Wasted Weekend

This weekend was almost a total waste. I didn't get anything done and it's no suprise because I'm so unmotivated. My weekend started Thursday night because I have every other Friday off from work. Thursday was also my anniversary with my husband. We've been married 4 years now. It really sucks that we don't have kids yet. We stayed home and had a delicious meal and ate way too much. Then as with birthdays, every family member imaginable called to wish us a happy anniversary. I can think of other things I would rather do on my anniversary than talk to everyone in my husband's family all night on the phone.

So Friday, even though it was an off day for us, my husband went into work to get a presentation ready to send out, it was due out that day and truthfully I didn't mind him not being home so that was ok. Although he didn't get home until 7pm. So I watched some TV off the DVR that I hadn't gotten to watch yet, I watched a movie, I read some and took a nap. And I also did some laundry.

Saturday was half lazy, half busy. My sister and her boyfriend came to visit and we all went to Tanglewood for the Prairie Home Companion show. It was hot and sticky and it rained a little bit, but we've seen a lot worse on the lawn at Tanglewood so that was ok. But yet again, I didn't get anything done.

Sunday morning we went to Mass, then grocery shopping, got home and had a small breakfast then at noon I took a nap... until about 3pm. I did more laundry, cleaned up the kitchen a bit and had leftovers for dinner and then it was time for bed. Back to work this morning.

It seems like during the weekend, I don't feel like doing anything, I'm tired from the week, it's too hot and I don't sleep well, I'm just cranky in general. Then this morning comes and all I can think about are all the things I should have done. All the little projects that I should have worked on. Fixing the screens on the back porch, tons and tons of work in the garden (jungle), cleaning out the tupperware cupboard, washing the litter boxes, cleaning out the garage, and the list goes on. I put vinyl tile in the bathroom back in February and I thought then that I would finish painting the trim when it got nice out so I could open the windows and not have the paint stink in the house. When is that going to get done?

I guess I'm just tired of being tired all the time. I don't remember the last time that I had a really good night's sleep. I think it was before my husband and I shared a bed, not that he's not nice to snuggle next too, but it's not the same as having the bed all to yourself, no one to wake you up in the morning or for middle of the night blood tests. Then there are the cats. Ever since Sasha died on November 4, 2005 we let Katie sleep with us, they use to both be locked in the basement at night, which is furnished and has comfy places to sleep. We didn't want Katie to be alone that first night and we were so sad and wanted to have her close to us. So she sleeps by my shoulder which isn't much of a bother to me, but it's a bother to her if I have to get up in the night to use the bathroom. Krista is the replacement cat. We got her in April 2006 so Katie would have a buddy, but there was no replacing Sasha. Katie hates Krista, that's another story. Krista had her own room for a while until she was more familiar with our house and the location of her litter box, then she started being locked in the basement just at night. Now she sleeps with us too. It was rough for a while because she's still very kitten-like and doesn't sit still for long. Plus Katie would hiss at her if she got too close. The sleeping part isn't too bad, it's the getting up in the morning. Katie wakes up when the sun comes up, which isn't a problem in the winter, but with the sun rising at 5:20 this morning, and it actually gets light out earlier than that, she wants to get up and get scratches and snuggle under the covers and yell in our faces and purr. This is all very cute on a work day when the alarm is going off anyway, but not on a weekend when you want to sleep in.

Sasha and Katie were sisters and always very snuggly.

Krista knows not to get too close to Katie.

So long story short: How do I get more sleep and get more stuff done? How do I get motivated again? I feel like I haven't really accomplished anything in the last couple years. I'm so stagnate. I can't let go of the notion that Isabella should be here right now. She would have been 9 months old today. I can't let go of Sean, and that I should still be pregnant with him. I would be in my 21st week by now. I feel like I'm waiting for my life to start. How sad is that when I'm 30 years old?

