The Room

It’s there.  In the house.  The room that was to be the boys’ room.  It’s filled with baby boy clothes, toys, a crib, a car seat, broken dreams, dashed hopes, lots of sadness.  I haven’t set foot in that room since we moved in.  The crib was never set up in there, the decorations never hung on the wall, the walls never painted.  I can’t even tell you what the closet looks like in there – the last time I saw it, I was pregnant and we didn’t own the house and now, I can’t really remember life before April 8th. 

I walk past the door about 14 times a day and I think, “I’m never going to get in that room.”  I lay in bed at night and I can see the door from where I lay and I think, “I’m never going to get up in the middle of the night, pad across the hall, scoop up my crying baby and rock him back to sleep.  It’s never going to happen for me.”  I lay there, not sleeping, staring at the door.

This is my life now.  Trying to live with my disappointment.  Trying to survive this loss.  I thought I was doing okay but really, these last few weeks…I’m not.  I’m not okay.  I want so badly to look at the people around me and say, “help me.  Please, help me.  I’m hurt and I can’t go to the doctor to fix it because it’s deep down inside….they won’t know what to do for me…Someone please just take me in your arms and hold me, let me cry…”  I have conversations with people about the weather, books, shopping, whatever but my eyes are searching their faces, begging, “please, ask me how I am…ask me about them…ask me if I’m okay….but only if your prepared for the answer…I can’t freely give this information if you don’t mean it when you ask the question, if you are not prepared for the answer then don’t ask…”

But I don’t.  I’m supposed to be better.  I’m supposed to be moving forward.  The people around me, they have lives, they can’t be taking care of me.  I have to take care of myself and Hubby.  I’ve always taken care of myself.  Always.  I have to be strong, I can’t fall apart again.

I want to get into that room…I want a baby to hold and cuddle and love who will live in that room but I fear that will never happen.  I want my boys and I KNOW that won’t happen.

 

Squashed…

That’s how I feel.  I feel squashed.  Hopes, dreams, desires, everything just feels squashed.  I can’t even breathe right now, I’m just so defeated and deflated.  I continue to try and find options for financing for adoption and I think that I’m out of options.  A personal loan is the only thing I can think of that I haven’t tried and no one is giving personal loans.  Hell, Hubby couldn’t even get student loans this year without his mother cosigning for him and they used to hand that money out like it was prostitute advertisements on the Vegas Strip.  My last ditch effort was trying to take a loan against my life insurance policy and I was denied (haven’t had the policy long enough).

I haven’t felt this bad in a while.  When the world around you seems to be moving forward and you feel stuck, it’s hard not to feel bad.  I hate feeling sorry for myself, I hate it.  I’m trying to be proactive and do something to ensure that the boys will have brothers and sisters.  I’m trying but I can’t do anything right.  I can’t make money grow on trees or my fucked up genes split properly and aligned with each other so as to produce a beautiful sibling for A and B. 

Compounding this is that I want to be happy for all of my pregnant friends but the ones that haven’t had losses, it’s hard to get excited for them.  I know that sounds screwed up.  I totally understand that some of you might read that and think, “what a bitch.”  Those women get to be part of a club that I will never belong to…”the blissfully ignorant shiny new baby mommy club.”  Not me, I will never get that again.  Fine, I’m a bitch.   And that’s totally not fair to those women because I would hate for anyone to feel as bad as I do right now.  I wouldn’t wish this on anyone – not my worst enemy…so I’m considerate and sweet and post congratulations and send cards and gifts when all I really want to do it scream, “I’M SO PISSED OFF AT THE UNIVERSE RIGHT NOW I CAN’T STAND IT!!!!”

I think to myself, “I really want to be pregnant again and you know, this will be THE month it happens” and I smile like a jackass.  And then negative me counters with, “get pregnant all you want, honey, you will never make it to 40 weeks – hell, you won’t make it past 8 weeks.”  And there are lots of tears alone in the car.  What do I do with negative me?  She’s right, that’s the thing, she’s right.  All I know is that I fear getting pregnant but I want to be pregnant more than anything but one thing – I just want my boys back.

