Baby Seals

I'm starting a new post on this subject because I wanted to include another picture:

The one I posted before was of a "whitecoat" and yes, I know that they are not the ones hunted harvested. Once they start to shed that coat, they have the beautiful silver spotted coat in the picture above. They are still just babies. They still cannot get away from the fishermen jumping from their boats, wielding hakapiks. What I know about the hunt is what I've read online, not just at the HSUS website but also other websites, even Canadian websites. They might want to twist things to make it seem worse than it is, but the videos they post speak for themselves. Not once does the fisherman keep the carcass, not once do they check that the seal is unconscious before skinning it. It's easy to see some seals still squirming as they are dragged by a hook across the ice.

I'm curious where Heather gets her seal meat, do you buy it in the grocery store next to the beef and pork? Where does the meat come from when the fishermen in the videos always leave it behind?

I've read stuff about the cod population being the excuse for culling the seal population. But nature is never really just a one way street. Killing hundreds of thousands of seals may sound like the best way to get the cod population back up, but taking away one predator usually just leaves room for another to take its place. Other fish eat cod, seals eat those fish and the cod, so without the seals to eat one predator, they are still there to eat the cod. Maybe it was over fishing that made cod endangered.

I haven't read up on the seal hunt for a while, it's too gory and depressing, so I'll admit that I'm not the most informed about this subject. I just didn't want you to think that I thought the white coats where the ones killed. They wait until they're 2-3 weeks old before they kill them.

I don't want to get in an argument about this either since this is suppose to be a blog about Isabella and Sean. If you have information from other websites disproving what the HSUS says I would love to look at it. I hope I didn't offend anyone or come across as too ignorant.

Day 1

And the cycle starts again. How depressing. Damn that faint line, I would have just kept my big mouth shut if not for that.

I'm having such a miserable day. Aside from the fun of writing the opinion post I've been in a pretty bad funk. I went to my therapy appointment after work. Rushing around like crazy to get there on time. I let it all pour out, all the things in my life going on right now that have been making me bawl my eyes out until they're red and sore and puffy. I feel like I could somehow deal with any one of them if they happened separately, but they're not. They're all at once. I keep getting knocked down and I can't get up anymore. It's no wonder I'm not pregnant, I'm so stressed out. I wish I could be someone else, live somewhere else, or just not be at all. I wish I could be picked up by the wind and blown away over the trees, or melted by the rain and pour into the river and be washed out to sea.

Just when I think things can't get any worse, they do.

Just when I start to have a little bit of hope, it's destroyed.

I wish I had a different life.

I wish.

Opinions

Carol wrote on her blog about things that she feels stongly about. I didn't want to ramble on in her comment page so I'm posting most of my response here.

For Carol:

1. I don’t hang my laundry outside. I grew up with my mom doing this even in the dead of winter so your clothes didn’t dry as much as they froze. She has always been frugal to the point of being cheap so I rebel against hanging my clothes on the line. I also didn’t like that it gave the corners of my shirts points from hanging, and my socks felt stiff and crunchy. The fresh scent is nice, but dryer sheets smell nice too.

2. I would love to try cloth diapers, if I ever get the chance. I’ll have to find out more about it, brands, washing methods, etc, when the time comes.

3. I didn’t know that detergent was made from petroleum. What brand of vegetable based detergent do you use? Can you buy it at a regular grocery store or do you order it?

4. Ah, circumcision. I am also against this. I think it is completely ridiculous for the exact same reasons. I’ve had lengthy arguments about it with my husband and with an old friend who had a baby boy last year and “just had it done”. My husband is of the mindset that he wants it done to his son because it was done to him. So if I do get pregnant again and if it’s a boy and this all comes up again, I’m going to make a point of asking his parents why they mutilated their son. They have no religious reason to do it.

5. Reading is very nice, I just wish I had more time to do it. When I read a good book I get totally sucked in. I’ve stayed up until 1 am on a work night because I just can’t put my book down. I even snuck down to the kitchen so that my husband wouldn’t be kept awake by my light being on.

6. I love TV. I could probably watch less and have more time to read. But after a long day at work, sometimes it’s nice to rot my brain a little. We have a DVR so I generally record things that I like and then watch them later, no dealing with commercials.

