The bad days and body betrayal

         I feel like I would be doing everyone a disservice if I didn't also write about the bad days. For every good day in that first week, there was at least one bad day to go along with it.

          Tuesday was a bad day. It usually starts with nothing... Just being quiet for long enough to start reliving our loss. The most vivid images come back into my head at a moment's notice, and the worst was thinking about the nose bleeds. Kaitlyn's little body was breaking down while we were able to hold her, and her sweet little nose kept bleeding. Nurses, visitors, whoever, kept handing me kleenexes to wipe away the blood, but her sweet nose just kept bleeding. This image kept coming to me one day while I was in the shower and I just lost it. I. lost. it. Alex came and found me in the shower and asked "what's wrong, what is it?" and I cried to him about how I was her Mom and I was suppose to protect her and I didn't do that. I didn't protect my baby girl from this happening to her. I couldn't stop her nose from bleeding, I couldn't stop time so that they would never take her away. I just couldn't protect her from this. Alex would usually just wrap his arms around me and let me cry, and tell me it was ok. He never tried to comfort me too much (that is a thing), but mostly he just knew I needed to be held.

        Another hard thing was thinking about holding Kaitlyn and feeling all of her weight on my chest. I missed holding her, just holding her. All 7 pounds and 9 ounces. I missed being able to stroke her hair and tell her how much I loved her. I miss those ridiculously long eyelashes that she clearly got from Alex. I miss that sweet face and being able to rub on her cheeks. I know, of course, that none of my memories are really of my daughter. She wasn't there when we were holding her, she was already gone. I just have the shell of her, and my perceptions of her spirited personality that I had when she was moving around inside me.

        The "should haves" crept (and creep) in quite often. I should have a healthy baby. I should have my daughter with me. I should have a happy family. Should have... Should have... Should have.

        While I was trying desperately to deal with all of my disappointment of not having our child in the house, my body was doing an awesome denial dance of its own. It's a hefty amount of salt put into your wound when your body doesn't realize that there is no reason for it to try to feed anybody, because there's no baby waiting to be fed. What they tell you in the hospital is to wrap your chest to signal to your body that everything needs to deflate, but they don't tell you how incredibly painful and uncomfortable that is. Their answer to that is adding more meds, of course. So here I am, waddling around the house with an ice pack strapped across my belly and an ace bandage wrapped so tight around my chest that I can hardly breathe. Not in the least bit comfortable, and of course none of my clothes fit so I'm rockin' the stretchy pants and oversized t-shirts the majority of the time. Luckily, I was raised right and managed to at least put mascara on quite a few days.

         When I was in the throes of a bad day, I tried to remind myself of the things I had learned in a Bible study last fall. One of the big lessons was about pride. At some point during the study, the leader talked about how we think that we shouldn't have to do things like wait in line at a red light or be patient in the line at the grocery store. It may seem silly, but it really resonated with me because she kept saying that sometimes we get in the mindset of "why me?" when our mindset should really be, "why not me?". What have we done that exempts us from hardships? Whenever the "should haves" hit, I am still working on changing my "why me?" to "why not me?", but its getting easier with each day.