New Toys! I love new toys!

For our impending 5 year anniversary, DH bought me an iPod touch, which I really, really wanted.

It arrived tonight (squeeeeee) and I've been playing with it ever since.

You know what I did right away?

Downloaded iBook and started trawling through the free books to stock up on favorites like Jane Austen and Shakespeare.

Bliss.

Holy Mother of FUCK

Right.

Not so much pregnant as FERTILE.

Mother of god.

I was having a lot of fluid and some cramping throughout the day, so for most of it I kept thinking - ok, period is coming, period is coming, ok then. That's that.


Until I got home and had to pee and had gobs of stretchy ewcm going on. In a bit of disbelief I checked my cervix, and it is high/soft/gaping open.

Body, you can go fuck right off, as far as I'm concerned. I don't think we're on speaking terms any longer. I know I've been causing you no small amount of stress, and I'm sorry, I really, really am, but this is UNACCEPTABLE.

So for the moment, I'm sitting here in relief mixed with outrage mixed with disappointment mixed with the urge to grab my husband and insist he inseminate me immediately mixed with reminders of just how bad I felt yesterday.

Also, splitting headache. Fertile. Ugh. Work it out, reproductive organs. I'm not joking. You cause me far more trouble than you are worth, and you're not cute enough to make it worthwhile.

Uncertainty.

I hate it.

And I know that much of life is uncertain - unpredictable anyway. But after a month or so of shifting sands under my feet and instability and uncertainty, I've been in a good mood since Wednesday or so, when I was finally let in on the plans for the immediate future and the outline of plans to come at work.

And from that, we sat down and worked out something of a plan in regards to ttc and I felt comfortable for the first time in awhile.

And then, because my cycle was fucked up by all the stress and I'm not clear if I ovulated or not, but FF says so and further says that I should be having my period at any moment now, I took a pregnancy test.

And like so many tests I've taken, there is something there. Now, I grant I am a master at spotting the slight indentation and shadow that indicate where the line of hormones are - the line that ought to turn pink. So good in fact, that I have marked both test lines before wetting the stick and been 100% correct. It's like the lamest super-power ever.

Consequently, I don't trust many brands of tests, or my ability to read them. I could probably see a line on anything at this point. So I don't assume a faint line means much anymore, even when both of us see it in the time limit. Unless it's a lovely pink color, nothing doing. Too many chemical pregnancies and dashed hopes for that.

So I haven't seen anything I'd call positive. But I saw enough to make me bite my bottom lip, feel a frown crease my forehead and turn to DH and say, "Shit. Now what?"

Because, honestly, I don't think I want to be pregnant.

And of course, I do, oh I do, with all my heart.

But not right now. Because I just won some stability and pregnancy for us is so enormous and huge and consuming and frightening and such a very long time filled with uncertainty. And it's expensive and we have no money and we're working so hard on paying off debt and how the fuck am I supposed to find time for appointments twice a week and oh GOD, I cannot take another miscarriage right now, let alone another dead baby, please for the love of every thing precious on this earth, I don't think I can do it again.

I mean, maybe I can, at some point, but I don't feel that point is now. And if you look at my chart, it's fairly clear we weren't really trying so much this month. From the moment things went wonky and uncertain we backed off. So the odds are . . . not good at all! So I shouldn't even be at this place of wondering again, not after 10 cycles of beautifully timed sex with clear ovulation. And that I am makes me feel guilty.

That I feel conflicted at all over the possible outcome, when a few months ago it's all I wanted, makes me feel guilty. That I am in bad shape and have forgotten my vitamins a lot over the past few weeks (but hell, I've also forgotten lunch and snacks and sleep) and have so much debt also makes me feel guilty.

I want a child. I want a living baby. I want a pregnancy to progress far enough for me to feel my child moving within me and pinpoint what is poking me. I want to see my husband change a diaper and watch his face light with love as it does on the rare occasions he speaks of our son.

But I don't want all the uncertainty that accompanies that. I don't feel mentally or emotionally prepared for it, and in fact, I wonder some that I thought I could handle it a few months ago when I was still so overcome by grief. Really I'm grateful to have gotten to a place where I feel more at peace with the events surrounding our son.

I doubt, honestly, that the faint line turns into anything darker or more present. I expect, really, that in a day or two, I'll start spotting again, and this time it will lead to a new period and I'll start taking Vitex again and we'll go ahead and buy the elliptical we keep talking about and our plans will fall into place. The speck of doubt though is making me fear the outcome. And I am ashamed of that fear.

Wii would like to fuck with you.

Worth noting:

I suck at Wii baseball (and even more at the real thing. There was an incident in which my father, who coached baseball, tried to play with us, and I shrieked and ducked when he threw the ball because I was upset he was throwing it at me. He was saddened and disappointed in the sports skills of his progeny and refused to do it ever again).

That is worth noting because anytime I take their stupid fitness test and there are baseball sections I fuck it up.

I went from my best 48 to 80 tonight.

I chalked it up to 2 baseball tests that I performed abysmally on.

So then I decide to make myself feel better by doing the Power Throw Bowling training. I like making the rows fall down.

Only no matter what I did, the ball kept hooking left (irritatingly like real life). DH confirmed that my arm and wrist were straight, so I started getting upset and demanded he fix it.

Turns out SOMEONE (who wasn't me) moved the effing television. So the stupid little bar thing the Wii uses for the motion sensor wasn't straight and was skewing everything.

I am NOT 80 years old. But I'm still pissed because in my growing frustration, I think I threw out my shoulder.

Not a bad day, really.

All things considered, not bad.

Which makes for a pleasant change. Feeling moderately better about things, at least for now.

