Out of the blue.

I would say it has been quite a long time since I last wrote a post in here. I have been seeing a therapist every two weeks and a physical therapist for my PFD every week (recently we progressed to every other week). I mostly am starting to feel better. I have good days and I have bad days. Some days I feel like my old self. And when I catch myself in that moment, it is surreal. And if feels wrong and sometimes I tell myself to snap out of it, and I know that I shouldn't.

I don't know what's compelled me to not write as often as I was, and to now all of a sudden open this blog again. I think it is the battle you face with grief. I think for a few months there, I was so focused on feeling normal again, that the mere thought about allowing myself to feel sad would set me backwards. I started meditating and I started positive affirmations. I think by doing this it didn't allow me to feel sad. But was it just pushing my grief to the side? I don't know. I think it might have because this morning as I did my yoga, something cracked open inside of me and I randomly started crying. And then I was compelled to write.

There are three women in my family who are pregnant now. My sister-in-law (who was pregnant at the same time I was with Harper... she was only a month  behind me), and two of my cousins' wives. All three right in a row. When I first found out about my sister-in-law, I cried. I know that sounds horrible, but it was this instant thought of, "why not me? She already has a healthy toddler, why does she get two?" Then I found out about my cousin's wife through Facebook and thought to myself, well.. anyone else? And then literally two weeks later, at a family party, my other cousin's wife surprise announces her pregnancy. These two were literally married last June and are only 20 years old and are still in college. I feel like I am being slapped in the face. But how screwed up is it that I am taking these happy people's pregnancies personally? Like they are all done in spite of me or something. I am not liking this jealous person I have become but I am really starting to wonder when it will be our turn.

I don't like these low moments. I'm sitting here crying and the room is dark and the sky is overcast and cold. I have been tinkering with the thought of TTC again, but with PFD, and PTSD, it is proving to be a difficult task. I feel like I live in constant fear of infection. Even when I am not pregnant. I am terrified of something being wrong all the time with my body. PTSD is a cruel, life-sucking bitch. I have been trying to conquer these thoughts and replace them with positive ones, like "I am healthy" and "My body functions normally". But sometimes, that panic creeps in. What if I am not? What if there is some underlying reason why I feel so badly? What if I have an asymptomatic infection? I hate, hate, hate what incompetent cervix has done to me. I used to be so confident, so strong, so self-assured. I used to feel good about my body. Now, I feel like all of that has been ripped away from me.

Is this a random moment of relapse? I think to myself how the rest of my life will be. Will I spend the last year of my 20's, hoping desperately for a healthy, full term pregnancy? Will I spend all my thirties, enduring the same cruel cycle of conceiving, loss, and depression? Something makes me want to try again but I have no idea why. There's that little voice inside of me that says, "this time it will be different." And then there's the other voice that says, "what makes you think this time will be any different?" It is such a battle. And it's exhausting. I feel so much  older than I really am.

My therapist suggested that one of the ways I deal with PTSD is to talk about the experience in detail. I know I have written about the losses in here but even the thought of going back and reading them scares the shit out of me. I feel like I'll be reopening a portal of depression. She said I could print out the entries and read them aloud to her. I haven't done it yet but maybe I will. I guess part of my problem is I try to sweep it under the rug.. and after doing this for so long, it builds up into this mountain and then it collapses, just out of the blue.

Harper.

Today marks two years since my daughter Harper was born too soon at just 20 weeks, due to the incompetent cervix I didn't even know I had. 

Wow, so two years. How does two years feel like forever ago but just like yesterday all at the same time? So much has happened in just two years and I feel very old. I can't help but have flash backs of that day two years ago. The painful contractions as they induced me into labor with pictocin. How I lay there completely tormented and confused, sad and angry and helpless. The infection and fever I had. Not wanting to believe my daughter had died before she was even given a chance at life, before she even took a breath of air, and how I couldn't help but feel completely and totally responsible because it was my body that had failed.

It is tradition that we let go balloons on our babies birthdays. Today, the weather matches my mood perfectly. Gray, cold, rainy... I only hope it stops raining so we can let Harper's pink balloon into the sky. I wrote a message to her, hoping somewhere out there she will read it. But I have so much to say to the little one I never met. Who should be sitting on this couch with me, a year and a half old. Who should be cuddling up next to me, who I should be singing sweet lullabies to at night. But no. Instead her soul floats along somewhere out there, with Eli and the other little one we lost this year. I can only hope that she somehow feels the love I have for her, I hope she knows how much I miss her and want her here on earth. 

Tiny steps.

