... for pregnant women again?

Mother in law just called to tell me that sister in law is 6 weeks pregnant with her second child (on the first try, of course).

I say that I am happy for people when they announce pregnancies. A cold, detached, rational part of me is happy because I know that it is something that brings them happiness. But, honestly, I don't feel one bit of genuine, emotional happiness for them. Not one ounce. I just feel completely heart sick.

I feel like such a sickeningly bitchy person because of it but I'm owning my bitchiness. It is just the way I feel.

I don't think i ever will. My therapist told me to place my hand on my heart when these hateful thoughts come to me. And to allow myself some tenderness. Because it literally hurts my heart to see pregnant women and I don't even know any of them right now.

I think we will always look at other women who are pregnant and feel a twinge of jealousy. After my loss I was able to get pregnant again but for me nothing about it is the same. I envy them their feelings of joy, when I am still stuck down deep in my grief and the utter incomprehensibility of what has happened to our family. Sadkitty is right, you need to allow yourself to feel that way, I believe we have earned it. I lookat people with newborns the same way, with a sort of hatred in my eyes because they got to keep what was taken from me (from all of us). It's too hard to try and grieve our children and expect to have anything left over for other people, sometimes I'm thankful that I can even get up in the morning. Be gentle with yourself Steph, it's ok to feel this way, and I like it that you embrace the bitch in you, I do that too.

Well said, SadKitty and Mindy. I've got nothing to add, other than I have come to think that the "inner bitch" is the little bit of life left in us protecting us with vigor. We've been so shaken down by the death of our children that there's almost nothing left. But what is left has to hang on tenaciously to life and if that means being bitchy, so be it. We're survivors.

Much love.

I have slowly found my way back to being happy for pregnant women I know. At first I could only muster it for people who had already lost a baby, then for people who had trouble getting pregnant, high risk pregnancies . . . I am now able to be happy for friends, family, etc. when I hear the news. Doesn't mean that I'm not still jealous sometimes. Doesn't mean I don't worry for them. But yes, I manage to be happy for them again. FWIW, I'm a little over two years out from my son dying.

Sarah,
Everything is still too raw for me to even be able to look at pregnant women - never mind be happy for them.......
I think its normal to feel this way, and its something that will only come back with time, if its ever going to.

Much love,
Julie x

Sorry Steph - I looked at the wrong poster.

x

I don't know.

I'd like to tell you yes, but that is in no way universal.

I can tell you that I am happy for people that are close to me. But having had 8 friends who were pregnant when I lost Gabe, I think I couldn't hate too much right away, you know? It's surprising. I can't really be around pregnant women much, that is too painful. Maybe when I'm pregnant again? But then I doubt it.

The people I'm close with, it's a lot easier. That's not to say pangs don't exist - they do. The people I'm not as close to, or who see it as competition? Nope. Can't do it. Random strangers? Whatever.

And I should add that happiness doesn't extend to long conversations about the pregnancy or the baby or the nursery or anything related to babies except for 2 people. That is it. Otherwise, I don't want to discuss it.

So there are degrees. I think time and relationships help that - I know it was a lot easier to be happy for the friend who lets me bring it up than the one who wants to tell me all about it. But I'm often ok with things. Not always, not universally, but I guess it doesn't bother me much. Unless it is a celebrity or the Duggars. For some reason, that always ends in me seeing red.

I so agree with Mindy, it's too hard to grieve our lost babies and have something left over to give other people. I also don't think that this means we're being bitchy, mean, hateful, etc. We are just sad, broken, often angry, deeply hurt, misunderstood mothers. I don't think we should feel bad about these very human emotions we feel. It's hard when other people don't understand, but oh well it's not our job to make them understand. Seems like people expect the most out of us when we are the ones hurting. They think we can and should smile at them and feel happy for them when it's just not in us to do at the time. Too often these people that want us to be this way with them are the very same people who do not have it in them to EMPATHIZE with us. So forget them. We've dealt with enough. They can deal with the fact that one person can't and won't gush over their pregnant bellies and newborn babies.

Something a friend of mine always tells me when I am feeling bad for negative reactions I have is "You are not a candidate for sainthood. Stop being so hard on yourself."

She's right. And Babyless Mother is right as well. We are often far harder on ourselves than we need be because we hold ourselves up to these terribly impossible standards. Would we expect someone who had just lost their spouse to be overly excited about and interested in someone else's wedding? Or someone who had just lost their parent to be overjoyed about mother's day plans?

Of course not. So why do we insist on so much from ourselves? The people who love us won't demand it of us and when we can give it, we will.

You will be again. Some day. I'm not there yet, and everytime I vent about some pregnant woman gallivanting around with her t-shirt with some stupid "I'm Pregnant" quote on it, I am reminded quite frankly that that stranger didn't get up in the morning and put on her "Baby on Board" shirt to rub it in my face that she is pregnant, and I am not. I understand that. But that is how I feel. It makes me angry. As if your obviously swollen belly isn't telling the tale clearly enough, let's just slap on a t-shirt that announces "Haha, I'm pregnant, and YOU LOST YOURS".

