Since my XM Radio was not charged enough to listen to music on my walk (gotta remember to do that in the mornings before I walk), I walked as I usually do - no music, just me and the track (minus the butterflies and adding the Canadian geese). It was nice to get out there again - even though I was getting my new sneakers kinda dirty with the melted snow and mud left from last week's "snow storm." Someone else apparently had the same idea as me - in certain spots, I was able to walk in someone else's show tracks through the snow patches. I walked my two miles, kinda sliding in some spots...thinking it would be rather amusing if I came back to my office from walking with a wet ass if I fell in the slop. Good thing I change before going out...
Anyways, before I digress any further, I had an hour to re-think and resolve my little pity party from yesterday's post (see Hosting yet another pity-party). I feel much better about it today - and here's why:
Sure, I feel cheated out of all the pink, frilly things that mothers get when they are expecting a girl. I would have loved receiving pink blankets, white tights with the lace booties, hair ribbons. I would have loved the girlie toys, like the strollers, the dolls.
But, way more than that, I feel cheated out of the love and lives my angel babies would have shared with me, with us as a family.
It is very important to distinguish the difference.
For the "stuff factor," I had a beautiful baby shower when I was expecting Chris - my FIL hand-made the characters standing around my chair (he made the scale-version of the nursery-rhymn characaters that were on the shower invitations), which now adorn the walls of Chris' room.
My MIL crocheted a lovely blanket for the baby (who we did not yet know would be a boy), which Chris snuggles up to every night as he sleeps.
There were at least 40 people there to share in my joys, fears, and excitements over our first baby. And, I received almost everything I needed to welcome him comfortably into this world. I did receive so many cute outfits - unisex, but cute none-the-less. I received so many cute toys, memory books, and the like. It was perfect.
So, I cannot sit here and whine the day away as everyone buys pink things for Suzi for her shower. It is not the stuff that matters....it is the life being brought into this world that is important. It is the babies who cannot be here with me that I miss, not the pink things I probably should have been folding in October 2006 when my baby girl would have been due.
Making that distinction is very important to me - it centers where my feelings sit right now.
I want another child - no matter boy or girl. I want another healthy to share our lives with, our love with. And, healing from my losses and my anxieties will be the only way I can finally try to make that happen.
...And, no longer hosting the pity parties is the first step.
4 comments:
I'm glad you sorted things out for yourself. You were very blessed and I just pray that you will be again. Carrying around the emotional baggage is often a heavy load *trust me I know*, just waiting for that rainbow at the end of the storm... I will keep praying for it, for you.
But I think you're entitled to grieve. You're entitled to feel a twinge when you see someone going through a ritual (such as a shower) that you should have been having. I just don't want you to be too hard on yourself.
perfectly put- by you and the other commenters... dont be too hard on yourself, your feelings are real and you have to feel them and acknowledge them because other people may not. And yes- that rainbow at the end of the storm will be SO GREAT! Cant wait for it to get here for you (and me too!)
I am the same way with the thinking, its the whole fact that someone else is getting a baby... my daycare providers daughter and a lady who brings her kids there = they both had boys (one the same week I was due with Leah, the other a couple weeks later), its just as hard for me even though I lost a girl.... its a baby all the same!
BUT, I will have my day in the sun soon and hopefully you will too!! How is all that coming along???
HUGS
DI
Just wanted you to know I am here. I understand that pity party but for different reasons.
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