When you shake 'em up, that's what happens

This afternoon my neighbour came over for tea and brought her 9-month old daughter along, who I adore. Seriously, this kid is all kinds of cute.

We were chatting, baby J and I, catching up, bouncing around and generally making merry.

And everything was going well.

Until, of course, she projectile vomited all over the couch. By some miracle she missed me and most of herself, and I don't know how since my left arm appeared to be directly in the line of fire. Her shirt caught a few streamers and she had a charming vomit ring around her mouth, but the bulk of it went on the couch cushion. Tiny curdled milky puddles of it.

I totally know it was my fault because I'd just finished lifting her up and down over my head in what, in retrospect, was probably a very nauseating Conklin-midway-ride-esque kind of way. And I got what I deserved. Babies are essentially walking carbonated milkshakes. You shake 'em up and they're going to blow.

Lesson learned.

Now here's the thing, I'm kind of grossed out by things that come out of people's mouths. Saliva, vomit, moistened crumbs - even my own toothpaste foam. Can't deal with it. Congealed spit on a sidewalk? Forget about it. And don't even get me started on the amount of perfectly good water hockey players gargle and regurgitate during the course of one period.

So the vomit on the couch, well, it squicked me out. I mopped it up with a couple of pretty smelling baby wipes and shot it with Lysol after my guests departed.

But the whole thing left me feeling ill. And, to my surprise, it wasn't really because of the vomit as much as it was the way it initially made me feel. I felt guilty for being grossed out. Really, really, really guilty. And what's worse, I started to question the quality of my maternal instincts.

Everyone says that when it's your own child, nothing bothers you. Not the biggest puke or the nastiest poop. And since I've always assumed this to be true, I also assumed that someone who was a mother (theoretically if not literally) would have at least some of the innate ability to look at a puddle of baby vomit as nothing more than a little smidge to be quickly swiped up with a tissue.

So when I found myself inwardly cringing at the site of the spit-up soaking into my couch, I panicked.

Seriously. So much so that I had to poll someone online mommy types to find out if I was really as horrible as I suspected I was. I knew these women would tell me the God's honest truth. And if they didn't, I'd be able to hear it in their words and know if they were lying to save my feelings (something I'm kind of paranoid about in general - but that's a whole other blog).

As it turns out my fears were unfounded. The mommies concurred that baby vomit, pee and poop is NOT cute, even when it spews forth from your own progeny. You deal with it because you love the child, but it's still icky. And, what's even better, someone else's child's bodily fluids are gross. Even to mommies with living children who deal with pee, poop and puke on a daily basis.

I was even given permission by one friend to scream YUUUUUCK!!! if any of her children ever vomited on me.

So whew. Crisis averted. I'm not horrible.

And the puke on the couch? Well, it doesn't really bother me all that much now. You know, now that it's okay if it did.

Oh sure, 'cause THAT'S fair

I don't know how far the story traveled, but I'm pretty sure that most people around these parts (my parts, I mean) know the horrendous story of Paul Bernardo and his wife Karla Homolka. He was a serial rapist before turning into a serial killer with a fondness for teenage girls. With the help of his loving bride, he first killed her little sister, then abducted, sexually assaulted, tortured and killed two area school girls - making sure to catch it all on film.

Karla was fully complicit. She was there. She participated in the torture. She helped kill her own sister, for God's sake. She later claimed spousal abuse and tried in vain to make it appear as though she too was a victim of this horrible man, but the public didn't buy it.

The "Deal with the Devil", as it has come to be known, meant that she would only serve 12 years for her part in the murders. She was finally released back into the free world last summer, much to the horror of the victims' families and society at large.

Her husband is still serving time and will likely never be released, thank God.

Karla, on the other hand, seems to have moved on. Yesterday she had a baby boy.

Yes, a convicted murderess who helped a man kill her own sister and then two teenage girls just had a child of her own.

Yeah, 'cause THAT'S fair.

What a nice way to start the day

I read a disturbing article about the dangers of c-sections in the local paper this morning.

There's no way I'll risk another labour, not after three hours of unproductive pushing followed by a massive abruption that killed my son. No thank you. Thomas died when he was off the monitors during the sprint from my birthing suite to the OR. In 25 minutes he went from being safe and healthy to being born brain dead. And they had no idea until they pulled him out.

I won't risk any of that ever again. But apparently I'll be risking a lot by having another section. According to the article, anyway.

I just loathe that newspapers latch onto these kinds of stories and run with them. If you're going to post the results of a study, post ALL the results. Don't pick and choose the scariest bits and leave out all the rest.

Not only is it irresponsible journalism, it's just plain cruel.

I sat there on the couch in my purple moon and stars pajamas, a white knuckled grip on the paper, my eyes bugging out of my head and my heart racing. Along with what's left of my mind.

And the thing is, I don't have a choice. I can't risk a VBAC. And even if they told me I could, I wouldn't. In all seriousness, that probably would drive me right over the edge. I've been strong enough to endure a lot over the last two years, but I know I'm not strong enough for that. I'm just not.

I'm going to assume that if I survived it once - with a couple of serious complications thrown in for good measure - I can do it again.

You know, if I ever get pregnant.

Well this feels familiar

The weeks leading up to Thomas' first birthday were horrible. Absolutely horrendous. I felt more unglued than I had in months and I worried that the weight of a year's worth of dealing with the sorrow of losing him was finally about to do me in.

In short, I was a basket case.

As his second birthday approaches, I find myself feeling that old familiar fragility that threatened to knock me off my axis last year. It's not as bad as it was 12 months ago, thank God, but it's there just the same.

I should have expected it, but stupidly I didn't. His first birthday put an official end to all the things we'd have to do, see, experience and feel for the first time. I breathed an enormous sigh of relief when the sun set on the anniversary of the day he died. In many ways, I actually started to breathe again; to live in a way I hadn't for a full year; to remember him for the sweet blessing he was and not just for the sorrow that engulfed us when we lost him.

And I never thought it would get that bad again.

And when I say "bad", I mean the aching, relentless torment of wanting, loving, having and losing playing out in your mind like an endless horror movie.

"Bad" is the ungodly pain of holding a child you know you're going to bury, and remembering that instead of the feeling of him rolling and kicking and living inside you.

"Bad" is hospital flashbacks triggered by something you can't identify that assault you out of the blue and drag you back to a desperate moment when you felt that hell had swallowed you whole.

"Bad" is standing in front of the bathroom mirror watching yourself cry and being shocked by a face twisted in agony that you barely recognize as your own.

I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that, by some miracle, so far it isn't as overwhelming as it was last year. And I can also take comfort in knowing that I survived so much worse, both when Thomas died and the whole year after.

If I did it then, I can do it now. And I can keep doing it year after year after year.

But oh God, I wish I didn't have to.

Just to clarify...

It's not that My Beloved or I think think that Thomas wasn't the right baby for us and that he was returned to the gods because of it. He was the right child - he most definitely was, and we know there was a reason (or maybe a million reasons) for him coming to us and staying for 20 hours. And we're blessed and grateful for every second we had with him.

The "right" child My Beloved was referring to yesterday was the next right child. The second one.

Just had to clear that up. Because I'm neurotic and anal that way.

The end.

Roadblocks

So I finally muster up the courage to call about scheduling the lap (even though we haven't officially decided for sure if that is indeed our next step) and I find out they're currently scheduling into May.

Into. May.

I knew it wouldn't be next week or anything, but I'd kind of hoped to hear it wouldn't be more than a month or so away. Sometime after Thomas' 2nd birthday, but certainly long before my 37th.

No such luck. 'What a surprise', she said oozing sarcasm.

So in the interim we'll just continue plodding along blindly, not knowing if the past two years (because it'll be one month shy of two years by then) have been in vain.

Good Lord.

After I hung up with the nurse from the good Doctor's office I stood, seething, in the living room wondering how many more roadblocks the universe is planning to toss in front of us during the course of this journey. I mean, we've crawled our way over an ungodly number of barriers already, but my God, how much more can be thrown at us? And how much more are we supposed to take?

All. We. Want. Is. A. Baby.

People have them every day. Sometimes in multiples. I've seen the bellies. I know.

My Beloved, bless his heart and his calming effect on me, suggested that the baby we'll get (because he's still so sure one is coming out way) will be the right one - the one that we're meant to get. And not despite the delays, but because of them. The roadblocks that make me so crazed with rage will ultimately be the reason we'll get the child we will. The right child.

It's a nice theory. In fact I can almost believe it.

Almost.

Epiphany

So I was thinking about the whole God thing in church the other day (instead of planning the week's dinners or mentally writing to-do lists, which is often what ends up happening when I'm trying to pay attention at Mass) and I think I might have had a bit of a breakthrough.

Since Thomas died I've been waiting for God to show himself to me - to speak to me in a way that made some kind of sense. To speak to me at all. I've been begging him to somehow be present in my life and to show me that he cares. Essentially I've been asking him to prove to me that he still loves me.

Because after what he did to me, it was hard to know.

And yeah, I guess I kind of wanted him to explain himself. Not because he owed it to me, but because if he's such a nice God he'd want to.

But despite my relentless pleading, all I ever heard was silence.

Or so I thought...

