four days later

I thought I would write some thoughts about my grief. I have been posting some small thoughts on facebook, but I think I will stop doing that because eventually I think people start to get tired about hearing how sad you are. Although it is what's "on my mind" pretty much all the time, I know other people don't necessarily want to be brought down by my sadness. The last post I said was "I think I'm going to be ok" and I think I'll leave it at that so everyone can be satisfied. Everyone really seemed to like that.

Today was the first day I was able to get out and about and not just lay on the couch and cry continuously. I put on a happy face all day. I went shopping with my mom for an october birthstone ring to remember Brynn with. One of the clerks was pushing and asking about what the occasion for the ring was and said "oh you just had a baby?!" I pretty much wanted to fall apart, but simply teared up and got out of there and managed to choke back my pain.

Not only was I trying to convince everyone else that I was happy, but I'm also trying to convince myself. I hate being sad and depressed all the time. I want to move on and be happy.

All day I tried not to talk about anything that would make me sad. I talked about Brynn in a very positive way and tried to stay hopeful talking about having another baby in the future.

But by the end of the day, while eating out with my family, I became terribly exhausted and fought back tears the whole night. I didn't eat a thing. My stomach again was hungry, but my mouth was not. I couldn't hide it any longer.

I got in the car and fell apart. The truth is, I'm not over it. I'm still sad and I still miss her. I don't want to be sad, but I am.

I will never know if she had brown or blue eyes or what personality traits she had or whose smile she had. I will never know my own baby girl. She was taken from me too soon.

I also mourn the loss of my pregnancy. Pregnancy is not the easiest thing for me to achieve, and I was almost half way done. Now I feel like I'm starting at the beginning and this time I will do nothing but worry about that damn cord the ENTIRE pregnancy. Or what if I can't get pregnant again or something is wrong with the baby. Corynn and Brynn were perfect with no abnormalities. How many times can I get that lucky. The next one might have some horrible genetic defect.

But despite that, I want to be pregnant NOW! I so desperately need another baby.

Also, I HATE the word miscarriage. If anyone calls it that I want to hurt them. A miscarriage is in the very early stages of pregnancy before the cells even remotely resemble a human baby and you don't have to deliver the baby to get it out.

She was a baby. A person that I gave birth to and has a name and a birthday and deserves some recognition, not just some expelled tissue that you throw in the trash. I asked for "now I lay me down to sleep" photography to take pictures because they are so good at taking pictures of dead babies, but I was denied because they only do babies 23 weeks and older. Why?! If I'm willing to pay you and want you to take pictures of my baby, then you should take pictures of her!

Now all I have are snapshots that are too scary to show people. I needed well lit, posed, black and white photos that could be touched to not be so graphic. Now I have no pictures of my baby girl to show off and it makes me sad. It's like they won't recognize her as a person and it hurts me greatly. I hate them for that.

My boobs hurt today. I think my milk may be coming in, which I also hate.

I've decided I won't be celebrating holidays with anyone except the close people I see on a regular basis. I don't want to see any extended family that I talk to maybe a couple times a year.

I went to the support group last night and it was pretty helpful. It was good to see faces and hear stories of other people who knew EXACTLY how I was feeling: "No, this is not the same as the death of your grandfather, so quit trying to compare it to this." But probably the most helpful thing was that we were the only couple who already had one living child. This was a reminder that I should be grateful and feel lucky to at least have that.

That's what I've mostly been trying to remind myself today, and it keeps me focused for a while but eventually if I'm left with enough time to think, I think about Brynn and I cry.

I feel like my story is someone else's, that it can't possibly be MY life. I keep going back to the moment of the ultrasound where he turned off the screen. It is a moment I never expected for myself and I can't get it out of my head. It doesn't seem real. I remember last weekend and it seems so long ago, like a whole different world. A world where I was happy and excited, I was pregnant, I was the mother of two children, I had no pain. There are pictures of me from that weekend and I have a belly with Brynn inside. I didn't even know she was a girl at that time. I thought I was out of the woods, out of the danger zone and into my lovely second trimester. It is hard to see myself like that, so in love with life. I wish I could still feel like that.