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Monday, September 21, 2009

September 21, 2009

It's been a while since I've blogged...I think I'm getting to the point where I don't *need* to as much anymore. I guess that means that I'm "moving on" or "working through my grief" or something. Or maybe I've just been busy, or just didn't feel quite up to pouring my heart out again.

I've noticed that I'm not thinking about her constantly anymore. Daily, yes, but not constantly like those first few weeks. School has started back, so two days a week I'm teaching, two more I'm preparing lessons. I'm trying to do homeschool with Ian on a semi-regular basis. We are working on letter sounds and numbers. He's starting to learn his numbers 1-10 in Spanish, and to practice writing letters and counting objects. He's doing really great! His 2's look like 2's.

The most intersting thing that has happened to me lately is that I've learned how to "coupon". My friend Mimi - a fellow LLL Leader - took me to Harris Teeter for the first day of "tripple coupon week" and showed me how to do it. I got about $58 in groceries for just over $16. I'm absolutely hooked. I'm working on getting an organized notebook to keep all my coupons in and all that jazz. PG thinks it's great. I got paid for babysitting Bailey today, so I've got a little extra money now. Maybe I can go again tomorrow (last day of tripples week) and get a few more things.

Saturday we went to Chapel Hill for the ECU game. Cris and Leann went with us. It was a terrible game. ECU looked more like a bunch of guys out playing football together than a team. They absolutely deserved to lose playing the way they did. I honestly don't feel bad about missing the game next week now. We're going to New Bern for a couple of days. PG has a psych conference to go to, so I'm going to take the boys and spend a couple of days with Crystal and her kids. We'll probably get in a few hours of D&D while we are there.

People are still asking me how I'm doing, which is nice. I would rather them ask than to ignore that anything happened. It's hard to see my pregnant friends, though. I've got two who are due within a month of when I should be, so I'll spend the next few months watching their bellies grow, and probably being their doula. I'm so happy for them, and so sad for myself. Is that selfish? I actually thought I might be pregnant again this past week. I was nausious and having an upset stomach. I tested, but it was negative. I didn't know whether to feel sad or relieved.

I found this poem on another blog. She lost her baby to SIDS, and someone had posted this in one of the comments. I don't know the author, but I think it sums me up pretty well:

My Mom Is A Survivor

My Mom is a survivor,
or so I've heard it said.
But I can hear her crying at night
when all others are in bed.

I watch her lay awake at night
and go to hold her hand.
She doesn't know I'm with her
to help her understand.

But like the sands on the beach
that never wash away...
I watch over my surviving mom,
who thinks of me each day.

She wears a smile for others...
a smile of disguise!
But through Heaven's door I see
tears flowing from her eyes.

My mom tries to cope with death
to keep my memory alive.
But anyone who knows her knows
it is her way to survive.

As I watch over my surviving mom
through Heaven's open door...
I try to tell her that angels
protect me forevermore.

I know that doesn't help her...
or ease the burden she bears.
So if you get a chance, go visit her...
and show her that you care.

For no matter what she says...
no matter what she feels.
My surviving mom has a broken heart
that time won't ever heal.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

September 8, 2009

Today is a Praise day. Looking back over the weekend, God has been providing for us at every turn.

First, a praise that Memaw seems to be doing ok. She's moving fluid better now, so her breathing is easier and her swelling is going down. Her kidneys seem to have peaked out and are on the mend now as well.

A praise for my cousin Rebecca as well. I don't think I've written about her yet...if I have, I appologize for repeating myself. She's in her 30s, a little older than me, and has two sons ages 4 and 7 I believe. She was really sick over the summer and now is in ICU with double pneumonia and sepsis and I don't think anyone is expecting her to ever wake up from the induced com she's in. But last I heard, she "wasn't any worse" which at this point is good news.

So we decided we definately really wanted to go to Crystal's house Sunday night, so we scrounged around and found a whole $11, which was enough to get gas for there and back, but no money for food. We changed clothes after church, packed a bag, and headed out. First stop - gas station of course. Then we swung by the hospital and PG used his cafeteria card to buy some drinks and snack food to take with us. Then we went by McAllister's (Leann gave us a $10 gift card just last week because she doesn't like to eat there). What a blessing! Free lunch!

We got to Crystal's house at about 3 and poor Ian and Zollie had JUST fallen asleep. Well, Ian was immediately awake and ready to play with Alek and Mikhala, and Zollie was off to the races as well (after some serious oohing and ahhing over baby Natilee - he was quite taken with her. He would sit *right* next to her and touch her hair and face, and if you took her away he pitched a fit!). Crystal and I went to Target to get some milk, and while there she got some coffees for us. For the record, Starbucks makes a delicious Caramel Macchiato.