As I was sitting waiting for Mass to start on Sunday, a little realization wormed its way into my head. God isn't going to walk through my door with a magic wand, fix what ails me and explain away Thomas' death. It's never going to happen. It doesn't work that way.

But countless friends have walked through my door, and with them they brought comfort, friendship and support. Family have offered hugs, endless love and a safe place to hide when things were dark and I needed the comfort of familiar places and rituals. Strangers have sent me e-mails, cards and gifts. I have made strong, life-saving connections with with some wonderful women in blogland who have also lost children. Countless donations have been made in Thomas' name to charities around the world. People everywhere have prayed for him and for us - and maybe even for that moment of realization I had in church on Sunday.

I didn't actually expect the big Guy to ring the bell and invite himself in for coffee. I'm not completely delusional just yet. But I think I was expecting some sort of clearly recognizable grand gesture that would suddenly make everything make sense.

I didn't realize it would be hundreds of small gestures made by people who care about us.

And in them, I see God.

At last.

What's in a name?

So I've been giving the whole what shall we call ourselves? thing some thought. And here's what I've come up with:

Perinatal infant loss and/or miscarriage survivor - PILAMS

Miscarriage and/or infant loss survivor - MAILS

Parent of little lost angel(s) - POLLA

Parent in mourning - PIM

What a depressing exercise. And fruitless too, since people will always want to know more than you're comfortable telling, and will still always look at you with shock and horror no matter what pretty little name you use to tell them that your child has died.

Fantastic.

But stiil, pim kind of rolls off the tongue nicely, no? And it would be ever so amusing to answer, "No, I'm a pim" the next time someone asks if I have any kids.

Heh heh heh.

In the night

It's kind of weird what you do when it's late, you're tired and you're approaching the end of a week that ran over you like a freight train.

My Beloved dozed off long before I did last night. He was soundly sleeping for an hour or more before I finally turned off the light.

But before I did, I looked at him. I watched him sleeping and thought of Thomas, who looked so much like his Daddy it's unreal. Sometimes I see him in My Beloved - the purse of his lips or the shape of his chin - and I wanted to see it last night. It comforts me to see them in each other, to see the parts of Thomas that came from the man I love so much.

I know it sounds like it's an agonizing thing to do, to look for reminders of your dead child in the face of your living husband, but it's not. And it's not morbid either (not to me, anyway - but then again I do a lot of things that I now don't consider morbid that actually probably are).

As time passes, Thomas sometimes feels like a beautiful dream I once had. So when I can find a way to make him real again, even for a few moments, I do.

As I looked into My Beloved's peaceful face and searched for reminders of our little boy, I quietly whispered things that are sometimes too hard to say out loud, then kissed him softly three times and went to sleep.

It makes me want to cry that this is our life, but I'm also so grateful that we've figured out ways to make it okay just the same.

Ah, winter

It must be the winter. The darkness, the cold, the inability to make plans with any certainty for fear the roads will be sheets of ice, the general feeling of being trapped like a caged animal.

It must be the winter that's making everything so much harder to endure.

It's also possible it's the shitstorm of loss, grief and infertility. It could be that too, I suppose.

But whatever. I find it takes me so much longer to recover from upsets these days. And I'm tired. Worn right out physically and mentally.

The classic signs of depression. Yeah, yeah, I know. But under the circumstances I'm inclined to cut myself some slack. The past two years have been an absolute living hell in more ways than I can count or name, and if the winter blahs have me in a death grip because of my inability to cope with frigid, dark weather on top of sorrow, loss and a funky uterus, well so fucking be it.

So it looks like a lap is our next stop on the fertility train. More surgery. Because the last one (a c-section that left me infection-riddled after they were finally able to control the hemorrhaging) wasn't enough fun.

The good doctor seems to think that our last, best hope to figure out why the hell I can't conceive after almost two years of trying is to take a looky-loo inside and see if I have adhesions or scar tissue. All signs point to yes, I suppose, given that I conceived three times before with relative ease.

The idea of having surgery - of going back into a hospital, donning a gown and laying in an operating room with the sounds, smells and sights I remember so well assaulting me at every turn - quite frankly makes me ill. I'm very excited about the possibility of it being the answer to our prayers (or, more accurately, the answer to our wails of "WHAT THE FUCK????" directed at the universe in general), but it's the getting through it that worries me. Getting to it, and getting past it.

How will I cope with that? Particularly when a snowy day makes me tense.

Eeeeek.

I know several people who have had this procedure done. They all survived. None of them had complications. Many of them went on to conceive - some right away.

But none of them lay on an operating table listening in shock, horror and confusion while a team of doctors bagged their dying son either.

Clearly I'm approaching this a little differently than the average lady.

But I know I have to suck it up. My only choice is not to have it done and spend the rest of my life regretting it and wondering if we'd have had another child if I'd only been able to summon up the courage to have a simple 40 minute surgery.

I'm no picnic to live with now, but My Beloved would surely grow weary of the guilt seeping from me like sweat, the begging for forgiveness, and the relentless "what if" style speculation that I know I would be incapable of quelling.

So I don't really have a choice. But I don't have all that much courage either.

I wonder if they'd be willing to start administering the drugs from home...

Technical difficulties

Two days with a busted modem and no internet access, and now that it's finally fixed I'm just too damn tired to write a word.

Well, except for the 25 in that first sentence.

And those eight.

And these three.

Goodnight Gracie.

A name

Yesterday it occurred to me that it would be so much easier to dodge those well-intentioned so, do you have any kids? bullets if parents like My Beloved and I had a title - a one-word name given to people in our particular circumstances. The childless parents.

When you're a child and your parents die you are an orphan. Why isn't there a title for grown-ups when the unthinkable reverse happens?

My typical reaction is to drop my head, nervously shift my eyes back and forth in their sockets and listen to my heart pounding in my ears while I determine how to tell whoever has just innocently asked for a piece of information they probably don't want to hear, that my son died.

It's gotten to the point where it's not as emotionally painful as it is just plain deflating. I'm a normal person when I meet a stranger, but the instant they ask that dreaded question I become a pitiable wretch. And I know they think of me as "the woman whose baby died" anyway, so wouldn't it be so much better if there was an actual name that could be used instead?

Do I have children? No, I'm a ____________. End of story.

Well, end of story unless you have a hairdresser named Eduardo who prods you into telling him the whole story and then wants to know about the current status of your fertility.

I know people would still look at me as a pitiable wretch even if I had a title, but at least delivering the information that would lead them to that conclusion wouldn't be so awkward.

So I propose we name ourselves, we childless parents.

And while we're at it, we should think of a name for those who have living children in addition to ones that have died. That would allow those folks to include their missing little ones when they answer "yes".

So, any thoughts?

I'm only half kidding, by the way...

Fair??

I know life isn't fair. I know it's not even supposed to be fair. And I know that for all the whining and hand wringing I do, there are a billion people who have stories to tell that are far worse than mine.

Like, for example, the two little orphaned African boys living in a mud hut, sleeping on tattered plastic sheets, eating when they can - like when the rain isn't pouring through the holes in their thinly thatched roof and putting out the fire they use to cook whatever food they can find. Their lives are immeasurably harder than mine, and from where I sat on my puffy loveseat watching theirs play out on the TV, my life kind of looked like a cakewalk. Mostly.

But even though I know I have a charmed life in a million and one ways, I still want to throw myself on the floor and whip up the world's biggest grown-up-lady tantrum. Legs kicking, arms flailing, screaming, crying, gnashing of teeth - the whole nine yards. And maybe one more yard for good measure.

Why oh why can't I get pregnant?

I've done it before. Granted, my record isn't stellar. We go to bed childless each night despite seeing two pink lines three separate times in the almost four years we've been trying. But I did it. I conceived. And had it not been for the fucked up medical system I would have put our toddler to bed a few hours ago. Read him a story, tucked him in, kissed him goodnight.

Instead I'm here ranting about the unfairness of life, and trying not to feel guilty about ranting about it.

Because, you see, I turn on the tap and clean, safe water pours out. I'm healthy (well, if you don't count the busted uterus). I'm loved. I love. I have money to buy food. I have money to buy the hiking boots I want. I was able to afford a good education. I had opportunities. I have opportunities. I have friends. I have family. I can see and hear. I can walk. Most of my hair isn't gray. I've lost almost 40 pounds. I'm full. I have security. I am understood. I have respect. I don't have insomnia. I'm not incontinent. I can run up the stairs. I have a backyard. I can dream. I have good memories. I am capable of making more. I have ideas. I laugh. I have straight teeth. I have a roof over my head. I have access to a doctor when I'm sick (or afraid I have breast cancer). I don't have to beg to survive. I don't just survive. I have nine million pens and about 15,000 balls of yarn in my stash.

But I don't have my babies - any of them. And someone - the gods, mother nature, fate - seems to think that's exactly the way it should always be.

That can't be fair. No matter what else I have, that can't be fair, can it?

And now for something completely different...

Uh, does anyone have any idea where I might find a crochet pattern for a cocker spaniel snood? Apparently it's a protective sort of device that keeps their ears clean when they eat and snowball-free when they're walked in the winter.

I had no idea dogs wore snoods.

I barely knew what a snood was...

Anyway, it was a request made by my aunt, and since she's going to do a pastel landscape of my Grandparent's old cottage for me for Christmas, it behooves me to do this for her.

