Saturday, June 28, 2008

I missed my first 24th, but I didn't

The sixth month mark was so big, and June went by (in a good way to an extent) like one of those commercials where everything is moving in fast motion all around you. May was so horrid. And now I feel guilty because I forgot my baby. I was actually there on his day briefly, swinging by his grave like I like to do, I did have a 'bad' day, I was just down.
Ah, retrospect, how did I know? I knew I was missing something, missing my son who should be with me 24/7, giggling. Missing his day. How could I?
Seven months old, I should be trying sweet potatoes and solids and . . . I don't like the new me either, the new me is a slacker who is apathetic, indifferent, why can't the best be brought out in me? Instead, the anger and frustration.MISSing Myles, today, and every 24th and every other day of the month too, god damn it.

People talk to me about days, weeks, months, next week, last week, they're all so jumbled up. I've resorted to a calendar and frequent calls and emails reconfirming appointments I can't keep straight, I kept it all in my head before, and I can't do it now. Now that I've forgotten my little man's day, it makes me mad. That time has moved on around me. That I have moved with it, I just want to go back. It's like I'm moving further away from him. And all I want is to be close to him again. Every day, that would be my wish.

Time moving forward hurts, taking these steps through grief, so tricky, nothing is positive, everything is both, negative and positive. Painful and powerful, beautiful and cruel.
I'm missing that I missed Myles' day, missing that grief that I had always anticipated before, honored, acknowledged. I hope he would forgive me and maybe be happy though it breaks my heart. I would be happy for my mother, you know?

I drove to the cemetary today, a string of events has now led me down this different path of grief, one not so fresh, but old, and always there, but underneath even the happiness and joy sometimes.

I wrote my letter to him and him to me. It was good, I wrote it on butterfly paper given to me as a gift from an old garage sale, so precious. I wrote a letter from me to Myles and Myles to me, and left them there. It was good to do and I thank Joanne for suggesting it. My views are very naturalistic, and tonight I watched the fireflies.

Another mothers poem really made me try to rethink it all a few weeks back, and I felt myself moving on but it wasn't until I missed that day (the 24th, 7 months) I knew I had actually transitioned. We always yearn for the old and familar eh? The old grief I knew intimately.
This poem (about 6 weeks ago) made me think and notice everything about nature differently, that Myles is just not 'there' at the cemetary, that he is everywhere and in every beautiful thing I see. I'll repost:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep,
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the sparkle on the snow,
I am the sun, on ripened grain,
I am the gentle summers rain,
And when you wake in mourning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush... of quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the Moon and Stars at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,I am not here, I did not die.
I wrote it on the back of his tattered picture I keep in my back pock. In retrospect, it was his message to me when I wrote it on there that day last week.

And I've been learning gardening, and appreciating nature, and the cycle of life. It just hurts to 'move on' to change my hair, and to be changed (the new me is very different), and to find so much has changed, but everything is still the same (same house, same dogs, same family, same jobs) and we were a hous in anticipation of so much change . . . change that never happened like we'd anticipated but CHANGE nonetheless.

We got change all right.

A tornado swirled through my life and left everything in it's place but nothing untouched.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

My Menses

Clockwork. Never skipped a period (except for pg), after Simone, I breastfed for 2.5 years, got mine back on month 12 and it was the same from there after.
30 days. 30 days give or take, but 30 days.
Now? Well, I waited 18 weeks to get a menstrual cycle, unheard of by all the moms I know who've experienced stillbirth.
Then, that one was so heavy I woke up in the middle of the night with blood all over my pj's, even though I was wearing some super duper night pad more akin to a diaper.

Then I spotted on days 15-18. They I waited until day 42 for the next one. Same as the first, heavy flow, spotting on or around those days, then it took 36 days this time.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME???

Why does everyone tell me it's fucking stress too. Don't tell me about stress. I'm a stressed person generally and I've gone through many periods of my life where my stress load was off the charts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is 'different', fuck that.
I'm not going to sit around and poo poo myself anymore, and I certainly don't want these MOFO doctors to do it to me either.
My shitlist of doctors, I'll never see Dr. D again which basically means I'm fucked when it comes to my next pg as I'm high risk.
Don't fucking tell me the second time you've met me that my stress level is high and then argue with me because I'm crying because MY SON DIED. I'm not crying because I'm being irrational, nothing you've said has made me cry, you're not that important to me doc. I cry because I love and miss my son, and if when I speak of him and I cry, it doesn't mean my fucking brain has shut off or that now I need treated like a mental patient. I have a psychiatrist and psychologist, I want a OB/GYN to sit and talk to me and answer my questions and speak to me like I know what or how the pituitary, hypathalomus, Follicles and their associated hormones work. I do. I just need some help

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

I hate doctors

I do. I will be one next year. But I'll be a research doctor, I'm the one who comes up with the statistics everyone else is SUPPOSED to go by. Of course, nothing in a doctors office is hardly ever evidence based, and you better bet if its a drug you're receiving from your OB/GYN it has not been FDA approved for pregnant women. Basically, me and you are the guinea pigs. And they wonder, hmmmmm, why is maternal mortality rising. What causes 50% of stillbirth and 50% of SIDS births a year. Some magic freaking charm?!!!!!!

So help me, if I ever go through pregnancy again, I am not telling anyone, I'm getting a doppler and I'm just going with the flow. Because all these mofo doctors base everything off of is the trend (pharmaceuticals, hitech machines that don't tell you shit) and NOT WOMEN.

Okay, I''ll give more detail about this rant, but I've bawled for two days now, and I just want to know why. Why did I know there was something wrong? Why do these tests keep coming up borderline? Why, why, why? There are no answers, even to why I have a 42 day menstrual cycle with spotting when half my goddamn life I'd have periods like fucking clockwork.

