Thoughts on abortion

In researching and reading, I've come across some very disturbing things.  I'm going to muse briefly on abortion.  If you are rabidly pro anything, please recognize that these are simply the musings of a woman who has lost a little girl at 20 weeks, held that little girl in her arms, and mourned for the last two months.  I am not political.

Charlotte has a birth certificate...sort of.  In the state of Virginia, where I currently live, if you have something like what happened to Charlotte, you can apply for a certificate of "birth resulting in stillbirth"...basically acknowledging that she died, but not that she lived...which is counter intuitive to begin with.  It's a very chicken and egg type thought.  Not the point.  My point is that this is allowed in Virginia.  It's not the case in all states, and according to my research, a lot of that is a political issue...

Apparently, if you give a baby a certificate of death or birth, you are, in some way, acknowledging it as alive, and therefore the whole pro life or pro choice debate muddies the waters.  If my baby, wanted and loved, was alive and then died, then is it ok for another woman's baby, not wanted, to be killed?

Several issues I have with this:

1) I held my daughter's little body in my arms.  She was a person.  She had a face.  She had a tiny mouth, and fingers, and the smallest, most perfect fingernails.  Don't you dare presume to tell me that she didn't die, wasn't a person, didn't matter.  She matters.  She has a name, and that name deserves to be recorded and made official.  This was able to happen for me, but there are still 18 states that don't do this.

2) I don't understand why abortion is legal until 24 weeks.  I just don't.  People argue that the babies aren't viable before that point, meaning that if they are born they couldn't survive, and therefore it's still ok.  That's bullshit.  It may be entirely emotion based, but I held my daughter in my arms...I will never believe that it would be OK for someone to kill her, regardless of whether or not she could survive outside me...and 24 weeks is several weeks past when Charlotte died.  How can people think that's ok?  I don't understand.  I just don't understand.

3) Why is it that a baby born too soon gets a birth certificate (albeit a conditional one), yet a baby who may be older can still be killed?  My daughter died.  The state and the hospital and my emotions acknowledge this...and yet, were I a different person, I could have waited three more weeks and then chosen to have her ripped from me because I didn't want her?  Why is that ok? 

I don't have a stance on abortion.  I really don't.  When I was younger, I thought about it,  I won't lie.  When I thought about having sex in college, and the what ifs...I considered it.  I don't think I would have ever gone through with it, had it come to that, but it was on my mind at one point in my life. Now, on the other side of motherhood, on the other side of loss, I can't fathom wanting to get rid of a pregnancy, of a baby. I literally don't know what to think about it.  I don't want to say I'm pro-life, because I'm not one of the nutty, sign holding, bumper sticker toting, hell and damnation preaching people.  I don't want to say I'm pro-choice, because I'm not one of the nutty, it's my body, feminazi, Birkenstock-wearing people.  I don't fit.

Where is the group for people like me?

The people who don't want to preach or judge but who ache for the babies we lost by force? 

I was a stupid college student who knew she couldn't be a mother, and, while I was thankfully never put in that position, I would have considered abortion if it had happened to me...so how can I condemn the young and foolish like me?

I've had a miscarriage at 13 weeks, and I mourned for that baby...so how can I justify abortion through the first trimester?  Obviously I cared about my baby, right?

I had fertility problems after my miscarriage...so how can I justify the women who throw away everything I ever wanted for the sake of personal convenience?

I held my little girl in my arms and traced the contours of her face with my fingers...so how can I not be completely appalled that many people think it's ok for babies just like her to be ripped apart on purpose?

You know what it comes down to?  I wish I'd had a choice.  I wish I could have chosen for my daughter to live.  I wish I could have chosen to trade places with one of the women who is throwing away a beautiful little girl like my Charlotte for a reason that couldn't possibly be good enough.  I wish I could choose that.

*whistling and twiddling thumbs

OK, getting impatient.  I'm never a patient person.  I'm the kid who carefully unwrapped and rewrapped my  Christmas presents two weeks before Christmas because I NEEDED to know what was in there.  If I was that impatient about a sweater, imagine how impatient I am about waiting for my body to return to normal.

