The one that starts with things endings and ends with things beginning and covers up an awful lot of wondering “how could you?”
It has been a horrible week; I’ve cried harder this week than I have all year, mostly bout things I can’t write and partly because anything stressful turns into more tears about Freddie. For 5 nights now I’ve had only a few hours sleep, more lack of sleep than my fragile equilibrium can handle and it resulted in me just losing all sense of perspective. I’ve had darker thoughts about whether I can actually sustain my life long term this week than I’ve had in a long time.
Fran and Amelie have left their gymnastics club; it has been falling apart, slowly and horribly, for months. The owner left and didn’t leave a supported or sustainable structure in place and coaches and gymnasts have flocked and drifted away. The atmosphere stumbled and collapsed and the plans and structure stumbled and collapsed and my girls, who needed their coaches and their club and the continuity it ought to have provided, tried to stay loyal but in the end they just couldn’t raise themselves to enjoy it any more. Hardly anyone is left who they cared about and hardly anyone who is left cares about being there. It is such a sad end to something they loved and which we enjoyed supporting.
Next week we are going to join a trampoline club for a few months and look around for some new things. We’ll see where the wind blows us and enjoy a little more evening freedom for a while.
Their dancing school is also losing a staff member and lessons which they’ve attended for years are altering. Miss D took their first ever class, when I was heavily pregnant with Josie and it is going to be a shock to not see her. Everything’s changing.
Our Latinetc group has come to an unexpected end too. It has been so important to all of us, but suddenly it was not possible to sustain all the requirements and aspirations of everyone in it any more. Far more speedily than anyone really expected, we’ve concluded it. I hope it isn’t actually the end of working together, but it will be a different thing if we manage to regroup and it has come at a tough time for us personally, even leaving aside the rest of the group and how they feel. It means I also need to look for a new flute teacher for Maddy, as we’ll not be in the same place as her current one on a regular basis any more.
*exhales* about everything.
Perhaps all that explains why I behaved rather ungraciously this morning when I unexpectedly discovered a new baby on a blog I read called something I didn’t expect. I apologise for that – it was just shock. I suppose I expect that among circles of people who understand, some names become taboo. But that isn’t reasonable. I was just taken aback 🙁
Ten days ago I had a scan to see if I was ovulating at all; it was a horrible scan, rough, unpleasant and insensitively done and it left me very distressed, especially as I had to go to it while Button was dying. But it did see that I had just ovulated, which meant that our ‘not trying’ month did actually have a well/badly timed bit of trying in it after all. It meant I had some hope where I shouldn’t have.
But today my period started again, only 18 days after the last one. It means that even with an egg and perfect timing, I’m not getting pregnant. I’m supposed to start Clomid in a month but if I’m ovulating I have no hope it can do anything I’m not doing anyway. So there goes that hope.
God. This time last year I thought I was a few days away from completing my family. I’m beginning to wish I was a few days away from being old, grey and ready to depart.
I was so sorry to read this. I don’t ‘know’ you in real life, only through twitter and your blog, and sometimes it feels a bit intrusive to comment on a comparative stranger’s pain. I don’t know that it can help at all to know someone you have never met is thinking of you and wishing you well but I am. I hope the girls love their trampolining -my kids do it and adore it. And mostly I hope that things pull together for you all.
Oh no, it does help, really. I don’t think I’d write if I didn’t like it when people responded. It’s conversation in dark places.
Oh :hugs: Life is really not being fair to you 🙁
xx
This is just a hug from another woman in the dark, sending support through the shadowsxx
Thinking of you very much at the moment.
When I get back I shall hug you so hard. But you shan’t break xx
I shall hold you to that.
Sad to hear that so many things have gone pear-shaped for you all this week 🙁
Hope things looks a little brighter soon.
My thoughts and prayers are often with you.
Cx
Thank you.
Lots of us it seems are hanging by a fine thread for all our different reasons.
If you ever want a friend, let me know. I don’t mean the weird
Christian conversion thing either . Know what I mean.
Grin. I know you wouldn’t do that. Sorry to hear things are tough for you – and yes, I’d love to see you again.
((((hugs))))
Everything piles up at once, and sleep deprivation is just additional torture. Hope you can get some sleep soon ( not that I think that can be likely).
And complain about your scan- I’d want to know if one of my patients felt as you did afterwards. Depending on the path you choose, you may end up there again/the sonographer needs to improve- they need to know so they can be better another time xxx
I probably should but I just can’t quite make it sound serious when I try to write it.
I am so sorry to hear that the pile of crap you have to deal with just keeps getting bigger. And it is not unreasonable to be upset about that unexpected news on the other blog, it is a big deal.
It felt very huge. Oddly enough it is the second time, the first was just a few weeks after his birth and was someone with 4 girls. I think it was just that, coming so close to April and from someone I know knows of my Freddie, it felt… I dunno, like he had been erased. Both names was a lot. Just exactly the same. And that is the second time too; there was the weird grave phenomena in Devon – exactly the same name on a grave we had unknowlingly looked at before. I know, and understand, and respect, that there are only so many names and people can use what they like. But I guess I couldn’t do it – I couldn’t use Reid, or Micah or Cullen or Otis or Hector or Foster or Florence, or Charlotte or Georgina or Emma or Iris or any of the host of other names of the babies of women who have walked with me this year. Perhaps I was just taken aback to find that inside a circle of people however loosely connected they are, the ‘rules’ as it were, are not what I imagine.