After we got back, Zollie went into whiney mode, so I nursed him to sleep and we put him down for a nap and got down to the serious buisness of playing D&D. Then we took a break for a FANTASTIC supper of bbq pork roast, green beans and roasted potatos. Crystal outdid herself. Then back to D&D, with a break for bath time for the kids (we found it is in fact possible to fit 4 kids happily into a tub, and surprisingly enough, no one's penis got grabbed by anyone else LOL). We got the kids in bed (Ian got to sleep on the top bunk, he was stoked) and then played till about 2am, at which point all the adults crashed.

We woke up Monday morning to the smells of breakfast. Crystal and Dennis were so sweet to let PG and I sleep in while all the kids played. She made wassles (Ian's word for waffles) and BACON, and everyone Loooooves bacon. Then we got another few hours of D&D in while the kids played and then hit the road home.

We had such a good time, and to make it even better, Monday was Labor Day, and Chic-fil-a had a special where if you wore your sports team logo clothing you got a free chicken sandwich. So we hit the one in New Bern for lunch and picked up 4 sandwiches, and then swung through Greenville on the way home for 4 more for supper. Again, God provided for us!

The stress hit at about 7:30 last night, though, when I found out I was sitterless for this morning while I taught. So PG made a call to his grandmother who (praise God again!) was able to come watch the boys for me this morning. Class went really well...we continued talking about plant parts and germination, and both classes started germinating wheat berries. Thursday the younger girls will move on to properties of Matter while the older girls hit Heredity. After I got home, we did lunch and then ALL three of us took a nap! Yay! PG got home at about 3, and Ian did some schoolwork with me while PG rested and changed clothes, then we all walked down to the park for a few minutes before we got ran off by an approaching storm. Back home we did supper and then PG took Zollie for a bath while I headed out to the HOME meeting.

So all in all, it's been a really great weekend. I got a lot of distraction, which I needed, and a lot of normality back, though things will never really be normal again. I'm looking forward to the HOME activities this year and especially co-op for Ian! He's going to love it!

Well, it's after midnight, so I should head to bed. We've got a homeschool park day tomorrow afternoon, and tomorrow morning I need to go by and pay for my HOME membership and co-op fee. I hope tomorrow goes as well as this weekend did.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

September 5, 2009

Finally, some good news! The nephrologist says that Memaw's kidney issues seem to have peaked out and should be getting better from this point on. The stint procedure is on permanant hold until things get back to "normal" (there's that word again). Her BP is still fluxuating between a rather good 130/70 to a less good but not quite scary high 160/80. A big problem right now, though, is that she's retaining a LOT of fluids. She's up to 147lbs...this is a woman who is about 5"1 and usually weighs about 110 soaking wet. Mom says her hands look like they are about to pop open they are so tight. She must be miserable.

Today was a pretty good day for me. ECU had its opening home game today against ASU and we pulled out a win during the last few seconds after having led 27-7 at halftime. For some reason I guess the guys figgured they had it in the bag and that they didn't need to show up for the second half. If it weren't for our D, we would have lost, no question. PG's mom had taken the boys for the day so we could go have some adult time at the game. His dad and sister went with us. It was hot...about 89 by the end of the game...and we forgot to put sunscreen on our arms so we are all burned up. Thank goodness that we have 2 Aloe plants at the house.

Tomorrow the plan is to go to church and then head up to Crystal's house to hang out, play D&D into the wee morning hours, spend the night, and some of the day Monday. Then come home and chill out at home and rest up for a 3 day week for PG. He's got Friday off so he can go up to WVU with is dad for the ball game next Saturday.

The boys were so funny today. They had the bean bag chair in the living room floor and they would climb up on the couch and jump off onto the bean bag. Zollie just thought it was the funniest thing...he was laughing and laughing. He's got the best belly laugh. I love hearing it. Then they pushed it into the middle of the floor and would chase each other around it until one of them would trip (or get dizzy) and fall down and then the other would jump on him and they would wrestle around and laugh some more. They really do love each other so much, even if they beat the snot out of each other all the time. Ian was talking ugly to me earlier so I made him sit in time out and sweet little Zollie sat right there by his brother the whole time, just waiting for him to be able to get up so they could play some more. He really thinks Ian hung the moon. They are so precious to me.

Friday, September 4, 2009

September 4, 2009

I don't know if it's easier or harder to keep blogging about what life is like right now. On one hand it's good, I think, to get it all out. But on the other, reliving the day's events, or a couple of days, is painful.

