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.

This post pretty much takes on a life of its own about halfway through.

I'm having a really hard time getting going this week. I don't know whether this is an ADD thing or what, but if my Monday is off, then my whole week tends to be off, and yesterday's doggie drama disruption seems to have thrown me for a loop. I can't get focused or get my head in the game.

It doesn't help that, despite the fact that the high today is supposed to be 103, my brain has checked out of summer and decided that it's fall now, thank you very much, and no matter how many times I go outside and expose myself to the stifling heat, as soon as I come back inside all I can think about is sitting on a pleasant patio somewhere, working with yarn and sipping pumpkin spice lattes (or pumpkin ale -- something pumpkiny, at any rate) while I watch the leaves fall. And what's not helping that is that yesterday afternoon I went to Hobby Lobby to stock up on yarn for a baby blanket for my niece's upcoming baby shower. It's a super soft, heathery alpaca blend, and it's so pretty, and I just want to work with it all day long, never mind that my wrist starts hurting after about twenty minutes.

On the plus side, I think it's a really good sign that crocheting this blanket for someone else's baby is making me so happy. I put it off so long because I feared it would depress me, but so far I'm feeling totally okay with it, which is helping to lessen my dread about attending the baby shower. Really, these past few weeks I've been feeling a lot of peace about the whole baby thing. Still some pangs of grief here and there for my past losses, but mostly hopeful about the future, and full of conviction that, whatever happens, it will be okay. That things will happen according to God's plan and purpose, and if that doesn't happen to coincide with my plans, I'll be able to put my trust in Him and get through it with my faith and sanity intact. It's about trusting that Romans 8:28 is true, even when I can't see any evidence in my own life that any good is coming out of the stuff I go through.

Although, if I think about it, there is evidence. While I would happily suffer diabetes if it meant I could have my babies alive, the fact is that the miscarriages woke me up to where I was headed, health-wise, and forced me to start taking better care of myself. I also feel like my experience has equipped me for, and made me more open to, ministering to other hurting, grieving women. I think it's definitely made me more empathetic and compassionate in general.

Of course, none of this in any way makes me glad to have been through two MCs and an uphill battle against PCOS. But I can see evidence that God is using my experiences to help me grow, both as a person and in my faith.

Well, THAT went to a far more spiritual place than I expected. I thought this post was going to be about fall fever and yarn craft when I started. But maybe now all that's off my chest I'll be able to get some work done.

Emma Grace

This ultrasound was taken one year ago yesterday, and it's all we have of our second child (but at least it's something. All we have of the first one are memories). I remember like yesterday how the technician (who was awesome, by the way) told me that she wasn't technically allowed to tell me the results of the ultrasound herself, but that I'd know by the look on her face if she found a heartbeat; the anxious and tentative hope I felt when my baby appeared up there on the screen; and the gutted feeling when she looked over at me and gave me a slight, grim-faced shake of her head. And then she quietly left the room to give my mom and I time to hold each other and cry our hearts out, and came back a while later with this print-out.

It shows a fetus about 7.5 weeks along. Much too early to be able to recognize facial features, and we know that that hint of an eye and nose and cheekbone are tricks of the light and shadow, but that doesn't stop Matt from insisting that she looked like me.

I never told anyone that her name was Emma. Emma Grace. I didn't tell because we had no idea whether "she" was actually a she or a he, and because it was far too early to discuss names, and if she had gone on to be born there would most certainly have been disagreements and compromises made on the naming front.

But in my heart, this was my daughter Emma. Named for my grandma, Erma, which is a variant of Emma and much too old-fashioned and grandmotherish for a baby girl. Middle name Grace, because I knew it was only by the grace of God that she'd actually be born.

If I ever do go on to have a healthy daughter, she'll probably keep Grace as a middle name, if not a first name. But this name, as a whole, belongs to this baby, whose heart apparently gave out at only 7 and a half weeks, uniting little Emma with her namesake in Heaven, unbeknownst to Matt and I, who believed all was well.

I was 9 weeks along when the miscarriage symptoms started, and I had the ultrasound. They sent me for a D&C the very next morning, which was one year ago today. April fools.

My mom and sister went in together for a frame for the ultrasound photo. Mom took me to Hallmark to pick something out to remember Emma by. It was hard, and I broke down quietly in the back of the store, but ultimately I was pleased with my selection. The poem beneath the picture is a Chekov quote that reads:

We shall find Peace.
We shall hear Angels.
We shall see the sky sparkle
like diamonds.

Your mama misses you, Emma.

So about that song...

I done went and wrote it.

It's been percolating in my head ever since I got the notion to write one, and when I finally sat down this morning to get started on it, the whole thing came to me. Lyrics, melody and all. I waited all day to post it to step back and make sure it doesn't suck. I don't think it does. I mean, it's definitely not the best song ever. It's full of song cliches, yes, but it would be hard to convey the fairy-tale imagery I was going for without those cliches. And it's still a little rough, even though I've been tweaking and polishing it all day. At any rate, it says what I feel, and that's what important. It's also the first purely creative writing I've done since NaNoWriMo, and that sure felt nice.

I came thisclose to also posting an MP3 of me singing it, just so you'd get the melody, even though I can't sing, but the last thing I need right now is haters coming here to make fun of me and tell me I can't sing, LIKE I DON'T KNOW ALREADY, so I chickened out. But the next step, if Matt doesn't think it sucks (he's not up to reading it yet; I think this has been a tough day for him), to get him to help me compose a guitar arrangement for it. And maybe in another day or two I can pick out the melody on my old acoustic guitar so you'll get a better idea of how it goes.

