I Survived the Baby Shower

First, a housekeeping note: I moved my writing blog to http://blog.jeanmariebauhaus.com/ (but it will continue to be mirrored on LiveJournal) and am in the process of expanding it from a "writing" blog to an "all my creative pursuits plus stuff that makes me happy" blog. Just so ya know.

This past Saturday was my niece-in-law's baby shower. It was the first such shower that I've been to since before my first miscarriage, so I was just a tad nervous about how I'd be able to handle it. But I'll tell you, six months ago, when all of my RPL-related grief resurfaced in the wake of my in-laws' passing, I would not even have been able to contemplate picking out a baby gift, not to mention making one and actually going to the shower to give it to her in person. But as the time approached, I began to feel a lot of peace about the whole thing. I even got excited about crocheting a baby blanket for my new grandneice-to-be.

The blanket: one giant granny square

(As an aside, this was said to me at the shower: "You're [nephew #1]'s aunt?! You look way too young to be his aunt!" I can't say that didn't help get me through the day. But this is what happens when your parents spread you and your siblings out over 18 years.)

At the shower itself, I started out fine. The place was hard to find, and my mom and I drove around the neighborhood for probably twenty minutes trying to find the right address. We were followed by the girl who said the above thing to me, who was also lost, while I was on the phone with Li'l Sis, who was the only one with GPS and actually managed to find the place, and then had to stand in the driveway and help navigate the rest of us to the right house--by the way, I did look up the address on Google Maps before we left, but their directions were WAY off; and Flattering Quote Girl said that her Mapquest directions were also useless.

At any rate, for the first half of the party I was just relieved not to still be driving around looking for it. I was also worried about navigating the food offerings, since I just got back on my diet last week, but they had plenty of veggies and lean protein, so I hung out in the kitchen with my sisters and noshed on healthy snacks until it was time to open presents.

This was when things got tough. I wonder if I would have had as difficult a time watching the gifts being opened if it had been boy things instead of girl things. But I'm irrationally convinced that my second pregnancy would have been a girl, so seeing all those little tiny dresses and pink and frilly things hit me pretty hard, and I had to paste a smile on my face and practice deep breathing.

At one point, my Big Sis turned to me and told me she was proud of me, and I almost lost it, but I managed to keep my composure, and I got through it, although after the gifts were all opened I had to excuse myself and go hide in the bathroom and give myself a few minutes to feel sad and cry it out. But then I blew my nose and dried my eyes and went back out there to have some cake (yes I had cake; at this point I felt like I'd earned it), and then I was okay for the rest of the day.

So that's one more hurdle out of the way. Hopefully, the mere thought of somebody else's baby shower won't be so fraught with fear and negative emotions after this, now that I know for a fact that I can get through it.