I made it, made it through the week that resembled that other week. I was so relieved, and then I took a deep breath, looked around, and realized I'm surrounded by my own self-made milestones. I find myself sometimes thinking, only X weeks until...but there is nothing to count down to, I hope. I didn't know when my daughter was born that I was counting down to her older sister's death.
My little man is 5 weeks old today. When my daughter was 5 weeks and 4 days old, her sister died. The day after that was my postpartum checkup. I was going to have my checkup at 4 weeks this time but had to reschedule. Next Thursday will be 6 weeks and 2 days after the baby was born and that's when I'm having my checkup. I think once I get through that, I'll breathe another sigh of relief.
My daughter is still sleeping in a crib, and the baby sleeps in our room. After my daughter died, her sister stayed in our room rather than going to the crib at 2 months as we'd planned. And she stayed in a portable crib until she was about 9 months old. In our old house, she was right beside me and honestly it made me crazy. All the little baby noises and fearing that I would wake her if I got up to go to the bathroom made me frustrated and exhausted. Once we moved to this house, she slept just outside our door in a little loft area. It was insane--we didn't yet have a new baby monitor and I couldn't see her, but somehow I felt she was safe there.
I've already bought a second video monitor like the one I finally found for my daughter's room. And my daughter has new furniture in the bedroom that until now was mostly unused. Her sister's remaining clothing and toys are in the closet. The closet was once filled with plastic bins filled with my daughter's things. Now we're down to about 5 boxes, two of them very small. It makes me a bit sad that there's so little left, but also makes me feel a bit better that her sister has been able to use so many of her things.
Moving my daughter to her new room will be a milestone reached, but before that I have to be able to move her sister's remaining items out of that closet. Those bins will probably go into my home office. Another milestone there--admitting that instead of being a museum or shrine of sorts, the room will actually be used as a bedroom.
When will I finally get past all these milestones? Losing my firstborn was like having time stop and restart. I have to get my daughter past those same ages and stages. Will I feel this way as my son gets older? I want to stop feeling like every time I kiss her it's closer to the end, to some horrible end I'm envisioning.
In mid-September, my second child will be older than her older sister. In my mind, that's the last milestone, but realistically, I don't know. I've already thought about (and sort of dread) my daughter's birthday in December. She would have been 5, an age I was really looking forward to. Can I stop creating milestones? Maybe that's what's really happening here.
On a positive note, a friend of mine told me this weekend that I finally sound better, more like myself. I asked her how I sounded before, and she couldn't really say, but something about having to turn my attention to a new baby has changed. All I can think is that now I'm truly focusing on life rather than being dragged along by death.
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Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Deja Vu
No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth. Nor did I decide to stop blogging. I made it through The Month, which I've decided now to think of as half good half bad, like many things in life. First half of May--Mother's Day and my birthday. Second half--my daughter's death and my time to tell the story of her death. Made it through both intact. Learned about a new kind of tired then, which I'll briefly explain.
Stress has always messed with my stomach. I do sometimes have trouble sleeping, but for the most part, stress exhausts me and makes me lose weight like crazy. In the days after my daughter died, I lost around 5 lbs. in two days (while breastfeeding, no less) but slept like a log, at least 8 hours a night. I welcomed that tiredness, because it allowed me to escape.
The week I told my daughter's story, my husband and I both got sick. Nothing major, just colds, but since I was very pregnant at the time, all I could do was take some mild decongestants and cough syrup, so I was pretty miserable. And between the cold and having to relive her death via the retelling, I was utterly exhausted. For the first time in ages, I hated it. I didn't want to be exhausted. Like last year, I feared the anniversary somehow bringing some sort of other tragedy and wanted to be as rested and alert as possible. I would spend my days trying to figure out how to feel better--what could I overcome first? The cold? Pregnancy fatigue? Or the exhaustion of her death annivesary?
Eventually I got better. Then suddenly on June 14, I got up from my desk to get my lunch and felt a tiny trickle of fluid. I went to the bathroom and saw a bigger trickle. Called my doctor's office and was told to go to the hospital. With my other two pregnancies, my water broke at 39.5 weeks and that was that. On June 14, I was only 35 weeks along. But I know what amniotic fluid looks like and what it feels like when your water breaks. So that night, Baby Boy was born, about 6 hours after I left for the hospital.
