(1) There's the pregnancy ladies that I see out and about when I'm doing errands. Some of them are so big they're about to deliver, and I think [a] how lucky for them that they obviously haven't received a poor prenatal diagnosis . . . the baby in there is normal . . . mine wasn't and I'm horribly jealous; or [b] Mija, what are you thinking? The baby in there might not be normal but she's carrying to term. Stop jumping to conclusions that all is fine and have pity, for *** sake!
(2) Dear daughter, DD, asked me yesterday, "How is your baby feeling mom?" I was kinda taken aback, and every time she asks me questions in her newly-four-year-old about the baby I get a little heartsick, but I tried to answer in an upbeat manner. I said, "Well, I think he's doing pretty good, considering he's with God, and that's a great place to be." She agreed. She asks me a question about once a week, and at first I started crying, but yesterday was a milestone that I didn't.
(3) In response to a woman who posted about how sad she was about that today was her due date, I wrote: "My heart aches for you and I am thinking of you. I am not at my c-section date (what I was going to have) yet, but I am not looking forward to it. I know, though, that these wonderful people on here will help me through it. Wishing you peace and a freedom from anxiety about your decision."
(4) In response to the post, "How is your husband grieving?" I wrote:
dulcemija wrote:
I also want to say "thank you" to J- for his 2 cents . . . it helps!
As for my DH, from the second we got our poor prenatal diagnosis, he was there for me. We were "in it together" as LeLe said. Since I was so non-functioning and emotional, he got to be very action-oriented, which was good for him. He is very much a "take care of things" kind of DH. We held it in all day and faced what we needed to face, but as the sun was setting and all tasks were done for the day, we would sit together on our living room couch and talk and/or cry and let it all out--let out all we felt we couldn't around other people in the "normal" world. It was the same in the days that he was home with me right after our HC. He took bereavement leave at work, so we were home and could talk and do things together, and he could calm me down when I was crying those bitter tears. We knew, and we talked about the fact that, we had to be completely open and honest with our feelings and just say stuff out loud rather than keep it in our own heads (where mine usually resides when I'm not emoting), otherwise we wouldn't not get out of this on the other side for the better.
We're a little over a month out from our HC, and things are settling down a bit. I took off work for an extended time, so I've been home and will be until August. In my time at home during the day is when I'll cry . . . I don't want to cry in front of him. Sometimes he feels like he needs to fix it and make me stop, when I just need to cry. But, like the deal Depal and her DH came up with . . . I'll tell him, "I had a bad cry today." That day almost two weeks ago when I felt like I was feeling pretty good and then had the floor dropped out from under me . . . he came home and I immediately told him, "I need to sit with you. I need you to hold me. I had a Very Bad Day today." Likewise, one day when he was driving home and he saw something that just triggered something for him, he did the same. He came home, and he said, "I just need to hug you for a while. I had a trigger."
I am the one who is downloading grief podcasts and researching an "in real life" support group in my area and finding this site . . . I tell him about all that I do. I asked if he wanted to attend the support group with me in a few weeks (no); I told him about our site, which he thinks is great, but which he didn't show an indication to wanting to join. I guess I keep "checking in" with him . . . ? He doesn't show much of an interest in that stuff; he prefers to play his video games, which I know is his way of dealing with stuff. (Luckily, I knew that before this all happened . . . he's even tried to extoll the benefits to me of gaming thinking it would help ME(!) deal with things . . . so, okay, I have Guitar Hero III and The Sims now, which I actually DO enjoy playing.)
I still think I'm the one who will tend to bring up and start the "talk" more, but he will talk once I do. And, on his trigger moments, he'll start the talk with me, which makes me feel so good that I can be of comfort to him because I know it is hard to talk about. But all the other stuff, I just keep asking if he wants to be a part of it every once in a while.
I don't know if that helps.
