Guilty Conscience

I go to see a therapist – not really sure why I decided this will be helpful, but it seems like it might be a good idea and insurance pays for it so what the hell. The therapist is interesting (read: weirdish), until she tells me all about the stages of grief. How cliché. Yes, I know, anger, denial, bargaining, all that shit. I get it, I’m going through them all, trying to make my way to that acceptance finish line. One question though – where does "guilt" fit into all this? It’s not a part of the grieving cheat sheet she gives me. That’s a whole different area of fucked up apparently. Not that I think I’m the only person ever to feel guilty over a loss, but it’s becoming a burden I have to work constantly to shed myself of.

I have to force myself to recognize that guilt is not applicable to my situation. Yeah, like that’s supposed to keep me from feeling guilty – fault needs to be assigned somewhere (don't ask me why, it just does), so naturally I blame myself. I blame the couple of cigarettes I had before I knew I was pregnant; I blame the paint fumes I breathed on a job; I blame the vending machine food I ate during thesis; the construction adhesive I got on my fingers by accident; the massive quantities of peanut butter I consumed; the caffiene habit I couldn't quite kick; the myriad of other things I did wrong that probably didn’t mean shit but that I wish I could take back anyway.

You wouldn’t believe the idiotic rationale I find floating around in my brain – like this gem I thought up today: I’ve broken a lot of hearts in my life, never really had my heart broken by anyone. I was always the relationship-ender, always the one to make the boy cry. So I’ve racked up a truckload of bad karma in the past 14 years, and my account finally got audited. Certainly I’ve never had a broken heart like this.

There are a lot of little things that I don’t realize will cause me pain, and I have to wonder if they’ll ever not hurt anymore. Like how when I was pregnant and Phoenix was playing on the radio the baby seemed to kick me harder, and Scott and I would joke that baby had good taste in music already. Now I hear Phoenix and realize I’m not getting kicked, and it’s a fresh scratch on a healing wound.

If At First You Don't Succeed...

Autopsy results today – drove all the way down to Camden to wait for 2 hours for an appointment with the doctor. All morning long (as well as most of this last week) I’ve made a career out of being anxious. Scott thinks they’ll bring us all the way down to Camden to tell us they don’t know what happened, they don’t know what would happen if we tried again, so good luck. I think there’s gotta be something in the autopsy or pathology to tell us something about why everything happened.

Scott turns out to be right. Doctor doesn’t know what happened, but says the chances of our getting a healthy kid next time are “greater than 50%”, whatever that means. I mean, 51% is greater than 50%, but I don’t like them odds.

I’m flatter myself I’m under no delusions of imagining life to be full of meaning, but honestly, is that it? So there’s no reason this all happened? No reason that my first born child died in my toxic womb, no reason I went through being bedridden, no reason I have ashes instead of an infant? Really? It’s maddening, I expected to be ecstatic if the doctor told us our chances of bearing a healthy child the second time around were probably decent, but instead I’m just angry that there are no real answers. Also sad, for some reason I can’t put my finger on. Scott thinks I just don’t want to give up my grief yet, but that doesn’t ring true in my heart. I understand the anger, but the sadness? It almost feels like the meaninglessness of the loss translates into worthlessness, like my baby’s existence didn’t mean anything and so was worthless.

I want what happened to have some reason, some cause, if only so I can avoid future heartache. Doctor says there’s no way I could have prevented everything that happened, but I feel like I should have been able to. Shouldn’t a mother always be able to protect her child? I wish there had been a way I could have told my body to work better, keep that baby alive, screw the consequences. I’m starting to realize that one of the most horrible things about this whole situation was the feeling of helplessness, the knowing what parts of my body needed to work better, and yet not being able to force them to do so.

So I get to try again anyway. That’s good news, even if I know I’ll be terrified all through the next pregnancy (assuming I’m still as fertile as ever, and Scott’s still shooting live rounds). Even through the anger and sadness I’m still completely sure I want to try again, and soon. I’m going for a gynocology appointment on Tuesday, and if I get the ok from him I’m flushing my birth control pills that night.

Afraid to Try Again

I’m getting a little more worked up about returning to work than I thought I would. Been so anxious to get back in the game, to do something meaningful, to make money to ease the burden off Scott as sole breadwinner. Now, the day before I go back, I’m sad about it. I should have missed work because of maternity leave, and should be going back to work with pictures of a baby. This is all so fucked up, it shouldn’t have fucking happened like this! It’s so not fair. Like fairness matters, I know. But still, I can’t help thinking that. I did everything I could, I tried so hard to be healthy and not stressed out, and it all amounts to shit.

