Today I have begun to panic as I realized that I am not crying every moment of the day and have gone minutes without thinking about Wyatt. I haven't recovered well from the c-scetion and feeling this ill has started taking up some of my thoughts. Can it be that I've put Wyatt aside so soon? What kind of a mother does that? There is so much to plan for the memorial...so much at least for the level of functioning that I am at, which is almost none at all. I find that I am all over the place; I get mad when there are too many people calling or stopping by but then I am upset when I feel like we are forgotten or when people are not coming to the memorial. Don't they realize Wyatt was a person? Last night my husband rocked our toddler talking to her about how she looked like her brother. I see him so much in her, I don't know whether I should be happy or cry every time I look at her face. At one ultrasound the technician looked at me and said "they have the same profile, they'll look a lot alike". It's true. They were identical.
As with any other stressful time in a family, the fighting has begun. Just as my husband and I clung to each other around Wyatt's death now we seem to push each other away. Everything is fight: who said what, who feels worse, who has to cry and why someone suddenly doesn't have to cry, who has changed for the better, who is functioning more etc. It makes me feel even more alone.
We received another token of loving friends today- an edible arrangement that was just gorgeous. I observed the neighborhood kids pointing to the truck and screaming "they're lucky!". Yes, that's us. We're so lucky. I used to be the homemaker babysitting kids and making dinners. Now I find myself the recipient I never wanted to be. My husband took the statistics of infant deaths and figured out the odds of this happening. This happens to 1.5 babies per state per day. That's not much when you realize how much hospitals there are per state and how many women are giving birth in them per day. The hospital that I just left played a lullaby chime every time a baby was born. That stupid thing went off three times in 15 minutes one morning that I was there. Who was the tacky person who kept playing it and why didn't at least ONE of the nurses point out that there was couple here who had just lost a son? Maybe we could shut that off for a few days, huh? It was sickening when we realized that our door had been decorated with a painting of a leaf with a tear drop in it as a "sign" to people entering. I didn't want that label. It was like being dirty and not being able to wash it off. I almost took it off but I knew it wouldn't bring Wyatt back. The only hospital worker I didn't mind was a lady in charge of bereavement. Apparently she had lost twin girls at 30 weeks sometime in her past. Why she would want to surround herself with this kind of pain by having that job is beyond me, but when she cried with us I knew it was genuine. I knew that she knew. As much as I appreciate support and love from everyone around us, it's a different kind of tear that they cry. People look at us with a face that says "I don't have any idea what you feel but that must be sad". I don't like that look. Fear of that look has kept me away from phone calls and visits. I want to still be on that other side-with people who are ignorant of this kind of pain.
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