Everything Happened in 2017

Orion sees photos of little babies on Facebook and says in his little two year old voice “Thats Baby Ah-bee!”. Oh my sweet boy. Dont I wish.

I’ve opened this silly browser many times to write. I have ten thousand things to say on ten thousand different topics, but cant seem to find a good coherent groove. For writing or for life. So I end up not writing…as evidenced by my few days absence or even this “draft” that Ive been pecking at all day. We wont mention the few drafts that I trashed entirely. 😉

I was moderately productive today. Put on jeans and a bra. Mascara. Hired a handyman to fix the clothes dryer. Napped. Scheduled an appointment with a therapist. Doesnt look like much on paper, but its easily ten times more productivity/effort than I have been able to muster in the past weeks.

Thirty four days, tomorrow. Theres the dull ache from the flu that has not yet receded. I assume its safe to assume it could be from anxiety or heartburn, as well. Funny story…Blaring heartburn was the very thing that pushed me to take a pregnancy test last year. I’ve never really had digestive issues, but this was so bad. Bad enough to make me question going to the emergency room. I so vividly recall the panic as I told my husband something was wrong with me!

The pain subsided, and a pregnancy test the next day was positive.

The pregnancy was riddled with nausea and heartburn that just would not stop. I took diclegis through week 37 or so, and still was occasionally vomiting up til maybe 30 weeks. Being a passenger in a car wasnt my strong suit…and I even puked on myself/the car just as we were pulling into the hospital for my 21 week anatomy scan. Classy, huh?

I was even nauseous during labor, and was alternating between drinking and puking….but eerily, I wasnt disturbed by my stomach distress. The entire labor was peaceful, even in the puking. Even in the final minutes.

Im glad I wrote my labor story right away, as even now the details are fuzzy. There was this cataclysmic shift when everything happened. My beautiful, tranquil (dare I say ‘easy’) labor ceased to exist in the chaos of trauma. Im never going to forget that window of time. The time where I held my lifeless girl in my arms, begging her to breathe…knowing she was gone. Praying for anything different. I was totally in shock (not medically!), and seemingly void of emotion. She needed to be okay, and Im not sure my mind was even prepared for the alternative.

But the veil of shock begins to fray and at 5 weeks out, I can tell you that I feel it a lot these days. Even on a “good, productive” day like today was, it still hits me like a ton of bricks as soon as I begin to slow down. Even when I was in bed all day with the stomach flu, the grief was there as soon as I was upright. And now the knot in my chest, be it grief or heartburn….

Not a day goes by, that I dont think of you…..

Last updated April 12, 2017