Period Watch 2009 – Bear vs. Panda

is over.  Yup.  Yesterday morning.  I was sort of surprised but not really.  The nausea went away on Saturday and my breasts stopped hurting Sunday morning .  I had one of those moments (I call them “Sidney moments” after our puppy who, upon learning something or seeing something fascinating, cocks his head to the side and perks his ears up…sort of like, “huh.  Oh.  Okay.”).  It was a Sidney moment because I sat in bed Sunday and thought, “Hubby was right, we were pregnant.”  As a result of the BT, I’m guessing the embryo grabbed on (I did have implantation spotting which is why the negative test was so confusing) and then just didn’t have the genetic material necessary to keep growing and therefore, didn’t produce enough HCG to show up on a test.  Classic BT.  Despite what the movies tell you, it is possible to be slightly pregnant.  This is my 4th or 5th time proving that fact…I’ve lost count.  How much does that suck?

But, glass half full me is also happy that I clearly ovulated and got pregnant again.  I was worried since I hadn’t been pregnant since February – the Clomid experiment produced nothing and a 42 day cycle is not normal for me.  Only time I’ve had a cycle that long was when I was pregnant.  Hubby said the same thing, he was ready to call in the RE out of fear that something as wrong.  Good to know we already know what was wrong, it’s “just” the BT. 

Also, anyone else starting to notice a pattern here?  I seem to get pregnant in the Fall.  The boys were conceived in November, 2007.  I had two confirmed pregnancies in November and December 2008 and now this one.  Maybe I’m more like a bear than a panda.  I want to eat, get fat, get pregnant and hibernate until the cub comes.  I really, really want that….Prehaps it’s my love of Halloween…I get happy with the approach of my favorite holiday and I’m sure my mood has something to do with my ability to conceive…

Whatever.  There is always next month, right?  That seems to be the story of my life…next month, and then the next month, and then the next.

Losing the Battle…

I heard this quote this morning on NPR:

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places. ” – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.

I had forgotten about this book and this quote having read it YEARS ago.  When the person being interviewed said the quote, he was referencing his own war experiences.  He mistakenly thought the quote was a reflection of the character “Henry” and, by extension, Hemingway’s experience of being wounded in a mortar attack in Italy during World War I.

In fact, the quote is made by the character “Henry” in reference to his son being born still, not war.  I realized as I was driving that while the interviewee attributed the quote to the wrong loss for the main character, death of our boys was like a battle.  It was like a war.  I’m hurt, I’m bruised and bloodied.  Hubby is wounded – there exists collateral damage in our life.  There is tremendous loss and a deep well of anger.  There are days when The Battle of Grief and Loss is more costly than any other war I can think of…There are days when I’m sure I’m losing The Battle and those are days I am grateful for The Silent Army…

I just wish The Battle would end soon….

Secret Garden Meeting August, 2009

For those of you who don’t know, The Secret Garden site is for parents of lost babies to go and write about their children.  Oftentimes, we don’t get to talk about some of the things we want to because we don’t have anyone to talk about them to.  This month’s Meeting topic was something that Hubby and I thought about on Sunday in anticipation of starting the adoption process.

If you created a bedroom for your baby tell us what it was like.

We had planned to have the boys stay in our room until they were older.  Our bedroom at that house was huge so we thought a “co-sleeper” on each side of the bed would be perfect.  Then Baby A died.  We decided that we would turn the corner of our bedroom into a nursery for Baby B.  We got a crib and a changing table that Hubby put together for me to look at while on bedrest.

Did you have it ready for them before they were born?

Yes, eventhough Baby B died at 22 weeks, his changing table and crib were ready, his Winnie the Pooh pictures and decorations were on the walls.  I had folded all of his nightgowns, onsies and diapers into baskets….I thought I had more time to make up his bed and I had a baby shower coming up so I didn’t buy any linens…

If so how did you cope coming home to it without your baby?

Not well.  I came home to look at an empty crib.  I remember laying down on the bed, in front of the empty crib and changing table and sobbing to the point that I leaned over and threw up in the trash can.

Did you pack it all away?

I had to.  We were in the process of buying a house when Baby B died.  We closed on the house a week after we lost him so all of the “nursery” had to be packed up and moved with no baby.  I made Hubby take down and move the furniture and the car seat and all of their baby clothes to the new house.  I didn’t want the movers to touch any of their things.  It wasn’t rational but I didn’t care.  I took one night when Hubby was at karate class and packed all of the onsies and nightgowns people had bought me or given me, the tiny little Tevas that Hubby at gotten me to cheer me up when A died into storage bins.  I cried so hard and so loud that my neighbor heard me and came over and held me for an hour. 

What is your baby’s room now?

In the new house, we put all of the baby stuff into what will be the nursery and shut the door.  We bought the house 18 months ago and I haven’t been in there since.

If you are trying to conceive again, or are pregnant again how do you feel about setting up another room before your baby is born?

