The Road Here
Now that I've released the cat, as it were, I will try and explain how we got here. I honestly can't say it was one day, or six, or even that we're entirely ready, but we know that this is the right thing to do.
Right after Mazzy died and our family was already pushing for another baby, we sort of shut down and refused to talk about it. I know that, for my part, I was insulted that they would even go through the effort of bringing up having another child so soon after we'd lost Mazzy. I don't like being pushed and we definitely felt pushed. If it came up in conversation, and believe me, it did, we just gave everyone our standard answer, “We're not going to talk about it, but we aren't planning on it.” After a while, it just became the answer. Even when we were talking about it. Even after we'd started picking out names. Even after we picked a start date to being the whole trying to conceive process, we just kept lying.
Maybe if they hadn't been so pushy. Maybe if we hadn't started to see our future as Us vs. Them, we might have been more willing to let people in to the process. I know, for me, I felt judged and bothered by their insistence that we NEEDED to have a baby. All of their “compliments” felt like manipulations and I don't deal with being manipulated.
“You were such amazing parents. You need to love another child. You need to show these other people how it's done.”
Three months after Mazzy died Adam and I had a long talk about what we wanted. We were walking around our four bedroom house and trying to understand what we were going to be doing for the rest of our lives. I was back at work, but we knew that I didn't want to stay there. We talked about moving out of state, a lot, for the first few months, but eventually, Adam decided that he wanted to have another baby.
See, I told him that the decision was his. I would be fine, either way. It's the truth. If we have a baby, that's great and I love being a mother, but if he decided that we should never have another child, I was willing to make those adjustments. Get a real job. Live a different life. I'm the adaptable one in our relationship, remember?
During all of this Samantha is pregnant with Seth. She's getting bigger and bigger and we're having to face things faster than we wanted to. I was a baby shower LONG before I was really ready to deal with children. I was still crying when they touched me, you know? But, because Samantha needed me, I pushed forward.
I think, for Adam, seeing Samantha getting bigger and seeing me face that in my typically stubborn “I can do this” fashion gave him the strength to say what he really wants. Adam wants to be a father. He thrives on that.
All of this is going on about the time that my well-woman was due. I had to go in to the doctor, so we sort of looked at each other and Adam said, “Just ask. What's the harm?”
I turned my well-woman in to my preconception appointment and went on prenatal vitamins. When June rolled around and Samantha was giving birth to Seth, we had already started trying for our own baby.
We've talked and talked and talked about this in the last year. I wanted to make sure that we were doing the right thing. We knew that we started trying just a little before we were really ready, but we figured that we'd have time to fully wrap our minds around a new baby before the new baby got here. We didn't realize that a year later we would still be waiting to get pregnant.
Adam and I struggle to “do the right thing” all of the time. We knew that we were going to be taking on new family this year. Of course, we originally thought that they would be here in January and that encouraged us to start trying earlier than maybe we would've liked. The idea was to be knocked up before they got here so that they wouldn't stay long and we wouldn't back out. My brother isn't supposed to be here until August and one can only hope that we'll be pregnant by then.
Adam is really afraid that once people know, and beyond that, once I'm pregnant, that people are going to stress me out. He's hyper aware of my mental and emotional state for this pregnancy because what we went through when Wayne was alive. I think, in a lot of ways he wants to make up for the way that things went when I was pregnant with Mazzy. I try to reassure him that things will be different, but we both know that I'm lying.
Normal Chessy is supposed to hold hands and make people feel better in awful situations. While I was grieving my own child I had to be outwardly stronger than I wanted to be so that other people felt able to mourn Mazzy's loss. It's what I do. I make things easier on my family.
Except for Adam. I make him crazy. ;)
Pregnant Chessy is a whole other beast. I can't control a damn thing. I'm completely at the mercy of the hormones and that loss of control makes me so hard to deal with. I don't like the snapping and the drama. I don't like that I get my feelings hurt.
And people are going to hurt my feelings about this baby. They are going to need things from me that I won't be able to give them. Reassurances that everything is going to be okay. And, the thing I fear the most, a complete inability to love my baby for who it is as an individual, separate of Mazzy. That fear, and it may be irrational, consumes most of my thoughts when I think about being pregnant/having a new baby. I know that Adam and I will be okay, but if ONE person says anything negative about my baby ie: “He/She's not Mazzy” I'll lose my mind. The fallout will be monumental. It will be pack-my-bags-seven-months-pregnant-and-leave-my-husband monumental. (It's a valid fear since my mom already says that about my brother's youngest, Ella.)
Everyone is far too opinionated about the baby that they don't even know that we're trying to make. My mom has already started with her crazy shit. She's telling me that I'm going to have her another girl and that she's going to get to hold my hand during the delivery because, and I quote, “You wouldn't be mean enough to not let me be there this time. I deserve to see my grand-baby be born.” Um, no. Whatever hope she might have had of ever being in the room was dashed right there and I'm not even pregnant, yet.
