Jason and I are doing well. I mean, I'm not a grief expert, so my perspective may not be completely accurate, but it seems we are doing well. I still have my emotional moments, but they don't result in meltdowns anymore. For the first few weeks, I had many of those. I missed Landon so much- missed having him in here with me and missed the plans we had for him on the outside. I also went through guilt over my inability to plan properly for how to handle his arrival. We never planned for him to die. We only believed he would live. This made me feel that we were not properly prepared for so much of this tragedy.
Experiencing the love of a mother for the first time, while simultaneously experiencing the loss of your child, is something words can't adequately describe. I won't even attempt that, except to say that I thought nothing of myself, my loss, my pain, what I was going through. I did not enter the equation. I only thought of my baby boy and asked if I had done everything I could've have done, should've done for him- in the 22 weeks he was in my womb and the 2-3 minutes he survived outside of it. The beginning of labor to the death of my son all happened so unexpectedly and so quickly. I was in immense pain and incredibly traumatized. We all had our list of things we "should've" done or "would've" done differently in the few short minutes he was alive. All of us but Jason, that is. He has always maintained that we handled it the right way in the moment and we all did the best we could. He has been such a rock for me, during this whole process. I do get concerned about whether or not he's allowed himself to grieve. Men take on such a role of strength, to help women get through it. They also don't talk about things as much, so you can't help but wonder if they are dealing with it. I credit so much of my progress to talking about it that entire first week. Everything I thought and felt was expressed multiple times, to multiple people. I know that moved me forward. As for the guilt, we just have to let that go and trust that God guided us properly in that moment and provided Landon comfort as he brought him home.
In layer 2 (I like to think of my grief process as layers being peeled back. Steps is not the right word, because that implies a numerical sequence, and nothing about this process is that logical or clearly identifiable. Most of the time you feel too nuts to confidently place yourself in something so neat and tidy as "Step 2- Anger and Denial." You go in and out of steps and sometimes hang out in 3 at a time, or wonder why you're in step 4 when you don't remember experiencing step 2...And one can rarely label a feeling well enough to guess what step they're in. This parenthetical reference is becoming quite long, so back to the original thought.) my emotional meltdowns subsided and were replaced by anxiety- something very new to me. Normal life stressors, which I can always logically think through and resolve, would result in me feeling like my head was spinning and I could not formulate a forward moving thought. None of these stressors were even related to my tragedy. They were all normal things I had always managed fine before. In these moments, I could not move through the mental paralysis, nor did I believe I had the ability to do so. My proverbial fuze was quite short. I would feel angry, annoyed, frustrated and know that these feelings didn't fit the situation, but I couldn't get past them. That has also subsided, for the most part. I began working out again this week, which I believe is a huge contributor to that. I am thankful that I have not had to resort to medication to deal with any of this. I am not against medication, in general, but I did have a strong goal to make it through without medicating.
We had the postpartum follow-up appointment with the doctor on Monday. It was pretty much what I had expected- a whole lot of speculation and zero answers. Wait.....we did get one answer....I am 20% more likely to have this happen to me in my next pregnancy, now that it has happened once. That begged the question- "are there any anti-anxiety medications you can prescribe me when I become pregnant again?" I was happy the answer was "yes." We also got one partial answer, which was that we should wait a year to try again. I say partial answer, because he also said that there really isn't any scientific evidence to suggest that my body is not adequately healed at 6 months, so we may be fine to try then. He just prefers we wait a year to be sure. That didn't help solve the prior debate J and I had about whether we should wait 6 months or a 12. I was team 6 and he was team 12. I suppose we have some time to figure that out. =0) Other than that, we know I was infected, which caused the labor. They believe this happened as a result of the rupture. There is, however, no known cause of the rupture or any guaranteed preventative measures we can take next time. The best reassurance we have is that the doctors will watch everything much more closely and frequently next time, doing whatever they can, as necessary, to help me stay pregnant.
This is a great reminder that God is in complete control. It is also a reminder than this process is far too complex and far too miraculous for man to ever completely understand. For as advanced as we are in medicine, we still know very little. I believe that is God's way of reminding us that life is a miracle. We take for granted that we can get pregnant and have healthy babies. Medical professionals really can't even help us much with this. Only God can. So Jason and I move forward, trying to establish as much normalcy as we can possibly regain, with the knowledge that our future is truly and completely in God's hands.
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