01/16/09 New Year's Resolution....

I started this blog for a few reasons:
~ I needed an outlet. I can only talk about it so much to my friends and family before they start to make comments like "Maybe you should talk to someone?". "Someone" being a medical professional. I know it's hard for them to find something to say to comfort me. I can only hear "I'm so sorry for your loss" so much before it just become drowned by my thoughts. I don't even think I hear what people say to me anymore. I needed to be able to bring my thoughts to light and make sense of them. Sometimes, when I say things out loud or write them down they come into context.
~I didn't want to keep explaining and reliving every grueling detail to everyone who asked. Whenever I am met w/ "What happened?", the reply is this link.
~Most importantly, I didn't want Parker to be forgotten. The classification of the miscarriage still makes my skin crawl and I just want her acknowledged for the baby she is. I didn't want her to be a "failed pregnancy". I wanted her to be a member of my family who passed away. I didn't want the life she never got to have to be in vain.

I get emails everyday from people telling me that they read Parker's story. Nothing makes me happier than to read this because someone is thinking of her, acknowledging that she is real, loved, missed, etc. I know that when most people pass away they say "Don't cry for me..." but I'm glad people cry for her. It not only means that they understand how unfair her loss was but that they understand how important she is to us. The site meter counts clicks onto the site and it still amazes me to see how many people log on each day. Actually, it makes me feel bad when I go a month and a half w/out updating her blog.

As far as the last month and a half go..... I left my last entry at the "suspenseful 2 week wait". I started taking pregnancy tests way too early, read entirely too many books, spent enough time on Google that I should have been offered a job and of course, got my hopes up way too high. Chad was nearing the point of telling me I was losing it. At one point, he picked up my pill case and said "Don't you think this is a little overboard? You are taking 14 pills a day." He dared not tell me to stop all the madness. I know that he can't even fathom the amount of money I have spent of ttc a baby. The fertility monitor, books, ovulation detectors, home pregnancy tests, vitamins, etc....are not cheap items. These companies know a women desperate for a baby will spare no expense.

I had my progesterone levels checked at cycle day 21 and told the nurse who called to give me my results that I thought I was pregnant. I had every symptom. However, my period started two days earlier than expected. I was devastated.

Later that day, I came home and checked my Myspace only to find an entire page of baby updates from people that I really don't know. I had over 100 people on my profile from different message boards. My updates, bulletins, etc were cluttered w/ nothing but pictures of pregnant bellies, ultrasounds and babies. I lost it. I slammed the laptop closed, bawled in the shower until the water ran cold and cried myself to sleep w/ sopping wet hair. The next day when I opened the laptop, it immediately returned to my myspace page. I began to tear up and then I remembered something: it's called MY space for a reason. All these people had to go. I felt bad just deleting people who cared enough about me to actually want to be my friend and read my blog, so I sent out this bulletin:

I have added a ton of wonderful ladies to myspace from my pregnancy/baby websites. I really appreciate all the support that each of you have given to me through everything and even now. It means so much to me.

However, some things are just too much for me to handle. I log on to myspace as an "escape" from my day and my thoughts. Lately, it's had the opposite effect and I usually log off in tears.

Over the next few days, I will be deleting several people. Please don't take it personally. There are some things that I need to remove from my everyday habits. The baby websites being one of them. It's hard to do because I have made so many wonderful friends but the end result is that I feel like I'm suffocating. It's harder to log on and see the pregnancy updates and pictures of the people that I don't know in "real life". ((I hope that makes sense.)) It's easy for me to be happy for my pregnant family members and long time friends. It's easier for me to be jealous of the people that I don't know personally and wish that I could share in that joy of being pregnant or having a baby.

I know that many of you wanted to follow Parker's story and wanted to be able to view my blog. I truly appreciate that, with all my heart.
I have made a blog for her at www. parkerellen. blogspot. com.
Please feel free to follow her story there. You are more than welcome to comment there as well.

I really hope that I don't offend anyone but at this point, I need to do this for me. I have not deleted my profiles on the baby websites but I have no plans to log on....at least not until I feel that I am ready to deal w/ it. You have no idea how hard it is to listen to people bitch, whine and complain about how hard it is to be pregnant. I remember feeling that way w/ Jarod's pregnancy but right now, it just makes me bitter and angry. I'm barely sleeping or eating and getting through the day is a struggle in itself. I don't like the way that I feel and I can't keep going on like this. It's consuming my life and it's all I think about. Everyday is the same...."Today I would be 29w 5d pregnant" and "I would be feeling the baby move like she does" and "My belly should be that big" etc, etc, etc.

Again, I'm sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings when I delete them. Please know that it's not anything personal or anything that you did specifically. It's just the overall effect of the fact that my myspace has basically turned into BabySpace. I have nearly 250 friends and over 100 of them are from the baby websites. Clearly, you can see why this is turning into such a huge problem for me.

I'm hoping that over the next few days, everyone has a chance to see this bulletin. I suspect that once I remove myself from your page, my bulletins will disappear as well. I don't want anyone to think they did anything that offended me. If I have some time to myself, then I may send everyone a message as well.

I hope that all of you have safe & boring pregnancies and healthy & happy babies. I wish you all the Happiest of Holidays and will try my best to do the same for myself.

Love,
Shannon

I got a ton of messages from those girls saying that they understood, which made me feel so much better. When I log into Myspace, I see the people that I know in real life and maybe 5 of them are pregnant.