I am currently 7 weeks and 5 days removed from my daughter's birth...when exactly is my body going to get back to normal?  This is one of two times in my life that I'm just desperate for my period to start.  The first was after my miscarriage in 2009...and it ended in the excessive amount of missed tissue from my D&C very painfully and shockingly exiting my body two days after Christmas.  The longer I'm waiting here, the more I'm worried that something similarly scary and/or dangerous will happen.

In addition, the following is a list of the reasons I want my body back to normal:

1. We want to try to conceive again as soon as possible, and the doctor said I only have to wait one cycle...so any day now.  As a part of the belief system we adopted when we lost Charlotte, we really feel like we NEED to try again as soon as possible...that part of the reason Charlotte left us is because she was sick, and she wants to be able to help us have a healthy child...Charlotte's going to watch over her little brother or sister and she'll send a small piece of her spirit back to us as well.  With that belief, it's almost painful to try to wait.
2. The longer I wait, the more I research.  The more I research, the more I find strange diseases, conditions, and complications that I could attribute to my symptoms.  The more I find strange diseases, conditions, and complications, the more I worry...and panic.  I've alternately thought I have cancer, Ashermann's syndrome, early menopause, and renal failure in the last month. I am not normally a hypochondriac, but I find myself wondering and wondering.  Good times.
3. So, since we're not supposed to TTC for the first month, but we want to TTC AFTER that month (hence no pills, hormones, or devices), our only option at this point is the condom.  Eww.  I am no longer 18, I am not a prostitute, and I have no communicable diseases (or maybe I do...see reason #2 again).  There is no reason I should have to use condoms ever again.  Yet here I am.  Again, eww.
4. I'm getting tired of analyzing the...erm...moisture I feel at any given time of day, running to the bathroom to check, and being disappointed.  It's just annoying, and it's wasting toilet paper.  It's a silly concern, but it's still a concern.

Dear Aunt Frannie,
Would love for you to visit.  It's been too long.  Please only visit once, though...You'll wear out your welcome if you come around too often.
Sincerely,
Me

Exactly.

Wandering amongst blogs

So, I was wandering amongst some angel mom blogs tonight.  While my feelings of complete and utter loneliness ebbed a bit during the day today, once Mia goes to bed and Mike is off at work, it slams back.  Reading other people's words helps.  So, here are some observations:

1) I'm not a great writer.  This shouldn't surprise me.  Though I was an English major in college and I love to write, I'm not great at it.  I have a good, clear voice.  That's about all I can say for myself.  I feel like I'm fairly readable, but that's hardly a glowing testimony.

2) I'm not a great photographer.  Again, shouldn't be a surprise.  Still, I like to think I do a good job every once in a while.  For example:

 

I took this picture.  It's not art, but it's pretty, right?  Yeah....I want art.  Grumble.

3) A lot of mommas stop writing right about now...meaning a month or two out from their losses, many women seem to lose the urge to purge their hearts through inane blogging to an invisible army of other angel mommies who occasionally provide the appropriate responses.  Will I hit that point soon?  Maybe their support systems aren't failing them as much as mine is.

4) Sometimes, things are perfect.

 

I stumbled across this in my musings...ordered a large print of it to hang on my wall.  It hurt my heart, but it's entirely true.  This is how I want to remember my daughter.

 

Feeling really lonely

It's one of those bad nights.  They don't happen that often in the last couple of weeks, but every once in a while....here we are. So I'm going to vent and ramble, and hopefully the sludge that's clogging up my emotions will extricate itself from my life, if only temporarily.

I have a significant feeling that a lot of the people that I've counted as friends, some even really close friends, don't really care about me that much at all.  I know it's been almost seven weeks since Charlotte's birth and death, but, damn it, I still need people to care.  Or I need people to even care in the first place.