Of course, Mom is still telling me that she doesn't think that I loved Mazzy as much as she did. “If you loved Mazzy-do the way I did, you would still miss her.”
WHAT?!
And, yeah, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Why would I want to share any of my thoughts with these people? They don't even understand that our baby will be, in fact OUR BABY, and that Adam and I have no intention of changing the way we rear our child based on their emotional needs.
Reba wants us to agree to let her be in the room. And she wants us to let her watch the baby (THAT WE DON'T EVEN HAVE) when it's really young. Um, we didn't let you people near Mazzy alone, you really think that's going to change?
Spending time with Seth has really helped. It has confirmed for us that we're strong enough to love a baby, no matter its sex, and that we are still capable of working in a team. I've been reassured that I won't overcompensate for Mazzy's loss by being too protective, never letting the baby develop on its own. (I was really, really afraid that my Crazy would take over and I wouldn't ever treat the baby normally. I'm still not sure that I won't have moments, but I feel better about the overall care I'll give to my child.)
All in all, I think that we'll be okay. I keep telling myself that we'll get pregnant and have another child. (And that baby won't die.)
I try not to think about what will happen to Adam if we can't get pregnant. He really, really, wants a baby. Like, really, really, really......
And there you have it. Questions? Comments?
Right after Mazzy died and our family was already pushing for another baby, we sort of shut down and refused to talk about it. I know that, for my part, I was insulted that they would even go through the effort of bringing up having another child so soon after we'd lost Mazzy. I don't like being pushed and we definitely felt pushed. If it came up in conversation, and believe me, it did, we just gave everyone our standard answer, “We're not going to talk about it, but we aren't planning on it.” After a while, it just became the answer. Even when we were talking about it. Even after we'd started picking out names. Even after we picked a start date to being the whole trying to conceive process, we just kept lying.
Maybe if they hadn't been so pushy. Maybe if we hadn't started to see our future as Us vs. Them, we might have been more willing to let people in to the process. I know, for me, I felt judged and bothered by their insistence that we NEEDED to have a baby. All of their “compliments” felt like manipulations and I don't deal with being manipulated.
“You were such amazing parents. You need to love another child. You need to show these other people how it's done.”
Three months after Mazzy died Adam and I had a long talk about what we wanted. We were walking around our four bedroom house and trying to understand what we were going to be doing for the rest of our lives. I was back at work, but we knew that I didn't want to stay there. We talked about moving out of state, a lot, for the first few months, but eventually, Adam decided that he wanted to have another baby.
See, I told him that the decision was his. I would be fine, either way. It's the truth. If we have a baby, that's great and I love being a mother, but if he decided that we should never have another child, I was willing to make those adjustments. Get a real job. Live a different life. I'm the adaptable one in our relationship, remember?
During all of this Samantha is pregnant with Seth. She's getting bigger and bigger and we're having to face things faster than we wanted to. I was a baby shower LONG before I was really ready to deal with children. I was still crying when they touched me, you know? But, because Samantha needed me, I pushed forward.
I think, for Adam, seeing Samantha getting bigger and seeing me face that in my typically stubborn “I can do this” fashion gave him the strength to say what he really wants. Adam wants to be a father. He thrives on that.
All of this is going on about the time that my well-woman was due. I had to go in to the doctor, so we sort of looked at each other and Adam said, “Just ask. What's the harm?”
I turned my well-woman in to my preconception appointment and went on prenatal vitamins. When June rolled around and Samantha was giving birth to Seth, we had already started trying for our own baby.
We've talked and talked and talked about this in the last year. I wanted to make sure that we were doing the right thing. We knew that we started trying just a little before we were really ready, but we figured that we'd have time to fully wrap our minds around a new baby before the new baby got here. We didn't realize that a year later we would still be waiting to get pregnant.
Adam and I struggle to “do the right thing” all of the time. We knew that we were going to be taking on new family this year. Of course, we originally thought that they would be here in January and that encouraged us to start trying earlier than maybe we would've liked. The idea was to be knocked up before they got here so that they wouldn't stay long and we wouldn't back out. My brother isn't supposed to be here until August and one can only hope that we'll be pregnant by then.
Adam is really afraid that once people know, and beyond that, once I'm pregnant, that people are going to stress me out. He's hyper aware of my mental and emotional state for this pregnancy because what we went through when Wayne was alive. I think, in a lot of ways he wants to make up for the way that things went when I was pregnant with Mazzy. I try to reassure him that things will be different, but we both know that I'm lying.
Normal Chessy is supposed to hold hands and make people feel better in awful situations. While I was grieving my own child I had to be outwardly stronger than I wanted to be so that other people felt able to mourn Mazzy's loss. It's what I do. I make things easier on my family.
Except for Adam. I make him crazy. ;)
Pregnant Chessy is a whole other beast. I can't control a damn thing. I'm completely at the mercy of the hormones and that loss of control makes me so hard to deal with. I don't like the snapping and the drama. I don't like that I get my feelings hurt.
