Deja New....

Deja Vu: 1. feeling of reliving something: a feeling of having experienced something before, although in fact it is the first time that it has been experienced.

Yesterday was my monthly appointment with the therapist who calls me on the phone. It's a really great benefit of my now dropped insurance, and she said she'll keep calling until I show up as not insured anymore. I figure I've had my last call since it's been a month since I dropped BC/BS.

Anyway, I love her. I've loved her since I started talking with her nearly 10 months ago. She's also in Maryland, and if she was closer, I'd go see her in person. She's suffered miscarriage, challenges me to think about things and go through them even if I don't want to because she and I both know in the end, if I don't it'll haunt me, and she always, always, always validates me and makes me feel so normal, all things considered.

So, when she called yesterday, I had to be honest in telling her the days have been hard. She of course realized a lot of that is attributed to the upcoming 'anniversary of the trauma' and the grief that is associated with that but that the hormones I have going on with Luke just get stronger and stronger as he grows and that it must be hard for me. She then went further on to postulate that this must be like a really sick sort of Deja Vu for me--being pregnant, at this time of year, with a sweet little boy, waiting to FINALLY hold a child in my arms...so, so, so many similarities and yet so very, very different. She told me she really couldn't even imagine how hard it must be and that she's just so proud of all the 'grief work' I've put in to be able to cope every day without having a nervous breakdown. (Really, she is just wonderful because she GETS how unbelievably taxing and hard and conflicting and emotional every day is and she gives me so much credit for even the littlest things...well, huge to me and to her, but little to most others who just don't know.)

She's right. If I am really honest, some days, I have some thoughts that are disturbing to me. It's fall...Matthew's season. It's LOOKING like this time last year. It's FEELING like this time last year. I'm doing so many of the SAME things I was doing this time last year. Getting a nursery organized...feeling like I have a million things to do before my life changes (again) forever...feeling a wiggly little baby boy growing in my stomach. Even though at this time last year, I was about 6 weeks further along with Matthew than I am now with Luke, looking at pictures and feeling like I feel--I'm about as big this time as I was then and so I even physically FEEL the same as I did last year.

September 26, 2009--I was 31w5d with Matthew. Carrying lower (much!) but just about as big as I am NOW at 24weeks!

September 30, 2009--My sweet, sweet friends at school threw us an amazing shower...my face was starting to fill out (thanks, fluid!) but my belly was just starting to look like it does NOW!

I know this is Luke.

I know it's not Matthew.

But some moments catch me, and I have to be very purposeful in defining the difference.

It's so much the same.

And so won't ever be again.

No, it's not Deja Vu...I KNOW this is a different child and a different experience.

But it sure does feel like Deja New.