Seminar

Today I'm going to Carol's "Compassionate Caregiving When a Baby Dies" seminar. I'm on the "Parent Panel". I was trying to think of a way to prepare for it. Should I make some sort of list of things that worked or didn't when Isabella and Sean died? Should I just talk about those days and surrounding days or should I mention how depressed I was that I stopped working for 2 months and almost quit my job completely? How I've been on all kinds of medication for depression and anxiety? How I've been seeing a therapist weekly for over 7 months now? I guess that's the thing about loosing a baby. It's not like it's only that day or following week that is a total bummer, but how it makes living life a bummer. How different would this summer have been if I didn't lose Sean? His due date would have been Wednesday, November 12th, but I would have had him already. Because of my blood clotting issues, I would have had to stop taking my blood thinner injections and be induced. He would be with me now. I would be on permanent maternity leave. I would actually feel like a mother. I would be a mother.

I still feel like an impostor. Even going to this seminar, I feel like a fake almost. I don't know if easier is the right word, but for women who actually looked pregnant and lost their baby at least people knew. I feel like part of my isolation is that no one knew. That's the Catch-22 of when do you tell because if you tell and you have a miscarriage (like me) then everyone knows you lost your baby, and does that make them care? I don't know. But if you don't tell and you're sad or sensitive about being around babies and people wonder why, do you then have to tell then? On some levels it's nice that people don't know, because they aren't pretending to care or trying to say the "right" thing. Or eating their foot and saying exactly what you don't want to hear. But then I also want to shake people and make them realize that something so innocent as asking if my husband and I are planning on having kids can feel like a kick to the gut. How do you answer that without "showing your hand"? Or at least without biting their head off?

That's the thing about this... it's not easy at all.