Waves

I'm at this point where my grief seems to come in waves. When it hits, the waves are huge and I feel like it will knock me over. It seems like I can keep myself occupied enough to not feel the full brunt of my grief all the time, but then it just hits me, out of nowhere and I'm a mess.

We are quickly coming up on the six month mark. I really can't believe it has been almost 6 months. I feel like I'm losing some of the details of her birth and our time together. Sometimes when I think back, I feel like I'm outside of myself, watching what is happening. I miss my baby girl so much. My arms still ache to hold her. I wish I knew what she would've looked like today. She was a pretty good mix of Christian and Hailey, but it's hard for me to imagine.

I'm kind of mad at myself right now because I agreed to go out of town for work on Monday and Tuesday, the 10th and 11th. Every month on the 10th, I've gone to the cemetery. I didn't even realize until after I said I would go that it was on the 10th. I guess I'll go to the cemetery the day before. They still haven't installed her stone. I'm not sure when that will be done. I may call them to find out.

I have decided that I'm over this whole "don't talk about Sydney" thing that some people we know have decided is the way to handle this. If they can't acknowledge her, then I don't want them in my life. This isn't some phase or something I'll ever get over. I'm carrying on with my life because I have to, but that doesn't mean I'll ever go back to who I was before. If people don't like it, we can all agree to go our separate ways, whether I'm related to them or not. Eric posted a Facebook status to that effect and a member of his family actually commented back and said, "What do you want people to say exactly?" Are people really so clueless? Would she ask that to someone who lost their spouse, parent, grandparent, or anybody older? Would it be so hard to ask how we are doing, if there is anything they can do for us (like taking the kids for a couple of days to give us a break). I wouldn't dare dream of them asking to see her pictures, going to the cemetery, or talking openly about her.

In my dreams

A few nights ago, something I've been waiting for finally happened. Sydney visited me in my dreams. It wasn't like I thought it might be, but she was there, alive and whole.

In the dream, I was pregnant. At first, I didn't realize that I was pregnant with Sydney. My dream self remembered all that had happened, it seemed. I thought, I'm pregnant, I'm going to have a baby soon, I'm 39 weeks pregnant, how have I managed to stay pregnant when I was 4 cm dilated at 20 weeks? It was then that I realized the baby was Sydney. I went out to go shopping to prepare for her arrival. In the car, I realized I hadn't felt her move. I started talking to her, moving my belly, trying to get her to respond. I thought, please don't let her be stillborn after all of this. Then she moved. She kicked and squirmed and my whole huge pregnant belly shook. It was so real, so vivid. I talked to her for so long, telling her how happy I was that she was there and how much I love her. When I woke up, I was so sad. I wanted to go back and live in that dream. I wanted to dream of going into labor and having her, to see her beautiful little face. I hope she comes to me again, in a way that I can see her and hold her.

I am not in a good place right now. Sadness and anger have taken over and I feel justified in both so I don't fight it. I am so angry with everybody around me. I feel abandoned and forgotten. Work is really hard because I am surrounded by other people now and have to try to keep it together. It is times like these that I miss working by myself. If I needed to break down, I could. A few days ago, we were all eating lunch and the TV was on. It was on Ellen and it was a repeat of her Mother's Day baby shower show. I ate as quickly as I could and went back to my desk. I was trying really hard to not cry and hold myself together. My boss came by and talked to me and then realized something was wrong. She kept asking me, what's wrong and I kept saying nothing, I'm just busy. She went to her office then called me in a few minutes later. I finally told her what was bothering me and started crying. At least she was sensitive to it and let me talk about it.

Nobody calls to check on me. Even when I do talk to friends or family members, they don't ask how I'm doing. They completely ignore the topic of Sydney. My grandmother (the dog funeral grandmother) calls every few weeks. She will ask me to send pictures. I haven't sent any since Christmas. She has never asked to see pictures of Sydney, so IMO she shouldn't get to see my other two kids or my nephew. I don't bring up Sydney with unwilling parties because they get obviously uncomfortable and that upsets me. I don't want her to be a bad memory. I want her to be what she is--my baby, a member of our family, a part of our lives. Apparently, according to some people, I'm not supposed to expect that out of others. Well I won't. If Sydney isn't acknowledged, they shouldn't expect us to want to be around them. I need my baby to be acknowledged and treated as a member of the family just as the other kids are. Why are the feelings of others more important than MY feelings? I'm tired of everybody thinking more about themselves than us. We are the ones who have lost our child. We are the ones who live with this pain while they pretend she never existed.

I wish I could crawl into bed and stay there. I need a break from life.

