Ninja be damned

Yesterday was Evie's 7 month birthday.   People say that time flies; I don't think that's an accurate analogy.   It doesn't fly it sneaks by unbidden like a ninja, stealing away valuable moments in the darkness of shadows. Yesterday we enjoyed Christmas with my in-laws and in those precious moments of family Evie turned 7 months old and I never realized 7 months were already stolen away. And now in just 3 days the new year will begin, I have been putting some thought into what I want this year to bring and I realized I don't know when I last made plans for a year, but that's a lie; I do know.   

3 years ago when I was pregnant with Gabbie we made plans.   We made plans to have a baby girl.   We made plans to sell our house to buy a 4 bedroom house in the suburbs.   We made plans for the year.  But time,  like a ninja,  stole those plans in the shadows of a night in April,  and I awoke and all those plans no longer mattered.   That 4 bedroom house became a series of apartments, a place to suit the need of a place to stay. Sure we made them home,  but it's always been a borrowed home.

But now,  I've been thinking again about the future and that ninja. I want the girls to grow and know a place to call home.  I want them to think about the events that time steals away with fondness and have a home as the backdrop for those moments.   I want them to grow up in a house that is ours.   I want to steal back those moments.   I want to give to Evie the moments that Gabbie will never have, and resume with the plan that has been on hold for the girls for the last 2 years 8 months and 3 days.  I want to make plans to buy a house like we had planned to do when we had Gabbie. The thought brings tears to my eyes that roll gently down my cheek.

As I say that though, as I think about making a true plan to buy a house, I have terrible anxiety. Time is a ninja: a dangerous threatening shadow that steals away dreams and moments and life. My inner defenses say that if I make plans I'm setting myself up for heartache, disappointment, pain. But life cannot stop for fear of something that is always there. Time may be a ninja but often it just stands silently in the recesses of the moment and observes. I cannot always fear it.

My heart is in my throat.  Let's proceed with the plan, ninja be damned.

Marching on.

I have things to do and instead I'm blogging. Christmas is just around the corner. I didn't cry this year setting up the tree, or shopping for gifts. It makes me melancholy to think that I'm handling the grief better.

33

I was right. School started and it's been a collection of days which progress to weeks which smush to months.  I am an automaton going about my day. Each day preparing for the next. My mornings set me up to prepare for the day: Shower, get dressed, do makeup, do hair, brush teeth, get G dressed, prep the coffee, get breakfast, load car, wake Evie, put her in her seat, drive to the babysitter's and then to work to start my job. Throughout the day I teach, prep lessons for the next day, leave work, get the girls, make dinner, make lunch, lay out clothes for next day, go to bed. In the routine are moments when I get to sit for a minute if I'm lucky to pretend time is not marching onward and enjoy the girls. For just a minute. Maybe two. If I want more time to cuddle, to play, to just hold them something else must suffer. Sleep? Prep? Dinner?  I was right time is marching on and I am spending it just getting through each day and I'm losing my battle against it.

I went to the Walk to Remember on Sunday. I brought Gabbie's flag project. I watched the 57 flags fluttering in the breeze. I cannot believe that my first year I had 33 the day before the walk and now there's 57.  It's my third year there.  Some day it will be my 33 Walk if still they do it and I will still go.  It has been 2 and half years of time passing by without her. So much of that time seems missing somehow. Now I have Evie and time keeps marching and she's 5 months old. She smiles, giggles, rolls over, cuddles, blows raspberries, and kisses. But while I'm working on trying to balance life and raising three girls I sometimes feel like I'm somehow missing out on them. I'm so caught up in trying to be prepared and to remember things that I'm losing the time I have right now. Evie is my last and holding her, especially at night it's almost like the time I have with her is tangible.  S sits in the front seat of the car now, she's 11 and big.  I can see her starting to mature. He wishes for things like trying Starbucks or owning a Northface are real and telling; she's becoming less of a little girl and more of a young woman.  G and I had to have a discussion about strangers because in her innocence she thought that if a stranger told her they were taking her to me she should go with them.  She knows now that she should run and scream.  It's things like that that make me realize the world forces us to steal their innocence.  And time required them to know things, to grow up before I wish they had to.  Time is stealing my babies away.  Or perhaps I've only just been lent them, they were never really mine.  The thought makes me sad.  

