An Update

So here I am months after my last post wondering why I abandoned it all.

I know why: I got sick, very very sick. Pregnancy is just not something that agrees with me. Yesterday I made the first real meal for my family in 13 weeks! I haven’t been able to hardly move let alone cook or smell food or get more than a sip of water down. Yuck. I have been on all kinds of drugs to keep food or at the very least liquids down. Yay! Wow yeah sitting down and thinking about my life in the larger perspective doesn’t really seem worth it when I had to struggle with every minute of every day to feel physically human for 13 weeks. Not that I am “all better” now, just well enough to sit down and type.

So here is what has happened in the past couple months:

I got a letter from the adoptive family finally! It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.

I have decided to let go, I can’t be angry, I can’t dwell, I can’t . . . It hurts too much and I just don’t function well that way. I have to be at peace with stuff. I can’t be like some of you first moms fighting the adoption reform battle. I am not strong enough and not nearly angry enough. I know that I did is what I had to do at the time. I know that adoption is a horrid process and it needs reform, but there is nothing I can do to change my current situation at the moment and I am going to be selfish and say that I need only to concentrate on that, my current situation.

I am having another baby! And wow is that incredible. I have been having some bonding issues, but I think that is pretty normal in my “situation” i.e. – being a birthmother and also being so very sick. I am excited, scared, frustrated, and overwhelmed. I know it is so very cliché but it is hard for me to imagine that I can love this one as much as I love Little Bear.

My dear husband and I moved to our very own place! Yipeeee! We love being here. We love each other, and our relationship is getting so much better. It makes me unbelievably happy.

Finally I’m happy with my life – mostly. It is good to feel as if your life isn’t falling apart even if everything isn’t perfect in it. Sometimes you just have to be content with where you are.

Beautiful boy

My Silly Boy

Noah is walking now. He is having so much fun with it and is so proud of himself. He laughs when he gets some where(to the chair, in our arms, across the room) as if he has accomplished something uber fun. And so he has. I love to see him walk and gain independence. It is so fun to me that he is growing up strong and healthy and learning lessons that “big boys” learn.He is so mischievous. Will do anything naughty and then laugh about it because he thinks he is O-So-Funny. He is. It is totally impossible to laugh along with him even when I shouldn’t be.It makes me wonder what he is going to be like when he is older, I think I know . . .

Resting in the Sun

There are moments in my life that I need to stop and rest. When I was in college I would lay in the sunshine in the middle of the floor (that is where ever it would happen to fall) like a complete fool. I did this because number one I hate the cold and I did not go to college in a warm place, and two because I read in a kids book once that “sunlight makes positive ions in your head.” I don’t know if that’s true (although I do know that sun makes vitamin d, and helps seasonal depression). I didn’t have a roommate thank goodness, can you imagine walking in and seeing someone curled up, even sleeping like a DOG in the sun! I even moved with the sunlight. It makes me chuckle just thinking about it. I did however feel a little bit better after napping in the sun.

By the way can anyone remember that book that I am talking about?

So i’m taking a small stretch in the Sun this week and maybe next week too. I just finished “Wicked.” It’s good, but dark. And next week I plan to read “Son of a Witch.” I have to hurry through it though, stupid ten day library books, grumble. . . too cheap to buy my own. . . grumble. . . even if I normally read a book in a couple days. . . grumble. I read for fun and cook too! Those are my two favorite at least. Don’t you hate those surveys where they ask your hobbies? Yes I read, cook, play on the computer, and sometimes sew. I feel like the biggest nerd ever! Maybe that is why I have bright red hair, next week plumb, I gotta feel cool somehow. After all I do work with teens for my part time job.

Sunniest part of my week is that I’ve been watching my son learn to walk, and haven’t been tormented by “I missed this” thoughts. I have been giggling all week because Little Bear is the goofiest, silliest, absolutely most wonderful Little Bear ever. He makes me happy, more happy than I have EVER been. I really love finally being able to be a mom.

I have been working my arss off at the gym, and I am looking hot! Prince Charming (my husband) is having a very hard time with our once a week agreement. Crap! I didn’t think he’d notice that I’ve lost a jean size and that my chicken legs and arms are filling out. Heck my boobs are even perkier! And I’ve breastfeed for over a year now. Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful (remember those old ads? Ha!).

I feel like me again. Not so bogged down by hurt and stress and pain. That was the old me - the one that would have black moods that would last for months, then a small upswing and then back down. Prince Charming changed that, or maybe I changed for him. No . . . I changed because I admired the way he handled life and I wanted to be more like him. He changed too, but that is his story and really not mine to tell.

So here I am curled up in the metaphorical sun in the middle of winter, ignoring my poor lonely laptop except to say hi. Don’t worry all, good ol' lappy gets plenty of attention from Charming, he has his own blog.

Thanks for all the comments lately! You are all so wonderful and your support is more than I’ve gotten in years, well that is except for Charming. I appreciate each and every one and maybe I’ll stop being a chicken sh*t and respond to some of them from now on.

Off to enjoy some more Sun!

Always Afraid

Little Bear is running a temperature today. He has been running one for the last few days. He got his shots one week ago today and is teething. So a temperature of 102 is not completely unexpected. But I can’t seem to get over the fear of loosing him. Right now I have the monitor on to make sure that he doesn’t go into convulsions (something that can happen with the mmr shot) and that he is still breathing.

When Little Bear was a newborn I was terrified of SIDS. In fact it is still habit for me to suddenly wake in the middle of the night alarmed and put my hand on his little back and check his breathing. For over a month he got no more than 15 to 30 minutes of sleep at most, unless I was holding him and then I couldn’t sleep for fear of smothering him. I gave in and put him on his tummy. Exhaustion won out because I thought I was going to die after getting so little sleep. He slept beautifully on his own for the first time. It’s amazing I didn’t get an ulcer from that.

Little Bear sleeps next to me in his crib partly because we are living with my parents (another post for another time) but partly because I am terrified for him be anywhere else besides right next to me. I have never left him in the care of a babysitter. I have only just recently started leaving him with my mom for an hour or two in order to go to the gym. I have even limited my husband from going out unless all conditions are absolutely perfect.

I am ashamed to admit that I have thought horrible thoughts about him dying. Not post-partum thoughts, but thoughts about how he could die so I can prevent it in every possible way. It doesn’t help that my friend’s baby died this summer.

I know deep down what it stems from. I seem to be a text-book case on loss. I am a slightly educated woman and have some background in psychology and counseling. So I know that a woman who experiences a pregnancy loss will have a hard time bonding with that child until she is past the point of the loss. Until the wonderful social worker at my agency gave me a free ultrasound, I had difficult time bonding with Noah. She is young woman who was pregnant herself who I wish she could have been my social worker 10 years ago, but she was probably still in high school then.

So the situation that I am dealing with now is also text-book. When you experience a trauma, that trauma will manifest itself if different ways. If you loose a friend in a car accident you might be afraid of riding in a car for a while. If you get raped you can have a severe distrust of men. If you traumatically loose a child you will be afraid of loosing your child again.

So I maybe text-book, but this is still not easy to deal with.