On Infant & Pregnancy Loss Awareness Day, I felt something inside me shift. I wouldn't say I felt "acceptance" or anything like that, but I did something I had been avoiding for awhile because it hurt too much.

When we first lost Harper, we brought her home in a pink urn. It was not the homecoming i had in mind and I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. On the ride home from the funeral home, my arms ached to feel her warm, squirming body, but instead I held a box with an urn inside it. I could barely look at it. It felt so unreal to me. My baby was inside this little box, the baby I knew was inside my belly only a week ago. I was so overcome with disbelief and sadness, that we placed her in the room we designated her nursery. It took a lot of courage to even go in that room, let alone be faced with her urn. I know this sounds strange. Why wouldn't I want to talk to her each day, be in that room with her ashes? Because it was a reminder that she was not alive. She had died. And I couldn't face it. So I shut the door for a long time. A few months later, we opened the door and I even went in the room and talked to her a few times. I listened to Florence & the Machine loudly and cried my eyes out (some of her songs absolutely rip my heart out, they're so haunting and emotional.. I must have played that album for four months straight). 

When we started trying to conceive again, and we got pregnant again, I felt it were a little easier to walk by that room with the door open and not be overwhelmed with grief. Until we got pregnant and lost Eli, again at that 20 week mark. I knew it was happening all over again. We went to the same funeral home and brought our son home in a matching blue urn. I stared down at the box in my hands and felt the most helpless I had ever felt. Almost as if it were happening to somebody else. This had already happened once. It wasn't supposed to happen again. But it did. And it was. We placed his urn next to hers and I cried and felt hopeless and like it wasn't my life. It wasn't real. The nursery became a sad, avoided room in the house. Almost my own mini graveyard which I had to walk by each day.

I couldn't handle it and made my husband turn the room into a guest room. We bought a bed and night stand. We put all the baby related items and gifts that never got used in boxes in the basement. In a fit of crazy rage, I pulled all my maternity jeans and clothes off their hangers (I had kept them up after that first loss when we had hope for a successful second try) and threw them into the hallway. I told my husband to pack them up and get them out of my sight. 

But where would the urns go? If it wasn't their room anymore, where could we put them? I was still too fragile to look at them every day, it only reminded me of what we had lost. So in a random moment, we put them on a shelf in another spare room where the computer is. I never felt happy with this, but I didn't know what else to do. I hardly went into that room so it wouldn't be too hard on me. And I didn't have to walk by it each day. But I also didn't want them to feel forgotten, if that makes sense. It was such an odd feeling. What do you do?

So they stayed up there for awhile. Until this past Tuesday. My husband and I were sitting on the couch and we were going to light candles in a few hours. I said to him, "I think we should have Harper and Eli in the room we sit in most, I want them to be with us." I had been thinking about this for a little while, but never acted on it. I still hesitated. Would it upset me? Would I feel depressed at the sight of their urns? And another thought nagged in the back of my mind, how would visitors react? Family and friends? Of course, nobody talks about it but would they be caught off gaurd by the sight of our babies urns? I guess something inside me flipped a switch. I don't know when it happened but I stopped fearing their urns and the sadness that came with it, and I now wanted them with me.  

So there they sit, on our bookshelf, and I can look over and see them at any time I want. And it's okay. At first, it made me sad...and now, I feel like they're almost here with me. Sitting in this room with us. I want them to feel loved, a part of our family, even though they aren't physically here. And I know ashes can't feel that love, and I know it's just a container for their bodies... But I am holding onto their souls in my heart. Their spirits. 

October 15th

Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. I will light candles at 7:00 pm for the babies I have lost. If each time zone lights their candles at 7:00 pm, it will create a continuous wave of light for 24 hours, symbolizing our babies lives...how they will live on and shine bright, even when they are not here with us on earth.

Tonight I will be lighting candles in memory of our daughter Harper, our son Eli, and our little bean whose heart stopped beating at only 8 weeks this past May. I can't help but think about all we have been through (big surprise there) and feel complete sadness over all that we have lost, and all that we should have known. I should be pregnant now, in fact. I would have been about eight months pregnant and almost ready to deliver. I could be in such a different situation right now. But no, instead I sit here thinking about all that we have lost. All that we have been through, and I can't help but feel total disbelief. When did this become my life? This life of loss, grief, sadness, madness, trauma? When did this become my new normal? How did I even get here? I know I can't turn back and I can't go back into time and put the TAC in place that very first loss, but damnit, I would if I could. But I can't. And it is utterly frustrating. 