7. When did pacifiers become so popular. I don’t remember if I ever had one (I had my thumb) but it seems like every kid has one in their mouths all the time. I don’t know much about it, but it does seem like too much.

8. I would love to breast feed. I wrote recently about Kasey’s baby being born and not going to her baby shower, but when I ordered her gift I made a point of not getting her anything bottle related. I can't see buying something for someone that I wouldn’t use if I was in their situation. I hope I get to use my breasts for their intended purpose at some point.

9. Yuck, junk food. I never had soda in the house growing up. We never have chips or cheese puffs around now. Junk food has too much processed stuff in it. I love making chocolate chip cookies. Yum. I would take a homemade cookie over a bag of whatever any day.

10. I love sleep too. Unfortunately I don’t get much of that either. I don’t know where the time goes in the day, but I never feel like I get much done or get much sleep either.

Others:

Eating meat: I’ve considered giving it up, especially since I get emails from the HSUS about all the horrible treatment of animals. I don’t have a good reason other than it’s tasty. Sorry.

Indoor cats: I keep mine inside. We live on a moderately busy road, we have a lot of woods around our house, and I’m too much of a control freak to not know where they are at any given moment during the day. I know some would say it’s their nature to run and hunt, but I don’t want them to be the hunted, or get run over by a car, or get yucky diseases. They live a lot longer when they stay indoors and they can be just as happy. I think my cats are happy, otherwise they purr a lot for no reason.

My own issues:

I already went into my opinion of abortion in the comments to a blog entry of mine.

I have a lot of strong feelings about religion. I think it’s great to be religious, but I don’t think that makes a religious person better than a non-religious person. Like I’m going to heaven because I go to church every week and you’re not because you don’t. That’s just dumb. I don’t like to push my views of religion on to other people, but it seems like a big part of being religious is to recruit others into “the fold”. Sorry, I’m not going to bully people. I know what works for me, I’ll stick with that.

Here's a weird one: I'm holding a grudge against Canada. Not people from Canada, not the land itself, but the government. It really makes me mad that hundreds of thousands of adorable baby seals are slaughtered every spring on the ice, before they take their first swim, before they eat a solid meal, before they are even a month old. It's called a "seal hunt", but it's really a harvest because these babies cannot get away. I know I said I eat meat because it's tasty. Now if cows and chickens were as adorable would I still eat them? I don't know. But these seals are killed for their skin, their meat is tossed aside. It's all for the fashion industry. I'm glad that the HSUS is making progress and other countries are banning the import of harp seal skins, but more can be done. I try not to buy products from Canada if I can help it. Otherwise I love Canada, I've spent a lot of time there, and I love poutine. I would drive 5 hours to get to Canada to eat poutine in a heart beat. But it will have to wait until the baby seals are no longer in danger.

I could go on and on too, give me a subject and I could probably give you a strong opinion on it.

A baby is born

Kasey had her baby today. My husband's parents are visiting this weekend, so his dad's dad called his dad to tell him the news. It was a surprise because she was due in August sometime, I'm not really sure when. From what he told us of the conversation she had an appointment today, her fluid levels were low, the baby was breech and then she needed a cesarean. Joseph the third has arrived. This after I got her thank-you note in the mail today for the shower present I sent because I wouldn't have gone even if I could have. This after my doctor's office called again to tell me the test results were NEGATIVE. Thanks, I got the message yesterday. I feel really angry and hurt and jealous. No one cares about me, no one acted like it might hurt to hear this news. No one asked how I felt. But it's not about me. Isabella and Sean are DEAD.

They might as well have never existed.

Negative

How could it be negative? If the stick picks up some HCG then a blood test definitely should.... The only explanation I can think of is that the stick was bad. I thought false positives were rare. Now I feel like I cried wolf. :(

I guess I don't have to worry about telling any secrets just yet.

A Very Faint Line...

Today is day 26. I can't help it, I'm impatient. I did a test this morning and there was a very faint line. There was a time in the past that I "imagined" a faint line so I had my husband look at it. He doesn't have the best eye sight so I figured if he can see it, then it's there.