But I digress. I went to the Walk by myself, I'm perfectly ok with that.  I do not expect nor wish for company, not even D. We grieve differently and simply put, that is perfectly ok.  I do not get to celebrate her birthdays or her milestones, and her flag project is important to me, so I went. One woman waited by Gabbie's sign to hug me and thank me for the project and the page on FB. It humbled me. We talked for a few minutes. After she left I stood there by her sign by myself and cried quietly. I miss my angel's face so much. I cannot even picture who she'd be today. I wish I could. A woman touched my shoulder and asked to give me a hug. She wrapped her arms around me and told me Gabbie was right beside her angels in heaven. I have no words.  Friends of mine I met in a support group walked by and stopped to hug me too and take pictures of me at her sign.  The goodness in hearts is astounding. I was never actually alone. When I was looking at the flags the photographer mentioned how beautiful they were. I told him the project was mine and he commended me in it's beauty. Again I had no words. 

There is so much I want to say, to her, to the girls, to people but there are no words. I do not miss her less. I miss her all the same, still to the deepest parts of me. It doesn't hurt less it just hurts differently. I will always count her in my kids when people ask me how many I have. I will always explain I have 4 beautiful girls. When they ask me how old they are I'll tell them the ages of my earthly beauties and that my angel in heaven would be 2, and someday 3 and someday 33. 

I will continue to collect flags. I will bring them to the remembrance days even if going to the Walk made me sad. Someday maybe I won't cry. And if not, well then I'll cry every year and be ok with it. But the flags give people peace. They make me proud to be her mama. They make me humbled by other's love and sadness and gratitude. And if collecting the flags and displaying them as often as possible raises awareness about pregnancy and infant loss to just one person then it's one more person that will talk a bit more kindly, hug a grieving person longer, and live a little more in the knowledge that not all babies come home from the hospital and it's okay to say their name. 

I know she can see what we have done together. I know she watched the flags on the wind sending the prayers to other angels. I hope she is as proud of me as I am to be her mama. I am the mother of an angel and 3 beautiful flesh and blood girls. And no matter how time falls away, passes by, or matches on, to my very last breath I will make sure that they know how much I love them and am so proud to be their mama. 

holding on

Evie is home, and safe, and beautiful, and smart.  She was born with her cord wrapped around her neck, and not breathing but she's here and okay.

She's starting to smile now, and giggle.  Her giggle is funny.  It's sort of airy and then when something is really funny it cracks a high pitched hiccup sound that surprises her and makes her stop laughing.  She grabs on now and cuddles up.  I hold her.  A lot.  I put her down too.  But I hold her.  A lot.  My favorite time is in the darkness.  She cries for me and then eats.  After her bottle she get so tired that she fusses quietly some. Her little arms and legs move and she pouts her bottom lip big.  Rocking back and forth, the chair silent in the night I hum to her the song from "Three men and a baby".

Goodnight sweetheart, goodnight

Her little face always turns toward me in the darkness, her eyes glossy and sparkling.  She stops fussing and her body softly relaxes and her eyes get heavy.  Sometimes I hold her after she's fallen back to sleep even though I'm tired because the idea of putting her down is painful.  Sometimes I hold her in the moonlight and cry because somethings are too beautiful to see and have and hold, and until you have something so invaluable, something you've prayed so hard for that your knees have brush burns, you can't possibly understand.  It is so beautiful it hurts your soul.

Depression is a sneaky beast.  Most of the month it lies quietly dormant and sends me images and thoughts of Gabbie and how all this time and love I give to the girls, but especially Evie are moments I'd have had with Gabbie too and I brush them aside.  But realistically, and D reminds me on occasion, we probably wouldn't have Evie if Gabbie had stayed.  How ridiculously unfair that one should be swapped for the other.  During the month being busy with Evie and the girls I can put the thoughts away.  However I've noticed that I don't often look forward to things, in fact I can't remember the last time I've looked forward to anything.  My temper is often short.  I find myself being snippy with the girls.  The sad thing is I hear them mimic me sometimes to each other.  I don't like it.  The worst of it is the anxiety.  I cannot ride as a passenger in a car.  I can't breathe.  I see pictures in my head, flashes of accidents.  Those flashes flip on at home too.  I see the girls tripping, or falling down the stairs.  I warn then to be careful, to hold on to the railing, to hold hands in parking lots, and then when they do get hurt I get annoyed because they didn't listen to me.  I don't care for this quick-to-snap self.  Then pms makes the sadness so much harder to handle.  I am weepy and volatile.  My emotions are all over the place and the dreams are evil.   My doctor is pretty sure that, although I can usually control the sadness, the anxiety is part of PPD.

