Oh dear. No blogging.
We’ve actually been having a good time, if you count charging around like loons a good time. I could write lots of posts filled with interesting stuff. I will do. But not here. If you read my other blog (and thank you to the people who do and commented, I really appreciated it) you’ll know I dragged of a load of bile from the bottom of the last post and put it somewhere where it wouldn’t spoil things.
The truth is I haven’t been so great this last week. I’m full of hormones resulting in extreme crabbiness, headaches and a tense back that made me want to kill people. Various people have conspired to irritate me beyond what was, on reflection, reasonable. On the other hand, Those People were being really annoying and I seem to have very low tolerance for that sort of thing now. I’m not so good at seeing the other side as I was. Not so good at all.
I think I have a case of the baby blues. I wouldn’t go as far as calling it pnd, not yet. I think after all this time I’ve got enough self awareness to know that I just don’t do well, physically, after I have a baby. 5 months or so in, I hit a bump, a chemical, hormonal bump and my moods take a dive, no matter how happy or lucky I am. I know this well enough to think that if I sleep well, eat right, take some vitamins, get some sun (ha) and breathe a little, it should be okay.
I’m trying to analyse what is happening and hoping it will stop the spiral. I’m perfectly capable of very self destructive and, if this week is anything to go by, being horrid and painful to live with too.
I’m quite lonely, I think. The world has moved on, even the people in this house have moved on. I’m lonely in my grief, missing Freddie badly, hurting for his space and the fact that that god awful thing happened to him and to us and that time has passed. I miss hurting for him so badly. I miss (this sounds terrible) the right to have sympathy. I see people glaze over if I mention him now. Even here. He’s a taboo. He’s like talking about the bad credit card debt or the black mould on the wall. Everyone wants to pretend it isn’t there. Everyone wants it to be okay now. Move on, move on. Everyone thinks it is not so bad, now I have Bene instead.
I’m angry. I’m angry that so much happened and there is no one to blame for it. I’m angry the universe chose us. I’m angry time has passed and I hurt less. I’m angry, unspeakably angry, with people who let me down while I was pregnant, after Freddie, since Bene. I’m hoarding every slight and every tight lipped non acknowledgement of Freddie, every thing that ensured life could be harder. I can’t let go, I don’t want to let go. Give me a reason to be angry at your peril. There are no second chances with me now, I don’t forgive. If you fuck with me, lie to me, try to pretend my son doesn’t matter, fawn insincerely, mess with our safety, there is no getting back.
This means lots of things. One of them is that I’m not very nice. One of them is that I’m full of rage, patted down in a plastic face. You don’t want to see behind the mask. You really don’t. It’s unrelenting.
I don’t know what to do about that. I suppose I could see a counsellor. I think that’s fairly pointless. I could keep shedding people but I might end up quite lonely. I could hope time lets it fade. To be honest though, I’m not seeing that. I used to be rubbish at holding grudges; oh… Now I’m good. Now I’m good. I’ve got a whole tirade waiting for the day I meet whoever is in charge of the universe for messing with me and the people I love.
I haven’t looked back yet. Just occasionally a flicker of a moment of Bene’s pregnancy and last minute before being born make it to my consciousness but I don’t look. I don’t want to look. Nothing to relish there. Nothing from Freddie’s death to after we were home with Bene to think of fondly. Not because of anything nasty, just because it was all so awful, so painful, so dreadfully, terrifying grim that I can’t. He wasn’t born. There is no birth story. It was an amiable well handled birth but I go straight in my head from the day before to the recovery room. I don’t want to examine the fear. I don’t want to look. It feels, that whole pregnancy, ttc, birth, like gawping at a car crash. I hae no idea how we got through it.
Sometimes I see people dealing with loss, with grief and making albums, making memory books, treasuring things, filing ordering, organising and I realise how odd my reaction to Freddie’s death has been. His ashes are not buried. His photos are uncounted and unordered. I have not written my memories of him. I have barely googled. I have not tried to find out. I have not said goodbye or settled his affairs. I do not have his things gently sorted. We do not have a method for dealing with his loss. He’s an overfilled box, a pandora box and I’m sat on its heaving mass, pressing down the lid and singing loudly to cover the sound that is escaping. I haven’t done what is normal even by baby loss standards. No cute grave, no memorial garden, I didn’t even choose an outfit for him to be in. I looked at a photo of him today and had never seen it properly before. I ought to know them by heart.
But I did love him. I really did. I’m just not ready to do the goodbye things yet. I keep thinking perhaps it’s a mistake. Maybe.
