Whew.

Today, I feel better. I needed to vent yesterday, needed to cry, and for just a minute, stop holding my world together with emotional duct tape. I feel better now.

Today, I feel better enough, that I am going to drag Evan to our friend's house, who is 27 weeks pregnant with twins, and clean her house for her. She started contracting last week, and is now on bed rest for hopefully the next 8 weeks. I want these babies to come into the world healthy and without weeks in the NICU. I want that for their parents, who are good friends to my husband and to me, and we love them completely. So, I will tote my vacuum and cleaning supplies like a Happy Maid and go clean their house and scrub their bathrooms to help. I'm thinking it might be easier to just hire them a cleaning service, but we're broke with gas prices and all that. So I will clean someone else's house- one of the great sacrifices of friendship.

Now, with yesterday's post, you may think I will have a breakdown of sorts at her house, but I won't. I'm able to separate my pain from other people's joy. A good friend of mine just had his baby, a little girl, named Rileigh Elyse. She was born Wednesday, and he called me with all the details. My heart soared when I heard she was born, and was here and was beautiful. I got all choked up thinking of my friend, holding his new little baby in wonder, like you tend to do. But it was a happy-for-him tear up, not a sad-for-me tear up. Yesterday's rage was stemmed from a dark place, not a happy one. I can separate.

A couple weekends ago, we went to my nephew's 1st birthday party. It was adorable and fun, except for the fact that my dad, ever oblivious to other people's feelings, failed to tell his entire family that I miscarried. And I wore an empire cut shirt to the party. Stupid me. So I had to field all sorts of "how are you feeling?", "you are still so small!", "hi, baby mama!", "so when is the due date?"- without losing my mind. And I muddled through just fine. But this week we would've had our gender scan ultrasound for that pregnancy, and things like that hit me like a ton of bricks and take my feet out from underneath me.

But, I am better today, and though I don't know if we will just take a break for a while or not, I can just go forward. I've got other shit to do today- a business to run, a son to care for, a house to clean, a bank to ream out- you know, the day to day stuff that gets forgotten when you obsess about a pregnancy test. But thanks for listening to me yesterday. I don't really put this stuff out there to be read by anyone, but more as a journaling tool for me to get things out of my head. But I still appreciate you being there. I always do.

Another One Bites The Dust

So, you may recall I joined an online support group while trying to conceive, and it totally helped me get through the miscarriage. I'm thinking now I may have to take a break.

There are 9 women in the group, and 6 of them are now pregnant. None of them were when I joined them less than a year ago. Three of us have gotten pregnant and miscarried. Three of us have gotten pregnant and stayed pregnant. One of the three miscarriages just announced she's pregnant again a few minutes ago, the second cycle after her miscarriage. I want to be happy for her, I really do, but I cannot be. I'm jealous. I'm sad. I'm furious at my damn body for miscarrying, though my brain tells me there was probably good reason.

I hate that I feel this way, that I feel like a failure in my own skin for something that comes so easy to others. I feel like I shouldn't be so hard on myself for something I cannot really control. I hate that I cannot really be happy for someone who has been so supportive of me and everyone else in the group. I hate all of it.

I hate this whole trying to conceive piece of shit business as I sit here with cramps the size of Texas and the need to tote tampons to the ballgame today. I must have peed on a million pee sticks again this month, because my cycles are still fucked up from the miscarriage, and now I go 16 days past ovulation instead of 14, giving me false hope that maybe, just maybe, this is it. But it isn't. It wasn't. And it fucks with my head in a way I've never had to deal with emotion.

I think I just need to be done. Resign to the fact that it may never happen. Because it hasn't happened in two years time, and the one time we got close, the hopes and dreams slipped away in a cruel twist of fate. I fucking hate this. And I'm still terrified and always will be terrified that if it happens again, if I get to see two lines on a pregnancy test, that they will slip away as well.

I hate it.

Pictures of My Heart

He is my heart. Need I say more?