Pre-Pregnancy Planning?

So...coming up on 6 months since Becca died. The doctor told us to wait at least six months, but we are going to wait at least a year. After Becca's one year Angelversary at the end of October, and after Jimmy's two year Angelversary mid-November, we can start trying again if we want to.
I have a long list of health-related things I would like to take care of first and I've gotten part of my dental work done and started taking a daily baby aspirin and folic acid again.
All of a sudden, 6 months seems like a very short period of time and I don't know whether to be excited or scared or both?
We had a full-term stillbirth, an 8 week miscarriage, and a 23 week premature birth resulting in death....what are the odds that if we try again we will wind up with a living baby? Are we ready to face another infant loss?
Strange as it sounds...I'm worried about burial plots. We took up two of my mother-in-law's burial plots to bury Jimmy and Becca. I think there are only two more...which are for my mother in law and father in law when they die maybe? What if we have another dead baby and nowhere to bury him/her? It doesn't seem right to not bury another child with the two previous siblings who have passed on.
I wish I could get a guarantee that we would be having a living child...as it is, I'm afraid we will just wind up with yet another dead baby. But the small hope of a living child makes me want to try again, as does the knowledge that even a short pregnancy is still bonding time with our baby.
Does this make me selfish? Crazy? I'm not sure.
Sometimes I'm glad we still have several months before we can try again, and sometimes I wish I could just go ahead and get pregnant and get it over with....if I'm going to lose another baby, I'd rather get it over with before I've healed all the way and then have to go through this all again.

More Pregnancy Dreams

Had yet another pregnancy dream last night...this is starting to border on the realm of "recurring dream" territory.
I dreamed that I was pregnant and didn't believe it since I had been getting my period regularly, but I took a pregnancy test and sure enough it was positive. Then I spent the rest of the dream looking for a doctor and preparing for a cerclage and hoping that I had made it to the doctor soon enough.
This is getting rather annoying. I'd like to stop having these dreams, please.

No More Doom & Gloom!

Ok, I know I'm still in a grieving phase, and we have had probably one of the worst first two years of marriage EVER, but let's have a little happiness, shall we?
We can start with my attitude...attitude adjustment?
I started with cleaning the house yesterday...vacuuming the hardwood floors including corners and baseboards and under furniture, laundry, wiping down counters, cleaning sinks, washing out the kitchen trash can, dusting the tables and chairs with pledge, etc.
I have never been much of a house-keeper...arguably my biggest flaw as a human being is that I am a lazy slob. True story.
Anyway, my husband and I had one of those *real* marital "discussions" the other day and he finally let loose a few things he had been holding back for months. (Its like pulling teeth to get that man to admit he is unhappy with something.) Bottom line is that he had a good point....I may be grieving still, but being home all day while he works and pays the bills and him coming home to a messy house is really not fair to him.
That really hit home with me...I love my husband, despite our predicaments, and for him to feel unloved and unappreciated and ashamed of my lack of taking care of our home makes me feel bad. I need to get out of my feeling sorry for myself mode, press on through the anxiety and depression and anything else that gets in my way, and start small...so I blared the music yesterday and cleaned the house.
I remember a quote I heard on a commercial for that show on TLC "Buried Alive" about hoarders with ungodly cluttered and nasty homes, and the quote was something about the state of your home being indicative of your mental state.
You know, that is really true! If I look back on all the times that I decided to turn on the radio or pop in a good CD and clean my home top to bottom and organize drawers and throw away clutter and rearrange furniture...they were times in my life when I felt destressed, happy, and had a positive outlook on life.
So, if I only clean when I'm already happy and feeling good and when I'm depressed I live like a pig and keep everything filthy, and if your housing state is your mental state....wouldn't it seem logical that I could perhaps help myself get out of a mental funk by keeping my house clean? Even when I REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want to?
Let's see how that goes. I have very good motivation right now because my husband needs me with all the stuff going on with his ex-wife and kids right now. My season of being selfish and grieving is over...its not my turn anymore. My husband has given me ample time and leeway to grieve and he has done very little complaining. Now it's time to focus on the family situation at hand and start picking myself back up...I know I can't just become the person that I used to be overnight...but I need to step up this healing process because my family needs me right now.

Let's see if I can make a commitment to keeping my home clean and free of clutter and pray that it has the same effect on my mental and emotional state.

I feel lighter since the other day when I completely broke down and grieved for Becca so harshly...I put all the rest of the baby stuff in the attic that I had out in my room...the stuffed animal I had with her in the hospital, her memory box from the NICU, her photos and the ultrasounds and everything else. All in the attic. I miss my babies so much, but its been almost 6 months now since Becca died and it's been a year and a half since Jimmy died.
It's ok for me to be sad every now and then, but it's not ok to be a wreck anymore. I was allowed my time to wallow in my grief, and now it is time to get back up and get to work.
I'm so glad I am needed...I really don't think I'd have been able to motivate myself to climb out of this hole on my own.