I suppose this is a come down. The adrenalin rush of Bene’s pregnancy and new life had to end sometime. Now is normal, every day. The good times. I am so lucky. Well cared for, loved and adored and looked after by a wonderful man, a real partner. He does it all. I do nothing. I’m still bumbling around in a haze of barely functioning. I can’t plan, I can’t multitask. I can do one thing, very well, at a time. But not lots, not like I used to. I get furious if I get let down, by him (for being nothing worse than more able to move on than me), by naughty girls breaking rules, people just being thoughtless and crap and forgetting actually we are people.
I probably need to go out and fire a rifle at tin cans or something. Grab myself by the collar and remind myself I am lucky and where I wanted to be six years ago, three years ago, 6 months ago.
But where you wanted to be with a dead little boy tucked fading in the past and half forgotten and your whole life force choked out of you is a very different thing. It’s not quite what I hoped. Not the Bene bit, just the learning to live this new life. Again.
And oh, I could tell the world a thing or two if I had a moment to do so. It needs to back right fucking off and leave us alone now. That 0-60 reaction of fear and pain, mine, others. I wish I were the better person for having been through it. I wish it made me able to say the right things, be good at being a friend. I am frightened to find it doesn’t extrapolate to other situation people are in. I am still, STILL crap at being a good friend. Too inadequate. And all full of rage and hate and unforgiveness. Worryingly devoid of emotion for myself, utterly full of it for people I love. Terrified I will get the supporting wrong when they got it right. And hideously aware that is a whole ‘all about me’ thing. Except it isn’t. I want nothing more than to fix. What do you do if you are a fixer, once you are the living fucking proof that bad things do happen and it doesn’t always work out right?
In short, i am neither me nor anyone I ever thought I was.
But most of this is hormones. Some of it is a busy week. Some of it is the appointment yesterday to organise being sterilised. I thought when I went back to that place it would be where Bene was born now. But no, it was very forcefully the place where I have walked out without the pregnancy I walked in with and no baby to show for it. Yesterday, kindly as it was, featured a room I have sat in pregnant with two little boys, a nurse met under bitter circumstances once before, conversations where my notes from my doctor said ‘has five children’.
This, I have to remind myself, is the good time. We are lucky. I am lucky. This will pass. It is only hormones. Not pretty, not eloquent, no clever metaphors. Full of bile. Not being grateful or dignified or particularly likeable.
Heigh ho.
There might be a metaphor in that photo. If there is, there wasn’t one when I took it, or even put it here. But I possibly see one, even so.
Hey you… Got time for a rambling catch up tomorrow?
Xx
🙂
Yes, that would be nice 🙂
Just wanted to say… oh I don’t know, something… I am crap at being a friend too, at least in the sense that 99% of what I feel inside, of empathy or whatever, is not translated into any useful words or action. But, hey, if you ever want anyone to ramble endlessly about nothing in particular and make your comments nice and long, I am really really good at that;-) About 5 months is a bad time for me too, and it’s usually the tipping point either towards or away from PND, and hard to tell which way it is going. Keep talking to anyone who will listen. And never, ever stop talking about Freddie. Sod what anyone else thinks. He’s not a taboo. He’s your son. ((((Hugs))))
Thank you. They make a huge difference, comments, they really do. In my head, though it shouldn’t be true and it’s highly needy and feeble of me, the ratio of comments to views translates to people saying ‘shut up already’. I do know that isn’t true but, you know…. Comments help.
Merry, so much here that I’m nodding along to. And there, that’s pretty much all I can say, not good enough, I’m sorry. x
Xxx
“where my notes from my doctor said ‘has five children’.” I wish they didn’t do that 🙁
Have read & heard, don’t want to make it about me but I think that you get to a certain point, ‘move on’ far enough & it is easier for people to start thinking about the Bad Stuff as a blip in an otherwise good life rather than something that changes everything forever. They want to hope things can be okay – then you wonder, does it make me (look) deranged if it isn’t okay? Suckitude xxx
(I will make it about me – it’s Toby’s ‘anniversary’ tomorrow (Bastille Day, wish we were in France because I co-opt the fireworks), I may well be the only person that remembers & I won’t do anything except, perhaps, give up being not bitter for the day)
That’s it, isn’t it. It’s human nature (even mine, lol) to diminish and encapsulate any bad event and polish it up to be palatable. I do it even , do I suppose I can hardly blame anyone else if they do too. It’s certainly Max’s attitude ‘a bad thing happened but overall we are blessed’. It’s not a bad attitude but it’s one I can only play at. I can pretend to feel that way but I don’t. Really I want to beat everyone who does that to a pulp.
I don’t forget Toby. I have a very specific memory of hearing he had died and it had a very specific effect on who I am (all about me!) but I’m slightly less horrid because of him and that moment and I don’t forget. I promise I won’t forget.
Xxx
“In short, i am neither me nor anyone I ever thought I was.”
