October 1, 2010
Before Toby died I was diagnosed with PTSD. I had it the last two weeks of his life and it makes me angry because I feel like I wasn’t on my game during those weeks. Well, I know I wasn’t. Supposedly, it was brought on by his birth and might have been mixed with post partum depression. At any rate, I was a mess. Sometimes, the room would feel too big and other times it felt too small. I couldn’t get enough weight on me and when this would happen Pete would pile every blanket in the house on me. I had to stay upstairs because it’s darker than downstairs and the light bothered me. Little things made me freak out. The only thing that made me feel normal was taking the anxiety medication, which just knocked me out, and being around Toby. We almost didn’t go to Nashville for my cousin’s wedding because we weren’t sure how I would do but I’m glad we did. It’s the last good memory I have of all of us being together.
The other day I went to visit my friend and her little boy at the hospital. He had three surgeries that day and she was holding up better than I would have been. I was worried about the hospital because it’s the same one I had Toby at but we were in a different part so it didn’t feel too bad. Chasing Sam around kind of takes your mind off of things, too.
I know people probably feel like they have to change the way that they talk when they are around me and Pete, but honestly I feel like I have to change the way I talk around them, too. I’m becoming very guarded in what I say to people nowadays because most things resort back to people analyzing me and that just ticks me off. Or explaining me to myself which frustrates me even more. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to have a conversation with a lot of people because I feel like I’m having a lot of things explained to me.
Maybe I’m going through the anger stage now.
I had to defriend a person on Facebook today. It wasn’t a huge loss because it wasn’t someone that I was very close to, but it did kind of make me sad. She had been writing me all week telling me about her medical problems and when I signed on the other day she immediately started telling me about she had hemorrhaged and died the night before and how they had brought her back to life. The conversation went on and on and it sounded way too familiar to Toby’s birth (although the circumstances weren’t anything alike) and I started feeling anxious. I couldn’t talk to her.
Part of me wanted to be a good friend and listen but the other part was saying, dude, I can’t even handle my own stuff. I sure as HELL can’t handle yours. And I hated the way she kept more or less comparing our situations, like I would certainly understand what she was going through because I had “been there.” Um, this is not a club I want to belong to. I am not proud to wear this badge.
Besides, I don’t think I can be of help to anyone right now. If someone had lost their child to SIDS and wanted to talk to me about it, then I would try. I don’t know that I could be helpful, but I could listen and commiserate and we could be angry and sad together. But I’m not a counselor and I’m kind of new to this and my own moods change by the hour-sometimes faster. I don’t know that I could be good to anyone.
But somehow, I seemed to be grouped into this group of people who have had terrible things happen to them. One of my friends kept pushing me to talk to someone that they knew because that person had been through a similar experience. I wasn’t ready. Later, I found out that the person had lost their child during pregnancy. It’s not the same thing. I couldn’t relate to that. Heck, even the support groups at the hospital separate people into newborn deaths, stillborns, ectopic pregnancies, stillborns, miscarriages, and parents who have lost their children due to illnesses. In some ways, grief is grief. In other ways, it’s extremely different. I couldn’t, for instance, relate to someone who lost their 10 year old to cancer. I didn’t see Toby suffer, I didn’t spend that many years with him, and there was no illness to fight with him. I wouldn’t be able to relate to that person’s grief. Yet, you lost someone and you get grouped together.
It’s all very new and strange.
I have tried speaking to Ashley about it a little bit, since he lost someone a year ago, and although we can relate on some level (we’re both sad and seem to have trouble at night) we are both going through very different things.
I did try to call the SIDS Alliance today but the number I was given was wrong and when I researched for another number it was invalid. The closest SIDS support group seems to be in Frankfort and that’s way to far to drive, although I wouldn’t mind meeting other parents in the area. I wonder why we don’t have such a group?
Sometimes, I feel like people’s “projects”, too. But I guess that’s better than being totally ignored so I’ll let that one slide for now.
I’ve been thinking about another baby. I was trying to explain this to Pete but not doing a very good of it. It would have been one thing if we had decided to have only one child and be a single child household. We might have wondered from time to time what it would have been like to have had more and may have even had regrets on down the line. But now that we’ve had two and seen what it’s like, I don’t think we can ever go back to just having one. It will never feel the same as it did before. We will always know that our family is incomplete because we are missing someone. That is a very sad feeling.
I think I would like to try to have another baby. Actually, I know I would, but the idea scares me. I have talked about it with other people and finally I figured out that it doesn’t really matter what anyone other than Pete thinks. So I’ve stopped asking opinions.
It might even be fun to try. Sam was definitely not planned and was a huge surprise to us. Toby, on the other hand, was a little different. We were not “not trying.” If it happened, it happened, but if it didn’t that was okay, too. Then, at the last minute, we had decided that we didn’t want to have another one. A week later I found out I was pregnant.
Planning one would be completely different. I had to review this website for one of my jobs the other day and it was an ovulation calendar. I played around with it for fun and thought that if we did decide to have another one then we should try to make it fun (ha ha) and actually look at stuff like that. Do our best to make it exciting and different.
As always, nights are hardest. I miss him a lot. Some days I cry because I have trouble remembering his face and how his weight felt. When I tell people that they start explaining to me about coping mechanisms and how the brain works so I just stop and miss him to myself.
1 comment:
I miss him too.
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