Milestones

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.