Why is it so hard?

I wrote more and then erased it... who knows why.

I am so tired yet every time I am faced with the darkness of the room and the quiet of my thoughts I am also facing the loss and grief, especially the night before Mother's day.

I really hope all my friends and family out there who are mothers (of all kinds) have a great Mother's day. I am going to try my hardest to do that myself.  Not sure yet what we are going to do... I know that I will be running a 5k tomorrow to see how fast I can do it.

I don't know, I suppose now that my eyes are sufficiently tired from crying that I should try going to bed.  They now especially don't want to stay open... that's a good sign.

Circles

I feel like I am always thinking in circles.

For example, at work I have applied for another job, sometimes I find myself sitting there thinking about the job and wondering if I will get it, thinking I should talk to so and so about it and then wondering again if i will get it, am I qualified for it, will they find me qualified, and once more wondering if I will get it.  It just keeps going like that.  And it's such a stupid thing to wonder about since really it isn't something I can resolve or answer at that time.  I also think "What will I do if I don't get it?"  Again not something I really need to worry about since I don't know yet.  I tend to drive myself crazy worrying over it.

The other day at work I had a lot of these things going around in my head so I decided I should make a list of things I was worrying about and I hoped that my list would then help me not worry as much.  I don't know if it really helped but I like to pretend it did.

One of the biggest circles I go in right now are my goals, the things that I want and desire to work on in the next year.  Figure I will put them here in my blog, I've kind of put them here in different forms I suppose but it helps to write them out every now and again.

Goals
** Exercise and eat healthy, I want to get fit and to be healthy.  So this involves lifting weights, eating right, running, sleeping, and other things... just overall work on healthy living.

** Part of the first one but also in it's own category... I want to be a runner.  I want to run 3 miles a day or something like that.  Or at least 3 miles 5 days out of the week.

** Finish school - I really want to get my degree, open up some job opportunities for me and be proud of myself for that accomplishment.

** Get the job at work, the Category Analyst job.  I get so bored doing what I am doing and I really really want to be an Analyst and work with a Category manager by analyzing and processing data and numbers and stuff.

Now some of you might be confused, there are things missing from my list that used to be on there.  One of those things is the kid thing.  Well I don't plan on making that part of my goals just yet, it was at one point a huge life goal and then we ran into complications and things got hard.  We just need a break from the heart ache.  I know what people are thinking, "Well you guys just need to try, just get back on the horse and give it a go.  They know what's wrong now and you shouldn't have any issues.  It only gets more complicated as you get older and harder to have kids.  It won't be any easier if you wait"  Well perhaps that's all true, but it really doesn't weigh into the decision making here.  Realistically we are looking at a future with no children at all, it's a possibility though not anything we want to claim for ourselves.  Just because they can do a cerclage doesn't mean they can ensure that I will have a baby with no complications.  My future pregnancy will be the hardest thing ever for both Paul and I.  It's something we want so much but we don't want to have another problem, another loss and another baby that we have to say goodbye to.  It's scary, really heart wrenching scary the idea of getting pregnant right now.  Neither one of us can deal with another loss so soon so therefore we've decided to wait awhile, finish my degree and hopefully after a few years of waiting we'll be in a better place emotionally and physically.

Honestly I never ever thought we would have problem having children.  It never even crossed my mind.  I knew that both of our families got pregnant pretty easily so I didn't think our issue would be getting pregnant I thought it would be getting pregnant too soon and when we weren't ready yet.  Now to find out that the issue is my cervix... well it's just crazy.  Here's another circle I travel often... the boys circle... thinking about their losses, what we could have or should have done, wishing we had waited and knowing that it wouldn't have made a difference if we had waited, we would have lost the boys either way, wishing and hoping that my boys were still with me, that I could watch them grow up into young men, then talking myself down from this emotionally imbalanced place and trying to comfort myself with thoughts of them being with their heavenly Father and that one day we will be reunited with them and we will no longer have this pain and heartache... the circle of loss and hope for me.

I love circles, their my favorite shape but I really wish I didn't drive myself crazy with my thought circles.  I always make it back to the same points over and over again.

Now it is time for bed and hopefully a restful night's sleep and then a sleeping in morning with exercise/running in the morning. :)  Night.

Still standing...

That has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?  I am still standing, still going on, still living, still here.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, about life, the past, the now and the future.

