Yesterday, today and tomorrow

Dear Jacob,
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Sunday was a hard day. I woke up not feeling too bad, but the heavy cape of sadness slowly lowered itself around me. Dad and I were sitting around most of the morning, I made some banana bread, he did some gardening on the balcony. We took pictures of his tattoo and then put them on the computer.

A few days after you died, Dad went around the house taking pictures of all of the flowers that we received from others. He put the card with your footprints and handprints and the little teddy bear the hospital gave us (that stayed with you for several hours in the little box until we came back) amongst the flowers and took pictures. We added the pictures of his tattoo to these pictures and then Dad played all of the pictures in a slideshow with the song “Butterfly” by Mariah Carey in the background. I just started crying and crying. I can’t believe you are gone.

When it was time to get ready to go to the musical, I tried on a pair of pre-pregnancy pants. Big mistake – why do I do things to torture myself? I couldn’t do them up of course and that just made me cry harder - sobbing crying. Dad offered to help me find something to wear, because he knows that when I’m crying like that, I just get really frustrated, cry harder and can’t really do anything. But I just had to stand there and hug him and cry and cry before we could pick out what to wear. I ended up wearing some capris, but couldn’t even do up the zipper all the way, so I wore a t-shirt that covered up that whole area.


Once I got to the theatre, I met up with Grandma and we went upstairs so she could go to the bathroom. There were 2 other woman waiting up there, sitting in some chairs. Of course, one of them was pregnant – about 6.5-7 months along I’m guessing. Very close to where I should be. I started crying all over again. I walked away from them and stood staring at a wall and the tears just poured down my face. I knew that my shoulders were shaking and I wondered if they were watching me. I was so miserable. We bought these tickets in December, before I was even pregnant. When we found out I was pregnant at the beginning of February, I occasionally pictured going to the musical with my big belly, thinking that it would be one of the last ones I would go to for awhile. There I was, no baby in my belly, feeling really empty and no one around me knowing it. I really wanted to ask that woman how far along she was and tell her to appreciate every single second. That she could easily have been me but she got lucky (and I hope she stays that way).


When the musical started, there were about 10 young women on the stage, dancing and jumping around. What did I think? I wondered how many of them would lose their babies. I am so pessimistic about that these days. I am very hopeful that I will get pregnant soon, but I am so pessimistic about pregnancy producing a living, healthy baby now. I did start to enjoy myself a little, which surprised me. I had my moments, but once I had something else to focus on, it was good. I had to tell myself a few times to actually pay attention to what was going on though, to not totally waste the money I had spent to be there.


During the intermission, I stood up to stretch my legs. Who else did that? The same pregnant woman I saw earlier. She was sitting in the row in front of me and a little to the right, just so that I could have the perfect view of her belly.


Life just sucks sometimes (ok, most of the time these days).


We went out for dinner after with Antoinette, Phil and her kids. I haven’t seen Phil since losing you, but did talk to her on the phone once. She is one of the people I thought would call or come see me at work, but she didn’t (apparently she planned to, but never did). Anyway, no one mentioned anything about you and I hated that, so I brought you up in passing. They were talking about one of the students who is working with us for the summer and how nice he is. He is about 20, I pretty much only know him to say Hi, but when we lost you, he sought your Dad out and said how sorry he was to hear about our loss and asked how I was. I was surprised by this at the time, and touched. So I told everyone how he did that when we lost you. They went on saying how nice he is, but didn’t say anything about you again.

On the subway on the way home, I heard some girls talking. They were in their late teens and were talking about the future, which of course involved kids. One said that by the time she is 25, she would be pregnant or already have a kid. Little do they know. I remember thinking like that at that age, never even having it occur to me that I could lose my baby. Life was so much easier at that time, with that little bit of innocence about these things. How I wish I could still think like that, just assume that everything will work out. I always knew that bad things could happen during pregnancy. Grandma was a nurse and told us some really sad stories. But I never thought I would lose my baby after I passed 12 weeks.


I just had one of those moments where I thought I was still pregnant. I have a headache and just realized that I wasn’t taking anything for it because of you. Guess I’ll go take some pain reliever now. I hate that I can.


I think I was also more emotional yesterday because Monday and Tuesday were looming (although today hasn’t been too bad yet) and because my 6 week post-partum appointment with Dr. A is tomorrow morning. I am nervous about being in that office again, where she couldn’t hear your heartbeat. I am scared that they will have found no reason for your death. I assume that that is the case though, since she hasn’t called me with any results.

Can you give us some strength tomorrow Jacob? I could really use it.