Back to School

I am a Stay-at-Home Mom.  This was never the intention or plan for my life.  I always thought I would juggle a successful career AND being a mom.  Then I had my Hunter-Face.

I tried to return to school to get my Teaching Certificate when he was just 3 months old and I was miserable.  I missed him so much.  The stress of school and the stress of being a new mom about broke me.  I finished the semester and never went back.  Now I can't imagine someone else raising my boy and can't imagine being away from him for 40-50 hours a week.  I can't leave him even if being home makes me lonely, stir-crazy, squishy-brained, and generally crazy.

Last year, Hunter started preschool.  I was under 4 months from my due date when he started school 4 days a week for 2.5 hours a day.  I did not want him to go.  I did not trust these strangers with my baby.  But mostly, I felt like I was shipping off my Precious Boy to have another one.  Like I was done with him and moving on to Baby #2.  It did not feel good and there were many nights of sobbing.

This year, Hunter will return to preschool.  Tomorrow.  This year I still don't want him to go.  But this year I feel like taking a big yellow highligher to the fact that I will be alone.  Sitting around the house by myself.

This is not how it is supposed to be.  I am supposed to be home with a 8ish month old Riley.  WE are supposed to be waving goodbye to Big Brother.   Not just me.... lonely waving.

I miss him already.  I DO NOT want him to go.

Life Fail

I am 29 year old.  My life is almost half over.  I have done nothing worthwhile.  I have had no career, no business, no purpose.  My only accomplishment is birthing one healthy child who hates me, who I fail every day, who cries for daddy constantly and has for years.  I can't keep a house remotely clean, I cant play with my child.  I take him places because I can't make fun for him at home.  So I say to myself its okay that you have no career or purpose, you can make your kids your purpose and try to be a mom, but I keep killing them. I have no friends, no social outlets, no coworkers.  I sit upstairs because I don't know how to play with Hunter.  I don't see how the next 30 years are going to be an upswing at all.  Hunter is going to go to school then move on to life.  I have no career to go back to.  I have no experience to get a job with.  I play dumb things online because I have nothing else to do.  I lay up here as Hunter calls for me and hope, hope, hope he doesn't come up here and see this.  Please go downstairs buddy.  Don't walk in here and see me crying on the floor in a towel.   Im so lonely.  When you do all this shit, you lose friends.  When you only had 1 or 2 to begin with... that puts me down to 0.  I can't get the voices in my head to shut up and stop saying mean shit about me.
This has to go out into the universe somewhere.  It started out as a text to my husband, but that's too heavy.  A facebook update?  Yikes.   So here it goes for no one to ever see

Miracle Pregnancy and Other Mommies

I feel like all the air has been taken out of my sails.  I know this grief thing is a cycle, I know it's an up and down roller coaster, blah, blah, blah.

What exactly am I supposed to say to my friend of a new baby?  My initial reaction is pissed off, resentment, anger, and friendship annihilation.  This is SO unfair.  She was stupid, stupid, stupid in her birthing choices, yet her son is alive.  It's bullshit.

The news of her son's arrival came a quite a crappy time which didn't help me trying to process it.  I'm late.  My cloudy brain is keeping me from figuring out how many days I'm late.  5ish?  I had been trying to ignore it, but told myself on Monday that I could take a test Thursday if I still hadn't started.  Flash to Thursday morning 5am (see, you have to wait til first morning pee....).  Husband does not know I'm taking this test so I'm hiding in the bathroom, waiting those 3 minutes, trying to distract myself with my phone.  It's during those 3 minutes, that I read about my friend's son's arrival.  Then I get to see the negative pregnancy test and all that that conjures up.  Too much to process.  Crush.

I knew something had to be wonky.  I can't be pregnant.  The safety over the last month in this arena was pristine.  But I need a miracle pregnancy.  Crave it, need it, long for it, these words are not strong enough for my desire for some crazy miracle pregnancy.

What the crap is a miracle pregnancy?  It happens quite often; I am NOT talking about fertility issues.  I'm talking about that crazy pregnancy from pre-ejaculate (ew), the pregnancy from only 100% condom intercourse, the baby conceived from a toilet seat interaction (yes, I know that's not possible.  Haha.  Humor.) 

