Nine Months and still Counting

Scarlett Mae

She's here! Safe, alive, healthy and perfect!

I find it so hard to believe we get to keep her and she's not going anywhere. I'll share more when I get some time but here are a few pictures. 

Born May 25, 2011 at 7:05 am

6 lbs 7 oz 18 inches long

10 Days to go

I'm beyond frustrated and going totally nuts!

Tuesday they rimmed my cervix and I actually had some contractions for about 1/2 an hour. I'm 1 1/2 cm dilated 50% effaced with bulging membranes....whatever that means. I do however know that I'm much further progressed than I was with Spencer when they rimmed my cervix so I figured that it was going to work. But nothing, they stopped and I haven't had one since. 

So now I bounce on a ball, walk huge malls for no reason, eat spicy Thai soup and get no results. I think I'm going to give up until next Tuesday.....Mentally I'm going crazy I don't want to be pregnant anymore because the longer I'm pregnant the more I feel like I will only ever be pregnant. Last night I was thinking about how many days I've actually been pregnant in the last two and a half years. It works out to roughly 567 days of being pregnant...... And I'm still counting down those days. 

I know that she's going to come out when she's ready and any prompting from soup isn't going to encourage her, just give her the hiccups. But I need her to be here now, I need to stop worrying about getting her here and just have her here because I'm on the verge of losing my mind. 

Add to that my in-laws and their disrespectful boundary less desires to be at the hospital. This is a little tid bit I learned just yesterday. I've made it clear for months now that I don't want house guests around for the first few weeks. It's important to me that we get 3 on 3 family bonding time. I want to be settled in, I want to have those moments with my child and I DO NOT want my in-laws interfering with that important time for me. But that seems to be falling on deaf ears. You see I thought it was the few weeks after that I needed to be clear about, but now I'm being told they might just come down.....still have no idea when or for how long or if they will even be staying. No one wants to tell me anything because why bother she's just going to get mad anyway. Then yesterday I'm told that MIL wants to be at the hospital.........ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME????? Do we not all remember how things went down last time she was at the hospital cause I remember. Really really well and there is no friggen way I want that kind of energy around me when I want to be at peace and relaxed and comfortable in my tiny birth giving bubble. So now not only do I not know if they are coming this weekend and for how long, I now get to stress about the fact that if I ask my husband not to call them when we are going to the hospital I simply don't know what he's going to do. AND THEN even if we've expressed that we don't want them around they will probably come anyway. This is what is on my mind. This, these rude ignorant people are torturing me in my thoughts when I should be focused on this baby and the happiness and joy she's about to bring us. I'm angry all over again just typing this!! So I'm sure I'll have a good story once this all plays out, I can however guarantee they aren't going to come out on top of this one. 

So here we sit, waiting, wondering what's going to happen next week. I'm hoping they don't jerk me around, I'm hoping that at 9:30 on Tuesday they will rim me again, submit paperwork for an induction and I just go into labor on the spot and off we go. OR they call me that very morning and tell me to come in right away. Perfect world right? Well I don't come from one of those and that's what tortures me even more. 

So here we are 10 days away from my due date nothing is going as well as I'd like it to and this baby just wants to stay comfortable in my uterus. But really after reading all of that crap can you blame the girl?

Frustrated

Maybe I'm just bad at communicating or maybe I should have freaked out the second they assigned me to the "Low Risk Maternity Clinic". Instead I went with it and figured that given my story, given the fact that I had to bury my dead infant they would work with me and listen to me and give me whatever I wanted. In the beginning I pretty much tossed out any idea or suggestion of going back to the doctor I had with Spencer, but now.....25 f'ing days to my due date I'm wondering if I should have just gone to her because maybe just maybe she would be more understanding.

I had my 36 week doc appt on Tuesday, that was the day I wanted to confirm my birth plan with the one doctor that I liked because I figured if she put it in words then that was that. The matriarch of the practise says this is what's happening so that's what will happen. But of course I was wrong.

Let me first be clear by saying it's not a matter of no longer being pregnant it's a matter of getting her here alive, screaming, heart beating and well. So maybe when I say things like "I don't want to go past my due date" they assume it's me saying "I'm just sick of being pregnant and would like to cheat myself out of natural delivery". I wonder this because that's how I felt after my appt. I said exactly this to her "I would like to make a plan, maybe at 38 weeks we start rimming my cervix then if at 39 weeks that doesn't work we step it up and try some prostaglandin and take it from there". Now this was a huge step for me. I told myself that if the ultrasound went well then I would be ok with letting them rim my cervix and send me home to possibly go into labor which is what happened with Spencer. Then if that failed I ask to have the prostaglandin put in, be sent home and potentially labor which again was a huge step for me. Last time that happened my son died without me knowing so the simple fact that I was even willing to go with this was a shock to me. Seems pretty straight forward don't you think? I mean I'm a far cry away from some nut case walking in and demanding a c-section.

Her reaction was right to the point. "If you don't need to be induced chances are we aren't going to do it" they feel that there is no real reason to actually induce me because oh you know "Everything is ok" and"we will treat you as the routine pregnancy that you are". It then just comes down to easing my fears and anxiety because that's really the only real issue here. The baby is fine, everything is normal just this crazy mother sitting in front of us demanding things that she doesn't need for reasons that make no medical sense.

