Last night I didn’t sleep very well. I went to bed when Den did, which is to say I turned off my laptop and attempted to sleep. Attempted being the case. It wasn’t even that I wasn’t tired, or that I wasn’t almost falling asleep… it was that my mind kept drifting back to that day. That morning. That ultrasound. Why I was thinking about it, I just don’t know. But all night, over and over again the phone calls, the picture, the feeling of walking around with the weight of the earth pulling at my belly, my dead baby inside. I normally don’t fixate like that… I have lots of fleeting thoughts, memories, sure… but normally I can acknowledge them and let them go. Last night I just could not.

I wasn’t sad so much as I was… anxious. I could feel myself floating right near the edge of a panic attack. I could feel the anxiety pressing in on me. I guess, maybe what was worst for me wasn’t the knowledge that my baby was gone… but rather that time of transition, of upheaval… imminent death. When my mind is replaying those scenes it takes me back there while a voice is saying, God no, not again.

I finally did fall asleep, and I thought that would be the end of it… but no. I woke up half an hour before my alarm was set to go off, my brain still swirling. I just felt like crying at that point… not out of grief, but out of frustration. I did go to work and got some things done, but not only was my heart not in it, my brain was nowhere to be found. I was tired, frustrated, on edge. I went home early, knowing I’d have to go back in tomorrow to finish everything I didn’t get done.

And here it is, 2:40am. Still awake. I’m a little bit tired (I was exhausted all day, then night comes around and I’m right back where I started). But I think the main thing preventing me from turning off this computer and trying to sleep is the fear that those thoughts will all come crashing down on me again. And I just really really don’t want another night like that.

I’m not one to be at all fond of medication – in fact, I don’t ever recall a time, other than when I was ill, when I wished I had a sleeping pill to take. Tonight I do. I need some damn sleep… the peaceful, restful kind… not the kind that leaves you wishing you were still unconcious.