A week or so after the shower incident letting me know that I most certainly WAS NOT PREGNANT, I started lactating. And I have to say it was/is pretty confronting. Not horrible leaky kind (like after your baby has died and you stop expressing) just a very distinct feeling in my breasts and an urge to check if I was lactating. Which I was. You can understand that it kind of threw me.
I visited Dr Google and typed in lactating while not pregnant and got pituatary cancer, benign cancer of the brain, menopause.
Which is a good reason why you should never visit Dr Google.
I rang the clinic and the nurse said "that can happen sometimes". CAN IT???? I don't get why injecting estrogen would make my prolactin go crazy.
And I get starving hungry (which I am sure is hormonal) so when i was racing past a teacher (who is pregnant) at 8.30 am with a packet of chips in my hand and some salty crumbs around my mouth, she asked me if I was pregnant.
DO YOU THINK I WOULD NOT KNOW IF I WAS PREGNANT AFTER HAVING A BABY DIE AND 4 ROUNDS OF IVF?????
I simply said "No I am not" and went home and took another pee test to confirm it. Definately not. I even dug it out of the bin half an hour later even though technically I would be 7 or 8 weeks and an early reading pg test should show positive in about 0 seconds if I was pg. I still wasn't.
I have become very effecient in my grief. I can now fit a good half hour wail (literally) in between the coming and going of two sets of guests, or between arriving home from work and leaving for a social engagement. I've given up trying to look after myself at those points. I mean, I could send the guests away but I would stay miserable and if they arrive I have a better chance of not being as miserable for as long. So I sit and stare for the first 40 min and after a while I just join in. There is only so long you can maintain the intensity of feeling absolutely miserable.
Which is not to say I feel happy. Or I do in some moments. Minutes, hours even, but never for a whole day. Never for days at a time. The heaviness always comes home to roost - settles itself in my chest again, clucks about creating noise and discomfort.
I still wish I hadn't experienced any of this.
I just wish it was someone else and not me.
Yesterday I thought that nothing seemed important to me anymore. I don't have anything to say about anything (except my pain). It does not seem important. I don't get uplifted by seeing something beautiful. What meaning does it have. My husband and I are going parrallel but both seem stuck in our own depression and grief this weekand don't often connect in that. Which is a pretty bleak place to be, and I get scared because after years of grief these feelings seem to be stiffening into a more permanent part of my character rather than a transient feeling that I know is just something I am passing through. That scares me.
Perhaps the fact that I ran inside to grab the camera and take this photo this morning means that is not the case. It was enough to excite me and make me feel like the day had something in store.
It's a rosella in the gum tree I planted which is now in flower. There were a pair of them, sipping nectar out of the blossom. I only managed one picture before they flew off but I hope they come back.
5 comments:
I am sorry you are having such a hard time. So much of what you have written here I have experienced too. I bet your hormones are making it that much harder to deal with.
I'm glad you got that beautiful picture of the bird. Little reminders like that help us to know there is still hope for happiness again.
"I get scared because after years of grief these feelings seem to be stiffening into a more permanent part of my character rather than a transient feeling that I know is just something I am passing through. That scares me."
This worry is something I fought with for quite a while and still do, though on a less frequent basis. I think I'm beyond the worse of it. I found just recognizing that it's there is a huge step. You have to accept it and own it before you can let it go. Wishing you peace...
I'm so sorry you are so in the thick of this.
I've felt that heaviness that doesn't go away too. it's always there just under the surface. it's so hard to feel anything else. my husband told this week how sad he thinks it is that I carry that with me always, which of course made me cry.
thinking of you b and wishing you peace. ~luna
Major major hugs!
I hope they come back too.
Life can be so much harder and so much more unfair than we dreamed possible. I wish none of us had to learn that lesson over and over again.
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