One Month

Those words are crazy to me.  I can't believe it has been a month since we lost our baby, it seems like years sometimes.  On Monday, this week, it was exactly a month.  And three weeks ago, to the day of my miscarriage, I found out that all of my pregnancy hormones were gone.  Empty.  Abandoned.  Stagnant.

I wake up some mornings thinking I am still pregnant.  Sometimes when I'm dizzy, tired, hungry or nauseous I feel like I'm pregnant.  I talked to a friend about phantom pregnancy (like having phantom limbs when you lose one) and she said she still feels her daughter, whom she lost, inside her sometimes.  Lingering feelings, lingering emotion.

Last week was harder than this week.  I felt very depressed and down, like something had been taken away from me, something I was so excited for.  It's hard going back to your "normal" life when you used to feel special, like you were doing something important.  I have never felt depressed before now or have felt like crying for a whole day before but last week that's how I felt.  I was trying to explain it to my mom, and then to my husband the following day, and both times I just broke down in tears.  You just feel as though you are in limbo, waiting to be able to try again.  You aren't a mother, you don't have a baby and you know that you will have to go through all of that again - that whole 11 weeks all over again.  Thinking about it makes me so nervous, and actually imagining myself pregnant again freaks me out.  How will I be able to be stress free when I will constantly be worrying about the worst?  How can I think positively when I have been through something like this?  It seems impossible.  Totally impossible, that's the word for it.

The boys played the beer fest last Saturday and it was COLD.  By our house it was cloudy but still warm, but by the time we got down to Phoenix it was freezing and raining.  I mistakenly wore flip flops so that could be why I spent the next couple of days sick.  We also had to take my sister-in-law, Ashley, to urgent care because she cut her ear, and there were all sorts of sick kids there too.  Either way, I got it.

(My sister-in-law, Ashley, and I huddled together!)

(The beer drinkers didn't seem to even notice the cold.  Ha!)

We tried to head up to play in the snow last weekend and got stuck twice and had to turn around because the roads were closed.  We made it to Prescott, then up to Sedona but coming back was another story because of all the snow.  It was an 8 hour trip that should have taken just 4-5.  It was nice being out of town, even though we spent most of the time in the car, and nice to celebrate a late Valentine's with Ian in snowy Sedona at Picazzo's.  It is just that I was so so sad last weekend for some reason, but it did cheer me up a bit.

(Just an hour outside of Phoenix it was snowing.  Look at those mountains!)

(In Prescott, this was our 10 minutes of snow play.)

(Hoodlums)

(It was really white out, especially on the road ahead of us to Jerome.  It was a total blizzard and we actually turned around after this to head back to the major freeway to continue up north to Sedona.)

(We got stuck in traffic north to Sedona so we took a road that cut over.  Saw some happy cows on the way and then Ian scared them off.)

(We had just been to Sedona the week before but we wanted to see all the red rocks covered in snow.  I am happy we went, it was beautiful!)

(Picazzo's has organic, free range, boneless chicken wings.  It had been YEARS since I ate restaurant style wings and they were delicious!)

(I took these while sitting at our table by the window of the restaurant.  It was fine when we got there, then the sky turned white and it snowed, then hailed dime sized hail, then snowed some more and then rained.  All within an hour, it was so cool to watch but we knew we would be in trouble trying to drive home after this!)

(After lunch)

(The most beautiful pastel sunset on the way home.)

(We stopped and got pie at Rock Springs Cafe because they boast about their pies.  It wasn't that great, we were unimpressed.)

This week I have been too busy and too sick to be sad.  On our way back from Sedona I started getting really sick and ended up laying around all day Monday and Tuesday (and missing school).  Since then I've been trying to feel better but haven't slept much, my mind just won't shut off.

So, there you have it.  One month later and I'm still a mess.  Feeling lonely, infinitely sad and stuck.  Stuck in this place of nothing, this place of not motherhood but still reeling from the pain of motherhood.  It's so weird and depressing, you just feel blah.

Sorry for this post but this blog is for inner thoughts so there you have it.  Hopefully my next one will be more upbeat.  :)


UPDATE 2/28/11:

Ian kept telling me after our trip that I would start to feel better, mentally and emotionally.  And, he was right, I started to.  This past week was better.  Today it has been a month and a week and things are starting to look up - so all is definitely not lost . . .