?????

Here is an interesting thought:

What if my diminished relationship with God has more to do with my disastrous relationship with my mother (who I can't trust emotionally) than with God?

The person who asked me that question has blown my mind - and left me with a lot to think about.

Return to sender

Please Note:

The PO Box that I aquired before BB was born will no longer be mine come Saturday. Just so you know...

:)

Can you help promote?

First of all, I really want to thank all of the wonderful women that are helping to establish the Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss Blog Directory, especially kate, Julian's Mom, and msfitzita.

Several of you have offered to become contributors - Thank You! I am hoping that once we get things established, we can have guest contributors that post to the site on a montly basis. Please know that if you've offered, we will eventually contact you.

Please, if you could, it would be a great help if you did a wee bit of advertising on your blog to promote this resource. These types of things are always organic in nature - you never know who will use them. But a little bit of promotion would go a long way to make this a helpful gathering place for our community.

Scrambled Brains

I am F'd up. My younger cousin was 3 days past her due date. I was freaking out. Post-date pregnancies are horrifying to me, even though I've never been there. I know the statistics.

The baby arrived safely on Saturday. For which I am grateful. However, relief quickly turned to jealousy and envy. I am resentful that she gets to keep her first baby and I did not.

Nothing I can do to change that set of conflicting, opposite emotions. But I feel those two parts of my psyche warring against each other and it makes me feel like a lunatic.

Goodbye and Good Riddance

The summer after C. was born, I threw myself into redoing my front yard. Most of the plants I installed were chosen for a sentimental reason. Like the phlox that was named "Baby Eyes".

I took much of my inspiration from my neighbour (who lost a child to CF). This neighbour had a beautiful Memory Garden and a beautiful home. During that time they moved away.

A young family moved in. They had a 6 month old. When I worked in my garden I could hear the baby cry. It cut me to the soul. I hated that family.

In a bid to try NOT to hate them, we walked over and introduced ourselves when they were out in the yard one evening. I asked what they were going to do with the yard, since it wasn't child friendly. They didn't know. I told them that I would remove the plants for them if they decided they didn't want them.

This summer they tore out the Memory Garden. Everything went to the dump, including the incredibly expensive cedar fence. It made me sick for SO many reasons. They have, in effect, destroyed any of the charm that their property had.

Today Century 21 came and put up a sign on their lawn. They won't be missed.

Not so easy

This makes me crazy. We asked and asked and asked for ultrasounds to determine the location of BB's cord in utero and all we got were blank stares. The u/s tech told us that she couldn't do it on her machine and that we couldn't just ask her to look for cord location. Our doctor would have to tell her to look for it on the ultrasound requisition.

When we asked our doctor to write said requisition, all she put was "check cord". So the u/s tech would do the Doppler flow and that was it. It was a never-ending cycle of insanity. I finally gave up.

BB was born with 2 loose loops of cord around his neck. Thanks for helping us manage that risk.

Things that OBs and u/s techs believe:

• umbilical cord accidents don't repeat (not true)
• you can't track umbilical cords with ultrasound (not true)
• you shouldn't listen to the patient when she is telling you to check for something (ridiculous - who did more research into cord accidents, my OB or me?)

At the end of this CTV piece, the couple urges pregnant women to ask for a scan for vasa previa. Um, actually, it won't be that easy. Trust me, I made myself sick over asking for "location of cord" scans and NOBODY helped me with that.

Unless the local health district makes vasa previa screening a mandatory part of it's obstetrical ultrasound protocol and then trains it's ultrasound techs, it ain't gonna happen.

Here we go...

Okay. I have set up a blog for listing Babyloss blogs and for posting helpful resources. My goal is to have a central location for our community to share information and to be a starting point for someone who is journeying this terrible path.

http://babylossdirectory.blogspot.com/

Anyone out there smart enough about these things to create some custom graphics for us?

Please check out the site. If you would like to list your blog, please contact one of the Contributors listed on the sidebar. If you are interested in becoming a contributor, please let me know.

I have an idea

So I was lying awake (can you believe that I am sleepless sometimes despite brain numbing tiredness???), and it came to me: as far as I know, there is no easy way for someone who has just experienced the loss of a baby to find other blogs about miscarriage, stillbirth, and/or infant death.

So here is my idea: start a Babyloss Directory blog. The left sidebar could host a blogroll of anyone who wants to be listed. The right sidebar could list helpful resources, like websites and books dealing with Babyloss. The posts could be a place to list new releases, medical journal articles, upcoming television shows, etc.

I would start this blog and ask for volunteers to help maintain it (especially someone with more technical knowledge than I have!).

My question is this: is this a good idea? Or is it redundant? Does something like this already exist?

As Frank Barone would say: "Holy Crap!"

Oprah is doing a show on loss of a baby. Wait, was that a pig flying by?

https://www.oprah.com/plugger/templates/BeOnTheShow.jhtml?
action=respond&plugId=256500001

You should see my celebratory dance - it's pretty cool!

Hoping this starts something

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/03/17/
1174080223513.html

I have no opinion on whether or not negligence was involved in this particular stillbirth case, however, if it became a worldwide standard for a coroner's inquest to happen in all cases of stillbirth, well, I would probably cry for joy.

I am tired of being ignored.