Left 'on time' today - it feels early. But since I've brought a fair amount of work home with me, that's fine, I suppose. Got good feedback from my supervisor, from her supervisor and from the chair of my new gig, which, really, is all I can ask for at this point.

We'll see how things progress, but I'll take any good I can find right now.

Issues

I am beginning to dread work in a serious way and it's casting a pall over everything. The worst of it is that insofar as I can know about my position and stability, things are fine. I'm working hard, and I've been told I'm safe and that my superiors will fight hard to keep me if it ever comes to that. But with the situation seeming to change every week, I'm a little terrified that my personal situation will change too. And that makes me a lot terrified about everything else. What if I get pregnant? Will that alter my situation? I'll have to miss work, and then be out, and will that unconsciously shift my position downward and make someone else more seem more valuable? What about our debt and our house, which seems to need more and more repairs? What about our savings (hahahahaha) and our car, which still has over 3 years left on payments?

I'm biting my nails and grinding my teeth and no answers are forthcoming. I should have faith in what I'm being told, but my mind isn't shutting off there. It's an utterly nerve-wracking sort of experience. This is precisely why I stayed in the field I was in - because I thought it was more secure than your average pick-i-nick basket job.

I realize in all of this is that recurring tendency towards fretting and my old friend loathing for not being in control of an outcome. You would think, hard as that lesson has been driven home, I'd embrace it. And I do try . . . but I'm not good at it. I've listened to my meditation things, I've done deep breathing, and will consider yoga, should my back ever cooperate (when I feel down in the elevator last week, I think I did some damage). But when I'm alone, my mind starts spinning and spinning and spinning and you can see from the above where it goes.

Throw in a massive headache and a digestive system that seems to be protesting all the ways my current assignment has me abusing my body, and I simply couldn't do it today. I stayed home, practically whimpering with exhaustion. I wish I were braver, or able to trust more easily, or that I had an off switch.

Yeah, an off switch would be quite handy right about now.

The Event

I think it is fair to say that Gabriel's death is one of the top five Defining Events in my life.

Getting married was one of them. My mother's suicide attempt was one, I think; my not-yet-husband's was too. Gabriel of course. I'm not even sure what precisely else, but you get the drift.

Defining events - those big things (well, perhaps it could be a small thing that had a huge, reaching impact on you) that shape who you are as a person, that delineate the time of your life between into a clear Before and After. Those things that impact us in unprecedented and unanticipated ways, that alter who we are as people.

Certainly, the death of your child is one of those things. No way around that.

But I begin to wonder, as the pain is less acute and it has become mostly another fact about me, as central to me as being married to my husband or having long hair: is that becoming all it was?

Eric, on Glow, talks about 'it' as an event, and points out that there is no it, it's really them - him, in my case. He points out that it is an absence and a not-knowing, because our children were not long in the world and not cognizant enough to have a preference - at least none we were aware of. All the personality that they (he) displayed were mostly provided by our own flights of fancy. Elizabeth McCracken mentions that as well, that the personality is drawn by the parents and based on potential rather than reality.

It is in idea and a hope that we loved, and certainly, we loved our little boy, the realization of those hopes and dreams in the flesh, and now in a box of ashes and a photographic image. But that is so fragile. It often seems that what Gabriel really was is somehow less of a person - though he was that, yes - and more of an event that occurred.

As if the death of our son eclipses the personhood of our son.

But the personhood is such a small bit, he lived for such little time, and so much of it is conjecture, that maybe it's natural that the event take precedence as the thing which lingers on and continues to haunt us.

I don't like it though. It feels disloyal, unfair. It feels like a criticism, it feels selfish - as if it is the whispers of everyone who views us and thinks - Move On Already.

These days I'm feeling ok. I don't mean to say that Gabe is any less loved or missed, just that it is the normal ache, barely noticed any longer. The hole in my heart is still there, as open as ever, but I've learned to function with that, and I do. There is guilt that overshadows it though. I looked at the box of Gabe's ashes and wondered for the first time what to do with them. Is it morbid for them to be in their little box, sitting on the mantle? We don't think so, I can't even necessarily say I notice it that often. That's simply where Gabriel's remains are, much as the placement of the couch or the lamp - yet another simple fact. I wonder though if it's morbid, if perhaps I should move them. I feel no more emotional attachment to that spot for them. Rather like the tattoo I have planned. Originally meant to be Gabriel's footprints, I have shied away from that. Struck by a lyric in a song that spoke to me about enduration (the event again, rather than the person?), I recalled a previous idea and now plan something more symbolic and esoteric. I still think of it as Gabriel's tattoo, but it's not as transparently so as his footprints would have been.

And then I feel guilt. I have no desire to hide away the fact of my son's existence. I do not want to imply that I am ashamed or pretend he did not and does not exist. So moving his ashes feels wrong, and I won't do that; changing the tattoo feels right, and I will go ahead with the new design. But what is right and wrong? I know now that balance will change with time, that while the pain is less acute now, it may wash over me in full force again tomorrow. That as we age and as our family changes - however that occurs - we will have to re-evaluate Gabe's place and presence in our lives. He is fact, that doesn't change; how we balance his presence and absence does.

I get tired of it sometimes. I wish for a day away from being the mother of a dead child; perhaps that is one area in which my motherhood is universal - a momentary longing for time away, freedom from the mantel of responsibility that we wear as mothers. And yet, I do not wish it so, if it means wishing he never was. I only wish for the impossible, for him whole and healthy and alive - that which cannot be.

One of the biggest events of my life, perhaps the biggest to date. A painful one. Shocking how such a tiny, tiny little boy, known for such a short period of time, could have so large an impact.