Heavy Hearts

Home and on restricted activity.  Baby dragon looks good.  My body may or may not be contemplating preterm labor.  

My heart is heavy for a fellow BLM blogger who lost her rainbow baby last week at term, a beautiful little girl who joins her big brother in heaven.  We are all heartbroken for this family and stunned at such a loss.  Words cannot comfort right now, but we offer them anyway. 

And I am reminded once again of the stakes we are playing for here. 

 

Second trip to L&D

Spotting this afternoon + minor contractions while being monitored = overnight in the hospital tonight. Also a shot in the butt of something to stop the contractions. Baby dragon still looks good so that's all I really care about. Here is my excited hospital face.

First trip to L & D

At the hospital for monitoring since I absolutely could not shake the feeling this morning that something was wrong. Luckily only one nurse so far has acted like I'm unreasonable. Baby dragon seems to be doing well but they will keep me on the monitor for another hour or so. Decided this is also my chance to try blogging by phone...might as well post a picture to see if that works too. Wow that's a truly terrible picture of me.

Angry Day

This is totally unrelated to my last post.  There has been a bunch of good news about rainbow babies lately, and I hope it keeps coming :)

But

I had an angry day today.

Angry that Elizabeth was hurt.
Angry that Elizabeth died.
Angry that babies and children die.
Angry that I am so petrified of losing baby dragon.
Angry that Elizabeth will never be a toddler, a kindergardener, a young woman, a mother.
Angry that I have been so broken.
Angry that our family will never be whole.
Angry that grief is a full-time job, consuming and neverending.
Angry that I cannot always explain my rage, even to myself.

Angry and exhausted.

On Pins and Needles

I never thought I would be this invested in moms and babies that I've never "met" but I will hardly sleep tonight, knowing that several of my fellow BLM bloggers are in the hospital (or talking their way in), just hours from delivery.  So many families so close to meeting new little rainbow babies. 

My heart and thoughts are with you all.  I am surely driving up your blog stats with my regular rounds of checking for news.  That said, take all the time and space you need.  Family is the most important thing.

Please let the universe do some small things right this week.  Please let these babies arrive safely.

I don't know how this story will end

I can only speak or daydream in the very vaguest terms about a happy ending for this pregnancy, about a future in which we have a living child.  When we were pregnant with Elizabeth, we called her by name constantly and wove beautiful future plans.  Now we have roundabout conversations about things we "might do" someday "with kids" and talk about "if baby dragon gets here ok..." 

I can list but am actually unable to picture the concrete steps of delivery day all going well: checking in and prepping for the c-section, the operation itself, baby dragon crying and being healthy, seeing her, being sewn up and taken to recovery, baby dragon being there with us instead of in the NICU, feeling some sort of joy or relief.  I don't know how to say this strongly enough --  it's not just that I don't/can't daydream these happy things.  Even when I sit down and try to FORCE myself to visualize everything going well in the hospital, I am unable to.  My brain will not comply.  I just see visions of chaos and emergencies and somebody critically ill or dying - either baby dragon or me or both.  The visualization ends in tears and terror every time.  This weekend I made my husband talk through what he and a healthy baby dragon would do if I were to die from complications, so some of the terror of that scenario is gone now.  But I'm still left with - what if we lose her?  Would there be anything left of us?

So I go back to focusing on each day.  That seems to be the only way.  Today's kick counts.  Tonight's "play session" with baby dragon as she kicks and wiggles. Curling up with the puppy and watching a movie with my husband.  Tomorrow morning's nonstress test.  Less than ten weeks to go.

GD test and US pic

Although I rarely throw up at this point in the pregnancy (yay!), my stomach still requires constant maintenance:  breakfast first thing in the morning, regular small meals, lots of protein, almost no sugar.  A glass of lemonade last night almost brought dinner back up, so there's not a lot of room for error.

Needless to say I wasn't looking forward to this morning's fasting glucose test for gestational diabetes.  By the time I got up, skipped breakfast, drove to the lab, kept down that nasty orange sugar drink for a whole hour, and was in the process of having five(!) vials of blood drawn (my doctor is being thorough), I was so focused on getting home and eating that I had the following conversation.  Note:  my husband and I refer to the people who draw blood at the lab as "vampires":

Nice lady vampire:  How are you feeling?
Me:  Hungry
NLV: Well, we're almost done here.
Me:  Great.  I'm finally going to eat breakfast.
NLV:  Do you know what you're having?
Me:  Eggs.
NLV:  Um...I meant, boy or girl?

Right.  Like I'm a normal pregnant lady who really cares.  Then the NLV proceeded to tell me about her friend who wanted a boy so badly she cried when she found out she was having a girl.  I refrained from asking if that was because her first child had died?  Because those are the only people I have any sympathy for in the baby-gender department.

I'm at home eating eggs as I type this.  Baby dragon is kicking away.  We are sure she'll be developing chubby cheeks like her big sister any day now.  Here she is making the world's cutest little pouty-face :)