I got some new books to read, some easy chick-lit that hopefully would be a nice escape. Going through books I immediately tossed out any that involved dealing with small children or pregnancy. No thanks. I settled on one that revolves around a single woman struggling with her weight. That sounded safe enough.

So I’m reading along, finding it a well-written book, I’m enjoying the humor and sharp wit and the story. Then something happens in the story and I start getting a little prickly feeling. No, no, I think. I’m just paranoid. That’s not what this book is about. But then the story was leading up to something and that dread feeling just got worse. It was no surprize when it was revealed.

Can you guess? Can you? Yeah, the single protagonist is pregnant. By accident.

Now I’m thoroughly irritated because I really want to finish the damn book, I’m already halfway through, but it’s not so much of an escape now. I’m really really hoping that somehow this author can work around this whole pregnancy thing without making the book All About Pregnancy, because then I’ll have to put it down and that would piss me off further.

Also, today I ran to the grocery store today really quick to pick up some ingredients for dinner. Middle of the day, the store was not very busy. But yet I managed to run into two women pushing shopping carts that were holding a wee baby in a carseat. I want to start pulling coke cans off the shelves and lobbing them like grenades, yelling, Go away!! Leave me alone!! I don’t want to see your cute little baby. I don’t want to see you happy. I don’t want to see how frickin easy it is for normal people.

In this phase of my life I just seriously want to pretend that anything baby does not exist, unless it’s regarding Devin, Kel’s boy Daniel, or SIL’s baby H. Those three things I can handle, most of the time (though there are still times when I come across something of Devin’s that makes a pit in my stomach just ache emptily). Sometimes I can handle other friends’ babies, depending on my mood. But strangers? Random baby things in the world that seem to serve no purpose except to show how easy it is to have babies for everyone but me? Those I’m almost never okay with. New pregnancy announcements? Not good with those either. I live in a constant state of fear that a friend will unexpectedly announce that they are pregant. And here I thought I handled that poorly before we got pregnant. Ha. I had no idea how bad it could get.

Now even characters in books are unexpectedly getting pregnant when I least expect it.

I am really hoping that when I get pregnant (again) I can get over this bitterness (again). It never entirely went away the first time, though I was so full of joy that the negativity was a blip in my radar. Now? No joy. Lots of angry bitterness. I’m not so certain that’s ever going to heal.

I’ve seen on forums people giving warnings about “triggers.” I understood conceptually, but not personally. Reading about another’s circumstance never made it worse for me. My pain was separate, unconnected.

Tonight I understand.

The rest of that book was indeed about pregnancy. I couldn’t not finish it, even though I kept telling myself it would be better to just leave it alone. But I was so close to finished so I kept reading, though a little faster than usual. I figured the book would have a happy end – and it did – but not without a major pregnancy issue that resulted in a scary preemie birth. My first thought when reading as the shit went down was, oh no, if the baby dies… I don’t want to read that, I don’t want to deal with that. But when it became apparent that the baby was going to live and everything was going to end in a sunshiny happy family moment I got very angry. Books always do that… major bad things happen, but everything is okay in the end. The baby never dies in books. But that’s not how real life is. Guess dead babies don’t make good stories.

The worst part was reading the part after everthing was coming around and reading about the protagonist’s wonder with her baby daughter, all the little things I will never get to know like the funny sounds they make, the way they flail around awkwardly. I skipped those parts. But it stuck in my mind.

I was excited tonight because the season finale of House was on. (If you haven’t seen it yet, do not read any further, spoilers in action.) I excused myself from my conversation with my dad, got some food, and settled on the couch to read.

Here’s the big spoiler: someone dies. And I. Fell. Apart. Watching the loved one break up as he hears the news, as he watches her die, watching him sob in gut-wrenching grief… It was too much for me. It was no longer about the TV show’s characters. I’ve cried for characters before, but I cried for them, not for me. All those pregnant and baby thoughts from the book were still lingering in my mind, and they combined with the grief bubbling up due to the show. I broke down sobbing, feeling like my heart was breaking all over again.

I know I have to go through this grief over and over to get to the other side. But there is no word for how much it sucks. I feel like I’m drowning in despair. I know at this point that it is possible to have good days, happy days. But on days like today none of it seems to matter. The whole preganncy seems like a dream, as do good days and future plans. All I know is what I do not have right now. My son is buried in a graveyard instead of being in my arms.

I am downsizing my life. For the first time in years I am finding myself spending hours outside, or at work, or watching TV… without being near a computer. I haven’t been catching up very well on my forums. I have even gotten behind in my blog reads since Vegas. I am still checking a few things, but I’m really seriously cutting back.