When you've lost a child (or two, or more), your whole life changes.  Things that used to be constant are no longer really all that stable.  Death was not so close to you, the people who I've had die in my life usually are older folk, there have been some exceptions where some people I've known who passed away too soon in life, they had more living to do, and lots of life spread out before them.

This last week has been hard.  A week ago was Christopher's due date and the approximate date that we conceived Nicholas.  I miss my boys so much, and really just want them with me.  Perhaps that seems obvious.  I still need to say it, need to think it often.  I miss them, I miss who they would have been and who they were.  I am thankful for my friends and family, lots of comfort and words of love.

I read a blog entry recently that another mommy whose lost he babies posted about Mother's day and how to talk to someone who has had a loss, what to say to them, it was very very well written.  I've found a very helpful forum/website called "Still Standing" and so many people on that have lost their babies and they understand the ache, the emptiness that's inside, that consumes you sometimes.

On a different note - a friend of mine recently posted a great blog entry about running 101.  I have found it very helpful.  I've decided that I am going to be a runner and that I will be in better shape in a year than I currently am.  I am soooo tired of being fat, so very tired of it.

Also I have applied for a promotion within the company.  The last 6 months I've been working and it was interesting for a moment and then it got extremely boring.  We'll just have to wait and see if I get an interview at all.

Well guess it's time for my morning shower, maybe it will wake me up some.  Then off to work I go. :)

Dreams, Goals, Life

When you are a child it seems that so many people ask you what you want to do when you grow up.  You are constantly thinking about things in the sense of... "When I grow up I'm going to..." and it's all kinds of things.  Teach, have kids, marry someone, live in a particular spot or type of house, parent a certain way, clean your house(or not)... so many things!

What they don't tell you is... "I know you have {insert dream here} in your mind but just so you know, this may not be what happens.  Sure, shoot for it but understand that it can change, that life happens and things get in the way of what you want sometimes or other things come up that you want more than you thought you did."

I've been thinking recently about the dreams that I've had as a person, from when I was a child to the now.  My earliest dream that I can remember was to be a horse.  Obviously that's not gonna happen.  Then when I figured out that my initial dream couldn't happen I was going to ride horses.  But then the whole monetary thing figured in there, my parents just couldn't afford riding lessons or a horse in general. So sad for me.  Next I went to something about "I'm going to be a mom with 6 kids and live on a farm, and marry Zach."  Well... I didn't marry Zach, he is not anywhere near where I am in location and I think he's not interested in girls anymore... but I'm not entirely sure... it's kind of an odd thing to ask someone about.  After that and through my first year of college I wanted to be a Math teacher.  Then things kind of went south in the way of dreams... I no longer really had an image of myself in the future, I didn't know what I wanted to do or what I would be doing with myself.  I did end up falling in love with Paul, which helped things out considerably.  I knew where I would be... and that was wherever he was.  Then there was the whole "We'll have kids and I'll stay home and be a housewife dream." I wanted to have a home birth, I wanted to homeschool and probably have at least 3 children.  It's hard when your dream isn't matching up with your husbands though.  He wasn't even sure he wanted to be a father, let alone where he would be in a few years.

So obviously he decided he did want to be a dad.  We tried that and twice it hasn't worked out for us in the way we expected.  We had dreams and plans and thoughts of our children.

It's not that I don't still have dreams, plans and thoughts for our future children... it's just that I have no feeling of certainty anymore about it.  Sure I want to have kids, at least one.  But right now looking in the direction of kids is like this black hole... I could jump but I really don't know how deep the hole is and I am really not sure that I want to figure that out yet.

So for now I have a dream of finishing school.  I am excited and anxious for it to start.  It's been a few years since I failed at it before (yes I did fail my last semester in school), and I am ready now to succeed.  This is one thing that I am fairly certain that I can do.  I can finish my school, I can pass my classes, I can achieve what I'm setting myself for.

Cause as much as I want to believe that we will succeed in having kids, I really have no control over it and that's scary.  I say this a lot, but it's true... I don't know how I will handle another loss if we have one.  I'm not ready to face that scary reality, not yet ready to possibly endure another loss.  Don't know if I ever will be, but I'm fairly certain there will be a time where I will be better prepared for it.  And honestly if we don't ever have any kids, well it won't be the end of the world.  There's more to life than just bringing life into the world.  We contribute to the lives and well-beings of so many little ones, I wish I could have them around all the time, but we do have some around pretty often and that's really awesome.  There's always adopting or being teachers or just being awesome at our vocations.