Perhaps I thought that there was a time frame where a name still belonged to a child, even if he was dead. And I suppose that is silly and wrong of me. And it is not like it makes any difference; we don’t live on the same continent and I don’t ever have to look at that blog again – it is just that it becomes another thing on the list of things I have to be careful not to do.
I should say that this lady has emailed me, removed the links so hopefully they’ll fade off my blog panel eventually and is very upset to have upset me. And I’m upset I’ve upset her by having to communicate my distress to protect myself. It’s one of those unfortunate things – if I had known in advance, I think I’d have been fine with it, it was just the shock of seeing it, alongside a picture of a sleeping baby and not having been warned.
Had it not been nearly April, had I been pregnant, had I not been hormonal, I think it would have been a different story.
Oh Merry 🙁 *hugs*
xxx
Some days all I have is love to offer, that’s what I’m sending today, and every day. x
Thank you.
At this stage of all this you were about to have a baby. Honestly, however much I wish that was how it was here, I can’t really imagine it either. So stressful.
Oh Merry. I hate that feeling when everything seems to be unravelling all at once. I’m glad / amazed that you are able to exhale about it all – but understandable that you’re not sleeping so well. Maybe it is worth going back to your doctor with the new info from the scan to see whether clomid really is the best thing, or if there are other options.
It is getting close to Freddie’s April too, which I guess makes everything especially tender. Sending you so much love xxxxH
I did sleep last night thank goodness; hormones and wine did the job 🙂
wishing with all my heart that Freddie will send you a miracle x
He’s certainly taking his time about it. 🙂
Dear Merry
With reference to home ed groups/hobby classes etc, I always find that it means that something new will come along. Sometimes I’m grateful when the old things fall apart as nice as they are because it means that we will have an opportunity to try something new and often completely different. I think that is one of the joys of home education – that there is a great big world of discoveries and being able to turn around the grey clouds to silver linings is a useful skill in order to facilitate our children’s learning.
What are you doing nutritionally for yourself at the moment? Please make sure that get some sunshine as and when you can. When I get low, with life and especially after the long dull winters we so often have, I find a gamut of leafy spring greens help, 15 minutes on a walk in sunshine, along with cod liver oil and B vits. Please look after your body on a cellular level.
Best wishes
Liz (also missing little lives that won’t be)
You are right and in some ways an almost clean slate is welcome and a bit of a relief. But it feels a bit *whomph* all at once-ish.
I’m being very good. Lots of vitamins. I do need more fruit and I do need more exercise. I’m working on that.
I’m sorry you have little people missing too 🙁
Merry, I am sorry that things are so difficult at the moment. It’s really tough when disaster seems to be striking on every front.
Perhaps, as Liz says, the gymnastics and Latin will make way for new things? But it must be hard to see them go, especially the gymnastics that your girls had loved so much and invested a lot in. I hope they enjoy the trampolining.
I’m sorry about the awful scan and I would have been taken aback by that turn of events too, anyone would have been I think? I don’t think you need to apologise for being ungracious, it would have been a shock xo
It is hard to see it go. It is one thing to leave because you are ready, another for it to dissolve under your feet.
Thank you for the understanding; I feel a bit of a heel to be honest and I reacted badly in a very fight or flight way. I could see afterwards, in how I wrote, that I was a bit blinded by the shock of it. Wasn’t good enough.
{hugs} and prayers xx
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Merry, I’m so sorry you have had such a horrible week. I hope you have a better weekend and that you get some good sleep. I know I suffer from lack of perspective after several consecutive nights without sleep, and things look very bleak. About two and a half years ago, I was going through a very bad phase of not sleeping and ended up with a prescription for temazepam. I have only used them very occasionally, and only half a tablet at a time. I still have the original bottle (of 28) unfinished, so I don’t think I’ve over-used them(!) but when I have really needed to break the cycle I have treated myself to a reliable night’s sleep – it really works for me. Don’t know if you have gone down this route, or considered it, but it might be worth a try. Doesn’t make all the difficult stuff go away, obviously, just makes it a little easier to handle – and gives you a few hours respite from it instead of thinking about it all night. Don’t know if this is helpful or not, but just a thought. Anyway, I wanted to check in and let you know I am thinking of you. Lots of love xx
Thanks Hannah. Not comfortable with taking anything when I am ttc really; the sleeplessness seemed to resolve itself with the early arrival of my period anyway, so I think I had some stress related hormone blip.
Nobody is going to blame you for darker moments. Nobody.
At some point you’ll get footholds enough to scale some of the more dangerous times. You’ve got the gumption to get through. Sending you lots of love and thinking of you often.
Thanks EF.
Merry,
I am so very sorry that so many things are difficult and testing and hurtful right now. I am thinking of you and Freddie as April approaches.
Merry, I’m so sorry so much crap is piling on top of you right now. It seems so very unfair. I would think, somehow, that after a loss such as ours, that some things would just cooperate – that April would be yours to do whatever it is you like with it, that nobody would ever name their child Freddie again, that you could be pregnant as quickly as you want and that poof! you’d suddenly be bringing home a living breathing baby. It really does seem too much sometimes, having to deal with the grief of losing a child with all the other crud that life can throw at us. Isn’t losing a child enough?
http://www.sensiblehealth.com/Journey-06.xhtml
This might help you! Hugs, Sara