Plus she's a good egg.

So, any idea where I might find a cocker snood (giggle giggle)?

I need to know

Just out of curiosity, how many times can one be erroneously convinced that she is pregnant before the powers that be deem her a complete and utter delusional mental case?

Uh, I need the answer to be well into the double digits, by the way...

Impulse buying

MY BELOVED: Look at this!

ME: Oooh, I LOVE it! Wow - I wish we knew someone we could buy it for.

MY BELOVED: Mmm.

ME: Well...maybe we should get it?

Big pause while we stare at the box in my hands

ME We could get it and...and...

MY BELOVED: Hope?

ME: Yes. Hope.

So we did. And we are.

Well that'll teach me to be nosey

Much to the mutual chagrin of our husbands, my neighbour M and I enjoy going to open houses. Just to be clear, neither of us are planning to pull up stakes and hightail it out of the neighbourhood - we do it purely out of curiosity. To see other homes like ours, to check out paint colours, to see where they've put their couches, to ooh and ahh over houses that are bigger than ours...and sometimes to giggle at ugly curtains and hideous bedspreads.

Hey, we're ladies.

Anyway, we headed out on Sunday afternoon to check out a large home a few streets away. This time it wasn't purely nosy-neighbour syndrome though, since M has friends who are interested in moving into the area and she wanted to check the place out for them.

It may have been our first semi-legit real estate outing.

We wandered through the main floor, did the typical small talk with the agent and headed upstairs to the much touted master bedroom.

Master indeed. It could have swallowed up most of our bedrooms in one gulp! And it was nice. Big, bright and airy.

So big, in fact, that it housed the nursery along one wall.

I sort of started a bit when I saw the crib, but I've seen baby stuff before. I've been in my neighbour's house WITH her baby a million times, for heaven's sake. I can deal with seeing a crib and baby accessories and even little outfits hung in the closet (we've very thorough when we snoop through open houses).

But what really did me in was the change table. It's the exact same one we had for Thomas. Exactly. The. Same.

I stopped, pointed and said "Oh. Oh - that's the change table we had."

Then I stood there dumbly staring at it. As thought if I stared long enough I would magically be transported back to our nursery. The long-gone nursery of two years ago.

I see our change table every day. It's still up in the spare room, and except for the first drawer which holds special mementos from Thomas' life, it's now being used for yarn and craft storage. I'm totally used to seeing it.

I'd just forgotten what it looked like when it was covered in baby things being used for the purpose we bought it for.

I immediately looked to the crib to see if everything was the same in this weird parallel universe.

And you know what? I don't know. I can't for the life of me remember exactly what Thomas' crib looks like. I walked into that nursery a million times a day and stood there staring at it, dreaming of what it would be like to see his little face looking back at me, and now I can't remember what the crib looks like.

It's in the basement, tucked away beside the empty bassinet. Forgotten.

Fuck.

Well that'll teach me to be nosy, won't it?

A very lazy post because I have no energy left

We had an appointment with my primary care OB at the fertility clinic this afternoon. But instead of blathering on about that (there are no answers, by the way, just the recommendation for more intrusive testing - increasingly so), I'm going to post a picture of my most recent little toque creation.

Because I like it, because evidently I'm vain that way, and because I just can't bear the thought of rehashing everything the doctor said today. It needs time to roll around in my head.

And I need time to bury myself under the covers and pretend I'm 7 years old again.

So while I do that, here's a hat...

Old habits die hard

Thomas was on my mind a lot the other day, but in that old familiar way that makes me so desperately sad.

As time passes I'm able to think about him without crossing over into the land of complete anguish every single time. It has become so much a part of me, his life and his loss, that it's almost difficult to think of his birth and death as events. or to think of him as a baby that I bore. It's like he's just part of me - the way I see the world, the blood in my veins, the air in my lungs, my waking, my sleeping.

But there are days when I slip back into my old ways - when I find myself thinking of him as someone who slipped away. Someone I just can't reach. Someone who is lost forever.

Those moment make me ache. And I remember that ache so well because it plagued me 24 hours a day from the moment Thomas died for months on end. I'd almost forgotten what it was like until it showed up the other evening as I was waiting for My Beloved to come home from work.

He'd sent me an e-mail (the contents of which I won't discuss in deference to his privacy) that broke my heart and made me think about our son as the little soul we lost.

It's amazing what the mind will do to protect itself. It's only now that I realize the complicated measures it must go through every second of every day in order to ensure that my right foot will continue to follow my left foot step after step after step.

I know we lost our little boy, but I absorb that knowledge and make it part of me instead of simply carrying it along with me. Absorbing it makes it easier. Carrying it, well I might as well be dragging the CN tower around with me all day.

I don't know if this makes any sense at all to anyone but me, but that's the only way I can describe it. I have to internalize Thomas or the sorrow of his not being with me would suffocate me.

Anyway, the other night as I pondered the e-mail from My Beloved while I waited by the window to see him coming home to me, I thought about our boy. I opened the window, rested my arms on the sill, looked up into the darkened sky and quietly sang him a lullaby.

And let myself miss him like crazy.

There's good news and bad news

The good news is I don't have breast cancer. The bad news is I busted our immersion blender making the sinfully rich tasting chocolate cheesecake pudding Stephanie recommended (see comments from my pudding plea post).

About the cancer...

Yeah, so I've had this dime sized sensitive spot which, because of its stubborn refusal to go away, had me completely convinced that I had some rare form of breast cancer.

I'd all but buried myself in the family plot.

In my less pessimistic moments I'd think, "No, God wouldn't do that to us on top of losing Thomas and battling secondary infertility, would he?" But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that that wacky God is capable of just about anything if it happens to be part of his grand plan. You know, the one he's still not interested in sharing any part of with me.

So into the doctor I went. I worked out my speech in the days leading up to my appointment to avoid the awkward topless babbling scene I'd been playing out in my head. I mean, how does one whip out a boob and ask someone to have a poke at it? The speech included the fact that there was no lump to be found.

That's right, no lump. I went in convinced I had breast cancer despite the lack of any hard evidence whatsoever.

In my speech I conveniently left out the part about me being a wee bit worried that I was slowly coming completely unhinged and had been pondering whether or not this was the start of my full-on hypochondria.

No point in divulging all the gory details. Gotta save some for the next appointment.

Anyway, long story short, after some poking and prodding she told me there was nothing wrong - no lumps, no bumps and thus absolutely nothing to worry about.

Unless you count the fact that I was sitting there half naked grasping at the shredded remnants of the tiny little paper top they gave me to cover myself while she was giving me my diagnosis.

I'm not sure why they give you the little top to put on in the first place if they're going to rip it off you and leave you wearing nothing but tiny ragged paper sleeves, but I digress.

So I'm fine. Crazy, sure, but otherwise fine.

Whew.

And now, the pudding...

Oh YUM! It's very rich, very thick and totally does not taste like something that's low in fat. Not at all. It wasn't quite as sweet as I would have thought (or maybe would have liked) but that could be easily remedied with a touch more honey.

If you like the taste of cheesecake, this pudding-like dessert is definitely something you should try. However, don't double the recipe and then try to blend it up using an immersion blender because odds are you'll blow the motor.

Trust me.

I plan to work my way through all the recipe suggestions and even if you don't particularly care, I'm going to write a review of each one I try.

Because now that I don't have breast cancer pudding seems all the more sweet.

HELP!!!

I'm in desperate need of a low-fat chocolate pudding recipe.

Seriously. It's bad.

If I don't get pudding soon...I don't know what might happen. Does anyone have a good recipe? Or know where I might find one? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? ANYONE???

puuuuuding

The ugly truth

It's amazing how relatively together I can be one minute and what a pathetic mess I can be the next. I'm always surprised by this Jekyll and Hyde routine - that it still comes on so strong every now and then. After close to two years I'm mostly even keeled. Mostly. I can control the rage and sorrow and have it blend seamlessly with the part of me that has recovered enough to function with some semblance of normalcy. I can look and act and almost feel normal most of the time.

But on Friday a little of the crazy lady slipped out.

I spent day with my sister and a friend of ours, both of them teachers and still off for the Christmas holidays. We went shopping, had lunch and eventually wound up at one of my favourite clothing stores. I was happily wandering past racks of clothes to make sure I'd selected everything I wanted to try on, when I heard another shopper chatting with a clerk.

The shopper had just had a baby. She was looking for in between clothes because she was too large for her pre-baby clothes and too small for her maternity clothes.

And that's when I panicked.

I started to hear more than I could bear. She had an easy delivery. Not everyone can do it, but she was up and about soon after....blah...blah...laughter....chatter.....baby....blah blah blah.

I drowned out her voice by walking away from them as fast as reasonably possible, holding one ear shut with my free hand and trying to focus on the music playing over the store sounds system. I'm not sure, but I might have been humming to it too.

My in-store version of LA LA LA LA LA LA LAAAAAAA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!

It wasn't quite that bad - I don't think - but I'm kind of surprised that I did it at all. The flight response kicked in so swiftly that I was halfway across the store with my finger jammed in my ear before I even realized what I was doing.

And yet I ask my pregnant friends for belly pictures and cuddle my neighbour's baby every chance I get. Because I want to.