I realize today that I am breathlessly afraid of getting pregnant again (guess why), and also desperately wanting to get pregnant. The conflict is annoying. Wanting to get pregnant again wins hands down, but that landslide vote doesn’t abate the fear in the least. I understand the risks of trying again, more than I did the first time around. I know in my heart I can deal with another loss, it wouldn’t kill me. It would hurt like hell but it wouldn’t kill me.

My Fingernails

Dammit dammit dammit! All these tragic little tidbits keep occurring to me at random times. Today’s sad thought: looking at my fingernails. Remembering how I was taking such good care of them when I was pregnant. Pregnancy made my nails strong and thick for the first time ever. I had them filed and painted professionally. Never before was I into such a feminine thing. I figured after the delivery I would have to cut them short so I wouldn’t scratch the baby. Didn’t care, just was happy to be expecting to hold a baby. Who gives a shit about perfectly manicured nails when you can cuddle with your very own baby?

Tomorrow the doctor is supposed to call to tell us when to come in to hear the autopsy results. Scott and I go for a long walk in the park tonight, discuss what our response will be to each possible scenario. It feels pointless to prepare – I thought I was prepared for any outcome of pregnancy – turns out losing this baby hurts me more than I could ever have imagined.

Why does it hurt so much? I never got to know her, or even hold her once. I have no idea what color her eyes were, let alone how she liked to be held or when she liked to be fed. The only things I knew about her were sleep patterns, because of the frequency of her kicks. I know nothing about whether she had birthmarks or any resemblance to me or Scott. I don’t know what it would have felt like to kiss her. How am I hurting so much over a baby I never even saw?

Phantom Kicks

I notice I’ve been using Scott as my shield to protect me from anything to do with babies. He screens telephone calls for me, and tells me when to leave the room so he can make cremation arrangements. If he sees something on TV that he knows will bother me, he quickly changes the channel. In the store today, a baby being held by his mother in line in front of us was smiling and gesturing at us; Scott made sure I had room to stand behind him, where he became a literal shield so I didn’t have to look at the baby. In accepting his help, I wonder if I’m sacrificing a part of my independent nature. I no longer feel the need to handle everything, to be in control of everything. I want to hide from responsibility – who is this person I’ve become?

That weird thing has still been happening – I’ve been getting phantom kicks. I know they must be just little twinges in my uterus, but they feel like a baby kicking me. I look it up online, and sure enough, other women who have had stillbirths report feeling the phantom kicks, too. Of course, after feeling one, there is the conflicting feelings – the flutter of joy that must just be a Pavlovian response, and the subsequent sadness at remembering that there’s nothing inside to kick me.

Belly Fat

I’ve been having conflicting thoughts about whether to try to lose that last bit of belly fat, or just leave my body alone. Looking down at even that slight bulge hurts my heart, but I don’t want to lose that hurt to what seems to be vanity. Same old same old with me – vanity and body issues versus real life. I’ve avoided and kicked addictions – pot, cigarettes, alcohol – and pregnancy actually cured the one addiction I thought would be with me forever – my eating disorder. There was no room in my brain to worry about caloric intake versus energy expenditure, all my thoughts were about being healthy and eating enough for baby. So it’s mildly surprising to me to have a vague desire to lose weight. Like, who the hell am I to worry about a little belly fat? I need to be concentrating on not getting depressed, or on making sure my marriage is still good, or on staying healthy so that we can try for another baby.

I’ve always had addictive behaviors, even when I was little. What do I do now? I’ve got nothing, no cigs, no bulimia, no obsessive reading of pregnancy books. Is this what most people feel like most of the time? I just feel kind of bored. I need an addiction, but I don’t want it to be a bad one, I’ve worked too hard to get rid of the bad ones. Maybe obsessive behavior is a better term than addiction. I need to be obsessive about something, but something constructive, maybe like throwing clay or organizing my photo collection. Trouble is, everything seems kind of meaningless right now. I should be fighting that feeling. I know I should believe that being pregnant didn’t give my life meaning, my talents and achievements and goals did. My brain says, that’s the right way to think, but my heart says bullshit, you amount to nothing until you prove you can have a baby like a normal woman. Continuing to stuggle with irrational thoughts.