As I tell my husband, I can't help how I feel. It is just the way it is right now....

He doesn't get it at all.

I hope that I too will be happy again some day.

This thread and, being invited to a party that I fled in tears, inspired this poem. It kept me awake all night. Must remember to keep a notebook by the bed.

Anyway, here is a very cynical poem

-Are my snakes showing?-
The Medusa Oblongata
the part of
dead baby mamas
where fangs are bared
internally as often as not
(Biting my tongue poisons me)
From which venom flows
instead of milk
envy spite and malice
The part of me that hungers
and hates
that you get
to be ignorant
The part that cannot
be happy
that your baby lived
That you got pregnant
again
That you are awake
at night
for a reason
Look into my eyes
and you will know
that babies can die
and that knowledge
spreads like a toxin
You do not get
to feel safe
to not know
The pain is yours now
Sharing does not
lessen it inside me
but makes it spread
No one gets to be innocent
Look at me and turn to stone
then you too will have
a stone baby
bones and ashes

I didn't get that, I just sort of went numb. Still am, in some ways. Here's what I had posted:

Friday, June 20, 2008
Please send me your baby pictures...
I want to see them. I am still happy for you, although I may break down into tears when I open the messages, the announcements of "healthy x pounds x ounces" and "x inches long," the pictures of happy red-faced babies sleeping in tired mama's arms while daddy mans the camera or has an arm around mama with a big cheesy grin on his face. My sorrow does not diminish your joy, and I can still be happy for you. I just may not be able to say so for a while, your child may get a big kid shirt two years from now instead of booties or a blanket. That's the way it is, I'm not shunning you because I'm angry or bitter, just because I'm frightened that my tears will hurt you more than my silence.

That, and the feeling a lot of us have talked about, the idea that we're somehow contagious.

Something to think about - how did your mother-in-law tell you? At six weeks, maybe they're telling you before they make the big announcement just so you don't get that cute card in the mail to hit you in the gut.

Thank you, everyone. It is comforting to know that I am not the only one to feel this way. I know in my heart that my feelings come not from bitchiness, but from deep pain, emotional exhaustion and self preservation.

And, Katherine, my MIL told me when she found out because she wanted to tell me before anyone else did. She did it in the most delicate way possible... it still hurts, though. What hurt even more was the realization that this baby is due in early December. So I will have to spend what would've already been a brutal Christmas (we lost my daughter on the day after Christmas) staring at some other mother's newborn baby.

I may be skipping Christmas festivities at my in-law's next year....

UPDATE: My mother in law just called to tell me that my SIL"s pregnancy is not viable. She should've been almost 7 weeks, but they didn't see anything in the ultrasound.

Don't I feel awful now. It was hard for me to feel excitement for her, but I certainly didn't wish this on her.

I can't win-- either I don't feel happy for people whose pregnancies are viable or I feel terrible for people whose pregnancies aren't (and guilty that my jealousy somehow willed this to happen... stupid, I know).

Oh, hon. I'm so sorry to hear the pregnancy isn't viable.

I felt a pang of jealousy that was short lived when my friend C got pregnant and I didn't. But I set it aside and rooted for her. And then she miscarried, and I too felt that my less-than-whole-hearted-enthusiasm could have somehow cosmically affected it and felt awful. And felt even awfuller when she was in the limbo of waiting for the pregnancy to end and knowing the pregnancy wasn't viable and I got a positive test. That pregnancy ended 3 days later and we commiserated together. And, well, I posted a ways down about how I felt when she got pregnant again and told me the same day I got a negative test. And now I'm holding my breath for her first u/s.

The fact is that the world continues on around us and we can't always be joyful. And that doesn't make us bad people and it doesn't somehow cast bad juju on the people around us. We aren't contagious and we don't spew bad luck, and our feelings aren't manifested onto another person in that kind of bad way.

But, uh, yeah, it does suck to have no win that in situation and to feel shitty all the way round.

I remember finding out that a friend of mine was pregnant (while we were trying for the 9th month) and I was so jealous and angry that she was, and I **still** wasn't. She announced, all over facebook etc..., that she was, and then miscarried. I sort of felt a bit relieved. Then I got pregnant, and miscarried at 12 weeks, 1 week after **I** announced that I was pregnant, and in the process of losing that pregnancy, lost a tremendous amount of blood and was hospitalized etc. Call it karma, I don't know. But I often wonder if all of this was a lesson because I felt that way. What an awful person. I still feel like I am awful.

Steph, it's not your fault, I promise. The guilt is 100% understandable, but you did not bring this on. Please try and give yourself a break. (I know it's not that simple.)

A., you don't sound like an awful person. Or if you are, I am too. I can completely understand all of those feelings.