So I delivered this beautiful little boy with the support of one of my best friends/doula and B by my side.  Delivery was fast and easy and beautiful.  Because the parents couldn't make it until the next day I had him with me all night and the next day until early afternoon.  It was surreal, peaceful, and I *thought* healing, at least as far as pregnancy went. 

But the rest of my world wasn't okay.  My life wasn't okay.

Fast forward a few months.  In September I left my home.  I left B and our family.  Not only had I not been happy for a long time, I let someone else into my life.  I had been having an affair.  I was a mess.  I didn't know if I was coming or going and I fled.  I fled everything.  I was hiding in lies and a facade of fantasy, escaping the reality of the pain I refused to face, to heal.

And then, in October, I found out I'm pregnant.  Even just acknowledging that moment again brings back that rush of emotions. Mostly fear. Pure fear.

Again, fast forward to now.  I'm 19 weeks pregnant, single, and scared out of my mind.  I realize, in retrospect, what a lie I was telling myself.  Thinking I was okay, avoiding my life, my sadness, my grief... I was running from it all when it all caught up to me.

I am back in counseling.  I am finally working through my grief of losing Colton, but not before I allowed it to completely destroy my life.  It's not HIS fault, it's not because of his loss, it is because we just didn't handle it well.  And we aren't the only ones.  You *hear* about people losing a baby, about it destroying their relationships, but you never think it'll happen to you ... until it does.

And now, faced with another baby ... I don't regret my surrogacy for one second.  I love him and his family so much ... but it was another lie.  His pregnancy didn't fix anything.  His pregnancy didn't heal my fears.

I sit here, almost half-way through my own pregnancy and wonder daily when she'll die.  I am scared, constantly, of burying another baby.  So much so I've been tempted to ask the cemetery to hold the spot next to Colton, just in case.

I use a Doppler almost daily.  Even though I can feel her moving often and strong, I still have to find her heartbeat and just listen.  I need to hear that she's still alive, and not that I just want her to be, like I did with Colton for so many DAYS before acknowledging I'd lost him. 

I don't know how to ease those fears.  I don't know if I can. I often believe I won't accept she's coming home with me until she's screaming and crying her way into this world. 

If that doesn't happen ...

Do we ever really heal from the loss of a child?? I obviously didn't.  But I'm working on it now.  There's been so much loss, so much damage ... So much loss.

Another day, another week, another year ...