Since we have been talking about adoption, I know that we have to have a place for our baby to come home to so I know it will have to be done for the homestudy.  I worry about that.  How am I going to face walking in there and looking at things that should have been the boys?  I’m hoping that I can call on friends and family to make it something fun and joyful.  I think with more people there, I won’t be tempted to look at the sadness but focus on the happiness.  Since, we are also still actively trying, I have also thought about that.  I have it in my head that I won’t put a nursery together until I get passed 22 weeks.  Then the baby will have lived longer then his/her brothers.  I don’t think that’s reasonable because I know I will be excited about another baby and want to make up a nursery since I really didn’t get to that for the boys but I know that I will be terrified too.  I don’t know.  I guess I just want to find out…

Okay, Well, Maybe Not…

We got the information on adoption over the weekend.  The amount of money required was not horrific.  The problem is that we need SOOOO much up front to even get started (I think, I can’t really understand the whole “process” since the information packet seemed to be a mish/mash of flyers).  I think we need to hear what they say at the information session.  It’s a lot of money to swing upfront and I don’t think we can borrow from family members even with the promise of the tax credit to pay it back.  I applied for an increase in my Care Credit card but I think it was such a large amount over what I had for my Lasik, they were like, “oh hell no lady…”  I also applied for a Visa from the National Adoption Foundation but I heard from the bank folks downstairs that no one is getting any credit from anywhere so I shouldn’t be surprised if it was denied…and it was….great….

So now I am looking into “additional income sources” to build up the adoption fund – no people, not porn…I am a Reiki practitioner (this is a good blog that talks about Reiki if you care http://reikiblogger.com/).  I did it in college to make some extra money and that was when no one knew what yoga was, let alone Reiki.  Basically paid my sorority dues.  The more I think about it, the more I wonder if getting back to Reiki would help with my own healing.   Part of me is scared because every time I have done treatments on myself, I’ve cried a lot and had a lot of “backlash” (basically it’s the grief and sadness working it’s way out but it’s still very painful).  I’m chicken to work through some of the stuff I need to work through but I know there will be no healing without it.  If I were my own client, I would scold me but I do enough self-hating on my own so I won’t add that to the list.  Now, I just need to see if this type of thing will fly in a recession…

I also wussed out on the group therapy session that I was going to attend with http://ourbabyboy25.blogspot.com/  I couldn’t face standing up and saying, “Hi, I’m Martha, my twin boys died and I’m really screwed up….”  I couldn’t do it this month.  I’ll work up to next month.  My friend, F heard me laugh today, she said it was something she hadn’t heard in months….I realized, I really don’t do it that often anymore…I’m treating life like a river and I’m just floating down it without any expectations.  It’s a nice image but not really how I’m used to living.  I want to look forward to the future but I can’t – actually, more accurately – I don’t know how.

Contentment – A Word from Kate Gosselin

So I had a strange experience on Saturday – one that made me question some peoples’ parenting choices and also made me wonder when I do finally get another baby, if I will forget what it was like to want one so badly.

So to set the scene, my therapy dog, Quincy and I, volunteer at a local library as part of a program called, “Sit!  Stay!  Read!”  We spend an hour and a half to two hours with children who have difficulty reading and need extra practice.  The kids read to the dogs because the dogs have no judgment and it gets the kids excited about the library and books and reading.

We had been there about 30 minutes and had a couple of kids read to Quincy (he’s very popular because he’s big, shiny white and fluffy – he’s the canine version of a Panda bear and kids love him).  A girl, her sister and her mother approached us with their choices in books and ask to read to Quincy.  I said, “of course, he’d love that!”  Now Girl was about 11 years old, I think and Sister was probably 9 years old.  Girl pulled out “Multiple Bles8ings: Surviving to Thriving with Twins and Sextuplets” by Kate Gosselin.  I looked up for Mom and she appeared to have no problem with this…this book seemed a little odd for an 11 year old and a 9 year old but it’s not my place to comment on the book but I really, really wanted to.  Instead, I said that I thought it was a little long and did they have something else a little shorter.  Of course they did and pulled out “Eight Little Faces” by Kate Gosselin.  I said, “so, you guys are really interested in Jon and Kate Plus Eight?”  “Oh yes, we watched the show all the time, we are a little obsessed with them…”  Mom is shaking her head in agreement during this exchange…Alright, this seems like a strange show and not all that appropriate for pre-teen girls butl, I can’t argue that “Eight Little Faces” was too long because it’s essentially a picture book with a couple of words of encouragement from Kate Gosselin, so we got started….