A Conversation

A couple days ago my husband bumped into a guy I use to work with on his way out from work. (We both work at the same place and it's a big building so it can take anywhere from 5-10 minutes to get to your car.) This guy, Jim, was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). My husband has type 1 diabetes so Jim wanted to ask how he disposes of his needles. Until my husband told me about this conversation and I did some looking online I didn't know anything about MS or how it's treated. Apparently Jim has to take shots to manage the effects of MS. But my husband doesn't use needles since he has an insulin pump so he didn't really know what to tell him. Jim was told he couldn't dispose of his sharps container in the trash. So the next day I bumped into Jim at work and we talked about MS and how things have been going. I mentioned that I had heard that you can put your sharps container in the trash (because the nurse at my hematologist had told me that). Later in the conversation I told him why I knew. Since Jim was someone that I use to work with he knew I was pregnant last year. So I told him about all the blood work I had had done and finding out about the APAS and even that I got pregnant again this February and had started taking the shots but then I had a miscarriage again, unrelated to the APAS. He gave me the standard line that it's going to happen for us. He also mentioned that his brother and his wife are having expecting and that he's going to be an uncle. I said in a tentative way not to count his chickens before the hatch. Considering my track record he knew why I said that. I told him that until it happens to you, you never think for a second that something could go wrong. I know I sure didn't last year, and even this year with Sean, I had hope that because I was taking the shots that we'd be fine. He seems pretty bummed out about having MS and the different symptoms he's been dealing with. I guess that's the worst part about miscarriages, the physical stuff is over in a matter or days or a few weeks, but the heartache will last forever. Only no one recognizes that heartache after a certain time frame has passed. So it's hard for me to feel too bad for him because it sounds like he can live a pretty normal life. It's not like someone died.

Vacation

So I really thought that vacation would be all fun and sunshine and tasty food and wine and everything nice a vacation should be. It wasn't all that. I wasn't all bad, but it could have been so much better. I want to think that the reason why it wasn't all that it could have been was completely out of my control. I guess it really was, but my reaction to it wasn't and I could have sucked it up more.

I started my period on the way to NYC. Yuck. I hate having my period. I wasn't expecting to be pregnant but there was always that tiny chance. My period was late. That was the first thing. I was so stressed out from work and grief and life just pressing in on me that I actually would have been partially angry if I was pregnant. I was really looking forward to eating and drinking whatever I wanted. To not being cranky and tired when I was suppose to be having fun. But I had my period instead. It was a 36 day cycle which is several days longer than I normally have. I had packed pads and tampons "just in case". But since being on low dose aspirin my periods are deluges. I ended up buying super absorbency tampons in the gift shop on board our cruise ship. What a mess the week would have been without those. It was still a mess, just a more manageable one. But the real problem with all of this was just the bad timing. I really wanted to have already had my period, to be trying again. What better time than on vacation. Instead I was a complete mess. Having to carry supplies with me all over the island just in case I sprung a leak. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. I'd say I hope that was the last period I'll have for a while but I know better. I know there's no point in hoping for anything. It hasn't worked before, why would it work now?

Avoiding a Baby Shower

There was a baby shower on Sunday that I didn't go to. My husband's dad's cousin's daughter Kasey (did you get all that) is due in August. I called to give my regrets a few weeks ago saying that my husband and I would be getting back from our vacation that day and I wouldn't be able to make it. I really wanted to say that I wouldn't have gone even if I could have made it. I'm really jealous but I don't think they would understand. We talked to my husband's grandparents Sunday night his grandmother brought up the shower, saying it was catered and how Kasey had a belly. All I could say was that's nice. After some silence they changed the subject. I had actually forgotten about the shower with everything going on during vacation and traveling home and being exhausted so I was blindsided when she brought it up. I'm glad that I don't have any immediate friends or even acquaintances that are pregnant, that would be so hard. It's just hard to not think about Isabella and Sean, there are reminders everywhere. On vacation there were babies all over the cruise, all over Bermuda, a couple my husband had met through an online forum that would be on our cruise had two children at home, one adopted after 4 years of infertility and not wanting to risk IVF and one that they miraculously got pregnant with during the long drawn out adoption process. I'm glad they have their two babies. I just wish I had mine.

