And another thing...

I want to put a fucking sign around my neck that just simply says, "She has a name..."
No one wants to acknowledge that I gave birth to a baby. At 21 weeks. And she's no longer alive. I held her. I loved her. I gave her a name. I didn't just "lose a pregnancy." I didn't have a miscarriage. I had a baby. I had a daughter. She has a name.

I'm still around.

I just don't have the energy for blogging anymore. Or at least I don't right now. Work is exhausting. My life has become a series of motions that I'm not finding much joy in. I find myself bouncing between angry and heartbroken. I can physically feel the pain of my heart breaking. It is horrible. The nightmares are terrible. I'm struggling so much now as I try to understand and find purpose in life. I have started to feel like that my life will not have purpose unless I"m able to have a child. These were not feelings that I've ever had until now. I feel like at this point my existence is to make sure that everyone else around me is taken care of and gets what they want and need.  I'm taking care of everyone's everything. When will I ever get what I want? When will I ever get what I need? I'm falling apart. So is this blog. I'll be taking a break from it for a little while so I can try to gather some thoughts. I'm still around, but things just aren't going well.

A Heart to Hold!

I'm excited about something, but in a sad way. I requested A Heart to Hold after Astrid was born and it came in the mail today! I'm so bittersweetly happy to be holding it right now. I love her. I love my heart. The non-profit organization makes these hearts for loss-mamas for free. The heart weighs as much as your baby. My little heart weighs 13 oz. Here are a couple photos I took with my phone:

Missing you, Astrid Lynne...

Back to Work

Monday was the day of days. It was the first day back to work since we lost Astrid. "Dread" is a good word to describe what I was feeling about going back that day. I expected it to be pretty terrible, and it lived up to that expectation. My work environment is office work. I'm surround by about 100 people during the day by people that work under me and over me. The leadership team that I'm a part of (and relatively close to) has about 20 people.  Before the loss, I was one of those people that was no stranger to visitors at my desk. It was relatively commonplace to have people stopping by and chatting about the pregnancy or about work or about anything really. My therapist assumed in this kind of environment that I would be overwhelmed with the people coming to me and asking me how I was and asking where I was and asking and asking and asking...

Instead, what I got was something much different. I felt like I was being avoided like I had the plague. The few that didn't avoid me talked to me about work as though I hadn't been gone or like I had been gone on some sort of 4 week vacation. And it's not like everyone didn't know. I made it a point to tell the people at work that I'm close to that the loss of my baby wasn't a secret. I couldn't stomach the thought of being happily asked, "Where ya been?" or "How's the baby?"

Anyway, so Monday was hard. Out of all those people I work with, there were 3 people that straight out verbally acknowledged that I was pregnant and that I wasn't anymore. One of the women I work with--god I give her SO much credit for this--came up to me while I was eating my lunch, sat down, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, "Jennifer, I'm so sorry." Of course, I immediately started crying. Partly because it was the first person there to come out and say it to my face. Mostly what I got the rest of the day were extremely cautious and extremely generic How-are-You's as I was walking by people. 

There was a card on my desk too when I arrived. It was a Thinking-of-You card. Inside everyone wrote something, but no one mentioned the loss. It was all, "Welcome back." I don't want anyone to misunderstand why I'm telling you this. It's not that I'm being unappreciative of what they were trying to do. I'm writing it because I want people to realize how much people avoid talking about loss. No one wants to say it. The avoidance game they were all playing isn't because I work with a bunch of assholes. It was because they thought that giving me space was what I needed. To an extent, they're right. But not to the extent that it was happening.  I told my husband while we were in bed on Tuesday night that I felt lonely at work. In a sea of that many people, I felt completely alone. He asked if I felt more alone at work than I did when I was home alone in the bedroom with the door shut. I let him know that I really did. I spent about 2 hours that night crying to him that I didn't want to go back. 

I've mentioned previously that it takes a lot for me to get truly close to people on my end. Typically people feel closer to me than I do to them. I do have one dear friend at work though, where that's not the case. People make jokes about having their "work wives" and "work husbands". He and I are more like "work brother and sister." If our birthdays were the same, I would assume we were separated at birth. I had mentioned to him the conversation that James and I had the night before. There were two things he could have done with that information. One being to just keep it to himself and to feel bad for me. But that's not what he chose. A little while after I had told my friend how I was feeling, one of our coworkers came to my cube and asked me how I was doing and said he was sorry for the loss. He told me that the leadership team was all aware of what happened but no one wanted to upset me or make me more sad. No one knew what they should do. Being an honest person, I let him know that, first of all, I completely get that and I can't imagine the position my work-peers must be in. However, there is nothing that anyone could say that would make me more sad than I've already been the last four weeks. We talked a little more after that about things. It was a brief conversation, but it was the acknowledgement I needed. I sent him an instant message after that just said "Thank you." He let me know that I had really helped him understand what things are like at my end. After this, I realized I had someone else to thank for this acknowledgement and conversation. 

It occurred to me that it was my friend that told our coworker to come talk to me. It was a daring move, but it was the right one. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a true friend. Because he chose to take what I told him and use it instead of keeping it to himself, I had a better day. It was that conversation that I had with our coworker that lifted some of the fog that I had been walking around in for the past two days. Today is my regular day off, and because of yesterday I don't feel a sense of dread about going back to work tomorrow. 

