First day of work went well. I walked out feeling very positive, looking forward to my future. The people were nice, the bank seems like a very good place to work. Training is going to be extensive, before they ever put us near the teller line, which definitely is a good thing. Training is like school - which for me is fun. I found out that my insurance will indeed kick in the day I am eligible. Now I just need to somehow verify that it does actually cover IVF - I’ve been kicked by the universe too many times to take it for granted that the law will actually come into play, even though there seems to be no loopholes for it to be ignored. We’re getting closer.

I am glad, however, that I waited this long to get a job. I could probably have done it a month ago, but not before that. Having to be around people who don’t know, having to be cheerful and positive… it’s hard, at times. Actually what I had the hardest time with was concentrating. I kept thinking about other things, wondering if people were going to ask about children and such. I actually do that a lot while driving, which is a little scary… but I’ll suddenly blink and realize the last thing I remember doing was two streets ago. This attention thing is getting better with time, but it’s just now getting to the point where I think I can perform a professional job to an acceptable degree.

I think I’m going to like working two very different part-time jobs. I like the change, the challenge. I would do well with a full-time desk/paper job, but right now I enjoy the one job I have had and it looks like my other job will be enjoyable as well. Different, but good. I like keeping my brain busy.

I came home and played WoW. Drained my brain, sapped my energy. Zoned out. Watched some olympics. Not much left over. I like it that way now.

First day of work - orientation - is tomorrow. I am nervous, but not freaking-out nervous. I have my clothes layed out, new shampoo and soap ready for an early-morning shower, my paperwork in a folder beside my purse. I’m ready to go. I just keep telling myself it’ll be like a fun class - I get to learn something new. And they pay me for it.

This is also the start of my 3-month countdown. One foot in front of the other.

The hardest part about this week is that I have NO idea what my schedule is looking like. My orientation is the “figure out what days I’ll be coming in for training” day, so until tomorrow I’m completely clueless as to what they need/expect. It has made it very difficult to make any kind of appointments or plans for work or shopping or anything at all really. And that is hard on me, mentally. I hate not knowing. I hate leaving things to chance. But so far I’ve been okay with just letting go and waiting until tomorrow. It’s an accomplishment for me.

One of the appointments I made was for a therapist. The woman at social services had given me a name and I left my contact info after being told the therapist was on vacation. I didn’t expect to hear back from her in a while, much less on a sunday. She’s booked for a few weeks, but given the work scheduling uncertainty that’s just fine with me. I have an appointment for September 8 or 9… I forget which. She sounded nice. I’m still just very pessimistic about how someone is going to be able to help me at all. I’m an introspective person, I examine and work through my thoughts right here. I can certainly see how a therapist would be helpful for someone who didn’t already do that… but me? Regardless, I’ll go and see what will come of it. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprized.

Den was talking to me yesterday about planting a maple tree in our yard. I think we’ve come to an unspoken compromise on the tree issue… Den really wants a fruit tree out front, not too big and bearing fruit. I really want something long-living, green, and bigger. So we’re going to do both. If the cherry dies (my opinion is still out on that one) we’ll replace it. I do like the idea of a cherry tree, I like what it symbolises… and it really was so pretty in bloom. A maple tree isn’t nearly so showy. And, damnit, I got used to the idea of a cherry tree and I want a cherry tree, damnit. So we’re going to choose somewhere in our backyard for a maple. We always planned on planting more trees out back - nice ones, planted with concious thought instead of the forest of ugly pine trees we have right now. So this will be the first step.

I’m pleased with this compromise, but it has been rough emotionally in accepting it. One of the lessons that has gotten hammered into my head over and over again this year is that you can’t plan things. Or, rather, that you HAVE to be able to adapt. It’s never going to work out exactly how you sketched it out in your mind. I had this picture in my head of our yard with the cherry, and my scrapbook with the yearly updates. Not getting pregnant when I planned to was another hard zig-zag in my life plan. Obviously losing Devin was the biggest, most devastating. But all of them required me to re-adjust myself, required a period of adaptation before I realized that life was going to be okay in the end. My scrapbook is not ruined because the tree won’t be the same. I will still be a mother, even if it wasn’t at 24, or 25, or 26. And my life is not completely worthless without my first son present. This is not an easy lesson for me to learn.

As I drove to the grocery store today I noticed a large tree in someone’s yard. It was dead. This huge 50-60 ft tree, magestic limbs… all completely devoid of foliage. All trees die. Even the huge ones, even the strong ones. I thought about our choice to memorialize Devin in a tree rather than something permanent. We could have chosen a more lasting memorial. But then it wouldn’t have been living, breathing, growing. I would not have been able to watch it bloom and grow taller every year; I would not have been able to watch it branch out unexpectedly in ways that only living things do. In exchange for all of that we get a finite life span, a risk. It could live 30 years, it could die tomorrow. But to me the risk is worth it, it is befitting of my son. And if it dies we will replant and try again.

