The Good and yet the Bad

I'm awake early. On the couch reading blogs and listening to the new U2 album for the first time. It's my husband's birthday, his 30th. He's four years younger than me. I threw him an elaborate party Friday night, and most of his family came from across the country. I gave him an expensive gift yesterday, trying to forcefeed him happiness. I have wished him a happy birthday. And yet in the back of my mind I know that any happiness is also tinged with a heavy dose of sadness. I think about how young he is and why he has to walk this path of grief. Why so much sadness amid so much that is wonderful?

I often think about the strange mix of good and bad things that each individual experiences in life, seemingly at random in many cases. Sure, we make choices that direct aspects of cause and effect. And yet. Sometimes an instant of poor timing, bad luck so to speak, can wreck a life. Cause the death of a loved one, a permanent injury, heartache.

When I created this blog I was obsessed with the feeling of unluckiness. With the statistics. I thought of myself as unlucky, deeply so. Colden's death was the only thing I could see. I was looking at my life as a single event, an n of 1.

It's harder now. I can see both good and bad things in life, shades of gray, pink and orange. I know that as absolutely awful, gutwrenching, and life changing as his death was, is, and always will be, that it could be worse. Much worse. And yet there is so much that is good. We are in love, financially secure, reasonably healthy, and with loving family and friends. We live largely without the fear of physical danger.

I don't know how to navigate this juxtopisition of amazingly good things and terrible sadness. I don't want to feel sorry for myself or forget the depths of pain. I don't want to wallow at home and yet the rest of life feels like moving on, moving past. It feels like living. I often don't want to. And yet.

Not Okay

"It's okay."

Somehow I ended up uttering these words seconds after telling someone, a stranger really, that my baby died. It's the kind of thing that makes me believe that next my head is going to pop off my neck with a clean sucking plop and roll off my shoulder onto the floor.

I tutor high school students from time to time and I recently started working with a new girl, a friend of a kid I worked with last year. I expected the question about my baby, expected that they would have heard from A and her mom that I was expecting last year. But the question didn't come during our first appointment so there in the last minutes of our second appointment I was caught off guard. And there was no way this poor mother could have ever guessed she was about to stumble into a morass that would leave her babbling like a crazy woman.

I handled it pretty well. She asked about my baby and without tears in my eyes I managed to get out the awful words that he died. She panicked. A look of horror and embarrassment crossed her face, she mumbled something that might have been an "I'm sorry," and I said without thinking, "It's okay." Then she launched into a subject change so abrupt and rambling that I stood there listening for 3 or 4 minutes before I could jump in and make my escape.

Of course it's not okay. I was just trying to soothe the situation. They were just careless words intended to make her feel less embarrassed and panicked, but I still sat in my car shaking. I felt like I must sound like a horrible person. A person who could coldly discuss the death of her baby and brush him off with statements that imply that it's not a big deal, not a horrible, gut-wrenching, utterly devastating loss.

Today it's been 8 months since I held him in my arms the only time, and while I am here at work, functioning at least well enough to fool people, it is not okay.

Trying Again

I'm paralyzed by the thought of another pregnancy.

While in the hospital after giving birth to Colden, I said to my husband that we should try again immediately. A month or so later, when my mom said gently that she could understand my OBGYN's recommendation to wait 6 months, I got very upset and told her that she just didn't understand. At 3 months, when I went to the perinatalogist, I asked pointed questions about why we needed to wait 6 months to a year and what benefits that wait would provide. I was so impatient. I wanted to pretend like none of it ever happened. I wanted to replace him. I wanted him.

Something changed. Now it's been 8 months since I delivered Colden, and I am in limbo. I'm unable to seriously think about having another baby, especially unable to imagine either me or the baby surviving it. And yet I can't stop thinking about it either. I am thinking about it all non-stop. I relive the day of his birth in my day dreams over and over again. I imagine another pregnancy. I wonder what we'll do with his room when we eventually move. I look into foster care or adoption. I think all the time that it may be better just to never have living children. It all just spins around and around in my head.

But the thought of actually moving forward with planning a new pregnancy stops me cold. We're still actively preventing, and my husband the non-planner will never be the one to change that. I keep thinking that I'm 34, and I should try again, if that's what I/we want, and yet I feel utterly unable to move foward. How can I even think about what I want now when what I really want is gone so completely and inescapably?

Today I ordered a couple of books about pregnancy after stillbirth. That's the only step forward I can manage at the moment.

For those who are trying again, are pregnant again or have had another baby, how'd you get that far? What has helped you cope with the panic and fear of trying to get pregnant again?