Let me explain something.  We don't "try" to get pregnant.  As soon as we let go of the birth control reigns, BAM we are pregnant.  The problem with this is my knowledge of it.  So we are either actively trying to get pregnant or we are actively not.  There is no in between.  No "let's see what happens." No easy "hand of God" type opportunity.    **To the fertility Mommies who want to punch me in the ovary, I'm sorry.  I know I'm whining about something you would kill for.  =( ** 

If I get my miracle pregnancy, it means that baby is supposed to be here.  God had to have made it happen, right?  So it's safer?  So this one will live?  So He won't take this one?  See?  I HAVE TO HAVE a miracle pregnancy.  Have to.

But what do I say to this lady with her baby.  This lady I used to consider a close, close friend, but now I can't even send her a text message.  I want to run and hide.  I want to push towards isolation and just slam the door.

Real

I promised myself that even if someone ever read this I would still write it for me.  Put on here what I need to put on here and not give a damn who may see the realness of my tender under-belly.  So...

Sometimes I am just so lonely.

60 years of grief

I learned last night what is wrong with my husband's grandmother.  I say that like there is something wrong with the woman like a cancer, heart disease or broken hip.... But no....she lost a child.....

60+ years ago when a woman was not allowed to grieve the loss of her precious, precious son, a little boy was born.  He lived for 10 days.  He had a bad heart.

Mitchell mentioned that when Jimmie dies, she wants to be buried back in MO with.....her son.  "HER SON!!??" was my first reaction.  What son!?!?!

But then I remembered that hot and spicy day during my first pregnancy.  2008.  A younger, more naive, less wrinkled and hopeful me is spending time with the in-laws at their cabin outside of Estes Park.  I am in my third trimester.   My mother-in-law tells us about her brother who died at infancy from some sort of heart complications. 

I remembered the horror stricken, full-blown panic attack I had in that dusty cabin bedroom.  Well aware that everyone in the little building could hear me freaking out and gasping for air.  It was the first time I had ever considered that something could happen to this life I was growing in my belly.  The first time the thought had even crossed my mind that babies die.  The first time ever that I realized that the terror of caring for another life is LESS SCARY than having no little life to care for at all.  Little did I know that my worst fear that day would be coming true 2.5 years later and again less than 12 months after that.

 I know that she's had a hard life, although I don't know many of the gory details, but no wonder the woman has had an addiction to prescription narcotics for the last ?? years.  No wonder she can be so cankerous and stubbon.  The grief has to come out somewhere.   Part of me would love to join her on her drug induced cloud of life.  Hell, give the lady her pain pills.

I can't imagine trying to grieve the loss of this baby boy, when you weren't allowed to.  Even today, people just don't get it.  They don't understand that my world is crushed, that I hurt for my children every moment of every day, that I have a hole that I constantly fight to keep from swallowing me.  They don't ask about them or me.  Everyone just wants to gloss over their deaths.  And I'm sure in rural Missouri, over 60 years ago, the glossing started before that little boy was even in the ground.  Had he even died yet before people started glossing over Jimmie's pain??

Jimmie, I am so sorry.  Please know that Mitchell and I will fight for you to be buried next to your babe.  My understanding of you has blossomed into a giant flower.  I get it.  Even if we can't talk about it, even if it's not a concept I can get across to you through the haze.  I get it and I am so very, very sorry.

Liam and Riley,
   Thank you for making me do things I wouldn't have done before you.  Thank you for making me push myself outside my comfort zone.  Color Run, Mud Volleyball, Scrapbook Parties, play groups, play dates, swimming suits. 

No baby says hubby

I'm having the realization that my husband may not want to have another baby.  Actually, I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to.  At least not any time soon.  ::crush::

I don't know anything.  But that's exactly it.  I want to talk about all aspects of going on a subsequent pregnancy journey and I can't get him to say how he feels about it at all.

Of course this hasn't taken over the entirety of his conscious mind (like it has mine).  He doesn't have a woman's biological clock tic-tic-tocking constantly, endlessly, in the back of his mind.  As a man, he can't possibly have the baby wants; that has to be a purely female thing, right?  The craving for a baby.  Empty arms.