When I make the decision to immerse myself in all things baby it's okay. When I'm ambushed by a loud shopper who feels the need to broadcast her perfect birth story to everyone within earshot it's not.

These rules of mourning are completely unfair and make absolutely no sense.

Except that in some horrible way they aren't unfair, and they do make sense. It's appalling, but true.

An apple a day - with some cheese

It's all about food these days, what with this being day 6 of Weight Watchers II: The Sequel. And with that in mind, I have a snack to share that literally blew me away when I tried it for the first time yesterday.

It's quite possible that it's not altogether as delectable as I think it is because I'm pretty sure hand sanitizer on felt would taste pretty darn good to me right about now, but just in case my taste buds and tummy aren't lying, you should totally try this.

Cut up an apple into little pieces (this makes it look like a LOT in the bowl - which, if you're on Weight Watchers, will make you want to squeal with glee) add about a 1/2 cup of 1% cottage cheese and sprinkle with cinnamon (to taste - I use probably a 1/4 of a tsp). Mix it all up and enjoy!

It's sooooo awesome! It kind of tastes like creamy apple pie. Well, with cold little cheese chunks and no crust, but close enough.

Good and good for you - and only 2 Weight Watchers points. Can't beat that!

Okay fine, a big honking piece of thickly iced chocolate cake beats the hell out of a skinny little apple and low fat cottage cheese, but just play along. The crazy hungry lady needs you to just play along.

The creme de la creme

The lovely folks over at Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters have done a round-up of the best blog posts of 2006 as written by those who have suffered pregnancy and/or infant loss and/or infertility.

The interesting thing is that the writers did the choosing. We picked and submitted posts that we thought, for whatever reason, best exemplified our experiences as mothers of lost souls, as infertiles - or as whatever sad label happens to best fit us.

The results are here if you want to take a look.

The big take away? We are not alone. Happily and sadly, we are not alone.

Say cheese

Oh Lord. I just discovered that someone found my blog by searching for an answer to the age-old question, Is mozzarella okay when pregnant?

Someone wanted a cheese sandwich and ended up with a whole plate full of information I'm quite sure she did not want to know.

Dude, I'm sorry.

But if you're still reading, yes, mozzarella is fine as long as it's pasteurized.

Oh who the hell am I kidding? The poor thing has run screaming from her computer and is probably begging her OB to put her into a medically induced coma for the remainder of her pregnancy as we speak.

God, I've ruined this baby-having thing for more people...

One, two, three...

I started Weight Watchers again on Tuesday.

I say again because in June when I started my regular treks to the fertility clinic for poking, prodding and other exciting indignities, I kind of gave up on counting the point value of every morsel I put in my mouth.

I needed chocolate and I needed it bad. And I didn't need the hassle of figuring out if half a Hershey bar was two points or three - or if I had enough flex points left to eat an entire package of four.

I've managed to keep off most of the 35 pounds I lost (save four playful pounds I've been yo-yoing since I quit in June), and while I've been pretty pleased with that achievement, I feel that old January need to get back on the horse and try again. With gusto.

Since you're wondering (as am I), I'm not totally sure if this means I've ditched the fertility clinic for point counting or not. I can't seem to do both at once so we'll have to see which one wins out in the end.

One makes me feel very, very good (albeit very, very hungry). The other, because it's a constant reminder that my body is old and busted, makes me feel very, very bad. One might help us have a baby. The other might help me fit into a decent pair of jeans. One forces me to eat my fruits and vegetables. The other forces me to submit to having my my hoo-ha prodded to within an inch of its life while I'm hopped up on drugs that make me feel utterly insane.

It's a tough call. Sanity versus family.

I don't know. I just don't know. If anyone is interested in making this decision for me, please feel free.

I've grown very weary of being a grown-up. If you need me I'll be in the closet eating a mixing bowl full of sugar free Jell-o and weeping.

Walter & Peggy

If you're very lucky, life (which can sometimes be so cruel) sweetly blesses you with an extra little bit of family - people who aren't related to you at all, but feel like they are just the same.

That's Walter and Peggy.

Walter is my Dad's oldest friend - a singing buddy who goes back more than 60 years. Peggy is his wife. Theirs is a love story that spans nearly six decades, and how fortunate I've been to be able sit back and watch just a little of it from the sidelines. Their devotion, tenderness, humor - a love so great that it radiated from their faces like light.

As old friends who felt more like family than some of the family I have, they were guests at our wedding. Special guests, as it turned out.

Instead of throwing my bouquet at the reception, I decided I would give it to the couple who'd been married the longest to honour their commitment and to show what an inspiration they were to me, my marriage just hours old at the time. Walter and Peggy had just celebrated their 55th anniversary and were shocked and delighted to be called up to receive the bouquet.

A month or so later a little package arrived for me. Peggy had dried a handful of the roses and tied them up in a blue ribbon that matched the dress my Maid of Honour wore.

That little dried bouquet now hangs in our bedroom in a shadow box along with My Beloved's boutonniere and one of our invitations.

Walter and Peggy were at the funeral parlor when my Grandfather died, honorary grandparents to me, by this point, and when Thomas died they both called my parents in tears. We didn't know (things were so private back then), but they lost a little girl, their second child, many years ago and were kind enough to talk about her and about the impact she had - and still has - on their lives.

They've just always been there. Walter and Peggy.

Last night Peggy slipped away in her sleep. Walter is alone for the first time in almost 60 years. Tonight he will lay down in an empty bed and begin the first night of a new life without his beloved.

All of us who love risk loss, but risking it and facing it are two very different things.

I've lost my ability to trust in the power of prayer the way I used to, but I do believe it's possible to ask God to give people the strength and support they need to endure their sorrows and to find peace. And so I'll be saying a prayer for dear old Walter before I go to sleep tonight.

If you have a moment and are so inclined, maybe you could too?

I imagine peace will be hard for him to find tonight.

Kindred spirit

The day after Boxing Day My Beloved and I went into Toronto on a mission to retrieve 11 empty giant Tinker Toy tins from his office. It's a long story, but they were scheduled to be ousted with the other office garbage and he thought they'd be perfect Christmas tree ornament storage containers.

Just to clarify, we don't have 11 giant Tinker Toy tins worth of decorations, but we hate to see useful things go to waste, so they're in our basement now awaiting further instruction. I'm not sure what those instructions will be, but in the event of a giant Tinker Toy storage emergency I know we're covered.

Anyway, after loading the tins into the back of the car we decided to walk up to Kensington Market to see what we could see. Although I've lived just outside of Toronto my entire life and worked in the city on and off for over 10 years, I've never actually been to Kensington Market. It's about a 15 minute walk from My Beloved's office and it wasn't a very cold December 27th, so off we went.

As we navigated our way through the bustling streets, I realized just how very suburban I've become since leaving my downtown job the week before Thomas was born. I haven't seen that many people all in one place in a very long time, and I'd forgotten how territorial pedestrians can be when they're on a mission.

I found myself shuffling, dancing and jumping in and out of foot traffic all the way to the market. And some of the owners of those feet (including a Food Network chef who breezed by us in full superstar mode) were definitely what I'd call interesting. I was mostly amused and intrigued - until we passed a woman in tears.

She was dressed in some sort of goth/punk/1980s retro outfit. Her hair was blue, I think. And as she clutched at the front of her jacket with one hand, the other rested helplessly on a face twisted in agony.

I heard her before I saw her. It was an awful, animal wail that literally shattered the noise of the city. I only saw her for a brief moment before she stumbled around a corner as we passed by, but instead of doing something or offering some kind of help, I just stupidly watched her go, my heart breaking.

I was stunned by how much of her pain I seemed to absorb - and by how quickly I felt it flow through me. It was almost like seeing a physical representation of my own intangible sorrow and it shocked the hell out of me.

For a second I wondered if maybe she'd lost a baby too. I wondered if she was crying out in agony for a lost boy she cradled just once. It suddenly struck me that what she was doing was almost logical if that was the case.

I mean really, doesn't it make a whole lot more sense to scream and sob rather than to smile and pretend? I've always opted for the latter when I'm out in public, but some days I think screaming and sobbing makes infinitely more sense, even if society tells us we should talk in muted voices and look on the bright side.

The bright side can be very hard to find and soft voices can be deafening.

Maybe the girl with blue hair is onto something. Or maybe she's just crazy - I'm certainly in no position to judge.

But I do wonder where she went after she turned that corner, or who she went home to. I hope she has a beloved who strokes her hair while she cries. I hope she has friends who listen. I hope someone understands.

I hope she'll be okay.

Status Quo

I was sitting on my cozy love seat with a glass of sparking red wine and a plate full of mozzarella sticks and sausage rolls enjoying the company of my sister and My Beloved as the final seconds of 2006 slipped away. It was nice - quiet and comfortable (at my age ringing in the new year needs to be quiet and comfortable for me to be interested in doing any ringing in at all).

It was the perfect way to usher in 2007 and I went to bed with the warm feeling you get when you've spent happy time with people you love.

But New Year's Eve has always made me a little sad - even before I had anything to be particularly sad about. There's something about an entire year ending that makes me nostalgic for the past - and a little afraid of the future.

And now along with the nostalgia and fear, I feel a sort of uncomfortable panic about moving so far away from Thomas. I mean from the physical part of him. Being pregnant, giving birth, holding my son.

