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We baked cupcakes here last night. It was Monkey's half birthday, and I promised her last year, after spontaneously doing one for JD, that we would start doing half birthdays as a matter of policy. Of course, we then equally spontaneously skipped mine, but who's counting. It was a lovely affair, the half-birthday, and it made my daughter happy way out of proportion to the effort required. But I am not so much talking about her half-birthday as the fact that it was sandwiched, not unexpectedly, between two other days.

Sincere thanks to everyone for your kind words and advice. I am feeling MUCH better today. I will definitely have to work on letting others know what I need from them. My husband has said the same thing. And we do have friends and family who have been very supportive.

I am so thankful to everyone here on Glow. I've lurked on boards for heart babies but I can't relate to the relentless optimism and "god has a plan" attitude, which I get in real life too. One of the nurse supervisors, trying to comfort me, said "don't be scared, he will be ok." wtf?! I snapped back at her "you don't know that, you can't say that"--really, what a riduculous thing for her to say. How was she ever made a supervisor? I'm so sick of hearing it will all be ok when things just keep getting worse and worse.

Pregnancy and living child mentioned)

Steph, I'm with Julie. The post in question would be perfectly appropriate for you to claim as your own. Perhaps you can turn your hurt into an opprotunity to teach others how you want to be treated - as the mother you are.

Yep, I've had my son referred to as an "it" straight to my face. Actually not too long ago. Pretty ugly thing to say. I corrected her and took it as an opportunity to tell the woman about George's life and death. Then I shrugged it off. This particular person is incredibly insensitive and for her it was just normal behavior so I was able to ignore it pretty well.

Sorry you had to be audience to that. Perhaps her "spirituality" was clouding her sensibility. I actually often find that the insensitive things people say almost always tend to be clouded in pseudo-spirituality.

I hardly ever post here these days but reading this made me swell up with anger. What a presumptuous ass this person is. Ugh. I have found that in the last two years since my son died it is the "godly" and "righteous" who have said the dumbest, meanest, stupidest shit to me. It is so easy to sit in judgment of someone when not living in their situation. You are doing the best you can and your children are not somehow suffering because you are grieving the loss of their sibling. Shame on this person.

I realize that this is not the kind of response you were looking for with the prompts you left at the end but I just need to say something, I don't know if this is the right place to do it so I'm sorry if I am violating the point of all this....

UGH, Mandy, I am so glad you posted this. I don't even want to leave my house, go on Facebook, or spend time with anyone because I am afraid I wil hear those happy words spoken yet again. 2 cousins, 3 "close" friends, 2 high school friends... I feel like it's a personal insult, as though they planned it to be a slap in my face: HAHA, your baby died, but WE can have a baby and YOU CAN'T!! Which of course, isn't true. We're all in our 20s and 30s- of course people are getting pregnant.