This month not only am I getting my period but I'm returning to work.  I'm not nervous about where the baby will be during the day, her babysitter is fantastic.  I'm just sad that I have to leave her at all.  I want to keep holding on to her, to not let go. What if school does what school always does and marks the year by the humdrum passing of each month?  Before I know it she'll be a year and my littlest and last will be big.  I need to hold on tighter.

New beginnings

Tomorrow D has his procedure.  And our ability to have babies ends.  I'm sad.  What makes it worse is it is also the same day that my cycle ends.  I look at Evie and know she is my last, that the rainbow after my storm really is it.  I know my body can't handle anymore pregnancies, and to even think about more would actually be cruel to me, to my girls, and to D but I'm stubborn and proud and don't like to think that I won't make anything so beautiful again.

That being said, I can't get enough of Evie.  I don't mind the feedings, the late night hours, I love the one on one time with her.  And time is so fleeting.  She's only 2 months but so big.  She won't be a baby much longer and I know it isn't fair but my time with her almost has to count for 2 times.  I still feel so robbed.  With the girls, S and G, I didn't know what I had.  I was selfish, and young, and naive.  But with Evie, it's different.  I feel guilty knowing how much I didn't know with my two sweet older girls.  Yes they are precious and now more precious still.  But it is not the same. My naive nature when I had the first two is tragic.  Not having anymore beautiful babies somehow means I can't share what I know with any other babies.  I don't know.  Maybe I'm just a hormonal mess.  I can't have more.  I know this.  I'm sad.  I'm ok with it.  I have to be.  Just like I have to be okay with so many other things.  I guess this picture I found today is even more meaningful...

Perhaps it's time to plan time for me and D.  Of the 5 years we've been married, I've been pregnant for 3.  Maybe it's time to focus on us.  It's time to focus on my girls and making the best use of time I have with them while I still have them everyday, while they still want to spend time with me.  Perhaps it really is time to trust in new beginnings...it doesn't mean I have to be okay with the past, it just means I can look forward to the beginnings and take the rest as they begin: One beautiful day at a time.  I owe myself that much and somehow this picture makes me know Gabbie would agree.  It didn't appear on my newsfeed on FB today by accident.

How dark the darkness

I have not handled this recovery well. I have lacked grace and patience. I am shamed by my attitude. It is easy to say "well look at the beautiful result" and much harder to step outside this body that created her and be at peace with the consequences of her arrival. In the darkness of night with this baby on my shoulder whose name actually means "life" I realized why I've lacked such grace. My most recent comparison for recovery should be no comparison at all, the darkness I was in after Gabbie made everything else pale by comparison. 

Two years ago after the arrival and departure of Gabbie I remember very little about the hospital and the physical pain except the heartache because at that time the grief was a physical heart-skipping-beats kind of agony. I could not tell you who visited us there except for a small few including some family and a friend who also suffered a loss like ours. I had had a c-section with Gabbie also. I don't remember anything about it aside from what happened in the hospital. 

Two weeks after I delivered her beautiful body, we said goodbye officially. I stood for hours at her funeral and hugged and cried with so many. I stood for hours split from hip to hip with deep pink around the mostly unhealed incision, perhaps with my stitches still in. I'd even gone shopping with my sister to get a dress that was appropriate to wear. I did it without thinking about the incision, without thinking about the pain or perhaps even noticing it. This time I couldn't even get out of bed two weeks later much less walk through a store and I definitely couldn't stand for hours wrapping my arms around anything but myself and my own physical pain. I see the me of two years ago in my memory and I realize that the darkness that consumed me then was so complete it made me blind to everything inside me. 

The point of comparison is almost apples to oranges. My heartache washed everything else away. Where as then I struggled to get out of bed because the darkness of grief, like night, was all around me and blinded me to everything else, this time the darkness is only within. I can see the outside. I just can't seem to get there. 

