Mood Swings

I thought I was bad when I was pregnant with Naya. During that first trimester, Dan was so afraid to talk to me as he never knew if he would be dealing with a crying mess or exuberant mother-to-be. Although, I didn't really recall it at the time, my hormones were so out of wack, that I never know who I would turn into from one moment to the next. Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde was inhabiting my body. Luckily, it cleared up when I moved into the second trimester.

The feelings that I have now are actually quite similar. I am mostly a crying mess. Sometimes, I am an angry mess. Sometimes a lethargic mess. Sometimes a drunk mess. Sometimes a catatonic mess. I have, however, lost the exuberant part of me. She is long gone and it scares me that that part of me will never come back. I feel like I am just watching the game of life going on around me and I wonder if I will ever feel like playing in it again. My pain is so raw that even doing simple things like leaving my house and going to the grocery store involve way too much energy. Especially because I have to mask my feelings so I don't look like a crazy person. It is unacceptable to start breaking down in line at the grocery store (which I did) and start a conflict over the price of ground turkey (which I did too.) Sidenote: the people at Vons in Nipomo are not very nice.

I have spending most of my day, sitting at my computer in our home office. I do work most of the day and spend the rest of my time researching Sepsis and what happened to Naya. There is not a lot of information out there, especially because I'm looking for families that have gone through a similar situation. I have found some and most of their children pulled through because they were diagnosed very early on before even leaving the hospital. It makes me sad and mad but thankful that at least their children made it and they can offer me a little bit of information. Once the autopsy comes back, I can at least start trying to fit all of these puzzle pieces together rather the just connecting the edges.

I have also joined a number of online groups that deal with infant loss, since we have no physical groups in the area that are specific to infant loss. While these groups are helpful, some of them make me a little angry. Most sites lump miscarriages in with infant loss and I hate that. I don't, in anyway, want to discredit any pain that anyone might be going through but holding/touching/bringing home a seemingly healthy baby girl is so much different then losing a child in a first-trimester miscarriage. I saw her, I held her, I kissed her, I smelled the sweet scent of her skin and heard her cry. I have concrete memories of her laying in her crib, on my bed and in my arms. I physically saw the person she could have become. I have connected more with the SIDS parents even though they are going through a different struggle, as for the most part, their babies passed at home in their sleep and I had to sit through the hell ride of the NICU and watch my baby get sicker and sicker everyday. I realize that the end result is the same though - we have all lost a child that we desperately wanted and loved. We all feel empty and that part of us is gone and will never return. We are all part of this shitty club of child loss and it's one that we all would do anything to get out of. But we never can. We will always be parents who have lost a child. It happened and nothing can change that. We just need to somehow figure out how to possibly go on.