Tombs and Homes and Fighting

I don't know any person who has never struggled with self esteem. I don't know one person who never had issues with the way they looked or how they sounded or what they wore. Everyone has something. I refuse to believe otherwise.

I have never not struggled with the way I see myself. I go through times where I feel strong and confident and other times when I feel literally like a beached whale. I try desperately to see myself through Gods eyes because I know He seriously loves every part of me. I am not God though and I do not see myself that way.

After our last miscarriage something in me snapped. People kept telling me to take care of myself because that's important but I totally didn't understand that. My body betrayed me. My body was supposed to keep our baby alive, and it didn't. So I stopped caring. And I stopped sleeping. February and March were awful. I didn't sleep, couldn't sleep. I would take NyQuil and Melatonin and beg to sleep and I couldn't. My anxiety issues came back, I didn't want to leave my house. Thankfully I didn't have panic attacks...

I hated my body. Truthfully and in big ways. I hated it. I didn't and still don't, fully understand what happened. If you talk to doctors they will tell you I never actually carried a baby which is a big old pile of crap. I know there was life inside me. And I know that life died. We found out on a Friday our baby wasn't there and I did not actively miscarry until Monday morning, rocking my hips on the side of our bed, clutching Blair's hands, sobbing out a silent prayer. According to doctors our baby had been gone for weeks. My body became a tomb

And I hated it.

I've always struggled with weight and self esteem but I just stopped caring. And it got scary. I wanted to sleep all the time but couldn't sleep and I knew that if this was how I was going to continue to grieve I was going down a dark path.

Luckily I have friends amazing friends. Wonderful friends. Beautiful friends. Friends who ask me to set goals and then stick to them. Friends who tell me things like "taking care of your body is taking care of the only home your babies ever knew." Friends who listen to me when I want to eat to make feelings go away. Friends who listen to me cry two months later, mourning the loss of a happy healthy baby.

See when I stopped using food as a crutch I had to deal with my emotions. And it suckssssss. Yesterday morning I literally sobbed while eating breakfast with my kids. I cried a lot yesterday. Because not only did our baby die, but my hopes and dreams of a healthy baby died too. I don't remember Deans early days the way I remember Ellie's. I mourn the loss of his baby hood and the loss of getting to do it all again this year. I wanted family pictures of us together for the first time. My children met through facetime. Face. Time. While I'm thankful for that...it pierces my heart a little too.

I joined a gym. And have gone consistently. And it has helped me FINALLY sleep at night. But it's hard too. Today I worked out and had to fight back tears because somewhere along the way my thought process became "if I was stronger..." or "if I was thinner..." or "if Id tried harder..".

None of those things define me and none of those things brings my babies back. And being healthier and thinner or stronger physically...will never prevent us from the very real possibility that we could miscarry again. No matter how hard I work...I will never get the memories and the images and the pain to go away.

I've said it before...but this miscarriage was particularly bad. Particularly traumatic. If you've ever seen the movie The Help...the scene where Minnie breaks down the bathroom door to find the woman ...that was me. That was us. Carnage. I don't get to forget that. And I remember it at awful times. Like when I'm at the gym working out. Or when I use our upstairs bathroom. Or when Ellie asks me where her new baby is...we've had a lot of talks about Heaven...

And then my friends. Two in particular. One who is walking the grief journey with me and one who is walking before me. The one who reminded me that taking care of my body, this body...is loving the only home my babies ever knew.

Seven weeks.
Ten weeks.
Twelve weeks.

Of pure unadulterated continuous love. That's all my babies ever knew. My body may have felt like a tomb for a while...but with help and healing I can begin to see it as a home. A beautiful home. A worthy home. Their home. And I'm just sprucing it up a bit. It feels good to make my body strong. It feels good to finally be able to sleep well at night. It feels good to be mentality clear and have people who help me set goals.


And as much as it hurts, it feels good to finally be dealing with the awful grief and pain that I have gone through in the past three years. Between Deans diagnosis and treatment and this last miscarriage, it has felt like punch after punch.

I have two choices. I can take it and let it break me. Or I can fight.

I'm fighting.

It has been one month. Tonight I am up late and my heart is racing and I can't force myself to sleep because that means tomorrow will come and I don't want to deal with tomorrow. I don't even want to deal with now.

You did not wake up this morning feeling an emptiness inside you. I did. I feel...like a tomb. A grave yard. I feel like I am standing on the edge of a panic attack...

Look so many things have happened in the past week and in the past month. My brain is swimming in images and thoughts and sensations. I want to write about everything. I want to tell these stories. None of the words formulate right and I honestly am afraid I sound like I'm having a pity party.

Dean got the flu. And just like I thought we would, we ended up spending a night in the hospital. If I can, I avoid ER trips. Do you know why? They suck. They always keep him up late they always traumatized him, they always make me cry. This time, his face turned blue while they placed the IV. The last time I saw him that blue was when he was air lifted because he was dying. All of my mom instincts wanted to be like "look we're here just cut him open fiddle around in there and be done, please".  Because honest to God I am effing sick of this. I just really am.

I'm sick of being scared to go places because he could sick. Then deciding not to scared and going places and then him getting sick. I'm tired of leaving Ellie with people when she should be with me. She had the flu too ya know. She felt just as miserable. And I had to leave her.

I don't think I handled this ER trip well at all. I don't think I've handled the past month well at all. I don't think people realize how traumatic and awful our miscarriage was. I don't think I realized how angry I am about all of it...

How many baby's do I have to watch die to have live kids? At this point, in order to carry to term, I assume I have to have a miscarriage first. It's like pieces of me are missing. Every time we take a family picture, three of my kids aren't there. Every time I see a family tree, three of my kids aren't there. When people ask me how many kids I have...how do I tell them I have five kids, when only two are with me? The X-ray tech at Deans hospital asked if I was pregnant or had any chance of being pregnant. I laughed. I didn't know what to say. "Nope! That baby died a mo th ago! We're cool!"...

I was so damn excited to be having another baby. To feel that little stinker kick and move, to watch my body change, to have him or her here in our home. I wanted t to nurse a baby again. I wanted a sweet cuddly newborn that snuggled with me late at night, wrapped in our own world...

Now I'm not sure if I ever want to do it again. I'm not sure I ever want to tell Blair we're having another baby only to watch myself bleed it out.

I don't really sleep any more. I've been having nightmares. It's easier to just stay awake.

This is not the life I ever imagined for myself. For Blair. For my kids. And lately I'm having a hard time accepting it and being content.

Anyways...it's late. And Moms don't get days off. So I'll go lay in bed for a while pretending I'm going to sleep...