* I took a pregnancy test yesterday. I knew there was no way I was pregnant, I am pretty sure I haven't even had my first cycle, but who knows...I had a lot of start and stop bleeding for about 5 weeks after delivery. Anyways, I took it knowing it would be negative, but I think I just needed to see that as proof. Maybe it was some type of weird closure for me. Waste of money, but I just really felt like I needed to do it.
*Perhaps related to the pregnancy test, I decided I really do want to have another baby. Up until now I have been obsessing over getting pregnant again, but it has been more of a hormonal, emotional reaction to wanting my baby, my first baby. But today I felt like it was more of a rational decision, that I will be able to love another baby and not just wish I had Kayla instead. And although I want it to happen right now, I also am gearing up to be patient, to let my life unfold in the way that it is supposed to. This made me so happy today, because it was a hint of the rational, positive person I once was and know that I will be again in the future.
*I also just felt what I SWEAR was a baby moving. I will randomly have what feels like movement and I hate it. It catches me off guard. It's probably just gas, or my uterus twitching or something. It makes me think about all those times in the last week I was pregnant that I felt her moving, but now know that it wasn't really movement, because she was already dead, and I didn't know it. Since she was my first baby, then I start thinking about how maybe her movements weren't normal ever, and what I thought was a decent amount of movement really wasn't enough, and that a more experienced mom might have said she was concerned, and then my doctors could have done a level 2 ultrasound, found the tumor, and either performed surgery on her or delivered her early and saved her. My mind spirals into these types of scenarios often, all of them ending with a heroic outcome. Just daydreaming, mostly harmless. I am not in denial or thinking my baby could have actually been saved, it is just where my mind goes.
*I had a two hour dinner tonight with one of my friends from work, who also happens to be 18 weeks pregnant. She has been so loving towards me and is one of the few people I have really opened up to in my real life. She asks the right questions and lets me cry, and then tells me funny stories and we vent about work. She is not scared of my grief and weaves it into our normal conversations. I really appreciate that, and that she has not turned away from me out of fear for her own pregnancy. She had a miscarriage before and some other issues and thought she would never be able to have kids. I am so happy for her, a little jealous of course, but mostly just want her baby to be born healthy. I hope to be able to express someday to her and my other 2 friends here how much it means to me to have people I can rely on. I find myself clinging to these 3 friendships while pushing everyone else away.
*After looking over all of the pictures we got back from Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, I am no longer regretful that we didn't take our own pictures. When I picked the pictures up from the photographer, she explained to me that we didn't get a lot of Kayla on her own, "because she wasn't in the best condition." I mulled that over on my way home, after having a nice conversation with her--I feel so connected to the people who were there with me in the hospital, the nurses, the photographer, because they saw some of my pain and they saw my daughter. Right after I delivered her, I thought she looked just perfect, she was my daughter. I was somewhat blinded by my awe of this tiny baby we had created, my sadness and my love. After looking at the unedited pictures, I see what she was talking about...her skin color doesn't look that natural, and some of her skin was peeling. Her body was also pretty beat up from when they turned her. I didn't really like looking at the unedited pictures, because they clashed with my perfect memory of her. The edited pictures, however, are beautiful. I feel so grateful to have them, so I can share her with a select few of my family and friends, and not worry too much about her being "scary" to look at. It is scary enough for outsiders to look at a picture of a dead child, without having some of the other issues to worry about. So, they pictures actually gave me a lot of resolution because I can let go of that deep regret I had about not taking my own photos. I realized they wouldn't have been that nice to look at, for now I prefer my perfect memories of holding her and discovering her details, but I'm comforted by the fact that I do have both the edited and the unedited pictures to have for the future.
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