All that happened in 2004 and 2005, and with the turning of yet another year it seems so far away. Like I'm racing away from all that I knew of him - which wasn't much at all to begin with.

Panic indeed.

So much of what I do is done with him in mind and only senility will rob me of memories of his existence, but time is pulling me away from those sweet months when I felt him alive inside me and when I held that precious bundle in my arms. And it makes me want to claw my way back in time to be closer to the him I knew.

That might sound a little crazy, but there it is. This is my second New Year's experience since he died and it appears that this is just the way it is.

Like Christmas visits in the cemetery and watching other children grow while he rests with the angels. That's just the way it is.

Okay, bit of a morbid first post of the year, but why should this Monday necessarily be any different from any other Monday? It is what it is. And I keep on keeping on.

S.O.S.

Too......much....chocolate............can't think........send...........help

Christmas #2

I wasn't sure what to expect from Christmas this year. Last year it was a struggle from that first in-store carol mid November to the moment when the last red and green vestiges of the season were finally packed away in boxes in the basement.

There wasn't much I enjoyed, except for a few gentle moments with family and the kindness of our friends who remembered Thomas in special ways - and made sure we knew.

So I had no idea what would happen this year, except that I figured it would be easier. It had to be easier. And since the lead up to the big day was much merrier than last year, I assumed I would be able to find my Christmas spirit when the sun rose on the 25th.

I think not looking for it made all the difference. I tried hard last year to make merry. I went to parties. I shopped. I wrote cards. I watched Christmas movies. I listened to Christmas carols - and I did it all under duress. I made myself do it because I thought I should, and because I thought if I forced myself to do all those normally joyful things, I'd somehow magically find the peace that had been eluding me all season long.

I didn't find it. I just wore myself out instead - and felt a million times worse because of it. I was happiest when it was all over and I could stop pretending. That's when peace finally came.

But this year was different. I did what I wanted to do, and found that it included all the things that I had to force myself to do last year. Imagine that.

Time is a great healer. Not necessarily because it's particularly kind, but because the more of it there is between you and your loss, the more proven coping mechanisms you have on hand to rely upon when the going gets tough. And the knowledge that the first Christmas didn't kill me (by some miracle) meant I could probably make it through the second too.

And I did.

But the thing is, I more than "made it through" - I actually enjoyed it.

I missed Thomas. I missed him with the same passion I always do. But I felt him with me, so close it was like I could reach out and touch him. He was with me. And I was happy. Happy.

I first felt it when we were driving to my in-laws on Christmas Eve. We had on my favourite Christmas CD (St. Michael's Choir School's Joy To The World) and we were listening to O Holy Night sung by a beautiful voice that has long since been stilled. A friend of my Dad's - someone I knew as a child. Someone who knew me before and never knew me in agony.

As I listened to his voice soar, I started thinking about all the people I've lost who were so special to me and so much a part of the happy Christmases of my past. And I felt them. I swear I did. And Thomas with them, right there in the car on the busy 401 at 4:00pm in the afternoon on Christmas Eve.

Normally those kinds of thoughts would have me sobbing, but instead I felt that one perfect moment of peace that managed to completely escape me last year. I felt it wash over me and course through me. I felt it give me strength - and I felt myself smile from the inside out.

They were there. They will always be there. In my heart, in my memory and, it would seem, in the back of the car when I'm playing Christmas carols on Christmas Eve.

I don't care if it sounds crazy. It was as real to me as this computer and my hands on its keys.

And that's what I'll remember most about this Christmas. That brief, beautiful moment in the car that I spent with the people I never dreamed I'd be sharing Christmas with. Not in a million years. And the feeling of my Thomas near me through it all.

My wish is for everyone to feel that kind of peace and joy, even for just one moment.

Merry Christmas.

If this doesn't make you smile...

Free Hugs

Why did he do it?

"I was the only person I knew in my own hometown, so I wanted to get out there and do something that spread a little bit of cheer and cheered me up, and this was the first thing that really came to mind."

For Laura...

...Laura, who's going to try the Ribbon Cookies!!

It's very exiting that someone is going to give this old family favourite a go! So exciting, in fact, that I find it necessary to post an inspirational picture of batch I made for last year's Christmas tea!

That's them on the right. The cookies in the middle were some sort of macaroon (that aren't worth making again), and the ones on the left were delicious little pecan balls which I've somehow (tragically) lost the recipe for.

Oh, cookies. I love you.

A little thing called shame

I had a no-so-nice moment the other day. One of those ugly, bitter moments that you're generally unwilling to admit to anyone that you have - or that you still have (since some people think those moments of bitter jealousy are horrendous and only acceptable right after a loss).

I opened up a Christmas card from an old friend and two small pictures fell into my lap. One was of her little boy who is, I think, 3 or 4 now. The other was a picture of her new baby girl, just 5 months old.

I've lost touch with this friend for the most part. Our only contact is at Christmastime now, which is sometimes just the way it goes. Lives are busy and move in different directions. It happens, and it's okay.

But I was still kind of stunned to see the pictures. And angry.

I sent her a picture of my Thomas in her Christmas card last year with a little note about what had happened. And then I waited to hear from her. The card I got the other day was the first contact she's made with me since, and in it she chose to put two pictures of her living, breathing, smiling children.

I was livid. I snarled and huffed quietly as My Beloved looked quizzically at me, but I was too ashamed of my instant wrath to tell him everything that was swirling around in my head. So I tucked the pictures back in the card and put it in our card holder. And quietly fumed from afar.

Yesterday I took it back out of the holder and read it again - and took a closer look at the pictures. The message she wrote inside was sweet, and I could tell she worked hard to choose exactly the right words from the millions that probably terrified her with their perceived inappropriateness. She asked me to e-mail her. She said she missed me and wanted to reconnect.

I picked up the picture of her baby girl and turned it over. On the back was her name and her age. I started thinking...

When my friend got the news of my son's death along with his picture in her Christmas card last year, she was about two months pregnant. The shocking reality of infant mortality came screaming into her life when she was in the first few nervous months of a new pregnancy. If she'd contacted me, what would she have said? What would I have said?

She must have been terrified.

The last words in her card were, "I know we are so lucky", in reference to their two beautiful children. The guilt in her words broke my heart.

I hate that things that should be easy are awkward. I hate that my sorrow dampens other people's joy. I hate that tentative hands reaching out to me are tentative. I hate that sometimes those gestures are met with hostility. I hate that my first reaction to the photo of that beautiful little girl was anger. I hate so much that I have that in my heart.

I am ashamed.

My Favourite Things (SO behind I've lost count)

My Mom's Ribbon Cookies

It's just not Christmas without a ribbon cookie. My Mom made big batches of them every year, and no matter how old I get the magic of seeing those three ribbons of delicious colour in one pretty cookie never fails to make me smile. You should see if it has the same effect on you. Go ahead. Poke. Poke. Poke.

1 cup butter
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1/4 salt
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 square bittersweet chocolate
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
red and green food colouring

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and mix well.

Sift flour, salt and baking powder together. Slowly add to wet ingredients until blended.

Divide the dough into three equal portions.

Add nuts and melted chocolate to one portion. Add red food colouring (until desired colour is achieved) to second portion. Add green food colouring to third portion.

Lightly grease a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan and line with Saran wrap, waxed paper or parchment paper, taking care to go up over the sides of the pan.

Evenly press the chocolate dough into the bottom of the pan. Gently layer the green dough on top of the chocolate, pressing evenly. Add the red dough and press, making sure the layers are smooth and pressed into the corners of the pan.

Cover with extra Saran and chill for several hours or overnight.

Using extra Saran, lift chilled dough from loaf pan and slice in half lengthwise (ending up with two long rectangles).

Slice 1/4 inch cookies from each dough rectangle and place 1 inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet.

Bake in 350 degree oven for 10 minutes. Makes six dozen.

Cool on wire rack and enjoy!

Pssst - these cookies freeze exceptionally well both baked and unbaked, so make a double batch!

So that's what it takes

I love my sleep. I'm not a napper (unless I'm sick or pregnant), but I love my night time sleep with a passion. And I used to be exceptionally good at it, once upon a time.

When I was single (sleeping alone in my snug little bed) and not on blood pressure medication (necessitating at least one groggy trip to the bathroom every night), I used to fall asleep in mere minutes and stay dreamily snoozing for the entire night.

Imagine that. Sleeping all night long.

I don't have a hungry baby wailing to be fed or a toddler who wakes up crying for me in the night, and yet it's been years since I've sleep right through to the dawn's early light. Years.

I blame it on the medication, the shared (and therefore not always quiet) sleeping arrangements, occasional pregnancies (of varying lengths), and my body's inability to regulate its temperature when confronted with the heat of another warm body. All in all, it makes for nights of tossing, turning and peeing. And occasional sleeping.

But that changed on Saturday night, and I have a bowl full of bad chicken to thank for it.

Maybe it wasn't the chicken fettucine. It could have been a 24-hour bug, but I suspect fowl play. And it kept me up half the night on Friday shaking from feverish chills and using the toilet and waste basket simultaneously. If you know what I mean.

By Saturday night I was quite literally spent. Drained of just about everything, but mostly energy. And so I slept the blissful sleep of the young, closing my eyes sometimes around 11:00pm and not opening them again until almost nine hours later.