Do they really want me to believe that everything (and oh, could I make a list) that EVERYTHING is unrelated. Fucking bullshit. And don't tell me, 'chances are', because that was my whole last pregnancy, me telling myself, 'chances, everything is fine, I'm overreacting'. Well guess what? I wasn't. I knew. And I didn't know how or what or why or even imagine I'd ever lose my baby. But I knew there was something wrong. And I'll be damned if I don't pay attention to what I believe are warning signs now.
I just hate being pooh, poohed. Talk to me like a fucking colleague because I do research in the development and reproductive health. Don't fucking listen to me like I'm 'hysterical' (as in hysterectomy, as in emotional, as in angry) because I want to theorize about what might be going on based on the in depth calendar I have of my menses.
Fucking bastard. Sorry. Didn't realize how pissed I was until just this moment.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Menstruation; I'm for the 13 month calendar

hopefully the title filtered out those of you who don't care to hear my TMI blogs. If not, this isn't one, or it is. Toughen up and figure it out wusses. LOL. I am crazy.

I've become more naturalistic in my worldview, gardening, for example, and it's been my release (especially the axe and these horrid bushes out front). Well, here are some really neat facts about women and menstruation. (on re-reading these first two sentences have much to do with one another).

We've used natural family planning since Simone was born, which was completely predictable. I didn't know what I had until it was gone (ain't that everyone's life story? fuck.) Of course now I'm dealing with complete unpredictableness, and I can't figure out why despite OCD bordline searches for obscure articles that result in me being obsessed with chimeraism (women carry their fetuses DNA for sometimes up to 27 years, and fetuses carry their mothers, and they think it might have to do with autoimmune disorders).

Why!!!??? Why can't my body be normal and menstruate?!! (Where is that axe, that B accused me of swinging like a bat, Heidi, LOL. My chopping 'form' has gotten better). Shouldn't I get a 'life is easy' pass now that Myles is gone? I don't think I should ever have to put up with anyone's shit again, ask B, and especially not my own god damn body.

Blah, so now I think my body is dysfunctional (to say the least). I know many women have experienced this feeling, trying to conceive, or who have experienced miscarriage or pregnancy loss, like me. It's more than annoying.

Anyway, the whole point of this post was to share THIS site that (I'm linking and quoting) which cheered me up. Hope others are empowered by it too, Guys and gals :) Sorry about the bitchfest.

Throughout all cultures, the magic of creation resides in the blood women gave forth in apparent harmony with the moon, and which sometimes stayed inside to create a baby. This blood was regarded with reverence: it had mysterious magical powers, was inexplicably shed without pain, and was wholly foreign to male experience. Early menstrual rites were perhaps the first expression of human culture.

Native American (Lakota):
"Follow your Grandmother Moon. Her illuminating cycles will transform your spirit." Begin with the Grandmother Moon at her brightest and most open. This is a time of outward activity and high energy. Sleep where the moonlight touches you. Walk outside where there are no artificial lights. Feel joy and creativity. As the Grandmother begins to cover her face, begin to withdraw into a quieter, less social place. Move to that inward place that is more about "being" than "doing." In the dark of the moon, when bleeding, the veil between you and the Great Mystery is the thinnest. Be receptive to visions, insights, intuitions. Go to a quiet separate place such as a Moon Lodge. Later, come out of the dark, a woman with a cleansed body. As the moon returns, come back out into the world, carrying your vision.

Customs and Traditions
Indians of South American said all humans were made of "moon blood" in the beginning.
In Mesopotamia, the Great Goddess created people out of clay and infused them with her blood of life. She taught women to form clay dolls and smear them with menstrual blood. Adam translates as bloody clay.

In Hindu theory, as the Great Mother created the earth, solid matter coalesced into a clot with a crust. Women use this same method to produce new life.
The Greeks believed the wisdom of man or god was centered in his blood which came from his mother.

Egyptian pharaohs became divine by ingesting the blood of Isis called sa. Its hieroglyphic sign was the same as the sign of the vulva, a yonic loop like the one on the ankh, RFLMAO
From the 8th to the 11th centuries, Christian churches refused communion to menstruating women.

In ancient societies, menstrual blood carried authority, transmitting lineage of the clan or tribe.
Among the Ashanti, girl children are more prized than boys because a girl is the carrier of the blood.
Chinese sages called menstrual blood the essence of Mother Earth, the yin principle giving life to all things.

Some African tribes believed that menstrual blood kept in a covered pot for nine months had the power to turn itself into a baby.

Easter eggs, classic womb-symbols, were dyed red and laid on graves to strengthen the dead. freaky

A born-again ceremony from Australia showed the Aborigines linked rebirth with blood of the womb.

Post-menopausal women were often the wisest because they retained their "wise blood." In the 17th century these old women were constantly persecuted for witch craft because their menstrual blood remained in their veins.

Calendars:
The Roman Goddess of measurement, numbers, calendars, and record-keeping; derived from the Moon-goddess as the inventor of numerical systems; measurer of time.
It has been shown that calendar consciousness developed first in women because their natural body rhythms corresponded to observations of the moon. Chinese women established a lunar calendar 3000 years ago. Mayan women understood the great Maya calendar was based on menstrual cycles. Romans called the calculation of time menstruation, meaning knowledge of the menses. In Gaelic, menstruation and calendar are the same word.

The lunar calendar's thirteen 28-day months had four 7-day weeks, marking the new, waxing, full, and waning moons. Thirteen months is 364 days. Pagan traditions describe an annual cycle as a 13 months and a day. Even today, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. The 13 month calendar also led to pagan reverence for the number 13 and the Christian attempts to demolish it. Generally, the ancient symbols of matriarchy were the night, moon and 13. Patriarchy (under Christianity) honored the day, the sun and 12.