Use this blog as your guide

If Maxie was still alive, today would have been his first birthday party.  We knew we wanted to have his part on a Saturday (so we wouldn't have to worry SO much about clean up) and the Saturday after his birthday is Yom Kippur (as I have already mentioned).  Today I am extra sad.  It doesn't help that I had a terrible nightmare last night.  I had a dream that I couldn't find Max anywhere.  I was asking everyone I knew and everyone kept saying they didn't know where he was but "he is fine.." and then adding, "you know that he is fine right?".  So, I went to my mother's house and said, "Listen, I cannot find Max anywhere and I am SURE I am just being an overprotective first time mom.  OBVIOUSLY he will be fine, but, humor me.  I am getting worried and I miss him so so much."  So, she went through a list of possible places he could be and while she was doing that, she was taking blankets out of an armoire and folding them and then, behind one of the blankets, was Max.  He was dead and sitting in his car seat and he had been in there for a long time and had been suffocated by the blankets.  He looked like he did lying in his hospital bed.  I woke up shaking.  Waking up again to the realization that my nightmares are just as bad as my reality.

Here is what I want to say today and I feel like I haven't even been subtle about it.  When I write here and tell you what I want to hear and don't want to hear, when I write what I am ready to hear and not ready to hear: I am hoping that you *might* use this as a guide.  That you *might* know that I am not ready to listen to the stories of miscarriage and other birth horrors because, even though I want to be compassionate, I am scared and vulnerable and still in the heavy stages of post-traumatic stress disorder.  You know I want to have more children so maybe just hold onto the story for now until I am better able to cope.  When I tell you exactly what you can say to me to make me feel understood, aka "It is so unfair that Maxie died and that you have to live in this world without him", I am hoping that you will understand that THAT is what I need to hear.  Not, "Shana Tova!  This is going to be an awesome year!"  When I tell you that right now I am not as compassionate and empathetic as I would like to be.....BELIEVE ME.  I don't want to hear about how miserable your life is.  From where I stand, it looks AMAZING.  When I tell that that if you plant a tree, we notice and it is important to us...I am not just giving you a fundraising pitch.  I am really telling you something you can do that will make us feel better.  It is NOT fair of me.  I recognize that it is not fair.  AND, especially after I just wrote about wanting to be more compassionate.  BUT, I am hoping that you might want to be more compassionate as well.  Is that fair?  It isn't right that I can sit here day after day and tell you my horror and sadness and not listen to what you believe is your horror and sadness.  What I guess I am saying is that 1) Don't read my blog if it is too much for you.  I am not going to read the blog of someone that I has had something happen in their life that I am scared of (my blog is not required reading). 2) If you cannot come here or email me or call me without complaining about your life, talking about the awesome things your kids are doing or telling me about your dead pets...that is ok. Let's just make a mental note that we can spend time together again later in life.  It doesn't need to be the end of our friendship, it is just some space that we are giving each other and that is perfectly ok.  3) BELIEVE ME when I tell you that I am sadder every day and that I don't want to hear your pontifications on how this will all get better eventually.  Every day I wake up is a day further away from the last day I was with my baby and it hurts MORE everyday.  You may not want to believe these things or accept them but I am begging you to use my words as your guide.  PLEASE.  I do not mean to keep pushing the point but I cannot understand how much clearer I could possibly spell this out for you.  PLEASE.  I am in the lowest point in my life and I don't need anymore pushing.  I don't want you to disappoint me so I am trying to make it easy on you and if this is too much for you, if you don't want a friendship with rules, then just count me out for a while.  I think we would both be happier.

I stare at Max's photos all day long and wonder if it was all a dream.  Was he ever here?  Was he ever really my baby?  Did I really carry him inside me and give birth to him and fall madly in love with him and nurse him and cuddle him and bathe him?  Was I ever really a mommy?  It feels like it was a dream and it gets further away from me every single day.  There are little details that are fading and it makes me sick to my stomach.  I am not getting better every day, I am sadder ever day.  On this day, that I should be celebrating his life with all of our friends and family, I am sitting in the same sweatpants that I have been wearing for 3 months, crying, staring at his photos and missing him like crazy.  Nothing has changed except that I am one more day away from the last time I smelled the top of his head and kissed his cheek and sung him to sleep.  One more day without my Maxie.