I went to the dentist yesterday. The same one I had gone to just after Gabbie was born. Then the women in the office made a big deal about me having her without ever asking how it went.  I had lied then at the end of the appointment and said she was fine after sitting quiet too weak to set them straight while they told their beautiful stories of their healthy babies. I was emotionally scarred from it. I have not returned in two years and now I probably need a root canal. The dentist scolded me for not taking care of my teeth because he presumed it was out of laziness that I had not returned more often. I did not explain the real reason though I wish I had or could. It was his staff and their sincere naive and blind pleasure in my delivery that made me not return. That is not easy to explain nor understand. And then when I finally was up to going back in I'd been pregnant and couldn't get X-rays to have a thurough check. But I'm there now and that should count for something however people presume too much and now again I don't want to go back because I've been made to feel small. Perhaps this is where I should note.... Doctors, if someone comes to you after an extended absence or even a forever absence seeking help, don't scold them for not coming in sooner, instead be gracious that they are there. You'll only make them wish they never came. 

So my point about the dentist is that when I could have returned to get X-rays between pregnancies the pain of a tooth was so far from my mind that, like the physical pain of a c-section, I could not feel it in the darkness just after Gabbie. It is another example of the strength of grief. Now I see and feel enough to at least attempt to take care of me physically. That is a stride, it is evidence in the stages of healing my heart. 

But now, two years removed from that pain that I could not feel, it is the most recent point of comparison. The only thing I remember about then was the self loathing at the perceived reason for losing her: my own body. My body created the water that allowed her room to move. My body did not tell me she was leaving. I was not aware she needed saving nor was I mentally aware enough to do the things that might have saved her. And yes I'm back to this...  I still have levels of that self loathing for a body I feel failed her and me.  I am more accepting of the fact that I had no control but acceptance is not forgiveness.  A part of me had hoped, I think, that this c-section would redeem my faith in my own body, that somehow this recovery would make up for the things my heart (not my rational mind) perceives as fatal flaws. But I've again been disappointed. My body is falling terribly short of whatever standard I had unwittingly and unfairly set for myself. I am again disappointed by my physical capabilities or lack thereof. I am struggling through a recovery that is more "there", more harsh, more complicated than the most recent comparison. It is as though now I am hurting enough for two surgeries because I never physically felt the last one. And I feel I am not handling it well and I am now ashamed that I have handled it all with such a lack of grace. 

In all the world I am my own worst critic. I have so little control over what my body does. I'm a soul inside a vessel set to sea; sometimes I can steer it and other times I have to go where the tide takes me. What I do have is my reaction to it and I have even fallen sadly short of the standard I've been striving for. I'm trying to redirect the thoughts of disappointment in myself and my experience to something more positive and self affirming. It's is not easy but I risk the darkness in me becoming darker if I don't. I have good qualities. I need to focus on them more. At least now I have stepped from the darkness enough to know I need to find better ways to take care of, love, and forgive myself for whatever wrongs against my soul I have imagined. 

I should be

I'm not sure why I'm here today.

I feel as though I'm waiting today.  Or maybe sad.  Or tired (always tired even when I get decent sleep.  I mean she slept 6 straight hours the other night twice in a row but still I was so tired when the sun rose). Or maybe I'm troubled.  Pregnancy hormones attempting to return to normal leave a sort of deep emptiness.  I have her, my Evie, and she's healthy, and ok, and I'm thankful.  But somehow I'm still sad.  And anxious and short tempered. I can't explain why.  I know that I should be happy.  I have a beautiful family and a healthy little girl to hold.  Yet I look at her sometimes and cry.  She doesn't fuss and only cries when she's hungry or wants to cuddle.  She's easy. And beautiful. And healthy. So why am I sad?  Why am I waiting as if for something to happen?  Why do I have anxiety about things happening?  I'm afraid to put her to bed in her crib--- what if I don't hear her?  Or what if she leaves me in her sleep?  I'm afraid to leave her with a babysitter (even people I trust totally). I'm afraid to take a shower while Evie sleeps and G watches TV, I think of things that could happen while I'm in there (from one of them choking to a stranger coming in the front door and taking them) though I know most of the scenarios are so unrealistic, but what if? I find my patience to be much shorter.  Two times of saying something, anything, is one times too many and I get irritated.  I can hear how quick I am to be snippy but it's always too late to take back the harsh retort.  It's not all day nor all the time but it's often. 

I just feel off.  Off and sad and anxious and tired.  And I see all the things I missed with Gabbie and I feel robbed. I should be okay with that for now I know what I have. Shouldn't I be?  But I'm not okay with that. At all. What's wrong with me?  I feel like a zombie just going about the business of living; it's a business of breathing, eating, sleeping, and hopefully taking care of my family existence with a smattering of life mixed in. But I cannot remember the last time I really (and I mean really) looked forward to something with excitement and child-like anticipation. Nor do I think I even remember how to.