Please go over and give a new friend of mine some support at her blog, Hot Mama Bear. She lost her baby just 3 weeks ago and has started a blog to help work through it. I know how wonderful this community can be, and I hope she finds some comfort here in blogland.

Remembering Sally Ann. The world is a darker place without her spirit here with us, with her parents where she belongs.

You know what I recently realized? Devin’s 6-month birthday comes only days after my own birthday. Suck suck suck. And here I thought my birthday was going to be a bad one in any case, without considering the timing issue on top. I think I’m just going to pretend it doesn’t exist.

This is the first year, ever, that my birthday makes me really upset. And it’s not because of the age. It’s simply that, for many months, I really believed I’d be celebrating this year with a baby. Turning a year older, now, means absolutely nothing to me but a reminder of where I am not.

::

I am sorry I have had little more to say recently, and it’s not because I have been holed up in my bed sobbing for days. I have actually been working… a lot. For the first time in my life I find it preferable to spend my entire concious day working, then coming home and watching some olympics before going to bed. This week I’ve had the dubious pleasure of shaving some cats, microchipping some cats, filling out a ton of adoption and intake paperwork, etc. Life at a sanctuary is fun. It’s certainly unique. As Den said to me the other day, “Not many people come home and say, ‘I shaved three cats today at work.’”

This seems to be a very good time to immerse myself in work, because we are in the middle of a big transition and there is a ton to be done… and much stress to be shared. I seem to be the only one not affected by the stress flying around between my coworkers… I simply have a very different perspective on the whole thing. Okay, so we don’t get this paperwork to print by that date. So? We get it done the next day. We’ll deal. So the others are stressing and I am just plugging along. I really enjoy working on paperwork and systems. Busy work. I really really enjoy busy work.

So life hasn’t really been bad lately. It hasn’t been good, either. It just… is. Tomorrow I have an adoption clinic to go to, to help my boss, and then I prepare for my first day of training on Monday. I’m already having nightmares about that… the same stupid shit, I dream that I woke up late, or that I forgot and showed up on the wrong day, or whatever. How irritating. How come I got to skip all the cool pregnancy dreams, but get vivid crappy ones when not pregnant?

Life right now is a dog chewing on something at my feet and a cat curled around my neck. How can you feel bad with a cat purring in your ear?

I’ve been watching a lot of Olympic coverage. I don’t remember watching much of the previous Olympics, even though for the last winter and summer Olympics I must have been here in this house. I vaguely remember flipping through some things. But this year it’s become a routine for us… we come home, eat something, turn on the Olympic coverage and watch until we absolutely have to turn it off and get some sleep. It’s enjoyable. It’s something for us to do together.

I still have serious doubts as to whether or not that tree is going to live. I walk out there every day with an air of disappointment and despair. I’d beg it to live, but I’m far past the point where I believe that good will or intentions prevent bad things from happening. It will either die or it won’t, and there is little more I can do about it at this point. I am following the instructions. I’ve done what I can - the rest is up to the universe and how bad 2008 is going to suck overall.

The top half of the tree was just laying on the lawn beside the rest of the tree where the arborist left it. Initially I was going to toss it in the woods, though I also had a very strong wish to throw it in the woodchipper with a scream and many tears. Instead, today, I picked it up and carried it inside. I sat it on my desk behind my monitor, half a tree. I cannot decide if it is comforting or depressing. But I know I can’t quite let it go right now.

I aleady have plans to plant a new tree. Originally it was an “if this tree dies” plan, but I’m thinking I might do it anyways. I get sad thinking about how a cherry tree only lives 20 to 30 years - something we did not know when we planted it. (Note to others: do research before planting a memorial tree. Apparently fruit trees, while very symbolic, aren’t exactly the best choice for this.) So I’ve been thinking about a maple tree of some sort…. I’ve always loved my parents’ variegated maples, and we have a huge, gorgeous japanese maple that we both adore. Den doesn’t want a huge tree in the front, so I’ll probably pick somewhere out back. I really love the idea of a tree being around long after we are gone. As long as it outlives me. My children can deal with it then, and it won’t really matter. If this cherry dies, Den may very well want to replace it with a new fruit tree, and I’m totally fine with that. I’ve had to get used to the idea of two trees, but this whole ordeal has forced me to accept what I did not want to… to view things in a different way.