(5) In response to a woman struggling with anxiety and panic after her HC, I wrote:
dulcemija wrote:
** TTC, LC mentioned ***
Hi there . . . (HUGS) . . . I *hate* anxiety SO much . . .
Like A_, I have lived with it for most of my life. I had my first devastating panic attack at 17 as a freshman in school, and it flares up BADLY every so often (mostly when I go off of my antidepressant for some reason), culminating in a complete shutting down of my body--no sleep, no eating, crying and shaking constantly. It's horrible. I'm so sorry. I know how you feel. I can live with depression, but when I am in a heightened state of anxiety, I just want to crawl out of my body, if I could.
I do not treat my anxiety with a anti-anxiety because they are very habit forming. I am VERY afraid of becoming addicted to something like that, as I have alcoholism in my family background. So, because of that, I started way back with a prescription for Prozac, which worked for me very well up until about a year and a half ago. The ADs are not addictive, so I felt better taking it. (I took it for nearly 10 years.) The times I have stopped taking Prozac included "important" things like when DH and I were thinking and trying to become pregnant with our son, to name one. I stopped taking it knowing by OB would probably want me off any drugs during the pregnancy. For a while I was fine, but the anxiety came back so badly--and to be honest, there WERE other things going on, too, like DH being deployed a week after I found out I was pregnant, which didn't help matters--that I resumed taking the Prozac after I was through the first trimester, and was on it from conception to birth through my second pregnancy of my daughter, with the knowledge and recommendation of by OB, and both children (thanks be to God!) are beautiful and happy and show no effects of me being on the med. (Total run-on sentence, but oh well.)
I am currently on Lexapro, because Prozac suddenly stopped working for me in Oct. of 2006, and I was back into one of my complete breakdown modes. We switched to Lexapro, and I feel great. Neither it nor Prozac are "happy" pills . . . for example, I feel the grief of my HC terribly, but I can focus on doing things that are right for me and healing for me, which I wouldn't be able to if I were off of the AD. If my DH and I decide to TTC again, however, I will probably stop Lexapro, at least through the first trimester, because I just don't want to take any chances again, you know? I don't know, it's something by OB and I would have to talk about, but my feeling is that I would want to temporarily stop for a bit during the critical first trimester when the neural tube things are developing (since ours was a neural tube malformation with our HC), and just hang in there as much as possible drug-less until birth.
Like some of the other ladies on here have mentioned, I also see a psychologist. Before our HC, it was once a month, sort of a maintenance for issues I was working on, but after HC it has been once a week as I begin to process what happened and work through grief. I, too, have to keep myself busy with things like housework and "projects" so that I don't think too much about things. I catastrophize everything, if given enough time to think . . . like in my time off work since the HC I've finished up a few art projects I was working on here at home; I made some Roman shades for my dining room, read books, cleaned out the garage today . . . It's a fine line for me because when I'm working, I tend to veer toward being a work-a-holic, which is NOT good . . . so I am constantly striving for balance. I think it is a good idea that you get out once a day; another one of the things I did to give myself structure was to get up and showered and dressed each day at the same time I would have had I still been going to work, but instead of going to work, I went to do my errands and to church for daily mass (we're Catholic). I am also a big believer in support groups, which is why I am here online. As I mentioned above, I have alcoholism in my family of origin, so I have been a faithful attender of Alanon for many years, and it works. (I've stopped attending regularly for a while, because it doesn't address my special needs right now.) I knew it would be a lot more difficult to try to find a support group for our special kind of loss, which is why I am so grateful this board is here. It serves that purpose for me, although I am still going to try to attend a perinatal loss group soon. (Their next meeting isn't for a few weeks, and who knows? It might not "work" for me, but I'm going to try.) I was so dismayed to find there WASN'T a support group in my area for this anymore, in fact, that I posted on here to see if anyone from this board who lived in my area wanted to meet up, and we are this Sunday!