He saw it.

This is all matter of fact because I can't wrap my head around it. It's just a faint line. I know that the instructions say, any line is a positive so I guess that means... I'm pregnant. But like Carol said in her blog a few weeks ago I'm only "maybe" pregnant. That could last until the 13 or 14 week mark, but I don't think I'll feel really pregnant until I get a belly and/or I get to 20 weeks, longer than I was pregnant with Isabella. It feels so weird to think it, to imagine it. I need to call my doctor's office to see what a blood test will say....

I haven't written about this before, but I took clomid back in February, first cycle and I got pregnant with Sean. That was after 8 cycles of not getting pregnant, which isn't a long time in the grand scheme of things but it seemed like forever to me. My doctor told me to go back on it when I was ready to try again, so I did. First cycle (maybe) pregnant again. My husband had really high hopes because it worked the first time last time I used it. I didn't want to get my hopes up because I know a lot of women don't have good luck with it. I thought maybe it was just a fluke. It feels too good to be true. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

In other news, today is my husband's birthday, he is 29. His parents are coming today to visit for the weekend, I know I said I didn't want to tell them, but I'm also horrible at keeping my own secrets. Other people's secrets, no problem, but when it's my secret, I can't help myself. I'll have to gather up some will power if I'm going to make it through these next weeks and manage to keep this news to myself. A blood test will tell me if it really is news at all.

What's in a dream?

I posted a dream I had last year a while back. Here is my interpretation of my dream (what I thought last year):

I think the digital camera represents the baby since we bought the camera to take pictures of the baby. Then the genderless kid also represents our child, how the child is lost and I have to help it get home. Just the fact that I didn't know if it was a boy or a girl says a lot to me. And mostly, my husband left me. I'm afraid of what this will do to us. Not that he will leave per se. But that it will forever change us.

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

After posting it and rereading it I had more time to think about the dream and really break it down to think about what all the parts meant. The interpretation above was just what I wrote in my journal after I finished writing down the dream that morning when I woke up from it.

I should also say in case it's unclear, that I had already found out that thing were going completely wrong with Isabella. We got all the bad news on May 1, 2007, I woke up from this dream the morning of May 4th.

So, I still think the camera represents Isabella, I don't know why the woman was there or why she was angry, but that the camera was broken is fitting since there was so much wrong with Isabella. The anger and then me punching the woman just tells me what I already knew, I was very angry with everyone and anyone for this happening to my baby. Bringing the woman to the camera repair place seemed like a way of blaming someone for what was happening. I wished there was someone to blame. My husband being absent or leaving me in the dream is how he was and still is to some extend. He isn't as engaged as I wish he would be, so I feel very alone in both losses.

Then there is the child in the bathroom, if I remember correctly I would put the child at about 4-5 years old. I don't think the age is important, but that I didn't know the gender of the child was the same as not yet knowing that Isabella was a girl, we wouldn't get the amnio results for a couple weeks. The only thing I can think of for the hot chocolate (and why I ended up drinking "a bunch" of it) was it was a form of comfort for me in this difficult time.

I think it's pretty self explanatory that the child was lost. I was feeling very lost. Or since I had to help the child find its family, that might represent me letting Isabella go, resolving myself to eventually losing her since I knew that likelihood was very high.

I don't know what the museum worker represented or why he took all the credit for finding the family, maybe it was like a guardian angel helping me find my way. It's hard to say. Nearly falling down the stairs and being laden with stuff is straightforward too. It's hard not to stumble with this burden of grief forever on my shoulders. I knew it would be a balancing act, how would people treat me, what would I say. Would I be able to face all the questions. I still feel like it's a balancing act, how I've put up a wall around me to protect me while I'm out in the world, how I put on a brave face and manage to "go through the motions" and carry on with the activities I've been participating in when I would rather just crawl in a hole.

The museum was a maze, we couldn't get to where we wanted to go. I remember feeling like it was a cruel joke or trick. But it wasn't. I didn't get to where I wanted to go. Isabella wouldn't be born in September like I planned, like I expected.

