Petrified... that's the word I've been looking for
Tonight the right word finally came to me. Don't know what the hell took so long. I'd been thinking terrified was the word but it’s not quite right. Petrified really brings across the frozen, immobile, stuckness type of feeling.
I thought I’d be all brave and optimistic and refusing to be robbed of what will be hopefully my last pregnancy, for the third time. I was sadly mistaken.
I feel like I’m walking a tightrope and the safety net is so far down that I can’t even see it. The fall is the worst part. It starts with the part where you realize this is really f*cking happening and it’s not a hideous nightmare. It actually is a hideous nightmare but it’s real and it’s your life.
I don’t know what will happen to me if I have to see another dead baby. Crumpled up on an ultrasound? Tiny and brown and dead in my arms? Alien-looking in the palm of my mind? So many ways to experience the dead baby. Will I have to do it again? What will be left of me?
I haven’t been posting because I was waiting to work up a good angst-ridden diatribe. I haven’t quite achieved a diatribe here but I felt a responsibility to say something. If I’m not feeling utterly tormented then I have a hard time being motivated to post. Doesn’t seem like it would make for a very good read.
Anyway, my two blood tests last week were good; both HCG and progesterone doing what they were supposed to. I felt relatively okay for a few days afterwards, mostly just numb and this-doesn’t feel-real type of thing. Nice that that’s “relatively okay.”
The only things I know to be true are that I got pregnant and as of last week on Thursday my blood work looked good. But... the baby could be dead for a week now already.
My positive-attitude friend would be wigging if she heard this but sadly I know that it’s true. I had a dead baby in me for three weeks and I had no clue it was dead until I started spotting, three weeks after it died. My dead baby virginity was lost.
Once you know that your baby could’ve died three weeks ago and you won’t even know, it’s a little hard to get to sleep at night. I feel bad if three-week-old-dead-baby virgins are reading this. Please don’t read this. Please don’t know these things if you don’t have to. Why am I spreading this information around?
Actually I think I stopped posting last week after watching a godawful sad video tribute to a baby who died from GI problems at about 5 weeks. I knew I shouldn’t watch it but I couldn’t stop. As if I need other potential problems to catastrophize about? As if any of us do?
I’ve got to get to sleep. Hopefully the melatonin will work. Reading myself to sleep at 11 and waking up at 4:30 unable to get back to sleep is brutal.
I’m coming undone.
Sweet dreams.
I thought I’d be all brave and optimistic and refusing to be robbed of what will be hopefully my last pregnancy, for the third time. I was sadly mistaken.
I feel like I’m walking a tightrope and the safety net is so far down that I can’t even see it. The fall is the worst part. It starts with the part where you realize this is really f*cking happening and it’s not a hideous nightmare. It actually is a hideous nightmare but it’s real and it’s your life.
I don’t know what will happen to me if I have to see another dead baby. Crumpled up on an ultrasound? Tiny and brown and dead in my arms? Alien-looking in the palm of my mind? So many ways to experience the dead baby. Will I have to do it again? What will be left of me?
I haven’t been posting because I was waiting to work up a good angst-ridden diatribe. I haven’t quite achieved a diatribe here but I felt a responsibility to say something. If I’m not feeling utterly tormented then I have a hard time being motivated to post. Doesn’t seem like it would make for a very good read.
Anyway, my two blood tests last week were good; both HCG and progesterone doing what they were supposed to. I felt relatively okay for a few days afterwards, mostly just numb and this-doesn’t feel-real type of thing. Nice that that’s “relatively okay.”
The only things I know to be true are that I got pregnant and as of last week on Thursday my blood work looked good. But... the baby could be dead for a week now already.
My positive-attitude friend would be wigging if she heard this but sadly I know that it’s true. I had a dead baby in me for three weeks and I had no clue it was dead until I started spotting, three weeks after it died. My dead baby virginity was lost.
Once you know that your baby could’ve died three weeks ago and you won’t even know, it’s a little hard to get to sleep at night. I feel bad if three-week-old-dead-baby virgins are reading this. Please don’t read this. Please don’t know these things if you don’t have to. Why am I spreading this information around?
Actually I think I stopped posting last week after watching a godawful sad video tribute to a baby who died from GI problems at about 5 weeks. I knew I shouldn’t watch it but I couldn’t stop. As if I need other potential problems to catastrophize about? As if any of us do?
I’ve got to get to sleep. Hopefully the melatonin will work. Reading myself to sleep at 11 and waking up at 4:30 unable to get back to sleep is brutal.
I’m coming undone.
Sweet dreams.
posted by whatthef*ck at 9:17 PM
6 Comments:
It's a wonder you are still standing, let alone managing to get any sleep at all! And I think that "petrify" is a good word. The woodeness that holds us in check from feeling anything other than fear.
Thanks for catching us up. I went a month without blogging when the pee-stick showed positive. The words just weren't there. Then I started setting myself little blogging deadlines - simply because I knew I needed somewhere understanding to place my fear and concerns. I sometimes sit in front of Blogger with nothing to say (does it show in my posts? I'm afraid so...). But eventually some words come. And if I am lucky, they are words that need release.
Checking in on you often.
thank you.
i felt you all out there. there was a pull that finally penetrated my "woodeness." i'm glad i got a post up even if it was negative and probably just killed my struggling embryo.
i need a name for the little creature. maybe that'll help me connect and send the love that i am so afraid to feel.
I also check in on you often. Hang in there - one day at a time or one check-up at a time.
been thinking about you.
I can't imagine having the echo of all of this bouncing arouund inside my head.
It is just terrifyingly horrible. Really. Gaye started spotting about a fortnight ago. While we were on holiday - camping - away - from anywhere. It has stopped now - but it haunts me, has haunted me all through the holidays. She is having a ultra-sound tommorrow. She still has all her symptions so she is worried, but not too worried. But then she wasn't there (we weren't together) when my baby died. And although she knows it was horrible, and I know has been nervous all the way along that this won't happen, that we have been lucky enough...I don't think she truely understands the depth of my fear.
I have just been exactly that - wooden - go through the motions and trying to be supportive for the last 14 weeks, but when she told me she was bleeding something in me just froze
I am hoping that you are okay.
Hi - I emailed you.
d
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