After thinking about all of this for a little while today I went out back to my small vegetable garden (which doesn’t hold much anymore, and is getting a little overgrown) to look at the small japanese maple trees I re-planted this year. Every year we get tons of seedlings sprouting around our yard from the big tree, and this year I finally hunted down some good ones and transplanted them to a safe corner of my garden where I can nurse them. The smallest ones started this year; the larger two I rescued from quieter spots in the yard where they had been left undisturbed since their sprouting last year. I thought to myself, wouldn’t that be fitting? A tree that sprouted last year… when Devin’s little egg was just turning into an embryo. Possibly a good choice. So I will watch these little trees and see if I want to choose one of them. But I’m still quite fond of the idea of a variegated maple - we do not have one of those yet. Either way I will decide next year… on his birthday, or his due-date-birthday (because March 6 may still be too early to plant a new tree).

I had this plan, you see. A plan that this cherry tree would be His Tree, and I would take photos of it every year for his scrapbook, that we’d take photos of us with it, our future children with it. That it would be a thread running through our lives, a way for him to be with us. We started this year. I took photos of it of us with it, I made scrapbook pages. The very real possibility that it won’t be there next year, that we’ll have to start again with a new tree, leaves me feeling so lost. I need something to cling to, goddamnit. I need some kind of thread that will carry me from this year to the next. I cannot start fresh every year. That takes all the meaning out of it.

Dear Universe: YOU SUCK. You took my fertility, you took my son, and now you’re taking his damn tree, too. Throw me a fucking BONE, will you please.

I am very, very angry, and I do not like feeling this way. I miss the person I used to be… naive and foolish as she was. At least she was happy. At least she believed that things could work out for the best. I feel like I walk around every day with a 50lb weight strapped to my back. I just feel like weeping because I am so damn tired of not being able to stand up straight.

We lost half the tree today. I say lost it today, but in reality it was already dead - I was just trying to convince myself it was going to be okay. I had an arborist out to look at it, who quickly determined that the top half of the tree was dead, and promptly cut it off. The bottom branches are still looking good though - he said it’s very promising.

I came inside, freaked out, starting crying hysterically. I shot off a couple of emails during which I realized this has just gone too far for me. I hate to speak it because I know it’s going to freak people out, but I feel myself edging too close to becoming suicidal. I’m not there yet. But I’ve been thinking too much, too scarily, in the moments that I freak out and I just can’t keep doing this anymore. I need to do something about it or I’m worried about how far down this is going to take me. It’s not that I want to die - I just want to stop hurting. Losing half that tree felt like having my heart ripped out all over again. Stabs of pain right from my temple down to my toes.

I dug through my pile of papers from the hospital to find some of the lists they gave me with bereavement resources. I called social services, said I need to find a therapist of some sort who who has experience with child loss. I was referred to someone. Unfortunately they’re on vacation for the week, but I should hear back next week. I might put in some more calls tomorrow, I’m not sure. I also don’t even know what I’m looking for… therapist? Psychologist? Psychiatrist? Who knows.

I just feel so discordant. Most of the time I feel fine (as far as “fine” can be, less than 6 months after your baby died). I’m capable, I’m productive, I’m social. But all it takes is a crack… one little crack in my armor. And I fall to pieces. I fall into that pit. I lose it. I don’t feel strong. I don’t feel strong at all.

When I told my co-worker what my schedule will be like this fall she said, “That doesn’t leave much time off.” “I know,” I replied, “it’s on purpose.” My goal for this year is just to get through it.

I’m completely bloated and burping up a storm. It’s aweful. Ugh!! AF sucks.

With AF right in my face I’ve been staring at the calendar trying to envision how this is going to go, when we’re going to get to do IVF. I become eligible for health insurance 90 days after starting, which will fall mid-November. Now I’m assuming it’ll take a week or two to actually get coverage, so I was thinking I’d be starting my BCP cycle with my December cycle, and end up with my IVF cycle - with retrieval and transfer - in January.

But I’m thinking here. I know an IVF cycle has to get pre-approved by insurance. So I can’t order meds until I get approval. But… can I do BCP before? I can pay for BCP myself, that’s not an issue. Would insurance consider the BCP cycle part of the IVF cycle? I think there’s a good chance I could get that in. Retrieval and transfer in December. September due date. There’s no way, even if I did do retrieval and transfer in December, that I would actually know if I was pregnant or not by Christmas. But it’s a step closer.

I don’t even know why a couple weeks matters so much, but I just. can’t. stand. the waiting. It sucks so effing bad and I just want to get pregnant again. Devin’s 6-month birthday is coming up next month, which depresses the hell out of me, and the only way I can see actually enjoying this Christmas is knowing I have an embryo inside of me… a real, honest chance at this pregnancy and baby thing.

