Today is 3 months since Mary was born silent. Monday will be when she was supposed to be born pink and screaming with bright blue eyes and whispy blonde hair. Or at least that's how I imagined it. I haven't been sleeping well. I never started counseling like I said I would. When I feel ok, I don't think I need it and when I feel rotten I can't be bothered to call. I feel like I'm climbing a mountain with no rest and little oxygen.
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God and I aren't really talking right now, so I appreciate any prayers you can scrounge up for me, Veronica. Remembering our babies with you.
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Well Mary's due date came and went. I do feel a little different. Not sure if it's better or not. Just different. Instead of missing feeling her inside me I'm now missing what I thought having a newborn would be like. It's a little bit more of a wistful feeling. My main issue now is not sleeping through the night. I've only had one night where I didn't sleep at all, but I'm not one of those people who only need 4-5 hours. Months now of getting well under 8 are taking their toll.
I've finally started the process of seeing a therapist. Hopefully that will help.
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I saw my therapist for the first time today. She knows nothing about babyloss. I even had to correct her after she kept calling Mary's stillbirth a miscarriage. But she thanked me for it. I like her, I think. Her specialty is trauma which is appropriate enough. And she's just got a nice way about her that made me very comfortable and at the same time I don't think she's going to let me get away with the "I'm fine" BS that I've been giving out to everybody else. We decided that medication is probably good idea for me at this point. I also decided to go with a psychiatrist instead of my regular physician. I'm a little scared of meds and feel that a specialist will be safer and more efficient at finding the right drug or combination of drugs. Oh, and I now have a diagnosis! It amuses me in a way. "Mybabydiedandithurtslikehell" is good enough for me. But she calls it adjustment disorder with anxiety and depression. I looked it up and it fits well enough. Part of the description does say, "having a stronger reaction than would be expected" which bothers me a little bit, but given that I told her that I was pretty sure I was going to start having panic attacks and/or stop getting out of bed in the morning soon if we didn't do something it may be a fair assessment. I just hope going the psychiatrist route won't be too horribly expensive. We're thinking about buying a house and not really sure we can really afford it and the tension knot in my chest has relaxed just a bit so I should just stop this line of thought now before it tightens back up again.
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What a difference a month can make. I had my last counseling session today. The knot of anxiety is gone and I'm sleeping through the night. It's so wonderful to be able to fall asleep and stay asleep until morning! I guess I'm fortunate that the wait list to see a psychiatrist in this town is so long. I had the chance to get better on my own without the meds. Not to say I didn't need them, because I probably did. But I don't feel like that any longer.
My longing for Mary is more like a constant buzz in the back of my mind than this sea of grief that I'm drowning in. Well, most of the time.The 30th of each month still has me right back reliving the day she was born. But the rest of the time I'm mostly ok.
I definitely have mixed feelings about feeling better. (What a crazy place this babylostness is!) Shouldn't I be completely broken forever? Isn't she worth that? But her legacy can't be that. If anything I have to live the best life I can in honor of her. Someday when I win the Pulitzer or the Nobel Peace Prize or something I can say, "This is for my Mary. She was beautiful and perfect and she gave me the strength and perserverance to do this thing. I'm sorry the rest of you never knew her." Ok, that's probably never going to happen but if I can dream about it, then maybe that's a small start.