Tough one

2 month immunizations - CHECK.
Mommy and Daddy nearly cried, too - CHECK
Our little love crying harder than he ever has before - CHECK
Mommy whipping out a booby to make him feel better - CHECK

Why, oh why, can't they put all of the vaccine in one syringe? Poor little dude has two holes in his legs :(

Book List

I just read and would recommend:

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Piece of Work - Laura Zigman
Anil's Ghost - Michael Ondaatje

Listening to The Notebook (N. Sparks) on CD. Almost to the end. Enjoying, but not sure what the huge deal is/was.

Comments?

Obsessing over the details

I have been mulling a number of things over for a while now, waiting for the oppertunity to write a decent post.

First: whether or not to try for another child.

I know I already lamented the insanity of the world around me that is already making comments about "the next one". But the thought is rather consuming. In that, if I were to make a final and permanent decision that we would NOT try another pregnancy, there is a whole lot of housecleaning that I could do. Pass on BB's newborn duds, my maternity clothes, etc. And it would actually allow me to visualize what our family's future might look like.

But I have to admit that I am totally undecided on the issue. When I am completely truthful with myself, I think that we probably will try to have another living child. I feel like we owe it to BB to have a sibling in the house that he can grow up with (rather than just a gravesite that he can visit). For him, I think that I could take the chance again. For myself, I don't think I could.

Going into our pregnancy with C., it was all about us: taking our two lives and combining them in a way that was our legacy. A child that would meld us into a family, two souls combined. All of that romantic kind of thought. Going into BB's pregnancy, it was more about desperation that we would never experience the joy of raising a child in our house. It wouldn't cancel out any of the tears that we continue to cry for C, but it would bring its own unique joy - to be able to raise a child.

Why would be the purpose of a third pregnancy? Assuming that it would result in a live birth (!), it could only possibly be for BB. And for FutureKid. So that they would have each other. I can't imagine my life without my siblings (rose coloured glasses blinding me to all the times I could have strangled them...). Theoretically, BB and FutureKid would be there for each other when we no longer could be.

I tried to explain a little of this to my parents recently. Since they were amoung the people who were teasing us about having another baby. All I really wanted for a response was an affirmation that they understood that it was our decision to make and that they would support us in whatever we chose to do. Instead, I was assured that I would change my mind and have more children (so easy, right? just decide and it happens) and that they were told they shouldn't have more after I was born and that it was too important to them, so they did anyways. Not once did they validate what I had expressed - that I currently didn't anticipate ever going through another pregnancy.

My relationship with my mother has been poor (to put it mildly) for months. This doesn't help things. She begs me to share my emotions with her, then she discredits them when I do. Remind me not to fall for that anymore.


Secondly: oh, the griefs we can grieve

I spend hours, sometimes, staring at BB. Memorizing all the unique things that make him who he is. I wish that I could say that my thoughts are about him alone. But much of my time is also spent wondering if any of his traits are similar to what his brother's might have been. Would C. have gotten the hiccups so often? would they have had similar temperments? did C. have his grandma's tounge and his dad's toes, too?

There were so many physical aspects of C. that we just didn't know to look for. We remember that he did have attached earlobes, but what were his toenails like? His lips were like mine - would he have looked like me when he smiled (BB does, a little)?

And what would he have been like with his little brother? Born almost two years apart, exactly. Would he have been tired of the noisy little being that was taking all of his mom's attention?

My thoughts drift to C. more and more - yet he feels so far away from us. That distance seems to have increased exponentially in the last two months. And that surely hurts.


------

BB goes for his first immunizations tomorrow. How hard that will be on the Mommy and the Daddy! He will get booby whenever he asks tomorrow, that's for sure.

BTW, any suggestions for dealing with an overactive milk-ejection reflex? I spray milk down his throat, he chokes and tries to pull away without letting go of my nipple. OOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!! Current techniques include: nursing laying back in a recliner, taking him off and expressing when he starts to choke, making sure he is sitting up when he nurses. Any other ideas?

Thanks for sharing your experiences with the dreaded # of children question. It always helps when I compare notes. Makes me feel normal, a little.

And thanks for reading this - assuming anyone still reads!

P.S. I bet you didn't know that Barenaked Ladies have a song about grieving...

Road Trip

We did our first big roadtrip to visit relative this week. A 500 kilometer trip that would normally take just over 5 hours to drive. We did it in a mere 10 (!) hours. Including travelling 50 kilometers in the wrong direction and a flat tire that had to be replaced at midnight at an afterhours tire shop (thank god for CAA).

I was going to write a really long post but it is 16 degrees C out there. We have summer days that aren't this warm! I am putting BB in the stroller and we are hitting the pavement!

Can you believe it?

So, remember when my GP referred me to the only RE in our area? The letter arrived in the mail this week. My appointment to see this RE is scheduled for the end of JUNE. Yes, well, my son will be 6 months old by then.

Any Canadian readers will have heard about the wait lists in our medical system ad-nauseaum. Other readers - how's that for prompt consultation? Typical of free health care, I'm afraid.

I am saving the letter. Maybe to show BB some day. To think: if we were still waiting to see the RE, we would have spent over two years "trying" without even a consultation.

One more reason that I give thanks for BB every day. Our chance.

Tomorrow I will call and cancel and open up my spot on the list.