The family is a mystery to me, but baby shoes as a reward seemed like saying to me, this is all you'll get, just a souvenir, no baby for you. At the time I didn't want to know the gender of the baby, I was still in denial or whatever. Later I decided to find out, that maybe it would make it more real for my husband since he was so removed from it. I was the one who was pregnant, I was the only one who it affected.

Then I wandered alone, crying. I woke up crying, nearly sobbing. Crying became the norm for me in the days, weeks, months to come. I feel like I've cried more in my life so far than 100 "normal" people ever will.

If I had living children I can imagine things would be so different. I would have to take care of them, they would be a source of joy in my life to cancel out or at least reduce the amount of sorrow. But I don't have any living children. I don't even feel like Isabella or Sean were ever mine. It doesn't make sense to me that they were only here so briefly. Will it ever?

Photos

A picture from this morning:

Wild turkey mom and her chick, so cute and fuzzy.

Cala lilies in the window box:

The Two Week Wait

So I mentioned in my Vacation post that I had wanted to be trying again during our vacation, not dealing with a menstrual cycle gone wild. And now that it's Day 18 it's basically out of my hands. I'm not messing with ovulations strips so I don't know when or if I ovulated yet this month. What's done is done.

So my question is, if I do get pregnant this month (fingers crossed, holding breath) should I post that? My husband and I have talked about who we would tell and when. Basically, no one and never is the answer. He absolutely refuses to tell people. He refused the first two times. Is it a guy thing or what? It's like he's embarrassed that people will know that we're having sex! I can't understand it because so many people knew I was pregnant last year. People know about the birds and the bees. But anyway... I think it comes down to who I can count on to be supportive if something were to happen again. After going through this twice I think I would rather suffer alone than have to deal with insensitive clods family. So I feel like I shouldn't tell my family, not his, not mine. I don't have any close friends really, at least not locally, so it would be easy to not tell anyone else. So I guess that just leaves the blog. If there was anywhere I thought I could turn to for support it would be here. I think it would be hard for me to write new blog entries and not say something either way. (Hurray, I'm pregnant!/Dreaded period again.) This two week wait will be nothing compared to the 38 week wait that follows it.

What to talk about?

I have an appointment this afternoon for therapy or whatever it's called. Some weeks I go in there wondering what the heck I'll talk about and next thing I know she's telling me we're out of time. I use to make a list of things but I stopped doing that. Things haven't been pressing in on me so much lately. Maybe I'll talk about my wasted weekend, or my crazy family. I have plenty of neuroses to work through, it would take years to straighten me out. She's not just a grief counselor so I can talk about anything. My husband and I were up late again last night talking about Isabella and Sean and how even though his parents and grandparents have apologized for past treatment of me I am still hanging onto that anger. How do I let it go?

The one thing that still eats me up is when I was told last year when I was pregnant that I could not participate in Mother's Day. I wasn't a Mother yet. It felt like a slap in the face at the time, in early April, and it was even worse when Isabella died the Tuesday before Mother's Day. This year I made a point of not participating. I still wasn't a mother to them. I didn't buy the cards, I didn't address them, I didn't mail them. Somehow buying, writing and mailing cards became my job, not this time. I didn't even get on the phone with my husband's mother or grandmothers that day. My husband's family is very religious. I consider myself religious but not to someone else's detriment. I'm sure they believe life begins at conception, yet when that life ends before birth it seems like to them it doesn't matter. They didn't hold a baby, then didn't have a relationship with it. I can ask all the right questions and get the right answers but of it doesn't add up to anything for them. Was I pregnant, yes. Was Isabella a product of me and my husband, yes. Was she alive, yes. Is she biologically my daughter, yes. Is she biologically your granddaughter, yes. All these questions, yes, but if I asked them they would probably say they aren't grandparents. They talk about when we have children, when they will have grandchildren. It's something that might happen someday. Isabella and Sean don't count. I feel like they are hypocrites because they are the type of people to be "pro-life" but if it's a miscarriage then it's no big deal?? That doesn't make sense to me. I don't like hearing about it being God's will. That's like saying God intended for me to hurt this much. I could take it even further and wonder if they think I should or am being punished for something. There are no answers. Only more questions.