That sounds hard to handle. I think life does that to lots of people when a juggernaut rolls through. Maybe few (none?) of us can imagine the transforming effects of pain on ourselves. The only way to learn about that is to live it and survive. I do often think of your family and hope good things for you but, obviously, I don’t understand. x
sending love. xxxxx
Sorry to hear that things are so hard just now. Sending some virtual mama support (tea, cake? coming right up…)
“They make a huge difference, comments, they really do.” Then I shall take a few moments to try to make a small difference.
I read, I rarely comment, but in no way am I saying “Shut up already” Please, never think that of me.
I remember reading of Freddie’s birth, sharing the news with a mutual friend who hadn’t heard yet and then following the updates. We sat here on MSN, miles away from each other and yet still in the same room, and we wept at his loss.
My brother died, aged 22 so a very different thing, in 1995. 17 years on and if you asked my parents, they’d tell you that a parent never truly “gets over” the death of their child – no matter when or how it happened.
We’ve never met but you’re often in my thoughts. Then I go and give my kids an extra hug. It makes one squirm with embarrassment and the other loves it.
Much love to you.
(((BIg hugs))) Merry. I read your blog a lot, I check several times a day to see if u have posted something new & worry if it’s been a few days without a post (weird, since I don’t know u). I can’t even contemplate what u & ur family have been through. When I read about ur kids & how u educate them & how they are evolving u make me want 2b a better parent to my two children. At least ur aware enough 2 understand that this is hormones (mostly), but grief has a nasty habit of lurking in the background, waiting 2 take u unawares. It jumps right out & whacks u on the head with a baseball bat. I don’t feel like a very nice person at the moment & I know how I am is down 2 my hormones & I’m in the process of going 2 see my gp for counselling (not sure if this will help) & AD’s. I hope u take comfort that ur in people’s thoughts, take care x
God I’m lonely in my grief too, and while it might be not the right thing to say, I too have missed the sympathy. People used to walk on egg shells around me, make excuses for me, tread lightly. Not so much anymore. I miss that. I miss her more though, of course.
You are understood, dear Merry.
xo
Just ((hugs)) fwiw you will adjust to the new you and will change again in time xx
I couldn’t read this and not comment, though being a fixer too, I’m at a loss when faced with something I can’t fix.
You’re probably right that some of the rage is hormones. From 5/6 months post birth onwards, I distinctly remember feeling overwhelmed with rage as well. For me, it didn’t disappear until I had the Mirena coil removed, so looking back now, it seems obvious to me that the emotions I was feeling were intensified by the hormones.
I hope you can try not to be so hard on yourself at not being able be a better friend, or being able to point to how you’ve grown as a result of losing Freddie. I think all too often, in an effort to find something positive in the negative, we’re pushed to highlight the silver lining. In Ireland, there’s a saying “What’s for you, won’t pass you.” But it drives me crazy. Sometimes, I think, it’s okay to push back and say “you’re wrong. This did not improve me. I am not better for it, it hurts, it was a crappy awful experience”. Because it’s the truth.
Hugs. xxx
I just want to say hugs, you are allowed to be angry, upset, happy, whatever you feel the need to be. I am sure hormones are playing a part in what you are feeling right now, but I think grief will always be lurking somewhere.
I do not know how you are feeling, but I feel so much sympathy for what you have and are still going through, I too am a fixer and am at a loss when I can not find the right words to make it better, but I don’t think this will ever be ‘fixed’.
Take each day as it comes enjoy the smiles of the family around you and one day you will feel ready and strong enough to face the times that you are currently blocking out.
Take Care.
XXX
There is no perfect, set, timeline for grief. Everyone has their own path to walk with it. I’m sorry things have been so hard lately … The waves of regret and grief and rage and bitterness, they come, they knock you down. And then after awhile, you realise those waters have dribbled away once more …. But in my experience? They always come back. Sometimes there are great swaths of space and time inbetwixt, and at other times, they crash and crash unrelentingly. My eldest living child is 23 – his older sister ought to have made me a grandmother by now … Except of course, she died before he was born. Not one single day ever goes by without me thinking of her. And my rising thirteen year old daughter? Her twin ought to be here. But he’s not. And every day, I hear what I think is his voice.
We just have to learn to carry it. {{hugs}} Merry
Whatever you need to feel is what you need to feel. But if you want sympathy, hugs, comments on your blog(s), whatever, then you need to ask. Only your close friends are aware of your need – maybe. Those of us who only know you in an online context cannot thought read.
Virtual hugs and waves of sympathy coming you way.
Sarah, above, is right about always being a parent whether your child is still living or not. But now I “have” two children (both grown up and with children of their own) whereas I “had” four.
Thinking of you lots and will send you a proper email when I can pull some coherent thoughts out of my own seething cauldron of a mind.