Angel Wings

Lea over at Nicholas' Touch has an angel wing memorial on her blog. She added angel wings for Sydney today.

Thank you so much, Lea! They are beautiful.

What was I thinking?

Today, my first baby turned 8 years old. This day brought about some unexpected emotions.

One of my birthday traditions is to watch the video of the kids' births. I realized yesterday that there was no way I could do that today. So I didn't. Then while we were out, Christian said, Mommy, we forgot to do something today, we didn't watch the video of me being born. :-\ I told him, next year, I promise. I felt so bad. I didn't realize how much that meant to him.

We spent part of the day at a local zoo/farm type of place called Grant's Farm. The place was packed and I swear, every family there had a baby. Every family except us of course. And I think probably 90% of those babies were girls. And then there were the little girls toddling around. As if that wasn't bad enough, on the tram ride (and you have to take the tram to get into the main part of the park) we were put in the first row, which is directly behind the area where they transport strollers. Right in front of me sat a pink stroller. At least it wasn't the stroller we bought for Sydney, but still.

We stopped on the way home to pick up a pizza and there was a little girl, probably right about a year old or so, with dark brown curly hair toddling out after her dad. It ripped out my heart to see that girl and know that I'd never see my own little girl toddling out of the pizza place behind her daddy.

The fucking universe hates me.

Walking with you--Naming our babies

Eric and I have very different tastes in names for our kids. Each time we try to agree on something, but I end up picking a name and he agrees to it. LOL We've picked several different names for each child, but we settle on it right before we find out the gender. Our firstborn is Christian Eric. We both love the name Christian and Eric is actually Eric's middle name (his first name is Jeremiah) and his dad's middle name. Our girl name then was Kaitlyn. When I got pregnant with Hailey, we first thought about using Kaitlyn for a girl, but changed our minds. I wanted the middle name to be Ann, which is my mom's middle name, and I didn't think Kaitlyn Ann flowed well with our last name. We had a list of about six girls names and we picked Hailey. Sydney had also been on that list.

When I got pregnant with Sydney, we discussed names a few times, but nothing was really sticking out as THE name to me. A week or so before our 20 week ultrasound, we finally picked names. Our boy name was Jackson. I really thought we were having a boy, which was the first time my intuition was wrong. We picked Sydney as our girl name, with two middle name choices--June, which is Eric's grandmother's middle name, and Sydney was due in June, and Alexis. I only wanted to use June if Sydney was actually born in June. I wasn't crazy about that, but the other two kids have middle names after family members. While we were in the hospital, we agreed that her name would be Sydney Alexis. I love her name. I love to say it, to see it written, or on things. There was never a moment for me when I thought about changing her name--she was always and will always be our Sydney.

Reality

Sometimes I wonder if I'm stuck in some kind of alternate reality. That in my real life Sydney is still alive and the real me is happy. But I'm stuck in this sad, painful Sydney-less world. It is so unreal to me that a tiny precious life can slip away and it seems like so few people remember or care, so unreal that it can't be true.

I've been in a really strange place the last couple of weeks, since Sydney's due date. I was pretty much ignoring that this is my reality. I feel terribly guilty for that. I don't want this to be my life. I want to be a normal, happy mom. I want all of my children here with me. I don't want to grieve anymore. I don't want to have to imagine what my baby girl would look like--I want to know. I hate this life, I hate this grief. I want my old life back, I want my baby back.

The last couple of weeks, I thought about Sydney a lot, but I let other things occupy my thoughts as well. I didn't cry. I went to a concert that I was really looking forward to and I had fun. I did have a couple of times where I thought, I should be home with my baby right now, not at a concert. But last night, I broke. Yesterday was Sydney's 5 month birthday. Five months since she came into my life and left it. We went to the cemetery and put out some new things. Then we went to Walmart to buy school supplies. On the way home, I was thinking about how Sydney should have been tucked into her little safari print carseat, dressed in a little pink dress, with a headful of soft dark hair, sucking on her binky while she fell asleep on the way home. It was such a vivid image in my head. I wanted that so badly. I didn't even realize until she was gone just how much I wanted that.

A new month

June is over, finally. It was a bittersweet end to the month. I was so glad to end the month, but then I realized, the month was supposed to end with a new baby in my arms but it didn't.