Despite missing my favourite holiday party of the year and having to spend the entire weekend before Christmas in a germ-infested exile, I look back fondly on that rotten chicken pasta because it brought me the first complete, uninterrupted night of sleep I've had for as long as I can remember.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my occasionally noisy Beloved for anything, nor am I particularly interested in spending another 24 hours in the bathroom - and I'm still devastated to have missed my sister's drop-in Christmas party - but oh the sleep. The delicious luxury of a full night's sleep.

It was almost worth it. Almost

A random act of kindness

For whoever sent me the sweet little garden cherub...

You didn't include your name so the only way I can thank you is to post here and hope you're reading.

I will keep planting and I'll do my very, very best to keep believing. Thank you for thinking of me at Christmas and for sending me a gift with so much meaning. It will find a special place in my angel garden in the spring. I promise.

And now back to our regularly scheduled holiday cheer

My Favourite Things

DAY 12 - VOICES OF REASON

When I think about what happened (I mean really think), I still find myself truly dumbfounded that I survived. Not physically (although given what happened to my body during and after delivering Thomas, the fact that I'm still here is relatively miraculous too), but mentally.

I am, for the most part, sane despite living through the worst hell on earth. A hell that continues, though greatly diminished in its everyday intensity, after 21 long months.

And while I'm shocked by my sanity, I know the reason I have it is because of the voices in my head.

Yours, yours and yours. And yours too. All the people who have listened and spoken and comforted and consoled and convinced and cried and prayed and laughed and sympathized and tried so desperately to understand - even when they couldn't possibly. All those little voices have stayed in my head, offering quiet comfort in the night and welcome company when I find myself alone with my sad, lonely thoughts.

Voices like these are very definitely among my favourite things:

"It is a fact that you couldn't save him. But you are also the reason he lived. Your body is just a small part of "you". You also have a mind and a soul. And your mind and your soul are not the reason he is dead. Your mind and soul are the reason you can still feel him with you."

Thank you Rosepetal.

And thank you, My Beloved. Thank you Mom, Dad and Kathy. Thank you to our families. Thank you to my dear friends, both virtual and real, both near and far away.

Thank you for your voices, but mostly thank you for not being afraid to speak.

Guilty mind

I used to be one of those cemetery visitor types. It never really made me all that sad, for some reason. I found great comfort in being where my people were, and I liked having a special place to go to where I could quietly say whatever happened to be in my heart, even if it was just a quick hello when I was just passing by. In fact, one of the hardest things about my miscarriages was that there was no place to go. No grave to visit. It devastated me.

But when Thomas died, all that cemetery goodwill changed. And with it came a boat-load of guilt - the complex kind that you think is one thing but turns out to be something else altogether.

The thing is, I have a terrible time visiting his grave. I read the blogs of other mothers in mourning who visit regularly, taking seasonal decorations and remembrances to the spots where their children lie, and I'm consumed with guilt because I don't. Hardly ever.

I went the day before Thomas' first birthday back in March (I can't even remember what I brought with me), and I didn't go again until this past Friday when I took his Christmas wreath to him. I let nine months pass between visits because the idea of going upsets me so much - and because I always get so upset when I'm there.

And I figured out why not long after I stood by his grave as the cold wind whipped through my hair and chilled me to the bone.

I talk to Thomas all the time, but when I'm at his grave it's different. I start out telling him how much I love him and miss him, but I always end up apologizing. I find myself saying "I'm so sorry" over and over and over again, and feeling the agony of a guilt I can't seem purge myself of - and don't always feel except when I'm standing by his tiny granite plaque.

I couldn't save him. My body failed him and he died. I am the reason he is dead.

I didn't do it on purpose of course, and I know there were other factors at play (including a fucked up medical system), but the bottom line is my body couldn't do what it was supposed to and my child paid the ultimate price for its failure.

And I never feel that guilt as acutely as I do when I'm standing in the cemetery staring at his name etched in stone.

I guess there's something about being right where he is - so near and yet so impossibly far away - that brings that awful guilt to the surface.

I didn't realize it until Friday. I had to pull the car over in the middle of the cemetery because I was sobbing so hard as I was trying to leave. I thought at first it was just being there, in that place, but it slowly dawned on me that it's the guilt that's robbing me of peaceful cemetery visits with my boy.

I'm not sure where that leaves me. I guess it's good that I have somehow subconsciously managed to contain the guilt - allowing it to surface only when I'm where he is - because it means my days away from the cemetery can continue to get better and better as time passes. But I also now know that ugly guilt thing, more powerful and frightening than I ever imagined, is lurking in the cemetery.

I talk to Thomas all the time, and I feel him with me - especially, and magically, when I need him to be. I keep his memory alive and honour him in small ways that make me happy and bring me peace. We have a nice little relationship, Thomas and I.

I know he doesn't blame me. I know no one blames me. But that's not really the point. The point is I blame me, and I'm not really sure how one gets over something that, from where I'm standing, seems absolutely impossible to resolve.

I swear I have more favourite things...

...and I know I'm behind two days again. Because I'm tired and a little bit of a space cadet, I'm going to cheat and kick it one word style:

DAY FIVE - chocolate

DAY SIX - cake

I like them together and separately, incidentally.

Why am I tired? A two and a half hour seminar on adoption last night. A lot of information went into our tiny little heads, and it took a very long time for it to stop swirling around before we could finally close our eyes and sleep. Which we did, but not until close to 2:00am.

And the swirl continues today.

Not in a bad way, just in a "how did I end up this grown-up" kind of way. Surreal. Once again, so very, very surreal...

At least my life is consistent.

Because you asked for it...

...I did it.

Plumpkin Heads

My favourite things - day 3 & 4

I kind of got a little behind (yes, already) so I'm combining yesterday and today in one post. It's okay to do this, by the way. I checked the official My Favourite Things rule book. Really, I did.

DAYS 3 & 4 - old home movies and the people in them

Last night after dinner and my mom and dad's we sat down to watch old home movies that we haven't seen in probably 16 years. Not since my grandmother died, in fact. My sister arranged to have all the old 8mm family movies my Mom shot in the 60s and 70s transferred to DVD just in time for Christmas.

And just in the nick of time too.

The ravages of time were starting to set in on the now ancient celluloid reels. The once vivid colours had slowly started to wash away and the crispness that I'm almost certain was once there has been reduced to soft edges and grainy blurs.

But there we are, in all our wonderfully young glory. The people of my memories. My grandparents - alive, vibrant and younger than my mom and dad are now by years. My mom and dad - not old and tired, but running, bending, lifting, kneeling and chasing after two toddlers. Kathy and me, two tiny little mites with wide brown eyes and big trusting smiles. Great aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, many now long gone. The house - the same house we sat in last night - with foreign furniture, strange lamps, wallpaper I'd long forgotten and impossibly tiny trees.

As I sat transfixed watching my early life play out in front of me on the screen, I realized that I have far more than I sometimes think I do. I'm ashamed to admit that I'd forgotten how rich my life has been - how much I've really had. I've been consumed with loss for what seems like forever, and somehow I allowed myself to forget the things I do have - that I've always had. And the proof is captured on those films.

Seeing the gentleness in my mother's touch and the love in my father's face brought me to my knees. Watching myself, at two on Christmas Eve, wrap my arms around my Grandfather's neck in the kind of hug only love knows how to give broke my heart. Seeing my face peek out from behind my sister's back and stare up at her with utter awe and devotion made my want to lay down and cry.

I've had so much. I've lost so much, but my God, I've been blessed.

My favourite things - day 2

DAY TWO - Saturdays

1. Bacon and eggs
2. Pajamas for clothes
3. Large format comics
4. Afternoon cooking shows
5. An entire day with My Beloved
6. Not having to cook dinner
7. Old movies
8. Staying up past my bedtime
9. Falling asleep on the couch
10. Knowing there's another day to do/enjoy the above

My favourite things - day 1

To give credit where it's due, I freely admit that I have stolen the idea for the next 25 blog entries from My Beloved. He thought it would be cool to do a Christmas countdown by way of a list of 25 of his favourite things.

What better way to focus on being happy than THAT, I say? And so, I copy.

(I think he's actually going to start on day 2, by the way, since right now he's sound asleep on the couch in front of the TV and there's only 10 minutes left of day 1. But we'll forgive him because in addition to having excellent ideas, he's very cute).

DAY ONE - Advent Calendars

Oh the little joys of Christmas when you're just a little girl. Picking open tiny cardboard windows to see what picture, bible verse or Christmas greeting was hidden beneath them was the highlight of every December morning when I was a child.

I would gaze longingly at that huge double window hiding the Christmas day message as I dug my fingernail under the lowly first few numbers, knowing that until I was into double digits Christmas was at least a good hundred years away.

I got a new Advent calendar every year, sometimes from my Grandma and sometimes from my Mom and Dad, and with it came the thrill of knowing Christmas was really and truly finally coming. I was holding the proof of this miraculous fact in my pudgy little hands. At last.

I can't remember any one calendar. They've blurred into a sea of donkeys, stars, snowy mountains, steeples, mangers, shepherds, reindeer, baby Jesuses and Santas in my memory. But the feeling of anticipation before opening each window - and the sheer brute force of willpower (the intensity of which I haven't seen since) that kept me from opening up the whole lot of them all at once - is what I remember vividly.