Like A- also said, I have tried to find Podcasts online that help, too. When I can't sleep in the night (which because of anxiety is a normal happening for me), I listen to the podcast. The one that I found on iTunes that I've been getting some help from is called "Healing the Grieving Heart" and it is for parents who have lost a child, doesn't matter what means. Some of the podcasts don't "fit" me, but they do have many that address perinatal loss and grieving in general -- including how the sexes deal differently with grief, which seems to be a theme on here today -- and those have helped too. (Thanks A- for the guided meditation tip!)
I don't know . . . I have just found that I HAVE to be resourceful and try to use a lot of different resources. I have the meds, but I do a lot of "work" besides with therapist, podcasts, support groups, etc., that I found a balance of all that works for me.
I am keeping you in my mind and wishing you a freedom from anxiety and fear . . .
For those of you who do no know what these acronyms are, TTC means "trying to conceive" and "LC" means "living child". For some of the people on the board I visit, they are so grief stricken that reading posts about people who have living children (when they couldn't not) is too sensitive, so it is a warning to them that they can avoid a potentially emotional post. "DH" stands for "dear husband."
(6) Lastly, in response to "Is God Mad At Me?" I wrote:
dulcemija wrote:
S-,
I, too, am Catholic and struggled with this question. I find it a little weird that I would feel guilt over this question because I actually wasn't raised Catholic; I joined the church when I got married because DH is from a very Catholic family. I embraced the church, though, and we are very observant. (We did attend a Methodist church for a while as a child, and I was very God/spiritual anyway before becoming Catholic.) I think, though, that Catholicism has not a whole lot to do with my guilt . . . I'm just a moral and ethical person, who was always raised with the idea that this kind of a decision is NOT one to take lightly. And, this is not something I ever thought I'd be faced with. Other women, yes. Me? No.
I don't think God is mad at us at all. Not at all. Here is how (a little over one month out) I've begun to reconcile things in my mind: (1) If God did not want us to have the option of making the choice to begin with, He would not have let us know about our diagnosis. That is, our diagnosis was severe hydrocephalus because of an extreme Dandy Walker malformation; our baby had virtually no cerebellum, and the rest of his brain was hardly more than just fluid. I know of at least one other family whose son was born with hydrocephalus, except they didn't know until he was born. They had no option to choose because God didn't give them one or want them to have that one. (2) There is that part of me, though, that still feels like I did something wrong, even though it was the best possible decision we had. In that case, I am reminded that at the beginning of every mass, we are asked to call to mind our sins and ask that God forgives us. That applies to me . . . I ask for God to forgive me. I know that I will be forgiven if I ask with a true heart, and I do ask at each mass. (And I've been going nearly every day.) I don't necessarily see what I did as a mortal sin, like the Church does, but I am sorry that I had to make the choice. (3) I do feel the need to go to the sacrament of reconciliation, but I'm not sure when. I'm very scared of what the priest will say! (Even though the other posts above have shown the priest to be compassionate, I'm afraid he won't be with me and DH. That's just my fear.)
I *love* the perspective K- offered above about how God feels our pain because He had to make the decision to lose His son for the ultimate good, too. Ultimately, I feel that. I do feel like God knew this was part of my life plan, and now he is holding my hand through it.
I forgot to add one last little thing:
dulcemija wrote:
Forgot to add . . .
I do take communion when I go to mass. I haven't waited to participate in confession before I did that which, I know, may be seen as a bad thing. But the way I see it is, communion is a way for me to get the strength of God physically into my body. I know that God's strength is getting me through this, but communion (taking the body of Christ into my body) is a physical, tangible proof of that for me. That's one of the things I pray to Him after communion, a prayer of thanks to Him for the eucharist, that through the eucharist He and His strength have physically come into my body and will help me through my day. And, since I have asked for forgiveness communally (and in a personal way too) before mass, I am acceptable to receive communion. Does all that make sense?
Just my thinking . . . take what you like and leave the rest.
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