Inappropriate Questions

My task lead was over at my desk one day. He's very loud and jovial, but has the attention span of a fruit fly. He's generally nice, but that day he really got me mad. I wish I had told him off. This is why: On a few occasions he has brought up the topic of me having children. He has four children in their teens so he's all for people having lots of kids. Since I only started working in this department a little over 3 months ago, he basically knows nothing about me, where as people in my old department knew I was pregnant with Isabella and that I was out for half of May when she died. So he knows nothing of this. The conversation led in with talk about the fitness room and how no women workout there, I mentioned a woman about my age who I've seen dressed in exercise clothes heading in that direction. He laughed and said she's way younger than me, since I'm old at 30. Then he said "when are you going to start having kids?!? Everyone is always asking me about when you're going to have kids." I asked who these people are and he listed off my parents, my husband's parents, other family. Of course he doesn't know any of these people so how would he know what they are asking or expecting? I told him that's not an appropriate question to be asking and that it was a touchy subject for me by which time he had started rambling on about his kids and that he would gladly give me a couple. Not that I want someone else's kids, especially unruly teenagers. I told him that he shouldn't complain about his kids because if they didn't turn out right it was his fault for not raising them right. That shut him up. Of course I don't fully believe that to be true but it is a big part of how people turn into the people they end up being. I can think of many things about myself and how I wouldn't be this way or I would be that way if it were only for XYZ that my mom or dad did. That's the problem with having an minor in psychology and also being an engineer. I think and analyze too much.

So debated going over to his desk at some point and quietly telling him that I've had 2 miscarriages, one of which was not long ago, so I'd appreciate if he wouldn't bring up my reproductive plans in the future.

Last year my husband and I waited a long time before we told anyone at work that I was pregnant. I was definitely in my 2nd trimester, I think around week 15. After Isabella died I remember thinking, great, now it's like we've shown everyone our hand. I feel very protective about our plans for starting a family, especially in my male dominated field. I wonder if people still think, oh she's pregnant and I'd be dismissed as just a woman and not as smart or whatever other biases people have here. So for the people at work who know about Isabella, how many of them wonder if I'm going to try again or wonder if I have but failed again. I've only told a handful of people at work about my second miscarriage.

So based on all that, I don't want to confront my task lead because it would be like showing my hand all over again. I felt like this new job in a new department would free me from the funk of last year and how awful it was on so many levels. But now I feel like it's all repeating.

I still wonder though, if I don't confront him, what I would say the next time he brings it up to make him stop and if it's possible to do that without telling him why.

I wish I had the guts to use my precanned answer when someone says something like "well, you don't have kids," or "you'll find out when you have kids." My answer would be, "it's not for lack of trying!"

*****************************************

Something strange happened a couple days later. My husband and I went to an appreciation dinner for work for a project he's been on. One of his co-workers was there and we use to hang out with him at lunch time and he and his wife came to our wedding. It was nice to see them both and catch up a bit. They had a child later in 2004 after our wedding and I remember seeing pictures of her at our wedding and you could tell she had a little bit of a belly. They had a second child later and were talking about their kids and the daycare they go to a couple days a week and the colds that circulate and how I'll find out about that some day. There were other comments about how we don't have kids yet and I gathered the chutzpah to say my line, "it's not for lack of trying". But no one seemed to pick upon that. Later she said a few more things to that effect and then outright asked if we were going to "take the plunge" so I told her that I've had 2 miscarriages and since she's a physician's assistant I told her about the antiphospholipid antibody syndrome. She said she was really sorry for what she said earlier in the night. So the strange thing was, Monday morning I got an email from her husband saying she enjoyed hanging out with me and wanted to give me their phone number so we could get together some time. I thought it was strange because the majority of our conversation was talking about my miscarriages so how could anyone enjoy that? I wonder if it's a pity sort of thing. It's fitting in a way because I feel like I don't have any friends in the area and it would be nice to hang out with someone although I also wonder when I would have time. There's always so much to do at home, our house is a total mess, I'm just not motivated to do anything. I'm just in a big funk lately. I'll be glad when it's time for our vacation and I can just get away from it all.