I hate that I'm going through this. My heart aches for my Astrid. I love her and miss her more than I can communicate in words. But I've been learning a lot. I've learned about the kindness of strangers. I've learned what not to do or say. I've learned about true friendship. I still have a very long way to go toward healing. I've still got a lot of grief to deal with. I'm just glad that I'm not drowning. 

Frustration

Well apparently I'm not good at grieving. I dealt with the death of my father when I was 22, so I thought I would be an old pro. Well. I'm not, as was highlighted in today's therapy session. And Yes. I'm going to therapy. Today was session 2. It sucked. And I hated it. The completely pissed off part of me wants to cancel all of my appointments and just figure this out on my own. The very small part of me that is logical right now, knows that this is "good" for me. But like I said: only a small part of me is feeling logical right now.

It's not my first time in therapy. I'm no stranger to psychological downfall. So now that's out in the open. However, I feel like this is my first time where I'm being profiled by the therapist in a way that is entirely too real. And I don't like it. This one isn't going to let me hide behind my defense mechanisms and my walls. She's going to make me come out of hiding, face the actual grief head on, talk about Astrid, and cry. It's mostly the crying that I try to fight the most. And I really enjoy hiding. I feel most secure in isolation. Therapist says that I need to become less isolated in the next few days or going to work is going to be that much harder next week. I want to be more isolated in the next few days because I won't get to be isolated anymore once I am forced to go back to work. So you can see where part of the struggle lies. She's also already making very poignant observations as to why I keep everyone at arms reach. Things from my past. I don't like this. You always think (or maybe it was just me) that being psychoanalyzed would be SO cool and SO interesting. It's not cool at all.  It's very real and scary.  Maybe I'm just not ready to be healed yet? Maybe I haven't even started true grieving yet? I don't know.

My "I'll show you" attitude is coming out though too. She gave me some assignments for this week. As mentioned she said I need to come out of isolation. She also said I need to call my supervisor to get a feel for what I'm walking into next week and I need to start exercising to help with depression. Guess how many of those things I feel willing to do? As soon as I'm told that I have to or need to do something, I tend to say, "No. I don't. And I won't." Childish? Maybe. It's part of my personality though. I don't really see myself doing any of those three things.

No good way to end this post except I'm clearly upset. I'm frustrated. I'm exhausted.

Bad days and worse days

For a while there I thought that I caught a glimmer of good days and good moments in between the bad. Lately though, even those seem to be gone. To say that all is gloom and doom is too dramatic.That kind of drama seems too endearingly narcissistic for what's really going on. It's a drama free sadness that I'm experiencing now. Empty. True depression at it's finest. Constant chest pain from anxiety. Lots of moments spent staring at walls. Lots of tears, but they're really not caused by a specific thought. They just exist.  My heart feels closed and heavy. I'm exhausted.

Things keep going

Let's get personal. Well, not too personal. Actually, it's probably a little late for that. I had my first appointment with the doctor yesterday. What a weird experience. I made sure to keep my guard up going in to the appointment. First of all, I didn't know what to expect. Secondly, it's the same location as the hospital where I gave birth. I wasn't crazy about going back there. Thirdly, the OB/GYN waiting room is a cesspool of pregnant women and babies. I made sure not to make eye contact with anyone other than the receptionist. I also made sure to sit around the corner from the main waiting room. And thankfully I got there 3 minutes before my appointment, so I didn't have to sit there listening to the beautiful noise of a crying newborn.

I won't lie about this. Prior to giving birth to Astrid, the noise of a crying baby made me cringe like you wouldn't believe. I couldn't ever wrap my head around the idea of having to deal with that day in and day out. Now it's a sound of new life for me. Amazing how perspective changes in the blink of an eye. 

My appointment wasn't long, but I came armed with a lot of questions. My doctor was so compassionate. Cutting the short story short: he lifted my pelvic rest, the genetic testing isn't yet complete, and we can try again when we're emotionally ready . 

He touched a little bit on the genetic side of things for me. Basically if there is something in our genetic make-up that will make our babies predisposed for this condition, we wouldn't ever have a greater than 50% chance of this happening again. Typically it would be about 25%. But it could just be a complete fluke, meaning that Astrid was 1 in 4000. What the hell? I don't know which way I'd feel better about things. Do I want to have a reason and something to pinpoint this on so we know why? Or do I want it to be a fluke and be pissed that she had to be the 1 in 4000? Whatever. I don't know. It should be another 4 weeks before we hear from the genetic counselor. 

Anyway. After talking to my husband about things, he's leery of trying again so soon. He says he can't handle watching me have to go through pain like this again. He recognizes that while the loss is very real for him, that I endured the physical side of things as well. I am torn about trying again. I've been analyzing if my feelings of wanting to try again so soon is me subconsciously thinking that a new baby will fill the void that I have. I do know though that no baby will ever replace Astrid. So there's a part of me that feels like I "should" wait a while so I know that my emotional healing is well under way. Yet that part of me doesn't want to wait at all. Again, I don't know what's right. I don't know how I should feel. It's almost odd that our bodies just keep going, but our emotions seem to be at a standstill.

I do know that work starts again in just over a week, and I'm completely not ready for it.