With blogs and journals I’m cutting back to those that I check frequently, whom I feel aquainted with, instead of lurking on tons of them. I just don’t have the energy to stretch myself thin. If I’m going to do something I want to invest myself into it. I want to create more real friendships and connections to other people, instead of skirting around the edges. (Unfortunately there are more than a few blogs/journals of people whom I really do feel a friendship with, but I can’t read it without getting emotional because of baby talk. So I hope those people don’t feel like their friendship isn’t important to me.)

On my forums I am unsubscribing to a lot of random forums, especially parent/baby-related. I was hanging on to them… why? I’m not sure. I couldn’t let go, even after I lost Devin… I wanted to keep hanging around that world. But as I slowly find new hobbies, new interests, I’m able to let go of those things that cause me pangs of sadness. I’m able to stop hanging around places that remind me of what I’ve lost. I hope to go back to them someday, when they stand for things in my future again, rather than things in my past. But for right now there is no purpose for me to be reading threads about baby bottles or cool playmats.

I’ve been spending a lot of time at work. Tuesday I got to work at around 10, stayed until a meeting at 6:30, and didn’t get home until 9. Wednesday I got there at 11 and stayed until 6:30. Today I was there from 12 until 2. Tomorrow I plan to be there all day again. I’m not even getting paid for all of the hours that I’m there, I get paid for 10 hours a week, the rest is volunteer. But I go because… well, I enjoy it. I am currently re-doing all their paperwork procedures, creating new forms, re-organizing all their files… it’s a lot of fun to me. I love to organize paperwork. And they are really really happy about that.

Less computer time combined with sleeping less have given me a lot of free time, even despite all the time I’m spending at work. It’s weird having so much time in a day.

::

My gardens are doing well enough. I am discovering I have preferences for things. (Who would have thought I’d not only plant things, but have a preference about what to plant? Ha.) I currently definitely have a fondness for my veggie plants. I feel like growing something for a season in order to get fruit is… rewarding. Fun, if you can call it that.

With few exceptions (my strawberries, which happen to be my only non-fruit that I planted, but they are located in my veggie garden) everything will give fruit and then die. You might think that would make me feel worse instead of better, but I really like the idea of starting fresh next year. I will be able to correct the newbie mistakes that I’ve made so far and will continue making. I can change the placement of plants, shuffle things around.

On the other hand, the flower gardens have been causing me a lot of anxiety. I don’t know where to put things! Take what I know about growing veggies, remove 9/10 of that, and that’s how much I know about growing flowers. My previous version of tending flower gardens was to tell my husband, “I like that. It’s pretty. Plant it.” And he’d do so. I would marvel from afar. So now I have to consider all these things… when they flower, what kind of light they do best in, what color they will bloom (so therefor what I should plant with it), how much space it needs, whether it’s an annual or perennial (and then I had to keep trying to figure out which one means “will come back” and which one means “will die”)… just walking through the nursery at the garden center has me wanting to grab my phone and call Den and screech, “Heeelllppp!” Flower gardens make me think I’ve jumped in way too far and am drowning.

My MIL, an avid gardener, said something to me that has stuck with me. When I expressed to her the anxiety around where to plant things and how to arrange them she said, “But you can always dig them up and move them.” I was all, “Oh, you can do that?” Smack forehead. Seriously, I didn’t know you could do that. I thought once you planted something it stayed there forever because if you touched it it will die. Or something. I don’t really know where my train of thought was going, but it obviously didn’t take into consideration the possibility of moving plants. I guess they are hardier than I gave them credit for. My plants just seem so darn delicate, I feel like just watering them will somehow kill them. (You should see my poor little flowers I bought, they all keel over when you get water on them. It makes me very nervous.)

I am learning that plants are living, growing things – not stationary decorations. They’re this weird in-between… you can’t move them around at will (which, with me, would be every day as I tweaked the arrangement), but you don’t have to commit to one placement for the rest of it’s life either. I think it’s good therapy for me. Even if it makes me twitch a little. Or, okay, a lot.

I’ve gotten used to grocery shopping. Today while in the grocery store I realized I wasn’t constantly thinking about how I used to be grocery shopping with a big pregnant belly. Enough time has passed that it’s not on my mind all the time; I feel more like me in my old body. Me as I am, not as I should have been.

However… however. It was friday evening and it was busy – way busier than I’m used to. (I usually do my grocery shopping in the mornings.) Lots of people meant lots of kids… lots and lots of kids.

I didn’t really notice at first. I’ve gotten good at turning my head to avoid looking, at tuning my thoughts out so I don’t hear a child babbling. I just hunker down behind my grocery cart and plod on quickly out of sight. But today there were just too damn many of them. Every time I turned a corner there were 5 year olds darting in front of my cart with siblings, or a 2 year old hanging onto his mother’s hand, wailing. I could tell it was wearing on me. By the end of my shopping trip I felt absolutely frazzled. I was trying not to forget anything off my mental list, but the chidrens’ cries and shouts were peircing holes in my concentration. I gripped my cart’s bar a little tighter, hunkered down a little lower. My eyes were fixed directly in front of me, trying not to look.