I wanted to go home to be with my randmother this weekend, but we have no gas money, and lots of plans for the weekend. And my sisters are going to be there, and she seems pretty stable right now, so I'm taking the risk of not going in order to try to have a "normal" weekend and I feel horribly guilty about it. So little is normal right now. I'm exhausted. I'm weak from not eating. I don't get restful sleep because I have nightmares all night. Every night I'm dreaming that I'm being stalked, hunted, chased. And I hide, and they find me, and I have to run again. Over and over, every night, different places and different people, but always the same theme. I "sleep" for plenty of hours, but I haven't had a good, restful night's sleep in 3 weeks.

It's been three weeks. Three Fridays ago my little girl was born, unceremoniously, while I was sitting on the toilet. She almost got flushed, but I saw her just in time. So different from my other two births...they were so full of hope and joy and elation, and Anna's birth was just dread, and fear, and sadness.

Three weeks and I'm still crying every day, sometimes many times a day. I was watching Ian today as he explained something in the overly verbose way that only a 3yo can do, and I just started crying because I will never get to hear Anna's imagination at work. I'll never get to see her playing with her big brothers, never see how gentle and protective (or rough and tumble) they would be with her. Never dress her up in pretty dresses or comb her hair or put ribbons in it.

I just feel so crushed by this sadness. Dr Lamson said that the biggest thing for me right now would be to start getting some good sleep, because until I'm rested I'll still not have an appetite and I'll not be able to cope well with these feelings. She's right, and I WANT to sleep. I hate feeling like this. I'm consantly at the end of my rope with the boys. I feel like such a bad mom riht now. I just want to feel normal. I just want to feel good.

I planned to go to LLL last night. I felt like i needed to get back into "normal" stuff again. But when the time came I just didn't want to leave the house. Today I went to the post office and mailed off some more snowflakes with the boys. Then we went to the library. Someone there asked me if they were my only children. I hessitated for that split second that it took me to think "Should I say something about our little girl in Heaven? No, she doesn't want to hear that..." So I just said that I just had the two so far. She smiled...that's what she wanted to hear. Then I felt so bad about it because it was like I was denying Anna existed.

This just sucks.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

September 1, 2009

Wow, I haven't written in a while. What's been going on?

Still crying at the drop of a hat, still very depressed. I'm not getting restful sleep...I can sleep all night, but when I wake up I'm still exhausted. I'm eating a little better some days. I'm either very hungry or not hungry at all.

Life is awefully cruel. It's apparently not bad enough that I'm having to deal with the death of my baby, I also got a frantic call from mom on Friday saying she was on the way to the hospital with Memaw (that's mom's mom, for those who don't know). Appaently she had woken up in the night, swolen and unable to breathe. My aunt Sherrill took her to the hospital in Greensboro and her blood pressure was 230/160.

Mom stayed with her Friday night - Sunday evening. I came down after church and took over until Monday afternoon. Her bp came down to a reasonable level (it was in the 160/85 range), but her liver enzymes were high (probably because of the bp spike) so they kept checking her blood for that to make sure the levels were coming down. Apparently they came down enough because Monday morning they did a heart cath.

The doctor found a couple of areas from her previous bypass surery that were degrading and causing blockages. He feels like she needs stints, but wants to wait till tomorrow to put those in because he would need to use more dye and doesn't want to overload her kidneys right now.

Mom called me back today and said that Memaw's hemoglobin is so low that the are giving her blood transfusions now. I don't know what that will mean for her cath/stint procedure tomorrow.

Today I taught this morning. Class went well but I'm concerned that some of the girls either aren't takeing school seriously this year because tey are used to public school and Roseleaf is so different, or if we just really need to work on note-taking skills. I gave a quiz today, that the questions were based on their notes and the homework they did the day before, and no one did well on it. I'm concerned about what this will mean long term, but I think I just need to make it clear that this is SCHOOL and they are being held to the same, or HIGHER standards than they were used to last year in public school.

I've got an appointment tomorrow with Dr Lamson. I am still feeling so depressed and some things happened this week that have upset me more...more thoughts, anxiety, just overwhelming sadness.

Well, the kids are playing in the tub and I need to get them in the bed, so I'll head off and do that. We've got a playgroup tomorrow after my meeting with Dr Lamson, and I'm actually looking forward to that. I need to get out, and the boys need to get out, I know that. It's just hard to be around people when it feel awkward, wondering what they are going to say, or if I'll see or hear something that will just set me off crying again.