And it's why I bought myself a pretty winter snow scene Advent calendar this year. I decided it was time to bring back as much of the magic of Christmas as I could, in any way I could. And an Advent calendar seemed like a pretty good way to start.

The funny thing is, my sparkly winter scene isn't the only Advent calendar I have this year. The other day My Beloved came home with a Santa ornament for our tree that doubles as a Christmas countdown, and my sister sent me a very cute sock monkey-themed countdown wheel that's currently hanging on our powder room doorknob.

After probably close to two calendarless decades, I suddenly - magically - have three. And the little girl in me couldn't be happier.

After all, it's the first bit of Christmas magic I've felt in what feels like a very, very long time.

In case you were curious, the picture under today's window was a big, fat snowflake.

The blankie

Today I did an odd thing. And I'm not sure why.

My neighbour was over with her 6-month old daughter this afternoon, and when baby J got a little fussified I volunteered to get a blanket to put on the floor so she could lay about and do her baby thing there for a while (since she'd abruptly stopped enjoying being held).

I ran upstairs to the room that once belonged to my little boy and pulled a cozy blanket from the top shelf of the closet. It was, of course, Thomas' blanket. It's been in that closet since the day I received it from a very sweet friend who made it for my Peanut and sent it up to us before he was born.

It's a soft, two-sided fleece blanket with moon and stars and big fluffy clouds on one side and plain white on the other. My friend's handwritten note was still pinned to it with instructions on how to wash it - and how to use it to cuddle up with my Peanut.

I froze for a moment, then unpinned the note and headed back downstairs.

I fought with myself all the way down. Don't use it. Use it. Don't use it. Use it. Don't use it. Use it.

Finally logic prevailed. Thomas is never going to use the blankie, so why not lend it to the little girl next door for a few minutes. What harm could it do? Other than break my heart just a tiny bit, of course.

I paused on the last step before rounding the corner, clutching the blanket to my chest for dear life. Do or die. Round the corner and it's all over - baby J's mom will see the blanket and I won't be able to explain my sudden decision to use a sheet instead. If she sees it and me holding it, it's going on the floor and a real live baby will actually use it.

A baby that's not my own.

I turned the corner, spread the blanket on the floor and smiled and cooed at baby J.

It felt good and horrendous all at the same time. Kind of like that brief feeling of relief you have between stubbing your toe and actually feeling the pain.

I've thought about that blanket a lot. Often when I'm in the closet rummaging around for something else I'll reach up and touch it, thinking about what might have been. I don't have any idea why today I finally got it out and used it.

But somehow I think it was a good thing.

Well looky here!

Hey, maybe my
think happy and be happy theory wasn't too far off base.

All I have to do is stay out of hair salons...

Short lived...

So, it appears I lasted all of two days with the happy talk. I tried. I did. It's not my fault I needed a haircut.

I'm happy with the job Eduardo did. That must count for something, right?

The sad story lady

My hairdresser, the wonderful Debra who gave me a such good cut along with the understanding that only someone who has also struggled to have a child can give, left the salon. Her whereabouts are unknown - at least to me.

I had no choice but to try someone new.

Here's how it went...

Enter Eduardo, a young man in his late 20s or maybe early 30s, all pimped out in trendy gear with a multicolour fauxhawk, overly plucked eyebrows and an earring. We shake hands, discuss my cut then head to the sink. He washes my hair and gives me the best head massage I've had at a salon. Ever. I'm a happy girl. We move back to his station and the cut gets underway. We make idle chatter for a few minutes. Finally, it happens...

Eduardo: (Innocently) "So, do you have any kids?"

Me: (Shifting uncomfortably) "Uh...well.....uh....I have a sad story. We had a little boy, but he died."

Eduardo: (Very quickly) "I'm sorry."

Me: (Thinking: awkward, awkward, awkward, awkward, awkward.)

Eduardo: "How old was he?"

Me: "He was only 20 hours. He was just a baby."

Eduardo: (With a trace of relief) Oh, okay. (Brief pause) I know that's bad, but can you imagine how hard it would be if he was like two or something?

Me: (Shocked, flabbergasted, outraged, hurt, angry - and utterly paralyzed) "Yes. I know. After our son died, the mother of a friend of the family told me that she understood our pain because she lost a son when he was two. I told her I couldn't understand HER pain because I couldn't imagine going through what she did, having her child with her for so long."

Eduardo: "Yes, I mean you really know the child by then - it must be awful."

Me: (Finally regaining my wits) "Well yes, but it's also very hard not to know your child at all and to have no memories of him to hang onto. That's pretty hard too."

Eduardo: (Looking a little shocked and contrite) "Oh. Yes. I guess so. Well there's good and bad both ways I guess."

Me: (Wondering what the good part is and laughing a soft, humorless laugh) Yes. Yes there is.


Yes, yes, yes. He meant well and it was a shocking thing to hear and he didn't know what to say. Blah, blah, blah, fucking-blah.

I will never understand people's need to try to convince you that what you've gone through isn't as bad as it could have been when they don't have a fucking CLUE what it's like. You take your heart (or the thing you love more than anything you've ever loved in your entire life), rip it out of your body, hand it over to strangers and let them bury it under six feet of cold spring earth. THEN you can tell me how hard it is or isn't to lose your baby - even if he was only 20 hours old.

Oh Debra. Where did you go???

Because everyone needs a little magic now and then

MAGIC COOKIE BARS

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup melted butter
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 cups sweetened coconut
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (it has been suggested to me that chopped maraschino cherries are a good Christmas substitute for nuts if you're not a big nut fan or have nut allergies. I haven't tried this, but it sounds good to me!)

Mix graham cracker crumbs and melted butter in a 9 x 13 inch baking pan until the butter is completely incorporated into the crumbs and there are no dry patches. Press the crumb mixture firmly and evenly into the bottom of the pan.

Pour entire can of sweetened condensed milk on top of the crumb mixture in an even layer.

Add next three ingredients (in order) in even layers, pressing down gently but firmly after the last layer (not so much that you get covered in goo, but enough that the nuts and chocolate chips are slightly embedded in the coconut and condensed milk).

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Cool completely, then cut into squares.

These are some serious goodness (and very, very easy to make). Bake at your own risk.

Happy

In my quest to make a happy life (as per my post yesterday) I'm going to talk only about happy things today.

I realize it's not this easy - I know I can't trick myself into forgetting what I've lost and I don't want to forget him - but I think I need to focus more on what makes me happy. I think I need to dwell on that as much as I've been letting myself dwell on what makes me sad. Which seems to be so much. Too much.

Maybe I can rewire my brain by forcing happy thoughts to the front of my mind. And if I can't, the worst that will have happened is that I'll have thought of a whole bunch of happy things.

And so here we go. Get ready - it's all happy, all the time. Today, anyway.

1. This afternoon I made Magic Cookie Bars for a lunch I'm having with friends tomorrow. I waited as long as I possibly could before "testing" a little (kind of big) piece. It was still hot - a mass of gooey, sticky, sweet, chocolate-y goodness. I stood in the kitchen cramming my pie hole full of it, and licked the graham cracker crumbs and melted chocolate chips off my fingers like a kid when I finished. It was good. So good. And I was happy.

2. Last night after My Beloved fell asleep, my sweet old kitty hopped up on the bed for a cuddle. She usually likes to wait until we're both asleep before burrowing her way under the covers, but I guess she couldn't wait. I rolled over, my back pressed against the warm strength of My Beloved's, and made a little hidey hole in front of me for Lucy to crawl into. She quickly obliged and snuggled down beside me, purring. I lay there feeling so warm and safe, sandwiched between the love of my life and the furry little friend I've known for 10 years. And I was happy.

Okay, that's only two things. But as they say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step. I two-stepped it tonight, and I think that's excellent progress.

Hands

I went to a performance of Mozart's Requiem with my Mom, Dad and sister yesterday afternoon. We haven't done something like this in so long. Someone's always sick or too busy, or I'm too sad, or we intend to it and just never get around to arranging it. But we pulled it off yesterday. It felt like I'd traveled back in time to simpler days when trying to escape from sorrow wasn't my primary pastime.

Listening to the music was a wonderful distraction. It's a terrible cliche, but it truly did transport me, taking me away from the cares of my world for 56 lovely minutes. I felt uplifted by its beauty, even though it was music for a funeral mass. And even though the concert took place in the church where we held Thomas' funeral. For some reason I was able to divorce myself from that reality, despite the fact that yesterday was the first time my family has been to that church with me since that sad, sunny day in March 2005. It was the first time we'd all sat together in those pews since that awful day.

But although I made a mental note of that fact, it didn't bother me. I was peaceful and content.

I even wandered off on a brief flight of fancy, wondering if it would be possible to swing having Mozart's Requiem Mass performed in its entirety at my own funeral. If it's possible to laugh one's ass off after death, I would be doing so as my very long and ridiculously melodramatic funeral dragged on and on in all its musical splendor.

I don't suppose anyone else would see the humor in an extra long and drama-filled funeral, but it sure would be funny to me. You know, what with me being joyfully reunited with Thomas and everyone I've loved and lost, sitting on my cloud in the happy place.