I was getting angry. Very bitter, very angry. All I wanted to do was buy food and get home to make dinner. That’s all… just some grocery shopping. But no, I can’t do this simple thing without being bombarded by taunts and reminders. Yet another child ran in front of my cart and I had the urge to ram my cart into him. So angry. Get out of my way. Leave me alone. Stop running around in a fucking grocery store. It’s not a playground. I didn’t, of course. I never would. But I’d be lying if I said the thought didn’t cross my mind.

As I stood waiting in the check-out line for the bored teenager to ring me up, a toddler in the next aisle over was screaming. The sound sat on my chest, pushing the breath out of me. “Peek-a-boo! Peek-a-boo!” said the mother. “Wha’s that? Nooo, baby don’t push the button. Silly baby! Silly baby!” The teenaged cashier handed me my receipt and thanked me. I forced a short, cold smile and fled.

Today I spent some time with pregnant SIL while the men were busy doing men things. She is getting exceedingly close to her due date – less than a week to go now. Her doctors will let her go a week overdue before bringing up induction (which is refreshing), so baby could still be another two weeks out. Hanging out with her just doesn’t bother me. I keep thinking that it “should,” all things considered. But it simply doesn’t.

I feel quite positive today, in fact. I feel like my next chance is lurking just around the corner, that I just have to be patient. I remind not to get too discouraged too quickly, as even superfertiles don’t always fall pregnant their first time out of the gate – SIL reminded me that I didn’t even get pregnant my first IVF. Patience. It requires patience.

I realized today, when I was thinking about being pregnant again, that I was thinking about Devin’s little sibling. I can’t remember me thinking about it like that before – I know I’ve mentioned to others briefly how our next baby will be our second, but in my head thinking about pregnancy was always a keening need to fill a void, to replace what has been lost. I wanted to be pregnant, but the thought of being pregnant with someone who wasn’t Devin was just… beyond comprehension, really. I knew it conceptually, but I couldn’t truly wrap my brain around it. I couldn’t conceive of a different child. I didn’t want a different child. So today it was a bit of a shock when I caught myself wondering what our next child is going to be like. And for some reason I am thinking girl… I keep picturing Kailet waiting next in line.

Yes, it is extremely extremely hard thinking about having a little girl, without Devin here to show her the way. It was supposed to be the two of them, Devin and Kailet… siblings. And they will be siblings… just not the way we ever pictured it. And that’s hard. It’s going to continue being hard. My entire next pregnancy is going to be hard, dealing with all the “firsts” a second time around. All those triggers, all those memories.

I realized when talking with my SIL today that I never actually got to see all the stuff we got for Devin. I did set up the stroller, because I wanted to see it and play with it, but there were several big boxes that we never opened: the crib, the carseat, the pack’n’play. I got a little bit sad looking at her things, wishing I had gotten to appreciate them before he died, before their existence was connected to loss instead of joy. We still have them all, because we plan to use them all again… but pulling them out will never again be a purely joyful, exciting event.

Maybe one of these days I’ll find my way into the garage, where they are kept, and open up the boxes. Just to see them… maybe to play with them a little. To remember what should have been.

I don’t think I have a link to Devin’s site from this blog, as it’s pretty much all the same info as I have posted here (I actually have more here – the other site was/is for my family). But I just added another page there: videos of me pregnant.

I have only one video of me walking and talking and being pregnant, and I was around 32 weeks at the time. But I also have two videos of my belly moving – of Devin moving. It took me over a month to be able to view and edit them, and I just now put them on a site for others to see. For me it is so bittersweet… I am SO HAPPY that I have them. Watching them reminds me of how wonderful it really was, reminds me that he existed. Reminds me of the good times we had.

But it also reminds me that he’s gone. I can’t help but cry when I watch. How could this have gotten taken away from us? It doesn’t seem possible. Two and a half months later and it still feels like some kind of horrible nightmare that I just haven’t woken up from. I feel like a shell, walking and talking and doing all the right things to get me through each day, pouring my soul into my gardens with a grim determination to try to find some sort of meaning to my life again. To find something work getting up for in the morning.

Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? I don’t know, I don’t know. Some days I’d do anything to remove this cloud from my heart… to make it stop hurting. But I never want to forget him. The grieving parent’s catch-22. There is no answer. But then again, there are no options either. It doesn’t matter what I want at any given moment, any given day. How I feel doesn’t seem to be affected by what I want. It happens regardless.