With one or two very rare exceptions, I don't remember the last time one of my friends called ME to ask to hang out.  I don't remember the last time one of my friends checked in on me to see how I'm doing.  I know that what I'm going through is just a small blip on the corner of someone else's radar....but it's a hell of a lot more than a blip to me.

I feel like I try pretty hard to be a good friend to people.  I try to do and say things that make people's lives easier, make people feel better.  I try not to burden people too much with my own problems if I can help it...but damn it, I need something now.  Who's trying hard to be a good friend to me? 

I literally do not remember the last time the phone rang and it wasn't an immediate member of my family.  Am I that person?  That person who thinks they're a better friend to people than they really are?  The one everyone is secretly annoyed by but no one has the guts to actually say it?  Am I that person?

I wish my phone would ring.

Disappointed. Again.

I feel a little selfish today.

Yesterday marked six weeks since Charlotte's birth and death.  I'm still dealing with it every day.  I still hurt and grieve every day.  I will miss her every day for the rest of my life.

...but it's been six weeks.  I've apparently passed the invisible line of time after which people don't care anymore.  I've used up my support.  Sorry, better luck next time.  OK, maybe that's a little harsh...but that's pretty much how it feels.

So my sister's husband is having heart problems.  She married a man in his 60s.  He is generally very fit and healthy, but this isn't exactly a huge shock considering.  That sounds cold, and I don't mean it that way.  Having just gone through what Mike and I went through, I understand, probably better than most of my family, how she's feeling.  Alone, unsure, angry, sad....I get it.

I did not call her when I found out....as she did not call me when she found out about Charlotte.  She was dealing with her husband at the time.  I think the two of us have a mutual understanding that, since we're each dealing with our own rough times, we aren't really able to be there for one another significantly.  I haven't blamed her for not trying to talk to me about Charlotte...but I know that, if I were to call her now, she would feel obligated to try to talk to me about MY loss, and I don't want to add that burden to her.

Instead, Mike and I sent them a bouquet of flowers last week with a card saying that we're thinking of them and praying for them, and that we're here if they need support.  Really, that's all I would want from the people in my family, particularly those who live far away (as we do). 

We went to lunch today with the family that lives locally...and they were talking about Beth and Luis.  They were talking about how much they were calling her, and how they were arranging for a personal nurse to help Luis recover at home, and all the things they were going to say and do to make this easier on Beth. 

And I got mad.  Really mad.  I feel incredibly selfish about this, and I do not, at all, begrudge Beth the support she is getting.  I'm happy and relieved that they're able and willing to be there for her...but...

What did any of them say to me?  Do they just like her more, or is it that, since her husband is still alive they feel more comfortable talking about it?  How many of my family members never even said anything to my husband?  How many of them chose not to ask to see pictures or read my journal?  How many of them, when I asked them as a group, through a reading I sent via email, and in individual emails and conversations to talk to me about my daughter because I NEED to talk about her, never once brought her up.  Not ONCE. 

When you spend your entire life believing that, if you really and truly needed it, your family would always be there to support you in whatever you need, and then when that's tested to have the bottom drop out...I'm hurt.  I walk away from family dinners now being angry, and sad, and upset...to the extent that I don't even want to be around them any more. 

I feel selfish.  I dislike myself. Maybe I'm asking too much.  I don't know.  I'm disappointed.

Feeling narcissistic...

I've been commenting in my message board a lot in the last few days.  I, for some reason, feel like I actually have really good things to say, for once.  I'm not sure my perspective on it is accurate.  I'm not particularly insightful.  Maybe it's just that I get such a good feeling from people responding to what I say...I don't know.

I keep filtering my message list for posts I've posted in...I want to see if people are responding to what I've said.  I want to see if people are helped by what I've said.  I need to feel like my thoughts, my ideas, my revelations are helpful to people like me who feel so lost.

There's the rub.  My focus is more on how I, me, myself am helping people...not on the people being helped...if I'm even helping anyone.  How narcissistic is that??