It's so easy... for some people

A few weeks ago one of my husband's co-workers announced that his wife is pregnant, let's call him Rick. I thought, that's nice, they got married maybe a year ago, so I was happy for them. Until I found out that they just found out. She was literally only 5 or 6 weeks pregnant and they were already telling people. I thought I would let it slide since they're young and maybe haven't heard about waiting out the 1st trimester before telling everyone. Then the next day, where all my bitterness is coming from, another one of my husband's co-workers was over talking to Rick, giving him baby advice, let's call him Chris. Chris is a major jerk at work and in personal relationships. He has a baby with his girlfriend born last June, not long after Isabella died, lots of bitterness there. It's also rumored that she intend to get pregnant accidentally-on-purpose as a sort of man-trap. So in his loud advice giving he announced that his girlfriend is pregnant again! She's due in November which is when Sean would have been due if I hadn't had a miscarriage at 9 weeks. So I'm very bitter. I think a lot of that bitterness is for all the people in the world getting pregnant before getting married, Chris specifically. I'm sure this is offensive to a lot of people but it's also strange because I consider myself to be pretty liberal. But my parents divorced before I was 3, so I feel entitled to my feelings that it's better to have 2 parents working together as a family unit. I realize this same thing can be achieved without a piece of paper from the state, but I guess in my opinion and for lots of others, when you have that piece of paper people take your relationship more seriously. (And it's good that Massachusetts has marriage for everyone, that makes me happy.) So the traditional part of me thinks that people should get married and then make babies. Build a foundation before you start adding bedrooms. I think I would still be bitter about this Chris guy even if it happened a year and a half ago. He's just the kind of guy to rub you the wrong way. But mostly because it's so easy for some people to churn kids out like butter when it seemed to take forever for me to get pregnant each time and then to lose both of them. That makes me really angry.

Innocence Lost

I remember when I was first pregnant with Isabella, I was on top of the world. I was excitedly buying pregnancy books and registering for online newsletters for weekly updates on my baby's development. When I look back on that time it's the innocence that stands out the most to me. How I never thought anything could or would go wrong. How I skimmed over the parts of the books that talked about "complications". It was all so foreign, it wasn't for me, my baby would be perfect.

It makes me wish that innocence could be recaptured. This is something I've been wondering since Isabella died and I started reading books and websites about pregnancy loss and conceiving again after a loss. How does anyone do it? It talks about the time it might take to grieve and work through a loss, how you never really get over it but assimilate your life to this new existence. But then when you're actually going through it and the time is passing so slowly and you think you're ready to conceive again but month after month you don't, how do people deal with that? And then how do I deal with it all over again for the second time. I really felt like it was all too good to be true when I was pregnant with Sean. You'd think I would have jumped up and down and ran screaming all over the houses with excitement that I was pregnant again, but I didn't. I couldn't believe it. So now, 9 weeks after my second miscarriage I wonder how I can pick myself up and go through it all again. I wish that I was trying to get pregnant for the first time. When everything was fun and exciting and wondering if this would be the month, before I started to dread getting my period, before it started to feel like a chore. I couldn't be that excited the second time I got pregnant because I knew how much it hurt when it all went horribly wrong, I didn't want to get too attached, I didn't want to hurt that way again. But I did, and I do, and I always will.