I skipped the Christmas party on my dad's side of the family. I had three pregnant cousins and countless babies there waiting to taunt me. Ironically, I was ill that day anyway. Very few people asked where I was and the ones that did understood why I didn't come. I'm sure the rest of them probably knew. However, I do have a big family, so maybe they didn't even notice I was gone.

As far as Christmas day went, I promised myself "one cry, that's it". I chose to take advantage of that first thing in the morning and spent about a half hour in the shower crying. (Personally, I think we need a bigger water heater.) I so wanted to be able to tell Chad on Christmas day that we were going to have a baby but that wasn't happening. I pulled myself together and went about my day. We had a good Christmas. Jarod was pleased w/ what Santa brought. I must admit that I was happy when the day was over. It didn't feel like Christmas this year at any point. Just more like a motion that I had to go through. Although this year will always be embedded in my mind, I doubt that I will recall anything from the day. My sudden unexplained breathing problem returned and I spent the majority of the evening struggling to pull out of it.

New Years was much the same story. Chad had to work, Jarod (who has the social life of Paris Hilton) was at a friends house, my friends were busy and I was all alone. I'm sure I could have found something to do if I really wanted to but who am I trying to fool, I didn't want to. Chad and I got in a huge fight before he left over something so stupid that I can't even recall what it was. Prior to the argument, my breathing issue returned and continued through out the night.

I spent the evening cleaning and thinking. The only thing that I was thinking about was ovulation and wondering if we timed sex correctly. As the hours dragged on and my house got cleaner and cleaner, I realized this was never going to stop. I live my life in cycle days. Today was not December 31st, it was cycle day 13. Once I ovulated, it would be ___ days past ovulation. I thought about nothing all day long except babies and how to make one. I wasn't sleeping the night through because I was waking up w/ anxiety about missing my temperature taking time. This, in turn, was throwing my basal body temperature off due to the interrupted sleep.

At some point, I realized that I was done. All the spinning in my head just came to a dead stop and it felt like a book slammed shut. I packed it all up... the $200 fertility monitor, every pregnancy test, ovulation detector, book, vitamin, etc in a tote box. Sex makes babies, nothing else and this is pointless. The next day, I asked Chad to put it in the attic. I told him that my News Years Resolution was to stop trying. When and if it happened, then it happened. He knew I was full of crap, but he played along.

When I walked into work on January 2nd, I was still struggling to breathe. My co-workers claim my skin was almost blue. I made an appointment w/ my family doctor. This time, I was had a chest x-ray and was given another breathing treatment. I left w/ a rescue inhaler. Later that night, we bought air purifiers for our bedroom, the living room and the main area of the house. We changed our furnace filter & put filters in every vent in the house. Although I was hoping that I wouldn't need to use it, I am pleased to report that the inhaler successful pulls me out of these breathing episodes in a matter of minutes. The air purifiers don't seem to be making a difference.

Deidre and Rachel invited me to go see "Marley & Me" with them a few days later. I was looking forward to making an afternoon of it. I had seen the previews....it was a movie about a dog, it looked cute. The day before the movie, Rachel approached me at work and informed me that there is a loss of a baby in the movie and said that they would understand if I didn't want to go. I paused only for a moment before saying that I would be okay. I stewed the rest of the day about that decision. I didn't want to ruin the movie for them by being a hot mess in the theater. Before I met them to leave, I took 2 Xanax. I made it through the movie, much better than I expected and I did enjoy my evening w/ them.

I decided that I wanted a cute and cuddly kitten. I found one that I fell in love w/. She immediately crawled into my arms and up on my shoulder. She thinks she's a parrot....so we named her Polly Skuttles. (Skuttles is the name of the bird on "The Little Mermaid" and Jarod was very adamant that must be part of her name!!) Our fat cat Lazlo (also named by Jarod) has been ruling the house for 2 years so he was anything but amused when she joined our family. Until January 21st, she has claws and Lazlo does not. It only took him a day or two to realize he needed to compromise w/ her claws. Lazlo may be smart but Polly is fast. It has been quit comical to watch the two of them together. They both sleep in my bed, Lazlo at the foot as usual and Polly near my head. For some reason, she likes to "rake" my hair. It doesn't hurt and she never get tangled in it but it's rather odd to have my cat petting me to sleep!!

I'd like to tell you that I have willpower but I would be lying. I called my doctor for another progesterone level on cycle day 21. (Progesterone is secreted by the corpus lutem after ovulation. It does this to maintain pregnancy. If no pregnancy results, then it immediately ceases production of progesterone and the immediate loss of it signals your period to begin.) I was annoyed because there had been no defined spike in my temperature so I couldn't confirm that I had really ovulated. None of the normal signs were there for me. I thought that this result would tell me whether or not I ovulated and maybe, just maybe give me an indication of pregnancy if it was much higher than last month. My doctor said no to the test and that it wasn't necessary because last months' level was fine. I freaked out, I cried, I paced in my office at work and I panicked. This meant that I was going to have to wait for my period to start to find out if or when I ovulated. The next day, despite my knowledge and better judgment, I got the pregnancy tests out of the tote box and took one. Negative. I threw the test into the trash can but missed and it bounced off the wall, which broke the cap off and resulted in my having to wipe pee off the wall.

Being that it was a Thursday, I went on w/ my day reading about what Parker should be doing at 32 weeks gestation....knowing that had she been born today, she probably would have made it. Remember, Dr. Marcotte told me back on October 10th that my goal was to reach 32 weeks. Looking back, knowing that 13 weeks have passed made me realize, once again, just how very long that was to have to hold on.