And that’s one of the many realizations, then kicks in the pants through this process, this change. All those self-help books that say you can make your life whatever you want it, you can acheive whatever you want to if only you try hard enough, if only you want it enough. But bereaved parents know better. Sometimes what you do or think or say means jack shit. You are the ant, life is a gavel. You can say all the positive mantras you want, you can love dearly and honestly, you can truly believe. You go squish anyways.

::

Today was SIL’s due date. Baby still hasn’t come yet. I am attempting to mentally and emotionally prepare myself – at least, as much as is possible. Part of me thinks it’ll depend on the hour and the day. Somedays I’m close to tears anyways; somedays I feel pretty positive. But the other part of me thinks it really doesn’t matter what kind of day it is, I’m going to have a break down anyways. It’s so… well, “hard” doesn’t really seem to appropriately describe it. Conflicting. My own grief anger at the world mixed with anticipation and honest well-wishes for my SIL.

Most of all I want to get this over with. Grief sucks, we all know that. Situations like this is like waiting for the salt, knowing it’s going to hurt. I want to run away from it and put it off as long as possible – I know just two weeks ago the thought of her going into labor early made me extremely panicked, like I wasn’t ready. And I’m still not ready, but I know the time is here. I want to work through it, deal with it, and move on with my life. I feel like I can’t move on until I’ve slogged my way through this. It might be easier than I expect, or it might be ten times harder – but the waiting sucks either way. I am scared. I am scared that it’s going to bring it all up again, watching and thinking about it. I am scared that it’s going to hurt as much as it’s ever hurt, and I just don’t want to feel that again. I am scared that I won’t be able to handle it, that it will somehow screw up my friendship with SIL. I am scared of this unknown future.

I really look forward to being at a point where I can look back on this time of my life, remembering how much it sucked but with a little perspective, a little separation from it.

Today I had the occasion to go up to my husband and say, “There is a pee stick in the bathroom. IT IS NOT A PREGANCY TEST. Repeat: it is NOT a pregnancy test. So please, don’t walk in there and freak out thinking I’m pregnant or anything.”

Yeah, I took an ovulation test. Haven’t used those darn things in over 2 years, but my body is totally playing psych! so I thought I’d use the few that were stashed in the cupboard just to see what’s up. End result: I’m no more enlightened than before, there was no blazing ovulation positive.

My body, you see, it’s all fucked up. I thought I had ovulated a week ago, I had some little ovulation pangs, plus it was around the right time. I guess I got way too complacent with my predictable body schedule. I stopped paying attention (since Den is constantly harping on me to stop obsessing over what my body’s doing). We also stopped having sex. Then today I notice my CM, well, it’s very… fertile-looking. It seriously took me a few seconds to realize I was looking at EWCM, I was quite confused for a while (boy, it’s been a long time). But there it was, staring at me and I’m all well, shit. So maybe my body hasn’t gotten back to its normal schedule. So I guess we’ll get back to the “dance” so we don’t miss any chances. Just in case.

This also means, however, that I can’t be expecting my period next week like I thought. That’s good, in a way… the dates are all fuzzy so I can’t be freaking out on one specific date like I used to (only to have AF show up the next morning). But it’s also longer to wait. Bugger.

I sure hope this works. I hope I hope I hope. But… okay, so there’s a part of me that is very cognizant that, based on LMP, if I got pregnant I’d be due mid-February. Before Devin’s birthday. I wonder how I would handle that… having another baby before a year has passed. So I remind myself of that, remind myself that planning and worrying is great but there are no guarantees, due dates aren’t guarantees either, so I need to just release it all and let nature take its course, however it will go. And I keep repeating that, so hoping I won’t be too disappointed if the first or second months don’t work. It’s all good, right? It’s all okay.

But shit the waiting sucks. This open-ended wait… with nothing to count down to, nothing to look forward to until another month on repeat. It just sucks.

This morning’s OPK revealed a different result: blazing OPK positive. And I pulled yesterdays out…. it darkened into an “almost positive.” So I guess that’s my answer.. I’m definitely ovulating now. Maybe that explains why I feel a little queasy, too.

But I’m not actually charting tempertures so now I am just hoping that I actually do ovulate and doesn’t psych me out again. I would be REALLY pissed if this cycle gets dragged out with several “almost” ovulations.

I’m really pissed about the whole goddamn situation. Earlier I wrote to some of my friends about just how angry I was…. this whole hope-anxiety-disappointment cycle. Like Rachel said… ovulation means hope, and hope really freaking sucks. I mean, I guess I have to have some hope or why even bother trying? These first few post-partum cycles are going to be the worst because in my head there’s actually a possibility (however slim) of me getting pregnant naturally. And in my past experience, hope just means a bigger punch in the gut later.