grief

Since January 7th we have been grieving. Then we started grieving all over again on July 9th. Ellie's name is said a 1,000 times an hour in my head. Sometimes it's just her name other times it goes along with a prayer or a memory.
Jason and I grieve differently, the difference between being a man and woman, dad and mom, didn't carry the baby and carried the baby.
I have the physical pain of wanting to feel Ellie kick inside of me. I feel like I am re-learning how to be in a non-pregnant body. I forget I can bend over or try to put on other shoes other than the flip flops I wore for the last month.
The Haven Network gave us a pink baby album with black and white edited photos that I keep in our living room. I can't sit in that room and not look at the photos. There is a picture of Ellie lying on her side with her hands folded together under her chin and she is staring so innocently at the camera and I instinctively rub her cheeks every time I look at that photo. I so badly want to feel her chubby cheeks again. Or wrap her fingers around my thumbs.

I posted this article shortly before Ellie made her grand entrance into the world...
family and friends

The anxiety and awkwardness of social situations is dead on in that article. Days after Ellie passed away Jason called to ask me if I wanted to get together with a group of people and tears immediately filled my eyes. My stomach tightened and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed. Since then I have not had such an intense reaction to seeing and being with other people. The intensity of anxiousness is different every other minute. I never know how I am going to feel or when the feeling is going to change to some thing more bearable.
I am ok with being around other people. But I don't feel like myself, like I used to. It feels wrong to be out of the house, to be making small talk, to be smiling. It is so uncomfortable to watch family, friends and even strangers go on with life so easily. Don't they know what happened 11 short days ago?

I am not telling you all of this so that someone can say the perfect words to make those feelings go away. I know that I am allowed to grieve how ever I need to and for how ever long I need to.

I don't cry every day. Ambien helps me sleep. And my husband makes me laugh everyday.

I have been asked if I will continue blogging... I will, but it will take awhile to figure why I am blogging now and what to write about. Before it was to keep my far away family and friends in the know about my pregnancy. And now...I don't want this to become post after post of depressing grief.

I love talking about Ellie. I love looking at her pictures. I even like talking about the hospital stay and labor. Maybe someday I'll share more details about labor and delivery. I will share one little detail now, our wee little daughter was 3lbs 6oz at birth, I gained nearly 50lbs...we were told early on in the pregnancy that I would retain excess water weight. They were NOT kidding. My OB had to break my water...I lost 3 liters of fluids in one fallow swoop. Imagine if my water had broke in the middle of Target...