Like my daughters, he was delivered via emergency c-section. So much for planning ahead! I hadn't packed anything, pulled out baby clothes, assembled a bassinet...obviously I wasn't prepared. But my husband and nanny pulled together everything we needed and took care of my daughter. Baby Boy spent 10 days in the neonatal intensive care unit because initially he had some trouble breathing and couldn't feed well. Fortunately, he was one of the biggest, healthiest NICU babies and was never hooked up to anything to help him breathe, never needed treatment for jaundice or any other condition.
I'll skip the gory details (most of which involve very little sleep) and fast forward to today. Baby Boy will be 3 weeks old 3 days from today. I'm tired still, that newborn up all night kind of tired. Which is OK. But now I come to the title of this post.
The day my daughter died, my husband was in class, my nanny was on vacation, and I was supposed to finally spend some time with my big girl. This morning, the nanny left on vacation. Tuesday my husband goes back to class for the first time since baby boy arrived. My mother-in-law is here helping out, whereas last time my grandma was here. And I'm afraid. I'm afraid of how much this week will resemble that day. It was a Thursday, so I'm specifically dreading Thursday.
What's getting me through is focusing on the differences. We're in a different house, my daughter still sleeps in a crib (her sister was in a bed and therefore free to move around), I am stronger now than I was 3 weeks after my previous delivery (thanks to conscious attempts at getting stronger), and I have one of the best video baby monitors money can buy. OK, there's nothing here that's necessarily completely reassuring, but I have to start somewhere.
Think of me this week. As I've told my daughter since just after her sister died, "Mommy strong!" I convinced her and to some extent myself, and hopefully that belief holds up this week.
Stress has always messed with my stomach. I do sometimes have trouble sleeping, but for the most part, stress exhausts me and makes me lose weight like crazy. In the days after my daughter died, I lost around 5 lbs. in two days (while breastfeeding, no less) but slept like a log, at least 8 hours a night. I welcomed that tiredness, because it allowed me to escape.
The week I told my daughter's story, my husband and I both got sick. Nothing major, just colds, but since I was very pregnant at the time, all I could do was take some mild decongestants and cough syrup, so I was pretty miserable. And between the cold and having to relive her death via the retelling, I was utterly exhausted. For the first time in ages, I hated it. I didn't want to be exhausted. Like last year, I feared the anniversary somehow bringing some sort of other tragedy and wanted to be as rested and alert as possible. I would spend my days trying to figure out how to feel better--what could I overcome first? The cold? Pregnancy fatigue? Or the exhaustion of her death annivesary?
Eventually I got better. Then suddenly on June 14, I got up from my desk to get my lunch and felt a tiny trickle of fluid. I went to the bathroom and saw a bigger trickle. Called my doctor's office and was told to go to the hospital. With my other two pregnancies, my water broke at 39.5 weeks and that was that. On June 14, I was only 35 weeks along. But I know what amniotic fluid looks like and what it feels like when your water breaks. So that night, Baby Boy was born, about 6 hours after I left for the hospital.
Like my daughters, he was delivered via emergency c-section. So much for planning ahead! I hadn't packed anything, pulled out baby clothes, assembled a bassinet...obviously I wasn't prepared. But my husband and nanny pulled together everything we needed and took care of my daughter. Baby Boy spent 10 days in the neonatal intensive care unit because initially he had some trouble breathing and couldn't feed well. Fortunately, he was one of the biggest, healthiest NICU babies and was never hooked up to anything to help him breathe, never needed treatment for jaundice or any other condition.
I'll skip the gory details (most of which involve very little sleep) and fast forward to today. Baby Boy will be 3 weeks old 3 days from today. I'm tired still, that newborn up all night kind of tired. Which is OK. But now I come to the title of this post.
The day my daughter died, my husband was in class, my nanny was on vacation, and I was supposed to finally spend some time with my big girl. This morning, the nanny left on vacation. Tuesday my husband goes back to class for the first time since baby boy arrived. My mother-in-law is here helping out, whereas last time my grandma was here. And I'm afraid. I'm afraid of how much this week will resemble that day. It was a Thursday, so I'm specifically dreading Thursday.
What's getting me through is focusing on the differences. We're in a different house, my daughter still sleeps in a crib (her sister was in a bed and therefore free to move around), I am stronger now than I was 3 weeks after my previous delivery (thanks to conscious attempts at getting stronger), and I have one of the best video baby monitors money can buy. OK, there's nothing here that's necessarily completely reassuring, but I have to start somewhere.
Think of me this week. As I've told my daughter since just after her sister died, "Mommy strong!" I convinced her and to some extent myself, and hopefully that belief holds up this week.
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