My therapist told me last week that I am very angry. I guess she is right, I am. I am mad at the world, at its cruel circle of life, how life and death can just happen. How life can be created and then ripped right from you, for no damn good reason. There is no reason my babies had to die. I don't care what anyone says. I've heard, "God has grander plans" or "God needed more angles." Really? God decided to give me a child and then take it away? Why didn't he just keep them in the first place and spare us all this pain? I don't know. I just don't know. 

Some people don't even know I was pregnant this past March. Most people have no clue. They don't understand what each day is like for me. Dragging myself out of bed. Going to work and "being normal" when inside I just went to die. 

I miss you all so much.

Make it better.

So, last week, I saw a physical therapist for pelvic floor dysfunction. Basically, my urologist felt around and determined that my pelvic floor muscles were in a spasm and I needed therapy to fix it. Which could be the culprit of all of my discomfort and issues the past couple of months.

What a great experience! This therapist was super sweet and gentle and understanding. I am so glad I was referred to her. I wasn't really sure what to expect. I described how I had been feeling and she listened to my entire story and history and then she had me lie on the table. She moved my legs around, tested my resistance, and felt the muscles around my hips. Then she did an internal exam and said, "oh yes, you are completely in a spasm! All of your muscles are completely tightened!" And she was finding trigger points... Basically spots of muscle that are so tight and worked up that they form little nodules. And, on top of this, I have a muscle that is constantly twitching! Like an eye twitch. And now (like right now actually) when I'm sitting I can actually feel it twitching. It is the weirdest sensation, even though it's barely there. So, she gave me some simple yoga-based exercises to do twice a day and I have to see her once a week for three months. I think we may be doing some internal massage this week, so I'm kinda wondering what that will entail but I can already feel a difference, I believe. But how crazy is that... To have your entire pelvic floor constantly flexed and not even be aware of it! But it is a result if all if the trauma I have experienced in the past few years. And stress and PTSD doesn't help it either.  

So here I am, trying to be brave again. Trying to trust a doctor (well, therapist really so maybe she doesn't count?) and hoping this fixes me. I haven't given up hope on TTC entirely but I must be able to comfortably be able to have sex again for that to even be an option, right? I see my other therapist tomorrow, too. I think talking to her has helped a lot, too. I'm trying to get me in a better place, physically and emotionally. It's been hard, and Harper's 2nd birthday is coming up on the 24th. I took the day off work because I know it will be pointless for me to try to work that day. My husband and I will get a balloon and we will write a message to her and set it into the sky. I can't believe it's only been two years... It feels like ages ago, when this journey began. 

I feel so old. 

Frustration.

I am tired. I am emotionally and physically tired. No matter how hard I try to be normal and feel "better", there always seems to be something that gets in the way. Set backs. Something that keeps me from feeling any ounce of normalcy. It is like I am in this constant battle with my body and I am fed up. I am so sick of having things happen to me. I remember when I used to be able to brag about never have been to a hospital before, about never even breaking a bone before. About how I never got very sick and how I never had anything to worry about. I want to rewind my life and go back to my early twenties. Life was perfect. I was engaged to my husband. We were living in small apartment and kind of poor because I was still in college and working only part time and he was working full time. I thought that was rough. But looking back on it now, I would go back to that place in a heart beat. Sure, we worried about paying rent and bills. We lived pay check to pay check and got creative with Ramen noodles for meals. But we were happy. My body was not this unruly, crazy beast that it is now. It did not betray me. It did what it was supposed to, when it was supposed to, and the biggest issue I had was a back injury from work. Oh, and I had my wisdom teeth removed. That was it.

I had a plan after this last miscarriage to have a carefree summer with my husband. We were going to enjoy each other, have fun, go on a vacation and go to concerts. We did all that, but I couldn't fully enjoy it like I wanted to. I would say it all started in June, or maybe July. I started noticing some odd urinary issues, similar to a UTI. Frequency, spasms, feeling like I had to go and I couldn't, burning (sometimes but not always).  I got urinalysis and culture done and there was no bacteria to be found, except a few white blood cells. Which was odd to me, but they said it could be the presence of something brewing, so they gave me macrobid and told me it should clear up. Well, I never felt completely better. And so I started seeing a urologist who suggested we do a cystoscopy. We did. I was worried something was damaged from my vaginal cerclage injury (not TAC, I wrote about this in one of my first few entries). She said my bladder functioned fine. Things looked normal. So why was I feeling this way? I told her, maybe it's PTSD. I went and finally saw a therapist, thinking maybe talking about it would help. It sort of did. But my symptoms have been persistent. With some days better than others. I had a especially bad day while we were on vacation in Florida last week. So, I called in and asked to have macrobid ordered in for me down there. While I took it, I did feel better. But I was so worried about it all the entire time, I was not myself. It was so frustrating, not being able to enjoy my favorite place with my favorite person, my husband. I looked forward to that trip for months and I felt horrible most of the time we were down there. I finished the prescription yesterday morning and what do you know, my symptoms are back and in full swing. I went in for another urinalysis and I was told I have a low amount of white blood cells but she couldn't prescribe me anything until after the results come back from the lab, which hopefully will happen tomorrow afternoon because it will be Friday.