How do you get through each day until you're pregnant again? How do you get through each day of your pregnancy wondering if it will be your last? How do you open your heart again to the chance that it might actually all work out? I think of all the women in the world who have lost a baby and know that it's a hope not a promise but I can't even get myself to hope anymore. I use to be able to imagine having a baby one day, now it seems like an impossible dream.

I envy the women who sail through pregnancy, who get the big belly and feel the baby kick, whose biggest complaint is that their birth didn't go exactly as they planned, but what does that matter if you get to take your baby home?

I want to have a baby so badly that I will endure daily injections of blood thinner to do it, and I'm not a big fan of needles. When will it be my turn? When will it be my time?

A "Last Hurrah"

My husband and I are going on vacation soon. It was supposed to be a last hurrah, the second one. Last year we went to Arizona, we even flew first class on some saved up air miles. I was right at the end of the first trimester with Isabella and we had lots of fun plans for our trip. We flew into Phoenix, drove to Sedona and spent the night in a fancy hotel. It was also my birthday so we went out for a special dinner. Then we drove to Williams to take the train to the Grand Canyon. What an amazing place. We hiked down into the canyon a bit and just took it all in. After getting back to Williams we drove back to Phoenix to visit a friend of mine from high school for the weekend. It was good catching up. Sunday afternoon we went to Scottsdale to stay in another fancy hotel and then we had a couple's massage at a spa the next day. I didn't have a belly at all, I was only 13 weeks. I would never get one.

This year we made plans to go on a cruise to Bermuda. We scheduled it with the hope that I would be pregnant by then. And I did get pregnant in February, I found out March 1st. But we didn't plan that Sean would die and I would have a miscarriage on April 9th. It wasn't a consideration to cancel the trip. It will be a much needed vacation after having such a rough year and a half. Maybe we'll bring home more than just the usual souvenirs. Maybe next time we'll skip any "last hurrah."

A dream I had last year

I had this dream May 4, 2007 and when I woke up I promptly wrote it in my journal. Here it is:

My husband and I were meeting in a mall and before I met up with him there was a woman. I had lent her our new digital camera and for some reason she was mad at me and hit me with it repeatedly. So when I got it from her and turned it on the lens mechanism was broken and crunchy sounding. So we brought it to a repair place at which point my husband was there too. I had to hold her wrist to make her stay and tell the people what she did to the camera. She was still mad and she kicked me in the leg at least once. Then when we were done I ended up punching her in the head. After that she and my husband took off. I couldn't catch up with him and I lost him. Next I was in a bathroom and there was a lost little kid. Unknown gender. The kid was pouring hot chocolate from the tap or had powder in the mug and just adding hot water. I told the kid I would help them find their group. The kid thought I was someone who worked at their daycare. So we went to find the kid's family and found a worker at the museum to help. So much for the mall. So we went all over, I drank a bunch of the hot chocolate and carried the kid's coat and the worker's binder. I almost fell coming down a flight of stairs I was so laden with stuff. It was a big binder and even though the hot chocolate was gone it was a tea cup and saucer which was hard to balance with everything else. Also the museum was a maze. We'd be on one level and see the other levels and not be able to get there. The stairs/escalators didn't go where we wanted. But finally we found the kid's group. The museum guy took all the credit and I handed them the kid's coat. The kid introduced me to their family: mom, dad and two brothers and a sister. One of the brother's names was King something, I can't remember the others. The kid offered to me as a reward some baby shoes. I declined. Then I wandered in the museum alone. I don't know if I was trying to find my husband, but I was crying.

I'll post what I think it means another day. If anyone is out there reading this, let me know what you think it means.

A Poem for Isabella

I wrote this poem last year a few weeks after Isabella died. As part of my fumbling around trying to find the best way for me to express my grief I've done a lot of reading about pregnancy loss. I've looked at a lot of websites and many of them had poems. They inspired me to write my own. I've never been much of a writer, it was always my worst subject in school, but the poems I have written seem to be during the hardest parts of my life.

What is harder than this??

