Just Some Thoughts

I am not really sure how to make all of my thoughts flow in this post so I am just going to number off some of the things going through my head this week.

1. I started back to work this week and it was very hard. Come Wednesday morning, I had a royal breakdown in my boss' office. Now, I am not saying I just started crying in front of my boss. Oh no, and besides, she has seen that plenty of times so that is no big deal! I am talking sobbing-snot-dripping-out-of-my-nose-voice-cracking-crazy-person-about-to-lose-it-big-time breakdown! It was humiliating! Michelle (that's my boss) decided that it would probably be better and easier for me if I eased back into work. So, starting today, I will be working from 8am to 1pm for awhile, just until I feel like I can "rejoin the real world."

While I welcome the chance to go home and be alone with my thoughts and my grief and my sweet Ruby (that is my dog), I can't help but feel defeated...like I am admitting that I am not strong enough or capable enough to get through what used to be a normal day for me. That is what is so humiliating to me. But honestly, I cannot fake-it and pretend like I am just fine all day until I get home. Maybe one day I will be strong enough to do that but I am nowhere near that strong these days.

2. I hate that some people do not even know about what has happened to me. At work, one of the ladies in the warehouse told me she thought I had quit since she hadn't seen me in awhile. So, I had to tell her where I had been and do you think that I could tell her without crying? Absolutely not...Another girl, a girl I was in choir with in high school, ran into me on Tuesday and she asked me, "Isn't your sister pregnant?" to which I had to reply with the truth...it was me...I lost him...

Which leads me to my next number:

3. Being a twin adds a whole different element to my story. People that run into me see that I do not have a baby-bump, just the leftovers of one!, and they assume that it is Sarah, my twin sister who is pregnant. They then proceed to ask me about her and her pregnancy and I have to tell them it was me, not Sarah. Quite a few people have gone up to Sarah and hugged her and started crying, etc., thinking that Sarah is me and Sarah doesn't know what to say. Does she tell them they have the wrong one or does she just let them think she is me? I feel sorry for her because she gets some of the stares mean't for me...she gets a glimpse, be it ever so small, into this dark place I am in these days.

I just wish none of this had ever happened and I was still pregnant with my Jonah, anxiously awaiting May 4, the day I would finally get to meet my sweet, healthy baby boy. It just seems so unreal to me sometimes that this is really my life, filled with such sorrow.

Creeping Up

It is crazy how it just creeps up on you. You can make it through a couple of hours or even a couple days and think that everything is going to be just fine, you will rise above, and then there it is...that knot in your stomach. It starts out there, you all of a sudden feel sick to your stomach as it gradually creeps up to your throat and swells into this enormous lump and you find yourself gasping for air. Then the tears come, the unexplainable tears...and it is all you can do to find a wall, the floor, the bed, anything to hold you up when the wailing begins.

This has been my morning...crying and watering flowers in my yard and then crying some more and then washing some clothes and then crying some more...and it goes on and on and on. I honestly think to myself sometimes that I will be able to make it in this life and I will be able to find some sort of semi-joy again but then the sadness, the loss, the ache just creeps up and reminds me that who am I kidding? My firstborn son was taken from me. I will never get to hold him again. I will never not ache for him, not tomorrow, not next month and not in the years to come. I will never understand why I did not deserve to be Jonah's mother, here on earth. I will never understand why I got to plan and consume myself with my Jonah for almost seven months, never to get to follow through with any of it.

I can't even explain half of the tears when they do creep up. For just no reason at all, I can't keep myself composed, I just have to let it out. I wonder what Jonah is thinking up there in Heaven as he looks down on me...she needs to be stronger...wow, she really did love me and want me more than I realized...will she ever be okay?...I'm really trying to get through this but it is much too much for me sometimes, sweet Jonah...much too much.

Six Weeks

So, it has been six weeks since I delivered my precious Jonah...six miserable weeks. I feel like I am making it through the days a lot better than I was at first but as soon as I think I am doing okay, I have a breakdown and it all comes crashing down. Since my last post, I have started my period for the first time since delivery, braved Wal-Mart in my hometown (!) and I have been to a specialist to discuss what happened to Jonah.



I went to a Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist, Dr. Willis, in Tallahassee on Tuesday. This trip to Tallahassee was awful...me and Aaron could not find the doctor's office so we fussed until we walked into the waiting room. Once we got in there, this pregnant lady and her husband were sitting across the room from us and I promise you that this lady stared me down the WHOLE time. I was seconds away from asking her what she was looking at when the nurse called my name. Me and Aaron followed the nurse to a room with a big, high-tech ultrasound machine. I sat down in a chair and the nurse said, "You can get on the table," as she started to put her latex gloves on. I asked her why and she proceeded to tell me that I was going to have an ultrasound. I kept asking her why and then I told her, "I'm not pregnant." She looked at my chart and said, "Oh, you're a non-pregnant consult" as if I didn't know that. Seriously, I didn't need her to remind me. So, by this time the strong woman I was determined to be for this doctor's appointment went into hiding somewhere deep inside of me. The nurse then took me and Aaron to Dr. Willis' office and closed the door. While we waited for the doctor, I just busted out crying telling Aaron, "So much for not crying through this whole thing!" as he grumbled about the nurse and how this was a "specialist's" office. Dr. Willis was very professional and thorough. He was really nice and decided to order a bunch of blood work (10 tubes of blood!) so that we can rule out some things. I went yesterday to LabCorp in Valdosta to have the blood drawn and we should hear back about all of it within two weeks. If the blood work does not show anything, then we are back where we started, with no answer. If the blood work does show something, hopefully we can treat whatever it is and I will never have to lose another baby in the future. I really want some answers because A.) I think I deserve that and B.) I need to know that this will not happen again before I even consider getting pregnant again.