So I lost it, I couldn't even hold back the tears. Now I haven't cried about this pregnancy yet, I haven't broken down in a sobbing mess of fear yet. But I did, I was pissed, annoyed and freaking out because she wasn't listening to me. She wasn't acknowledging what happened, what we went through how I was feeling none of it. She was brushing me off like I was a crazy that had no idea what I was talking about. Instead she suggested we make a plan, see an actual OB one she thinks might be willing to work with me if maybe they feel like it and then take things from there. If I'm lucky they might understand me and work with me to induce, but if they don't agree with inducing me then they won't and that will be that. I'll be stuck to just deal and hopefully she will arrive alive.

After I began to cry expressing that I just wanted to get her here the doctor goes on to say "But we can start rimming your cervix at 38 weeks as it's a service we offer everyone anyway"..........Ummmmmm is that not just what I asked you about? Is that not the plan I wanted to try out? Cause I'm pretty sure it took me 9 months to get to the point of actually verbalizing that I would be ok with it so there is no real way that I stuttered.

We left annoyed, I'm still confused, but I know for a fact that they aren't willing to work with me and probably in the end won't if they feel like they just don't want to. Why help me when help isn't needed because chances of it happening again are non existent. But of course I know different. I know mothers who have had to bury their babies because what happened shouldn't have but did anyway. But hey that doesn't really matter now does it? So I'm pissed, frustrated and hurt that my experience isn't being acknowledged as I think and feel that it should be. As each day passes I get more and more angry at the sheer thought of this happening again. Someone will pay I will fly off the handle and friggen lose my mind on each and everyone of them that went on to ignore me and my concerns and requests.

It's maddening and instead of being excited and looking forward to what's to come I'm pissed, scared shitless and feel completely in the dark about the next 25 days if not longer of this pregnancy.

2 years have come and gone

The weekend like this post was one I simply wanted to avoid. No real reason just didn't want to deal with it. I was grumpy, confused, uncertain of what we should be doing if what we were doing was right etc etc. I just didn't want to have to go through it, but in the end we did go through it and it did happen and the day itself actually turned out better than we had expected. 

24 months since our boy was here and gone. Lots of things have changed, many things remain the same. I think what really gets to me the most is not knowing what he would look like or how active he would be. I wonder what our family would look like and how happy we would be. It's those tragic what if's that you always hear about and torture yourself with on a daily basis. Of course those will never go away. Every occasion, every moment that makes you stop and think of him. They will never cease to exist. 

I tried thinking of where I am at right now, where I came from and what has changed in me since that day. I felt like that pain was never going to end, that raw emptiness of being a mother without a baby. It's still there, it still hurts, but I can say that you learn to live with it. You don't stop hurting and although the days of sadness become further apart than they used to they still come. It still feels like someone walked up to me and punched me in the stomach when it does hit. That never changes just how I deal with it has. I don't shed tears openly anymore, I've built up that wall and I now shed them internally. I'll choke them back, wipe away the one tear that squeaks past and hold it together. I've gotten good at holding it together, keeping a straight face and really living with the loss of my son the best way that I know how. 

I know some mom's that are still years later bitter, frail and lost in the pain. I read their stories, I feel their pain, but I know I'm not in a toxic place. I know I'm living, moving on with what I've got now, who I am as a woman, mom and wife and despite the utter brutality of this journey and the one that is ahead of me I'm proud of that. My son wouldn't want me to lose all that I am, he wouldn't want his parents to break up and go their separate painful ways. He would want us to find happiness again, after all he's given us his sister. 

I believe he's now giving me the strength to trust in what is to come. To believe that maybe I'll get to take her home. I've been told twice now that nothing is wrong, it's been confirmed that what happened to him isn't going to happen to her. But then of course I know about everything else. I know of infections, cords, heart defects that were missed etc etc. So really how much can I trust? Now I look to him, hoping he's out there somewhere watching us, protecting us in a way that I couldn't protect him. I can only hope that he is at least. 

Since we were at a loss for what to do, we decided to do something similar to what we did last year. It was on a much smaller scale and I didn't want anyone around really. I didn't want to be social or play host or talk much really. I just wasn't in the mood and neither was Jason. So instead it was us and my parents. Still somewhat crowded in my opinion, but in the end it was ok. We did a spring clean up, planted some more grass seed and placed some new friends next to his stone to keep him company. Then we let some balloons go hoping they would "get to him". I'm still confused as to what a person does on the anniversary of a babies death. It's not something you are supposed to ever do so coming up with creative ways to at least acknowledge his life is quite difficult. 

In the end what really shifted my mood was the bunny. Since it was Easter the weekend was jam packed with events and dinners, but this one was also Spencer's anniversary. As we pulled up he was the first thing I saw and I was so happy that he was there not only with my baby, but with all the other babies relaxing in the sunlight just spending time with all of them. 

It's been a terribly sad and extremely happy two years. One obvious loss paired with great moments in our lives. We lost him, but hung in there and got married loving each other more today than we did on that day. Then we made her and look forward to her arrival, hoping she brings happiness that we were robbed of two years ago. I miss him deeply, my scars are still there, my heart still hurts, but for him I'm here alive, well and for the most part happy. 

2 years, 24 months, 104 weeks, 730 days and still counting.