I’ll add this to my list of things to talk to the doctor about. It’s a long list.

So the Baptism was a bit of a disaster for me. For one thing I am not Christian, and that specific church is a little bit… special. Think sing-song chanting bible verses. Very weird, very over the top for us. The priest’s words while sending the children to children’s church didn’t really put me in a great mood to start with: “Let us give thanks, children are G*d’s gift!”

And of course the service was all about how important being Baptised is to G*d and, my favorite line, “Those of you here who haven’t been Baptised may wonder why your life is so chaotic.” That just felt way too personal to me. I had far too much time during the service to just feel angry, thinking about Devin. By the time the children were all brought back in to watch the Baptism I wasn’t in a very stable mood and as the service wound to a close I found myself gripping the pew in front of mine, tears rolling down my cheeks as a little boy walked up and down the aisle beside me during the Eucharist (which, of course, we did not partake in). Den held my hand and passed me a tissue, which I used to dab at my eyes. I fought the urge to run out of the church during the final prayer. I held on, focussed on breathing. Wound too tight.

Everyone filed out slowly and I walked into the small foyer to find it crowded with parents and children stopping to chat. I (somewhat rudely) shoved through, banged out the front door, and ran into the parking lot sobbing. I just totally lost it. Den ran out behind me and held me for a few minutes while I cried. My son was supposed to be there. We were not supposed to be sitting alone today.

I settled down after that. It helped that SIL’s mom and grandmother both came over to give me a hug and tell me that it’s okay to feel sad and mourn our loss whenever the grief hits. They are really so very kind.

Afterwards we ate, I photographed (too bad I can’t post any), and the athiest side of the family marvelled at how they could be related to BIL.

It ended on a fine note. But boy I did not expect that kind of reaction from myself during the service. I thought I was just going to doodle in my notebook, roll my eyes at some of the G*d comments, and take photos of BabyH being Baptised. But I forgot about the children, and I didn’t account for what kind of toll having to hold myself still and stately for such a long period of time with nothing to do but think about those children. Fucking sucks, man.

Hangover + period = uggghhhhhhh. I got next to no sleep because the room was spinning and my stomach was upset. I knew my period was coming, so I suspected some of it was that, but I couldn’t really separate the two. Now I just feel crappy. Blech. I never used to get hangovers, before I got pregnant. This is bullshit! Hmph. (The cramps and general icky-ness of AF I am too well aquainted with.)

Yesterday while the men played horseshoes I held BabyH for a while, shifting her around from arm to arm, bouncing her and chatting to her while she watched with wide eyes, taking in the movement and shapes. Den glanced over at me and smiled, then walked over and said, “You look like a natural. You’re going to be the best baby momma ever.” It feels natural, you know? And she’s such a freakin cutie. I’ve offered to babysit her on one of the days that I’m not working and SIL is (she doesn’t start until September) and I hope they let me do that… her parents are going to be babysitting on the other days. I just would really love to have that time with her every week. I really want to be an active part of her life, to be Aunt Nat, the cool one, not just one of the aunts and uncles she sees at special occassions. I love that kid a whole lot and I hope she knows it.

Now excuse me while I lay down before we have to get dressed up and go to church for BabyH’s Christening (I am the photographer! Wheeee). I may be sick. Freaking hell, what a day to be hit with everything at once. (Den asked about breakfast. I looked at him like, “Dude, you want to wear it??”)

Getting drunk worked. I now feel pretty sick, actually. I may have to stop drinking if this continues to be the case… I never used to feel this backlash before I got pregnant. Now my body just does not respond well to alchohol. Ugh.

In the course of the evening we were all sitting around with good friends. One of them isn’t a close friend of Den’s, but a longtime friend of his brother - so, not close enough to know about Devin. I was saying something about religion to the effect of, “I’ve had some people say, ‘God saved my baby!’ - what, does that mean he didn’t like anyone else’s?” This friend, obviously completely clueless, said, “But yours survived! So it’s all good.” Den responded in a very matter-of-fact tone with, “Actually, ours didn’t.” The friend looked MORTIFIED. I think he mumbled, “Oh shit. So sorry, man.” Then stared at the floor for the next five minutes. Den and I looked at each other and proceeded to try to let the guy know that it was okay, that he didn’t know. It took a while to get him to re-join the conversation. I think we totally ruined his night. I’m pretty sure he was willing the floor to open up and eat him.

Yay us. Bringing death and depression everywhere we go since 2008. Sigh.

I feel like I should come with a warning sign. “Hi, I’m Natalie. Just to let you know, we had a baby who died. … You may now resume normal conversation.”