I am really sad that my maternity leave is over after this week. I go back to work on Monday, March 19. I am SO dreading going back to the place that I used to go everyday. I would sit at my desk everyday, my mind consumed with thoughts of this little tiny baby boy that was going to change my whole life and I kept my hand on my stomach, almost as if I was trying to will Jonah to move so that I could feel this little creation of me and Aaron's. I would search Pinterest and Etsy all day long if I had nothing else to do, trying to find all sorts of things for Jonah....I can't do that anymore. I can't pass the time each day waiting for Jonah because he is not coming and I'm pretty sure everyone would start talking about me if I kept at it like nothing has happened to Jonah...the guys upstairs would probably run and tell my boss that I needed psychiatric help.

I just feel like the whole world should have stopped...I mean, my baby boy DIED before I could ever meet him! To go back to work and my old routine is going to feel like I am continuing on and that is absurd to me. My life kinda stopped the moment I was told that Jonah's heart was not beating....my heart stopped beating and I have no idea how on earth I am going to be able to fake-it.

Jonah, I had no idea how much you really were going to change my world....I can't stand the thought that you are gone from me my sweet baby boy. Oh, how I love you so!

What I Lost

So, if you were to ask Aaron what I do all day, he would probably say that I go to the YMCA and then come home and read blogs by people who have had stillbirths the rest of the day. He is not entirely correct but I do find myself reading those kind of blogs all throughout each day.

Anyway, I was reading one of those said blogs this morning and the topic of this lady's post was realizing what exactly it was that she lost when she gave birth to her stillborn son. This lady put it so perfectly and it got me thinking. So many times when a person is grieving, people surround that person immediately and as soon as the funeral and all is over those people are gone. Over the next few weeks people send cards and flowers on occasion but then suddenly that stops, too. It is almost as if everyone else is over your grief, you should be, too. But this is not the case when you lose your child, the child you never got to know. No...this grief I believe follows you around for the rest of your days, like a shadow that covers everything you try to do.

I was outside with Ruby and I started thinking about what exactly was it that was so horribly sad about the death of my poor Jonah. It is sad that I had to carry Jonah for almost seven months, not knowing that I would never get to bring this sweet baby home. It is sad that all of my future plans, that already had him in them, were just snatched from me. It is sad that I had to bury my child...I mean, pick out his plot, casket and headstone...and I am only 25 years old. All these things are devastatingly sad, but the saddest reason of all is that I will never get to watch Jonah grow up. I will never get to stop grieving over my Jonah because I did not only lose my 26 weeks and 6 days old baby boy, I lost my terrible two-year old, I lost hearing the innocent little prayers of my four-year old, I lost my nine year-old little boy who thinks all girls have cooties. I also lost my 15 year old child and the nervous wreck that he would make me while learning how to drive. I lost my 21 year old son, who is just getting out on his own. I lost my 25 year old son who just married the love of his life. I not only lost my son at all of those different ages and stages of life, I lost the relationship I would have formed with his wife and children, my grandchildren. I lost the chance of seeing the look on Aaron's face as he sees his first-born son learn to ride a bike, catch a fish and hit a home-run to win the game. I lost watching Jonah and Ruby play together everyday, forming a bond that only they could. I will never get to know if Jonah's hair would have stayed dark brown like mine or turned white-blond like Aaron's was when he was little. I will never get to know if Jonah's eyes were electric green like his daddy's or dark brown like mine. Would he have the same wit and charm as his daddy or would he be sappy and serious like me? Would he have been a "Mama's Boy" or a "Daddy's Boy"? There is so much I will never get to know.

I may reach a point when I can go around town to crowded restaurants, etc. and not be scared that I am going to break-down or that someone I know will be there and say something to me so I lose my composure...I do not see that day in my near future. But, all the same, I know that day will come, no matter how far away it is. But I also know that I will always be sensitive to this loss...always. I know that even after I am in a "better place" in my life, I will still have days and moments when the sorrow is just too much to bear and the tears will flow, relentlessly. For you see, I will have just lost my son, only each time he is not the baby boy without a heartbeat...each time he is my Jonah, at a different point in his life and I am sad that I can't see who he would have been.

I miss you, Jonah and I love you oh so much!