Isabella

When I was pregnant with you
I had so many plans
What we would call you
How our lives would change
Buying you diapers
Buying you clothes
Fixing up your room
Taking you home
How the summer would fly
How busy we would be
Waiting for your arrival
Waiting patiently

All my plans were lost
The day that I lost you
Holidays will be different
Because I won't have you
No one else will see
How the love in me had grown
I won't have you there with me
To gently hug and hold
I won't have you here with me
Just a memory in my heart
There's an emptiness inside of me
Now that we're apart

When I was pregnant with you
I was happy thoroughly
Before the news got out
My secret grew in me
I couldn't wait to tell you
How much by now I knew
My love for you was growing
I love you through and through

On a sunny day in May
I learned something wasn't right
I could not believe I'd lost you
I cried all through the night
I'll never see you smile
I'll never hold your hand
I'll never see you married
This isn't what I planned

My baby girl, my angel
My Isabella, my love
I'll always be your mother
Watch over me from above.

-Shannon, May 31, 2007

How it Happened

I found out I was pregnant in January last year. Everything seemed to be fine at my first two OBGYN appointments at the beginning of March and April. I had the triple test done sometime in April and my doctor was concerned about the AFP level, it was slightly elevated. So he had me go for a level 2 ultrasound. That was scheduled for May 1st. That was when we got all the bad news. Isabella was 4 weeks behind in growth. Since she was so small it was hard to see a lot of her anatomy and she was turned the wrong way, but they think they saw a lesion on her lower back indicating a neural tube defect. Not only that but her head/brain showed abnormal development, her skull had a lemon shape and the cerebral cortex was banana shaped instead of barbell shaped. There was nothing good to any of it. I can't really remember what the brain/skull things meant because my doctor mostly fixated on her size as being of high concern. 6-7 weeks later I had a ton of blood tests done. They took 11-13 vials of blood. The results were mostly normal except one which indicated I have antiphospholipid antibody syndrome. This means that my blood clots too much, so when her placenta formed it was full of clots and she couldn't get enough nutrients or oxygen which is why she was so small, and why I never really got a belly even at 19 weeks. They repeated the test again 12 weeks later to confirm that I really did have APAS. It was positive again. So the outcome was that if I got pregnant again I would take a blood thinner, lovenox, from 8-10 weeks until the week before we decide to induce me. Then I would go back on it for a couple months after the baby was born until my estrogen levels came back down. March 1, 2008 I found out I was pregnant. I started taking the injections on April 1st and had gotten through 7 days of shots when I found out Sean had died. I hadn't taken my shot yet that day and my doctor told me not to in preparation for a D&C on Friday, April 11th, but then I had the complete miscarriage on Wednesday. It was just a coincident that I had my doctor's appointment and U/S on the 8th just to know that my baby was dead the day before the bleeding began. I can't imagine how much more freaked out I would have been if I didn't know that there was a chance it could happen. I saved the "products of conception" that came out. I even looked at it closely myself to see if I could see the baby. I had no idea what it was that I saw. But I brought it to my doctor's office and they sent it to be examined and cultured to see if it really was the most likely explanation of chromosomal abnormalities, we found out the chromosomes where normal, but there are a million other reasons for why a pregnancy fails. We also found out it was a boy. So Isabella died because of my as of then unknown blood clotting problem and Sean died because of who knows what. I know that it couldn't have been because of my blood stuff, because that doesn't affect the baby until the 2nd trimester or later, which is why Isabella made it to 19 weeks. So while statistically 1 in 3 or 4 pregnancies miscarry in the 1st trimester, it doesn't really make me feel any better about it. I figured I had all my bad luck with Isabella. On top of the shots during pregnancy, after I got the first set of blood test results my doctor had me start taking a low dose aspirin each day and 4000mcg (4mg) of folic acid a day. Still doing that. I have the rest of my 30 day supply of lovenox (in pre-filled needles) in my closet, hopefully I can use them before they expire (in 2010).