Anyways, signed up for my first class... this summer.  Will be taking Economics... forget if it's Micro or Macro... one of the two.  *shrug* It should be fun.  Anyways.  That's all for now.  Going to bed now. :)

Ponderings

One thing I've noticed and maybe others who are grieving would disagree with me... it's hard to say.

For myself I find that yes there are joyous moments to remember back on, there are times when I cherish the time I was pregnant and I remember the joy and anticipation of bringing a child into this world.  Unfortunately all of that leads to some very painful thoughts and feelings.  There's no joy in bringing my kid home, in nursing and caring for my child, nothing to make the pain of childbirth disappear.  This pain is with me forever, for both boys.  One thought of one of the boys leads to the other boy.  They are connected, they are brothers.  It is very very hard to find anything positive to reflect on when thinking about the boys, and I would say that I should just stop thinking about them but that's near impossible.  I can control that as well as I can control my own breathing.  Sure I can hold my breath for awhile but eventually I need to breath.  Perhaps it's not so life threatening to not think about the boys... so maybe comparing it to holding my breath isn't a good analogy.... eh I don't know.  Just some things I was thinking about, ponderings of a bird mind some might say.

Haven't updated on here yet that I got into school, was officially accepted, now I just need to figure out a few things... but that's ok.  It will all work out.  :) With this leap back into school I have decided that we won't try to get pregnant again or start our family again until after schooling is done.  Trying to go back to school while working and doing kid things would feel like I was trying to drive myself crazy.  So for now that's the plan... but as we all know, plans change, they are move and are not concrete.

We get to see Paul's side of the family soon and then not too long after that my own family.  I am anxious about leaving the cat alone but I suppose he will survive and the trauma of us being gone for 5 days won't be too much.  We may ask some of our friends if they want to come over and say hi to him and just make sure he's not too lonely.  Just to have someone sitting in the apartment with him will help ease some of his crazy.  But we'll see.  Like I said we aren't gone for too long... either way we'll leave a set of keys and hopefully all will be well.  I don't know why I get so anxious over leaving the cat... but I do... ugh.

For now I am going to say goodnight.  I'll try to update in not so long. :)

Am I collecting Underpants?

That's the question of today... isn't it?  (Read this... http://nerdfitness.com/blog/2012/04/05/underpants-gnomes/ ).

If I had to be completely honest with myself... and why wouldn't I be completely honest with myself?  Oh right that's easy because honestly often hurts and is hard to face and extremely hard to cope with sometimes... whatever.  If I had to be completely honest with myself then I would say, yes I do collect a lot of underpants.  I can name them all too... Books, Fabric, Cookbooks, Blogs to read, Fitness ideas, lots and lots of ideas.

I guess the biggest thing is getting past the Phase 1 of collecting said underpants.  And probably the next biggest thing is which pile of underpants do I want to work with first?  I don't think I could work with a bunch of them at one time so I will try one or two at a time.  Ugh it's hard to choose.  I don't know if I can choose.  Some of them go hand in hand.

1. Books... the end goal for my collecting of books is to have a larger variety of entertainment.  I often want to try out an author so I buy the book and then have the book and never get to actually trying out the author.  That needs to change.  I am working on that I guess.  I have been reading books lately.  Perhaps that one is ok how it is, maybe I don't have to do anything more or less with that since I guess I am making it to Phase 3... I am reading some books, there's only so much you can read at a time.

2. Fabric... yes this one that I have been kind of successful with and kind of not.  I have tons of ideas and things that I want to try, but haven't tried.  I think in order to do this then Phase 2 needs to be "Finish one project in the month"  or "Finish one step of the project in the month."  That might be better since some projects are quite large.  I'll start with finishing the mug rug that I had started and actually sending it off like I intended to.

3.  Cookbooks... this kind of goes along with getting healthy and fitness.  I mostly want to enjoy cooking. Is there any way to help yourself enjoy cooking more?  I would imagine it would be to actually cook more often.  So perhaps I should make one new meal a weekend as practice.  That seems doable doesn't it?  *shrug*  Now that I am eating gluten free it's a little bit more difficult, I need to watch labels a lot closer and well... sometimes they just aren't labeled as gluten free.  Eh, oh well.  I will figure this one out as I go.  I know that there are a lot of blogs out there that I could read and review and perhaps even try out recipes from time to time.

