{"id":2596,"date":"2009-12-20T17:22:25","date_gmt":"2009-12-20T21:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/?p=2596"},"modified":"2009-12-20T17:22:25","modified_gmt":"2009-12-20T21:22:25","slug":"navigating-this-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/?p=2596","title":{"rendered":"Navigating this land"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, a fabulous post by Tash is up on Glow In The Woods<\/a>. Infertility and baby loss.<\/p>\n

::<\/p>\n

I find myself not mourning much as I go through this, retracing the steps that I’ve taken once before with a baby who never came home. I don’t have many flashbacks, and the joy I feel at reaching these milestones once again are not overcome with shadow sadness. Actually… feeling the joy now makes me remember the joy I had with Devin. I excitedly tell people how similar this or that is to my first pregnancy. I remember<\/i> how this felt. It helps me feel closer to Devin’s memories.<\/p>\n

But at the same time, I find myself kind of hoping for a girl this time around. It’s easier for me to picture a girl than a boy… I think when I think about a little boy the lines start to get a little blurred. A girl is different, separate. Early on this pregnancy I took out all of Devin’s baby clothes and sorted them into “neutral” and “boy” clothes. Giving the baby the neutral clothes is easy. But the boy clothes… that’s harder. I’m not sure if I’m ready to have another little boy… but at the same time I want one to fill that void.<\/p>\n

Of course we will find out next week and will be thrilled either way. I’m just excited to know, to give it a name, to start using pronouns and stop with this he\/she\/it thing.<\/p>\n

I will be 19 weeks when we find out boy or girl, and to me that seems appropriate. There was a reason I didn’t want to find out earlier, and yes I think it was holding myself back from bonding quite that intimately too soon. 20 weeks is the cut-off, that medical divider between miscarriage and stillbirth. There is something in my head holding back a little bit until that point – or at least, until this point, I think we’ve gotten there sooner than I expected. Now that I can feel the baby moving around all the time, I think my heart is lost regardless. If this baby were to die now I would choose another labor and birth, it would get its name. It is<\/em> my second child.<\/p>\n

It is horrible that I even need to think those things, to plan for death even while we hope for life. But that’s just what happens after such a loss, you start making contingency plans. I find myself doing that even with my husband, my marriage. I layed in bed last night and found my mind wandering, planning where I would live, what I would do with the pets, if something happened to Den. And it wasn’t in a panicky, anxious kind of way, either – it felt like I was planning my meals for the next day, running through a checklist and comparing different options. Then I realized what I was doing and felt slightly foolish – but only slightly. Like I said, it’s just something that I do now. And if it helps me to feel a little more secure to have such a contingency plan in place, if only in my head, so be it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, a fabulous post by Tash is up on Glow In The Woods. Infertility and baby loss. :: I find myself not mourning much as I go through this, retracing the steps that I’ve taken once before with a baby who never came home. I don’t have many flashbacks, and the joy I feel at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28,380,379,375],"class_list":["post-2596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-blogland","tag-contingency-plans","tag-gitw","tag-joy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2597,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596\/revisions\/2597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}