tired this week

We got back from our trip on Sunday and this week is so hard---I want to be on vacation still, sleeping late and eating lunch by the ocean.  And spending every day with my husband, I love him so much!  This week I am too distracted to do anything, including writing.  I'm so tired.  Physically, from being pregnant and coming back from a trip and getting thrown back into the daily grind.  And mentally/emotionally, from constantly trying to balance my hope and my fear.  It's an added layer of emotion that is truly exhausting (but worth every second if this baby is born alive). 

 

I had a good doctor's appointment on Monday--the baby is measuring right on track at 10weeks, 4 days.  I saw him/her moving and heard the heartbeat.  I'm feeling tired and sick, and wore maternity pants to work for the first time today (mostly because I just feel fat, not because I have a big baby bump).  I still haven't told anyone in real life and I think that is helping me.  I don't have to manage anyone's questions or expectations or stresses, just mine.  Eventually I will have to tell people, but not yet. 

 

Today I went to a training at a conservation center.  We got a lot of good activity plans and resources for the kids in my afterschool program.  The first activity made me uncomfortable though.  We had to place 10 beans in a circle and there were 4 categories:  BIRTH, PREDATORS, DISEASE, and ACCIDENTAL DEATH.  Each person was one of those four things.  When the timer started, a bean was "born" (placed in the circle) to represent a deer being born every 3 seconds, a predator took one out every 5 seconds, disease took one out every 10 seconds and accidental death took one out every 30 seconds.  It was actually a neat activity to show what things effect populations of animals and you had to use math and science, so it's great for our kids.  But it just made me uncomfortable--I'm not sure exactly why.  I think because it was an in-my-face reminder that Kayla's death was just another natural event, a "population thinner."  The science and biology of it is harsh.  She was sick/malformed and she died.  Biologically, it makes sense.  When one of our beans was broken in half, someone joked at my table that it was a "deformed deer" and I laughed along with them.  I've really been turning over the facts of Kayla's death in my head lately.  I think now that I'm pregnant again I am trying even harder to rationalize her death.  It wasn't genetic.  It wasn't environmental.  It was "just" a malformation (exact words from my doctor).  In the big scheme of life, my daughter's death was just like the game today, a natural event, plucking a bean out of the circle.