Sydney's due date went ok. After the kids got home from school that day, we reach wrote Sydney a note, attached the notes to pink balloons and then went to the cemetery to release them. We planned to spend some time there, but once the balloons were floating away, it looked like they were going to crash land. I think the notes might have been too heavy. I kind of freaked out, herded everybody to the car, and rushed down the road to see if they had landed somewhere we could get them. As we got down the road, I looked up and saw 3 of the 4 balloons floating away, together. I don't know what happened to the 4th. I hope it finally caught the wind and flew away. I don't know why, but I had a feeling that the 4th balloon was mine. That would figure, because it seems like I'm always alone now, but Eric, Christian, and Hailey have each other. :-\

The week since Sydney's due date has been really weird, emotionally. I feel shut off from all emotions--sadness, joy, everything. I feel numb. Maybe it is the aftermath of the heightened emotions of her due date. I feel like I'm ignoring my feelings. Maybe so.

I think I've gotten pretending everything is ok down to an art. I do it all day at work, otherwise it makes people uncomfortable. I have a picture of Sydney on my desk. My new coworker asked if it was one of my kids and I said, yes and before I could say anything else, she started talking about how that picture must remind me of the miracle it is that she's alive because she was so tiny. I ended up crying and told her that Sydney had passed away at birth. Then she felt crappy because I was crying and all I could really do was say, it's okay, everything makes me cry. Then I wandered away so I could cry alone for a few minutes. I can't remember if I mentioned it (because I can't remember anything anymore), but I recently got a promotion to the main office of my company so I've gone from working with one other person 1-2 times a week to working with 10 or so everyday, all day. I also try to act okay with most of my family, most of the time, and with my in laws pretty much all the time now. I don't think anybody really knows how I feel anymore, not even Eric. We've hit a really rough patch, he doesn't understand me and I don't understand him. As usual everything falls on my shoulders and I just can't manage it right now. I feel like I'm not worth the effort it would take for Eric, or anybody, to even attempt to show some sympathy and stop pressuring me about everything. When you tell someone repeatedly that you need them to do something and they don't even try to do it, it really seems like they're saying, You aren't worth the effort it would take to make you feel better.

Due date

Today is the day Sydney was due. I've never actually made it to my due date and I probably would've delivered well before now if this hadn't happened. But I know by this time I would've had a baby in my arms. For five months, my life was centered around this date, planning and getting ready, anticipating her arrival. So instead of cuddling my baby girl who should've only been a couple of weeks old, my arms are empty.

In 9 days, I will have lived longer without Sydney than I did with her. It is almost unbelievable to me that 20 weeks ago, we were so happy. We had just found out we were having a baby girl at our 19 week ultrasound. We were already buying little pink dresses and sleepers. We picked out her name and we were calling her that. I couldn't wait until June to see her and hold her. It is hard to believe that only 6 days after that wonderful ultrasound, our world crashed around us and our precious girl was gone.

I'm trying really hard to change my outlook. I am going to try to spend the rest of the day focusing on the good memories--seeing her on ultrasound for the first time, hearing her heartbeat, feeling those first flutters and then the kicks and squirms. I'm going to try not to relive the days leading up to her birth or the events of that morning. I'm going to try to think about the two precious hours that we had with her, how blessed I am to have had that time, and how proud I am of her for fighting so hard to hang on. I want to think about how her fiesty personality shined through even in that short time, how completely perfect and beautiful she was, and how it felt to hold her tiny body in my arms.

Today I want to celebrate her life, not mourn for her death. Her life was so much more than the two hours she had here and she deserves to have that remembered.

A Reminder

I had a rough day on Friday and on my way home from work, I decided to go by the cemetery. I was there for a little bit and noticed that the flowers on another baby's grave had fallen out of the vase so I walked over and put them back. When I walked back over to Sydney's grave, I noticed a little butterfly fluttering around. It hung around pretty much the rest of the time I was there and then it went behind her headstone and flowers and I didn't see it again. It was really pretty. Its wings were purple on top and white on the bottom. I've never seen one like that before. I felt like it was a reminder to me that she is always with me and she's sending little things to try to make me feel better.

Another blow

Never say that things can't get any worse. I should know that by now. It can always get worse.

We decided to start trying to get pregnant again last month. Amazingly enough, last Wednesday (also Sydney's 4 month birthday), I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. I took another on Friday and the line was much darker. I had typical signs of pregnancy. I was anxious and trying not to get too excited. Then Tuesday night, I started to bleed. I hoped it was nothing and would go away, but by Wednesday morning the bleeding was quite heavy and I knew that it was over.

This just compounds my sadness. I really don't like February or June anymore. Our very first pregnancy, before Christian, was an early loss in June and the baby was due in February. Just like this baby. And of course, Sydney was due in June and died in February. I now have more confirmed losses than I have living children (there was also one other suspected loss between Christian and Hailey, but it wasn't confirmed). I feel like such a failure. Maybe I'm not meant to have another baby. :(