Almost a year

It's been almost a year now since Sebastian died. I hoped we'd be pregnant again by now, and maybe the pain would not be so intense for the first anniversary. But that's just not happening. I don't know why my body isn't working but that's life. All I know is that I miss him, I miss the life we should have had with him and I'm still trying to live life fully, to honor him. It really does feel like a hole in your heart that never heals.

To sum up what it feels like, I am posting a very personal, awful photo. This picture really represents what every day feels like inside me. The nurse took this picture for Mimi to have of her with SJ. She was kind of baby talking with him and I fell apart. My daughter was in the room at this time and had no clue what was going on. Everyone left right after this because I was so upset.

I'm not sure what else to say but just getting this out of my brain and onto a blog will hopefully lessen some of the intensity of my grief. I can always hope, right?

Tschus.

What I am really.

I love you all for saying how strong I am. I really do. But guess what? I am not strong. I am nothing amazing or extraordinary. I think sometimes people say I'm strong so they don't feel bad when they think about me. "Oh she's been through a lot, but she's strong." No, I'm not. I'm just a mom who lost her baby.

Many times I wish I was dead, in heaven with him. I would never hurt myself. I don't think suicide is an answer to all this, but I do wish at times that I was with him. And his sibling. I do not know what would have happened, had they both lived. But I think about them both every day. And wish I could turn back time. No matter what I did, nothing made a difference in the outcome. I never delivered a healthy baby. And now I have to live with the past, something that I think of every day when I wake up and every day when I go to sleep.

The first two weeks after his death I existed with the help of valium. Now I have xanax during really rough days. Some days, not very often but some, I indulge in alcohol. It seems the best way to get by is by being numb. The number the better. Oh, what a shitty mother I am! What a horrible wife, a terrible person! And why? Because I admit what I am? Admit my weaknesses, my faults? To do something awful in order to get by? So be it. I care not what others think anymore. I just need to get by for now until all that is raw and painful is dull. To be able to continue to fake it until I can make it. To pretend what has happened is not on the edge of every waking moment of every day. Because right now, he is there, in my thoughts, my dreams, my tears, my anger, my frustrations. And trying to be a wife and mother have been the most difficult things I've ever undertaken before. Trying to be something for everyone when I feel less than whole. And to try not resenting those demands.

So here it is, raw and in your face. This is what a family looks like a few hours after giving birth to a still born. The result of learning of the death, going through labor and then the aftermath. This is what loss looks like, what marital strife is, what the ultimate worst nightmare is for parents to experience. I am not strong. I am merely working to continue to exist right now.

Even in my sleep

As I've mentioned numerous times, I take sleep aids at night and have been for many years. Chronic insomnia is nothing to sneeze at. Some nights I fall asleep immediately and some nights it takes me an hour or more to finally wander my way into la-la land. Usually it depends on how empty my stomach is, which is a great incentive to not eat heavy suppers or have snacks late in the evening.

This morning while dropping off my daughter at daycare, I tried to recall what I had done before falling asleep last night. I remember our new "baby", the pit bull puppy, cuddling up to me on the bed. She often has her muzzle resting on my hip or leg during the night and I wondered if this was just a Zelda thing or a pit bull thing. So I Googled something to the effect of "are pit bulls always cuddly" on the Ipad. That's the last thing I remember until my daughter woke up crying, again, and crawled into bed with me.

I found time to take a nice soak in the bath today and decided to read a book on my Kindle app on the Ipad. After entering my PIN, Safari pops up and I see this:

Talk about a slap to the face. No wonder I woke up feeling sad. I guess I was looking for any source of comfort online because the pain is still there. It's still raw and heart-wrenching. I know I've been feeling empty again lately, like my arms are always searching for my baby to hold. I think "he would be X many weeks today if he was alive." He'd be sitting in that double stroller with his sister while we walk the dogs. He'd be cooing and smiling around now.

But he's not here. He's a faint memory to most people now. I don't know if there will ever be any more children. And if there are, will I heal just a little? Or will this pain and sadness still be this intense? Here's to hoping tonight is filled with dreams inspired by the Outlander books or about our upcoming trip to New Orleans. And now I have to cut off this post because a pit bull just crawled on my lap and typing is annoyingly difficult. Until my fingers meet keys again...tschus.

It Piles On

So preliminary autopsy results show possible Potter's Syndrome. They also found blood clots in the placenta and possible distress on the umbilical cord.

What I'm looking at is that possibly my baby died from a fatal fetal polycystic kidney disease. It could be a fluke when the egg and sperm met or it could be genetic. My husband and I could be carriers. I have a gut feeling that I'm a carrier. There is a link to this genetic disease and something I was born with, something that happened to me when I formed in my mother's womb: Mullerian Defect. My doctor found that in my uterus back in 2009. It's blogged in here somewhere, I am sure. Anyways, while my kidneys are fine, my uterus developed abnormally, with a wall inside of it, almost dividing it in half. There are other types of defects that this presents as but this is the one I had. I could be asymptomatic or just a carrier. I have no idea. We have to wait for the final autopsy results so this was all speculation from the pathologist at this point.

Now what about the clotting? It's possible the baby had some kind of issue with clotting or that it's me who is predisposed to clotting issues, meaning I could develop a thrombosis or embolism at some point. There are several kinds of clotting disorders and one is autoimmune related. I will need specialized testing to figure it all out and from what I understand, there are false negatives to deal with too. I guess I could need blood thinners or something. I have no idea. My head hurts so bad from crying and from sinus headaches. I hope I am cleared for sinus surgery later this month, but we'll see how this blood clot shit plays out.

This is what I'm dealing with now, on top of losing my son. Do we carrier this kidney gene in our DNA somewhere? Is it in my daughter too? What the hell is with this clotting stuff? I feel like it never ends. I do want answers for why my baby died but I am so tired of hearing additional diagnoses, and then to think my body passed something bad on to my kids. My body, this piece of shit that's both good and bad, did this. It's overwhelming but I want definitive answers. I pray I get them.