Girl flipped to the middle and started reading about…..contentment.  Kate Gosselin was “writing” a quick, touchy-feely blurb about how difficult the first couple of months with the twins and then the sextuplets were and how she was now content with where she was in her life (granted people, this was way before Jon trucked off with someone else).  She was right where God wanted her to be and that if more people sought and found contentment, they would be as happy as her.  There was more to it but those words are what struck me….

I don’t have contentment.  I don’t have peace.  I feel like it’s easy for people who have what they most desire to say, if “you find contentment and peace, you will get what you want most.”  Now I don’t know Kate Gosselin’s struggle with infertility and I am sympathetic to that struggle but it seems to me, she more than anyone would know that contentment and peace don’t get you a baby.  She was lucky.  She could afford IVF.  All of her babies lived and are seemingly healthy.  She seems to have forgotten what it’s like to be on this side of the pregnancy test line.  And what’s worse, “writing” a book telling someone, “if you believe it, you will conceive” is just kind of mean…

I wonder, will I forget how bad this loss and this wait has hurt me when I finally get my baby?

I’m Trying….

to be hopeful.  I know it doesn’t seem like it but I am.  I promise, I am.  It’s so hard because you aren’t in my head.  You don’t hear the things that I hear – “I’m broken, I’m defective, I can’t make a single good egg that won’t result in a dead baby, I had my babies and now that’s it, I don’t get anymore, my body betrayed me and the boys died” – you don’t hear that.  I do.  Daily.  Almost hourly, if we are being honest.

The therapist wants me to be able to visualize having a family in a positive manner.  We had the whole discussion again about being positive and if I think I won’t get pregnant, then it will be become a self-fulfilling prophecy and I won’t get pregnant.  I’m not not having a baby because I’m emotional stunted.  I’m not have a baby because I have a genetic condition in which 2/3 of my pregnancies end in miscarriage.  I’ve been trying for the last 3 months to get back to where I was when I got pregnant with the boys.  We were finally free of money troubles, living in a nice place, I had lost 15 pounds….I’ve been working to get back to that but I’m starting to get frustrated because I feel like my attitude isn’t going to change the genetics.  That’s where my hopelessness stims from.  I cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel and I don’t know what is going to make me see that light.  I’m willing to try but…

And it doesn’t help that I am already grumpy from fucking fertility meds that I was so HOPEFUL would produce extra eggs with the correct genetic material.

A Second Poem…

Amy from Surviving the Day sent me this poem yesterday.  I love it, I think it’s perfect – I love the two petals.  It’s another one to add to my collection of “things”.  Not sure what I am doing with these “things” yet but I’m leaning towards a box…Still no word from the friend regarding the certificates.  I understand it’s hard to think about and I’m going to be patient until I hear from her.  Thank you for all the amazing thoughts and words…my little invisible army…thanks.

MEMORY

My mind lets go a thousand things,

Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,

And yet recalls the very hour – 

‘Twas noon by yonder village tower,

And on the last blue moon in May – 

The wind came briskly up this way,

Crisping the brook beside the road;

Then, pausing here, set down its load

Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly

Two petals from that wild-rose tree.

~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Mending My Heart…

I called on Monday to have the boys’ death certificates amended to include their names.  We didn’t give their names to the doctor at the hospital, I can’t remember…morphine….

The boys don’t have death certificates.

They never drew a breath outside of my belly.  I was told that they aren’t entitled to any certificate.

Why does this bother me so?  Yeah, I don’t know.  I discussed this at length with the therapist and she thinks that I just need something to hold on to so that I don’t feel like they are slipping away or that I needed this for closure.  I don’t know.  I feel like the universe gave me closure when it took them from me.  I’ve struggled with how I wanted to remember them, what I’ve wanted something that I could look at if I wanted to but put away if I needed to.  A tattoo is not something I can just put away…a piece of jewelry maybe?  Nothing I have seen has spoken to me in away that I would want to remember the boys.  I have a great key chain that I love but I can’t decide if I want something I can put in their baby book or…I just don’t know….I feel unsettled…

I took a deep breath this morning, swallowed my tears and emailed a friend who draws – J, she’s a sorority sister who lives in San Fran.  I wanted to call her but it’s been to hard to even say the words to Hubby.  He doesn’t know there are no death certificates.  I don’t know if it will matter to him.  Anywho, I’ve asked her to make me certificates for the boys.  I have no idea what she will say…it’s a lot to ask someone – “can you sit down for a couple of hours and make a little memorial to my dead babies? ”  Good times.

I’m hoping she will say yes but if not, I will find something else…I think I need to do this.