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celeste_noelaniOof.
I stayed a part of the due date community I joined when I got pregnant with Christopher Robin, mostly because I'd made a couple of friends there and liked keeping tabs on their babies. Besides that, I just liked seeing what he'd be doing if he had survived. I liked watching as mamas would post photos of babies sitting up, and then crawling. Of first Christmases and first birthdays.
As it goes with due date communities, the traffic tapered off until there'd only be a flurry of update posts every once in awhile, the photos usually behind a cut so I could decide if I was in a place where I could be looking at babies thriving where mine did not. I am almost always in a place where I can peruse and ga-ga just a little bit, though of course saying it's bittersweet is a monumental understatement. Through my therapy and personal meditation, along with just the ways that I have learned to survive loss by having lots and lots of practice, it's...maybe not quite easy...but definitely comfortable for me to taste many kinds of sweet in the terrible, terrible bitterness of having lost my son. But still, he's dead and there's no amount of acceptance and peace that will actually make me feel not devastated. That will last me the rest of my life. But so will loving him. I am okay with both of these feelings.
Anyway, the due date community popped up with another post, since the babies will all be turning two. TWO. I was reading my friends list at pretty much the only time I'm able to nowadays; nursing Iliana awkwardly in my new station, the rocking recliner. So there I was, nursing my almost ten month old lady (can you believe that?) and there's my son's crony, or would be if my son had ever been able to have any. And I think, dear god I could have a twelve year old and a two year old and a ten month old and I could be scoffing right now at my quaint perceptions of sleep deprivation and laundry and dishes and pooping in private. I could be crying because children are wonderful and completely worthwhile ways to drain every last ounce of patience and energy and make tear ducts work overtime and hairs go wiry and gray and pointing north, no, northwest, no, yes, all of them at once.
I love all of my children. Even though I balk at the thought of having all three kids and then have my mom get sick and die this year, I wish that I could raise them all. I wish that the gift that my middle child didn't have to give me was therapy and recovery the audacity to actually start mending a repeatedly broken heart. I'd rather have snot prints on the window and handprints on my pants and two kids in diapers. Well, that and a heart that was still pretty torn up, but not because of losing a child.
Just so you know, I don't say that lightly. Iliana woke up while I was writing that last bit, and she screamed and she writhed and she OMG NEEDED to nurse right then and I felt like she was being a snot and a burden and OMG SUCH A JERK because I can't do anything nowadays unless it completely revolves around parenting. I can't write and I can't read books and I can't watch movies and I can't even have my full fifty minute therapy sessions to myself because she's there in the middle of it, being wonderful and demanding and a great big ball of life. I mean, of course I can do things differently and find ways to read or to write or to watch or to whatever, but for right now I am making the parenting choices and life choices that I am not just comfortable, but happy to make, even if I'm looking forward to a day when different ones make more sense. But that doesn't mean that I'm always happy to have so much of my non-parenting self put away. It doesn't mean that I don't know full well just how much I am giving up so that I can be the kind of parent that I want to be. And it for sure doesn't mean that I don't know precisely how much less of myself there would be if my wish came true and I did have all three of my kids to drive me this much closer to a nervous breakdown. It just means that I'd do it anyway.
Cuz my son would turn two years old in about a month. He never even got to be two minutes old. And I guess seeing those other babies today just reminded me, once again, just how much I was missing.
I stayed a part of the due date community I joined when I got pregnant with Christopher Robin, mostly because I'd made a couple of friends there and liked keeping tabs on their babies. Besides that, I just liked seeing what he'd be doing if he had survived. I liked watching as mamas would post photos of babies sitting up, and then crawling. Of first Christmases and first birthdays.
As it goes with due date communities, the traffic tapered off until there'd only be a flurry of update posts every once in awhile, the photos usually behind a cut so I could decide if I was in a place where I could be looking at babies thriving where mine did not. I am almost always in a place where I can peruse and ga-ga just a little bit, though of course saying it's bittersweet is a monumental understatement. Through my therapy and personal meditation, along with just the ways that I have learned to survive loss by having lots and lots of practice, it's...maybe not quite easy...but definitely comfortable for me to taste many kinds of sweet in the terrible, terrible bitterness of having lost my son. But still, he's dead and there's no amount of acceptance and peace that will actually make me feel not devastated. That will last me the rest of my life. But so will loving him. I am okay with both of these feelings.
Anyway, the due date community popped up with another post, since the babies will all be turning two. TWO. I was reading my friends list at pretty much the only time I'm able to nowadays; nursing Iliana awkwardly in my new station, the rocking recliner. So there I was, nursing my almost ten month old lady (can you believe that?) and there's my son's crony, or would be if my son had ever been able to have any. And I think, dear god I could have a twelve year old and a two year old and a ten month old and I could be scoffing right now at my quaint perceptions of sleep deprivation and laundry and dishes and pooping in private. I could be crying because children are wonderful and completely worthwhile ways to drain every last ounce of patience and energy and make tear ducts work overtime and hairs go wiry and gray and pointing north, no, northwest, no, yes, all of them at once.
I love all of my children. Even though I balk at the thought of having all three kids and then have my mom get sick and die this year, I wish that I could raise them all. I wish that the gift that my middle child didn't have to give me was therapy and recovery the audacity to actually start mending a repeatedly broken heart. I'd rather have snot prints on the window and handprints on my pants and two kids in diapers. Well, that and a heart that was still pretty torn up, but not because of losing a child.
Just so you know, I don't say that lightly. Iliana woke up while I was writing that last bit, and she screamed and she writhed and she OMG NEEDED to nurse right then and I felt like she was being a snot and a burden and OMG SUCH A JERK because I can't do anything nowadays unless it completely revolves around parenting. I can't write and I can't read books and I can't watch movies and I can't even have my full fifty minute therapy sessions to myself because she's there in the middle of it, being wonderful and demanding and a great big ball of life. I mean, of course I can do things differently and find ways to read or to write or to watch or to whatever, but for right now I am making the parenting choices and life choices that I am not just comfortable, but happy to make, even if I'm looking forward to a day when different ones make more sense. But that doesn't mean that I'm always happy to have so much of my non-parenting self put away. It doesn't mean that I don't know full well just how much I am giving up so that I can be the kind of parent that I want to be. And it for sure doesn't mean that I don't know precisely how much less of myself there would be if my wish came true and I did have all three of my kids to drive me this much closer to a nervous breakdown. It just means that I'd do it anyway.
Cuz my son would turn two years old in about a month. He never even got to be two minutes old. And I guess seeing those other babies today just reminded me, once again, just how much I was missing.