And people are going to hurt my feelings about this baby. They are going to need things from me that I won't be able to give them. Reassurances that everything is going to be okay. And, the thing I fear the most, a complete inability to love my baby for who it is as an individual, separate of Mazzy. That fear, and it may be irrational, consumes most of my thoughts when I think about being pregnant/having a new baby. I know that Adam and I will be okay, but if ONE person says anything negative about my baby ie: “He/She's not Mazzy” I'll lose my mind. The fallout will be monumental. It will be pack-my-bags-seven-months-pregnant-and-leave-my-husband monumental. (It's a valid fear since my mom already says that about my brother's youngest, Ella.)
Everyone is far too opinionated about the baby that they don't even know that we're trying to make. My mom has already started with her crazy shit. She's telling me that I'm going to have her another girl and that she's going to get to hold my hand during the delivery because, and I quote, “You wouldn't be mean enough to not let me be there this time. I deserve to see my grand-baby be born.” Um, no. Whatever hope she might have had of ever being in the room was dashed right there and I'm not even pregnant, yet.
Of course, Mom is still telling me that she doesn't think that I loved Mazzy as much as she did. “If you loved Mazzy-do the way I did, you would still miss her.”
WHAT?!
And, yeah, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Why would I want to share any of my thoughts with these people? They don't even understand that our baby will be, in fact OUR BABY, and that Adam and I have no intention of changing the way we rear our child based on their emotional needs.
Reba wants us to agree to let her be in the room. And she wants us to let her watch the baby (THAT WE DON'T EVEN HAVE) when it's really young. Um, we didn't let you people near Mazzy alone, you really think that's going to change?
Spending time with Seth has really helped. It has confirmed for us that we're strong enough to love a baby, no matter its sex, and that we are still capable of working in a team. I've been reassured that I won't overcompensate for Mazzy's loss by being too protective, never letting the baby develop on its own. (I was really, really afraid that my Crazy would take over and I wouldn't ever treat the baby normally. I'm still not sure that I won't have moments, but I feel better about the overall care I'll give to my child.)
All in all, I think that we'll be okay. I keep telling myself that we'll get pregnant and have another child. (And that baby won't die.)
I try not to think about what will happen to Adam if we can't get pregnant. He really, really, wants a baby. Like, really, really, really......
And there you have it. Questions? Comments?
Comments
Kimberly
You've been a great help through all of this. Really. Thank you.
Don't let your family bog you down, they respond out of their selfishness without even realizing it (I hope). With the mess we went through people said a lot of stupid stuff trying to make themselves feel better... and sadly they thought they were being helpful. Once I began to grasp that they were well intentioned (but stupid), it made the ridiculous comments sting a bit less... but sting they still do. Letting them know how their words affect you can be difficult, but sometimes the sobering truth is what will wake them up... depending on how thick their skulls are. I can only imagine the many ways I stuck my foot in my mouth before tragedy came knocking at our door (and I'm sure my foot still gets jammed in there every now and again).
As for conceiving, we have seen a large handful of people struggle to get pregnant quickly. We couldn't get pregnant for 9 months our first time. And I promise you, stress makes it that much harder. You're probably fine, you've just been through a very traumatic season, and I guarantee not just your emotions were affected. It hits everything. Body, Mind & Spirit. Jessica and I will keep you in our prayers if that is okay with you.
Good luck with your family, sounds like you'll need it!
I never would have been a mother at Wal-Mart smacking my kid around. I might have faults, but that wouldn't have been one of them, ever. LOL Since Mazzy died due to a complication of a common childhood ailment, I do feel like I might be overly concerned with things that shouldn't bother me. I'm hoping to avoid treating my child like an invalid. It would be unfair.
As for my family - honesty is my policy, not theirs. :) They sincerely don't understand what they're saying has harm and I allow that, but once the hormones kick in? I'll be less understanding. My last pregnancy was filled with a dying, hateful drunk who threatened me and my unborn daughter, a brother-in-law with PSTD that stole and crashed our cars and another brother-in-law's marriage crashing and burning because his wife was addicted to pills and I had to drag her back.
And that doesn't even cover my mother's selfish, inconsiderate behavior. LOL
So, I supposed, even with dealing with people being ignorant of what Adam and I might need with this baby, it will be a step up from the stress of last time.
It took seven months to get pregnant with Mazzy. It has already been 13 months of trying this time. It takes what it takes. :) Your support is lovely.
I'm sorry for implying that you would be an inconsiderate mother, that was not at all my intention, but after rereading my post it may have sounded like that. You sound like a person who cares quite a bit about others, especially children. I simply meant that you'll be more understanding and concerned than a mother who hasn't experienced your loss. Too bad I didn't say it that simply last time! Oh how foolish expounding can become.
My last post proves that I can still stick my foot in my mouth:)