I feel like this entry is very scatter brained but this is how I feel. I am physically and emotionally tired of being in pain, of worrying, of feeling this way. I can't enjoy anything. It is always on my mind. I felt so bad on our vacation because I was so worried about it the entire time, I literally got so upset I cried..which is what I have also been doing a lot of because I am just so frustrated. I felt bad because it was supposed to be a second honeymoon. I could barely attempt sex because it felt so uncomfortable. All I want to do is enjoy that again. I want to feel like a normal, healthy woman. It has been nonstop issues with me for almost three years now. I am so over it. Some days I don't even want to leave the house because I feel so horrible. I feel like I'm somebody else, that I will never be normal again, that my body is ruined and I'm never going to feel good.

Part of that carefree summer plan was to try again for a baby in September. Well, here we are, two weeks left in September, and I can physically barely tolerate sex. It is like a cruel joke or something. It's me against my body. And my body always wins.

Courage

Oh my, am I a complete mess lately or what? I haven't written in over a month because I have just been, well, how do I say this - driving myself crazy. I am pretty sure PTSD is manifesting its ugly ways not only mentally but physically. I am drained and weepy and I feel like I just need to talk to someone. I am paranoid about everything and anything, especially if it has to do with my body. I am convinced that everything is going to fail or that something is not right - a bit like a hypochondriac. I need to say this all to someone. Someone other than a friend, who has heard it a million times. Someone other than my husband, who is going through it all, too and it isn't fair to put it all on him. Someone other than a family member who doesn't really know what to say back because they just don't relate.

I decided to search for therapists in my area, which proved to be not an easy task. Most are crazy expensive - $100+ per session! I finally found one literally five minutes down the road from my house and called last Friday. I was told I had to fill out an intake form from their website and turn it in and IF (yes, IF!) the doctor decides to take me as a patient, they will call me. I am thinking, what?! I have to be ACCEPTED by a therapist?! Does that sound crazy to anyone else but me? So, lets see...if I am not f*ed up enough for them, then that's that? I wonder how they choose who's crazy enough to quality. Nonetheless, they were the least expensive and the closest to me and I decided to print and fill out their 16 page intake form anyway, but not without a tiny personal protest. I turned it in today after I got off work. It was weird. The receptionist reiterated that I would hear back if I was accepted. It was just strange. I guess when I decided to embark on this quest for help, I didn't think I would have to impress someone with my traumatizing life story. And honestly, for someone to get up the courage to seek out help in the first place, this could be a road block for them. It almost was for me but I sucked it up. I guess we will see if they call me back. If not, then I guess I will search on. I want to choose my therapist, not them choose me. 

In other news... People have been getting on my nerves. The things some people say! I mean, seriously. My husband and I work for the same company. I am an interior designer and he deals with sales support. I guess when we were going through our TAC journey earlier this year, he opened up to a few coworkers on a smoke break about our past and our losses. (He has since then quite smoking, thank goodness!) There is this woman who is kind of blunt, and doesn't really have a social filter. She is nice enough and means well, but its a bit much sometimes. I had never talked to her personally in my life, until one day while I was working a few months back, she asked me if we had tried yet since the TAC. I was taken aback because we had never had a conversation about it before. I asked my husband and he explained that he had been talking to a few people about it because they asked, and I said that was fine. But, it caught me off guard. She was getting way too personal. Well, today, I ran into her in the hall - mind you I never talk to her, not since that day months ago, and she says, in front of other coworkers, "Are you guys trying for a baby yet?" I was so thrown off by it, not expecting it, and I said, "no, we aren't" and walked in the other direction. I mean, seriously?! How rude. She has no idea that yes, we had tried again after TAC and I had an early miscarriage (not cervix related). It took all I had in me not to explode. She has no idea what we are going through, she doesn't know me and damnit, it is none of her business! The freaking nerve. It's like, why does she care so much? I am sorry I don't go around, letting everyone know in the office that we are or aren't TTC. It's not causal conversation you just have, especially with someone you don't even know. I felt violated.

So, that is my rant for the day. Maybe someday I will actually be able to write about something not so hostile. But until then....