4. Blogs to read... it seems that is a bit of cooking, books, quilting, fitness... I need to find a quick way to clean up my blog list.  Google reader is not very user friendly when you want to get rid of things.  I tried unsubscribing and then it just would refresh and keep me subscribed.  Such a pain!  If anyone knows of an easier way to do this then please let me know.  It would make my blog reading happier if I could do that.

5. Fitness... I definitely have a lot of ideas about what I want to do in order to be healthy.  I think perhaps once we get back into weight lifting that this will be a little bit easier.  I definitely want to do couch to 5k.  I really want to be able to run a 5k and one day a marathon.  I don't know where this desire came from but it's burning inside of me like a fire, a little light goal in the distance.  I've never been much of a runner but it just seems so freeing, so nice and empowering and you get yourself some place with your own two feet... just you and your feet, going along, wind whipping around you.  Sounds great to me.

So... sometimes I feel loss, like I've lost myself and I'm not who I used to be and that I don't really know where I'm going.  But I look at this list of interests and I see me, the new me.  Some of these things are from before, some are from after, but they all collectively are me.  Life changing events happen, things change in your life and you just have to go with the flow even if that flow feels too strong and overpowering... perhaps that's why it's easier to go along with it than to fight it.

So Grumbly...

Not in my tummy or anything.  My mood is like crazy grumbly... grumble grumble grumble.  Don't even really know why... perhaps just tired?

I started my evening out by reading a book and was happy doing that and then I was like, 'I should really do something more than just reading cause if I don't I will be upset with myself for reading my night away".  It appears the opposite has happened.  I've spent the last 1.5 hours looking at stuff on the internet and being mostly disinterested.  I am going to just write this and then grab my book again and read.  I also really want to just snack on foods all night but I don't have anything I want to snack on.  Bah moo bah.

Today I was at work and I was using the restroom and thinking... don't we all do that from time to time?  Eh perhaps more information than people need to know.  But anyways I found myself skipping from thought to thought about the boys.  I was remembering a moment in the hospital from my time there with Nicholas.  It had been almost 48 hours since I had last bathed and I asked about that, they said they could come in and give me a bath in bed.  Never would I have ever felt comfortable with that ever in my previous life, the whole being naked in front of a stranger who wasn't my husband was an extremely uncomfortable thought.  I just think it's interesting how bits and pieces of both of my losses are very vivid to me, almost like they happened yesterday.  As I thought about this one particular thing I just couldn't help but thinking about more of my experiences... taking the time to sort out which hospital was which (cause lately they both kind of blur into one experience).

I find myself thinking about what I would have done differently each time (I know not very productive thinking cause what happened has already been).  Both experiences were so different, even the births were different.  One was medically induced and the other was natural and just happened.  One was with my family around the other was with Paul's.  One there wasn't any hope at all and the other it was all I was clinging to.

I really don't ever want to go through another loss ever, I don't know how I could bear it.  My heart aches every day for my boys.  I am so scared that we will get pregnant again and not lose another baby to my incompetent cervix but to some other cause that is a normal every day thing that women go through all the time.  One in four women have a miscarriage in the first 12 weeks of their pregnancy, that's a lot of women and a lot of babies being lost.  Our two losses were in a very small percentage of people, it isn't common to have an incompetent cervix, per Wikipedia.. "According to statistics provided by the Mayo Clinic, cervical incompetence is relatively rare in the United States, occurring in only 1—2% of all pregnancies, but it is thought to cause as many as 20—25% of miscarriages in the second trimester."  



I don't know why I am dwelling on this so much lately... perhaps my hormones are going crazy?  My OB suggested that maybe calcium supplements might help so I've been taking those and I don't know, I guess they are helping some... I don't feel weepy at work really much... except for on rare occasions when my thoughts betray me and start dwelling on the boys and how much we want them back.

Speaking of birds (you probably are thinking, "she wasn't talking about birds..." well yes I was just not in the blog post, I mentioned birds to Paul and now that I am distracted for a moment I figure I will run with it!).. I am reading a book by James Patterson now called When the Wind Blows and it's interesting, about some people doing genetic engineering with humans (almost typed the whole story, don't want to ruin it for anyone who does read the books).  I started reading about this story with the book "The Lake House" and had to get this book to read.  Which by the way is what I am going to read... and if you don't understand the connection to birds... well embryos have their genes spliced with bird DNA and then you have flying humans.  Definitely an interesting read and one of those books that's hard for me to put down cause it's so interesting.  I actually am finding that with all of the books I am reading by James Patterson... I am looking forward to reading more of his books.

That's all.  Gonna go distract my brain with bird kids. :)