Losing Two More Children

My husband's ex-wife informed us yesterday that she will be moving to Texas in May and taking her two children with her....she has hired a lawyer and already begun the paperwork to change the current visitation agreement.
My husband is going to go from being a Dad who has his children in his home at least 10 days out of the month, to a Dad who sees his kids twice a year: Summer and Christmas.
This is going to kill him.
On top of her leaving and taking the children so far away that we cannot see them but twice a year, she has informed my husband that the house that she has failed to refinance and put in her name for going on 4 years now and an equity loan...she is just going to walk away from and leave my husband and I to foreclose on...we've been trying for 2 years to get a home of our own that is bigger than the 950sq ft--one bathroom we have now, and this is going to wreck our credit for a very very long time.
We met with a lawyer...the worst part? She can do this. All of this. With little to no repercussion.
With no thought for anyone but herself she is singlehandedly destroying the lives of several other people and the law sides with her. She is effectively destroying their relationship with their father...and that's apparently ok?? That's awful!

I'm just now trying to crawl out of the pit of despair after losing two babies and a miscarriage in one year...and my husband has been a rock, bless him, even though those were his babies too...he has been "ok" because he has had his two living children here to focus on and spend time with.

I am worried that when his children are taken away from him by their mother that he is going to fall apart. How can one man lose so many children in less than two years and still be alright? Especially a man like my husband, whose life revolves around his family.

March Of Dimes...

Link to my team page: http://www.marchforbabies.org/s_team_page.asp?seid=1468122

I had a picture for Jimmy last year so I figured this year I'd do Becca's pic. It was nice to get a personal phone call from the coordinator at the March of Dimes to let me know that they will be having a balloon release this year. I'm looking forward to that...a lot of angel parents have released balloons but I've not yet done one for either of my babies.
I have two friends who have joined my team this year, but I don't think either one of them is actually going to be able to make it.
My husband and my son are going with all the men in the family that day to a Braves game in Atlanta (I helped plan it and it was the only day that worked for everyone) so I won't have any family with me either.
But that's ok, because it's not about me, right?

Yelling At God...

...is something I seem to be doing a lot these days. I cry out in pain and he's the only one who knows exactly what I've been through, right?

I have spent the past 3 weeks feeling more alone than I think I have ever been in my life. I finally reached a point where I began to realize that life doesn't seem to have a whole lot of meaning outside of suffering...I have forgotten how to be happy, and the little things I used to find joy in seem like hollow and meaningless distractions to me now.
My driving force, the one thing keeping me from just giving up and dying, is the hope that I can still find another reason to live...something solid, substantial, and with a deeper meaning than just finding distractions to fill my day with and meaningless activities to get me through life.

I need something real! I need hope and I need a reason to live.....but the biggest thing so far has been the loneliness. The feeling that, while there are people who have suffered and who are suffering, there is no one who knows what *this* feels like.

Spoke to a friend on the other side of the world today who is going through this too...I cannot explain why, but for some reason, knowing that they know how this feels, EXACTLY how this feels, takes a burden and a weight off of my shoulders and gives me hope.

What a delightfully odd feeling.

A Little Insight

I've been wondering why now, after 5 months, it has seemed to have gotten so much harder over the past two or three weeks? My heart has been hurting like crazy!
It was about around the 5 month mark that I got pregnant again after Jimmy...which would make one year now since I was pregnant with the baby we miscarried. But that pregnancy, even for a few weeks, brought me so much hope and joy. And less than a month after I miscarried, I was pregnant with Becca.
I think maybe my body is remembering all of this? The past couple of weeks of insane phantom pregnancy symptoms and baby kicks that aren't really there and the constant, vivid dreams of being pregnant...I even went out and bought a pregnancy test to make sure I wasn't losing my mind. Test was negative, so I guess it's just the grief and the physical memories causing me so much heartache right now.

It was easier to move forward after Jimmy's death when I got pregnant again. Now, it's been 5 months since Becca's death and not only am I not pregnant, but there is no hope of another pregnancy in the immediate future...we are taking preventative measures.
I think it's forcing me to go through a second wave of grief which is almost worse than the first.
My husband and I got into a huge argument last night over the kids and a good part of that could have been prevented if I would have kept my grief/anger out of the equation...I was not level-headed at all.
Today, I cried harder than I have cried in a very very very long time....one of those cries where you are moaning and gasping for breath in between sobs, there's tears and snot pouring down your face and you can't even wipe it away because you are spending all your energy trying to breathe and there's this wailing in pain and you are almost outside of yourself wondering if its really you making all that noise...holding onto Becca's little hat that she wore, hugging her stuffed animal, rocking back and forth and sobbing and weeping and wailing and gasping for breath as each wave of pain just slams into you like a fist punching your heart and your stomach over and over as a barrage of flashbacks attacks you as well...images of her body, the last time I felt her kick, a smile waking up to her fluttering, an image of my pregnant belly....to quote my friend Andrew who watched his six year old daughter die from cancer: "I didn't know it was possible for a human being to feel this much pain."

I've been holding it in. I miss my baby, and I miss her in a way that not a soul on this earth will ever be able to feel but me. My body misses her and I miss her body. My womb is empty, my arms ache, and I'm just broken to pieces from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet and from my heart to my soul. I just miss my baby.

How amazing is that bond between a mother and her child that a mother's mind and body continues to instinctually respond with such pain at the separation?

I hope I don't have to go through another day like today. I hope all the rest of my days being sad for Becca are just little soft tears and whispers of memories and tiny tugs on my heart....today I felt ripped apart. I don't want to feel that again.