Hormones

Well, I think it should go without saying that having something life-changing and utterly devastating happen to you when you are so pumped full of emotion-affecting hormones is about 18 million and seven times more difficult with which to deal.

Apparently, that's not the case. People feel the need all the time to tell me where I should be and how I should be feeling. Thank you. Feel free to write a book; I'm a big reader and maybe I'll give you a little more credibility when you can tell me you know just what this is like because you've lived this life too.

So I was glad yesterday when in counseling, my therapist confirmed that this is NOT a 'normal' (if there is one) grieving process for a dead child. I'm chock-full of hormones that drive women to desperate, desperate things during periods of post-partum depression, or the death of their child. Don't believe me? Check this post of Kristin's out. You'll need tissues as you feel for those poor, poor women. At least I did.

Anyway, I'm glad she finally honed in on this for John. Not because I think John doesn't get it, though in honesty, I don't see how any man can *really* understand what effect hormones have on one's body--heck, even I didn't get it until I became pregnant. Seriously. I have never been one of those women who had, um...well, moody times due to hormonal goings-on in my body. John will testify to that. Even pregnant, hormones were raging, and John often said he was so glad that I wasn't what he was expecting--crazy woman. (Yes, friends, he REALLY does say these things.) I was just incredibly weepy. Really, really weepy. But purely HAPPY crying...always, always, always shedding tears of joy. Even when I was miserably uncomfortable, I was just so happy to be where I was in my life.

But...my point--my point is that while many, many people are watching me and monitoring me to see how I'm dealing with all of this, (and I know this is all completely and totally done out of love and concern)--I do not think that the gravity of this whole grieving picture is being fully measured.

I started back on hormones/fertility drugs at the end of January. Less than two months after Matthew died. So...remembering that the hormones a woman's body produces to maintain pregnancy don't often leave completely for 2-4 months after the baby has been delivered, and then factoring in the artificial hormones I have been pumping through my body in MASSIVE quantities and well, I am just going to go ahead and give myself a big pat on the back for putting my feet on the floor every morning. Seriously.

Grieving the death one's child is in and of itself something that is simply unimaginable if you've never walked in the shoes. Trust me, you *THINK* you can imagine it--I looked at the pictures on the Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep site a week before Matthew was born and just cried and cried, *imagining* how those women felt...but I promise--WHATEVER it is that you imagine, when it is your life and it is real, it is a billion times worse.

Top it off with simultaneously pushing yourself through the arduous process that is IVF, and honestly, I'm surprised I have not just tucked myself in my bed for the last 165 days and been done with it all.

So when my therapist FINALLY realized that I have been, in light of the fact that I have TWO very difficult, very different, yet very much related situations (exacerbated by hormones on top of hormones) that are my day-to-day reality, doing an AWFULLY GOOD JOB of coping with all of this...I felt very vindicated. She then went on to tell me that unfortunately, as I probably have not been able to effectively deal with some of the things that go with missing Matthew because of the drugs and emotions of the IVF process, I'm still going to have to. At some point. And this 'process' (hate that word) will be longer.

Well.

I know that.

That's not news to me.

Just wish more people knew that too.

Tomorrow is our blood test. I am not feeling very optimistic. I want to--I am hopeful. I haven't taken a home pregnancy test because I WANT to MAINTAIN hope.

I'm really having a hard time believing that I'll get a phone call telling me we're pregnant again. I hope I am wrong.

And on Sunday, we go to Georgetown for a memorial service to remember all the babies who died in the last year.

SO:

>>>>Dead baby son. Still. Always.
>>>>Negative pregnancy test. Again.
>>>>Memorial service for dead baby son and other dead babies.
>>>>Hormones like you read about.
>>>>John goes out of town on Monday.

Sounds like the perfect storm to me.