Anyway, here it is. Remember: ROUGH DRAFT

###

UNTOUCHABLE
by Jean Marie Bauhaus
© 2011


Tower of glass
(unbreakable)

Atop the highest mountain
(unscalable)

Across the deepest chasm
(unreachable)

Behind the tallest fortress
(unbreachable)


Where you sleep
Where you dream
Where you wait to feel my touch

(CHORUS)
And I would climb the highest mountain
I would swim the deepest sea
I would slay the fiercest dragon
To have you here with me

I would raise the mightiest army
To knock down Heaven's door
I would gladly lay my life down
If it could give you yours

Just to touch you...

But you're untouchable.

Cradle of wood
(unfillable)

A room that's still a guest room
(unlivable)

A dream that's lost forever
(unbearable)

Two hearts go on without you
(so breakable)

I can't sleep
But I dream
And I long to feel your touch

REPEAT CHORUS

One kiss upon your sweet brow
to wake you from your slumber
One caress of your tiny hand
falls through my grip like sand

REPEAT CHORUS 2X

###

There you have it. If nothing else, writing it was very therapeutic.

Good Grief

I'm skipping my great-nephew's 1st birthday party today. I feel bad about it, but not as bad as I know I'd feel if I went. There is no doubt in my mind that if I went I'd end up spending most of the party locked in the bathroom, sobbing my guts out. Because I just cannot deal with babies right now. Not even family babies who I love.

I'm still mystified by how hard and heavy this MC grief has settled back on me. Yes, the anniversary of #2 is coming up, but I got through the anniversary of #1 with only a vague feeling of sadness and wistfulness. Otherwise, I was fine. I have to wonder if this anniversary would be affecting me so deeply if I wasn't so freshly primed for grief by recent events.

Or maybe it's because the second loss hurt so much more than the first one. Don't get me wrong--my first MC was devastating. But I was able to accept it more easily, as if it was simply a due I had to pay before going on to have a family. And I thought that was exactly what I was doing when I got pregnant with #2. When I lost that one too, it felt personal, like a slap in the face, adding insult to injury. I had anger with the second one that I didn't feel with the first. Or maybe it's just that the second pregnancy and MC happened before I got to finish dealing with #1. Who knows?

All I know for certain is that everything feels fresh again, for some reason, like this loss just happened. My eyes constantly burn and my chest constantly aches from all the crying I keep doing. I'm really tired of it, all this grief and sadness and crying. I'm tired of being the girl who brings all the sad stuff to the table. But I'm not allowing myself to stifle it, or ignore it, because that just isn't healthy. I'm allowing myself to feel what I feel, and I'm trying to work through it constructively instead of letting it take over.

Part of that involves reading blogs from the Adoption, Loss & Infertility community (ALI for short). This is helping  a lot (except for when one of said bloggers suddenly gets pregnant and then I can't deal with all of the conflictedness of wanting to be happy for them but being envious and sad for me instead, and all of the fun, fun guilt that that entails; seriously, I had to weed through this list to find blogs by women who weren't currently pregnant or had just had babies, and just in the week since I found the blogs I really like by women in more or less the same boat as me, TWO of them have discovered that they're pregnant. I mean, damn!) and helping me feel less alone and like the universe is picking on me.

It also involves listening to emo music and sad songs to help me connect with the pain and cry it all out. This list from Invisible Mother has some especially sob-inducing songs, particularly the ones by Kellie Cofffey and Avril Lavigne, of all people (since I'm not really a fan of either country music or of Avril). And blogging here, of course. And praying on a deep, intimate level, pouring out my heart to God in total surrender and giving all of my tears and sorrow over to Him.

And I've been thinking about writing a song. I've never written a song before, and I haven't written any poetry in years, and my instrument is a backup instrument that's not really suitable for melodizing, and I sing about as well as the people on American Idol auditions who make you cringe with embarrassment and pity. But in spite of all of this I'm feeling a powerful urge to write a song for my babies. It doesn't have to be good, and I don't have to show it to anybody. But I think I have to do it, and I think I'll get some healing from the process.

Happy Birthday, Aedan. I'm sorry Aunt Jeanie's dealing with all of this on your special day.

Updateyness

I got busy last Friday and forgot to blog my new homepage at JMBauhaus.com. Content hasn't changed--it's still just a portal to my schizoid online personalities--but it's got a new design that I made all by myself, from scratch! It took forever to remember how to do some of this stuff, and I had to cheat and peek at other web sites' source code to see how some things were done. Oh, and I didn't design the background image myself; that came from a free blog banners site. So I guess I did have some help. Still, I'm mighty proud of how it turned out. In Firefox, at least. In IE, not so much, but even so: pretty!

My next project: this here blog. I bet you can't wait.

Also, I created a home for The Hero Factor on Livejournal, where I've decided to go ahead and post it in installments as I do the next draft (I still have to finish the first draft, though, so it'll be a little while yet). It'll be subscribers only, so if you don't have a Livejournal account or an Open ID, or don't want to get one, or do and just don't want to "friend" my novel, then you'll just have to wait for the eventual podcast version. I'm sure you're seething with bitter disappointment.

UPDATE: Sometimes it's a good idea to look back at what you posted last week before writing a new post. /UPDATE

Two sentences in this post are sarcasm. Can you guess which two?

In creative news that had absolutely nothing to do with me, my nephew and his wife's latest collaboration arrived safely into the world early this past Saturday morning, and she is a work of beauty. And adorableness.

Oh, and by the by, my little sister has a blog. Go say hi!