But I digress.

Midway through the concert I began to think loftier, headier thoughts (ones that didn't involve funeral planning) when I caught sight of the hands of the frail old lady beside me. She was one of those old people that you can't believe is still alive. She looked like bones loosely wrapped in spotted crepe paper and she nodded off peacefully about halfway into the Requiem.

I looked at her hands, then looked at my own. Hers were gnarled with wear, the translucent skin clinging to tendons and swollen knuckles. Mine were firm, pink and plump. A few scars here and there, but otherwise strong and capable looking.

There we were, side by side. Old and young. And I started thinking about how much life I still have - or presume I have - and how there's still so much beauty to be drunk in and savored.

This tiny, frail lady suddenly seemed so strong to me. She was there too, just like me, enjoying the music on a chilly Sunday afternoon. Living her life and enjoying her days. I don't know what sorrows she endured during the course of her life, but there she was just the same, being lulled into a restful slumber by beautiful harmony written hundreds of years ago.

I want that too. I want to stop living in a cloud of sorrow and misery punctuated by moments of sun and cheer. I want to stop wishing for someone to turn back time. I want to once again be aware of the beauty around me and I want to make the world beautiful while I'm here. I don't want to eke by, barely surviving for the rest of my life because sorrow cut me off at the knees and killed the light within me.

I can't do that to me, to My Beloved, to our future - or to Thomas. He can't be the reason I died inside.

I want to be a frail old lady at a Sunday afternoon concert closing my eyes and dreaming to the music, remembering a life that I made happy.

I have no answers

It's been an unnerving week. So many losses; tiny little lives that have come and gone in the blink of an eye.

None of them mine, by the way. But each of them touched my life in a way that has surprised me. I thought I was mostly resistant to other people's sorrow, hardened by a thick protective shell that enabled me to express sympathy without having the unpleasant side-effect of absorbing any of their pain.

But I guess I'm not. Or not anymore, anyway. Maybe I'm strong enough to allow other people's pain in now. Or maybe I'm too weak to fight it off. I don't know.

But I do know I'm grieving right along with two dear friends as well as a total stranger who contacted me through my website. Three babies lost in one week.

I sometimes wonder about those little souls and what they feel. If you believe, like I do, that life begins at conception, then those little souls that lived for a matter of weeks or days were real people whose earthly lives will never be more than just those few precious moments.

What is that like? What is heaven to them when they haven't known anything at all of earth?

I complain about people with those moronic bluetooth phone things stuck in their ears, and people who don't signal lane changes, and dog owners who don't properly pick up their dog's poo (a story for another blog), and yet my life is more beautiful, more full, and more complete - even in its sorrow and imperfection - than those little souls could even fathom possible.

Why am I here and they're not? Why am I sitting here bathed in the light of my laptop screen typing a rambling journal entry into the blogosphere when little lives - some that will never be known even to their parents - are starting and ending all over the planet.

Why did I live when Thomas died?

Why am I so completely unstrung and affected by these losses?

Maybe because it's devastating to me to intimately know the pain my friends are feeling tonight. Maybe because I remember that yawning emptiness and despair after my first miscarriage, and how everything seemed to hurt me. Maybe because my tolerance for loss and sorrow has reached an all time low and I can't bear that it keeps happening to people I care about.

I don't know.

I just know I'm thinking about my two friends and that sad stranger who are all mourning profound losses. And there's not a damn thing I can do to make it better.

All I can say is that I'm so very, very sorry.

It's coming soon - I promise

The website, I mean.

Uh, and now I'd better get back to my crocheting...!!!

So instead, I made another monkey

Because I was sad and Kokopuff (the brown monkey) needed a friend, I crocheted a second monkey (who magically turned out much larger for some reason). He's kind of sock-monkeyesque in a deliberate homage to the sock monkeys of the 1970s that my Grandma made with my sister and me one sweet Saturday afternoon back in the day.

Cozy memories and a cozy little monkey.

You do what you have to do, right?

And the shiraz worked wonders too, in case you were curious.

10 Ways to cope with a second failed IUI

1. Stand in the closet and cry into a towel until you can't possibly cry any longer.
2. Go shopping.
3. Look at pretty Christmas things that you don't need and pretend that you're rich enough to buy them all.
4. Recognize the emptiness in pretty things because what you really want can't be bought in a store - but enjoy looking at the pretty things just the same.
5. Buy tupperware on sale.
6. Buy two great big bars of dark chocolate.
7. Buy sock monkey coloured yarn and plan to make your crocheted monkey a little friend (because even crocheted monkeys probably need friends).
8. Stop at a wine tasting on the way home.
9. Buy a bottle of shiraz.
10. Make plans to attend a seminar on adoption in an effort to show the gods that you cannot be broken or beaten, no matter what manner of shitstorm might come your way.

Manufactured memories of a 20-month old boy

Most of the time when I think of Thomas, I remember him as he was, as I knew him; a tiny, perfect little baby. He's frozen in time, always my tiny baby.

But sometimes I don't just remember him as he was. Sometimes I think of him as he might be.

I just realized today that he's growing in my imagination, just as he would be if he was really here. I've been doing this for 20 months without really thinking about it. Children of friends and family have served as reference points. I can imagine how big he'd be, what he'd be capable of doing and the things he might be saying all based on what I've seen other children do.

I can't decide if this is crazy or not. Or if it is crazy if it's something I can stop. Or something I even want to stop. It's excruciating imagining that sandy-haired little mop top toddling through the house after me. But those short moments of reverie make me feel connected to him in some strange way.

Make no mistake, those moments hurt like hell when they end and I realize I'm standing here alone with just the ghost of a boy in my head, but they're still worth it in some really strange way.

Maybe it happens because usually when someone dies you have memories to hold onto - moments you had together that you can look back on and take comfort from. Things you can smile about, even through your sorrow and longing. Memories, they always say, are the things that keep people alive after they've gone.

Except I don't have any. I was robbed.

So maybe what I'm doing, in some bizarre, retroactive sort of way, is trying to create what didn't happen so that I can still have the comfort of memories. I'm owed some comfort, after all, even if I have to manufacture memories to get it.

Or maybe I really am just plain nuts.

Hard to tell. Hard to tell.

Whose life is it anyway?

I think the Clomid is catching up with me. The blissful four days of near normalcy appear to be coming to an end as PMS settles in for the long haul.

Fantastic.

I dunno. Maybe it's the rain. Or maybe it's the nearly three and a half years of TTC with only dead babies to show for it. Hard to tell really.

And if you think that's morbid, you should crawl into my head for a few minutes and see what things are really lurking behind this mask of sanity. In fact, My Beloved and I just shared a giggle over an advertisement for a Thomas the Tank Engine Christmas tree train set a few minutes ago.

Editorial note: If you're in the family way, please seriously reconsider naming your child the same name as a very popular toy. Particularly if it's a beloved toy that every store seems to think warrants a TON of display space with that name screaming out at you in all font sizes and colours.

The copy from the ad begs us to consider, "how wide-eyed they'll be to see a battery powered Thomas going around the Christmas tree".

No freakin' kidding. Wide eyed, pale faced, slack-jawed...

Oh how we laughed.

It's weird in our world, but amazingly normal to us. And I have no idea how we got here.

When we were having lunch in Niagara Falls last month, we shared conspiratorial eye rolls as the tourist at a table behind us complained loudly to the waitress that he didn't get the extra olives he'd asked for. He'd only gotten one. ONE olive. Can you believe it? One when he'd clearly asked for extra.

You'd have thought the world was ending.

My Beloved, a sarcastic smirk on his face, quietly told me he should complain to the waitress that he got a dead baby.

I nearly spit my soup all over the table. It was classic.

And something I never in a million years dreamed I'd ever, ever be laughing at.

Seriously, how did we get here?

Monkeying around

I learned a few things this weekend...

1. You can't drown out sad thoughts with opera on the car stereo. The Barber of Seville will not push unwanted memories of your baby shower from your brain, no matter how loud you crank the volume.

2. Miraculously, sometimes Clomid gives you a grace period and you have two or three very, very, very happy days in a row. Well, not counting the brief opera fiasco.

3. I can make a monkey in a weekend. And I can fall ridiculously in love with said monkey who I somehow find oddly comforting.

4. I can overlook the tiny flaws in a crocheted monkey but I can't overlook flaws in myself.

5. The monkey is lucky.

Another cop out

Since I'm still in a horticultural sort of mood and still somewhat addled and incapable of a thoughtful post (let's blame it on the Clomid again, shall we?), why don't we all have a look at what happened to my Silver Leaf Dogwood shrub this fall.

I bought it in the spring - on my birthday, to be exact - and planted it a few days later. It grew and thrived, probably doubling in size, even though it was planted (somewhat stupidly) in a bit of a ditch that collects an alarming amount of rain water.

Sometime in August it started to turn a little pink. Then it turned really pink. By the time the leaves dropped it was virtually completely fuschia. Bright, bright, bright fuschia.

Surely that's not right, is it?

My Mom and Dad had a big old dogwood bush when I was a kid and it always stayed that delicate ivory and celery green all spring, summer and fall. I'm sure it did. Surely I'd remember a bright pink bush in the backyard, wouldn't I?

I've seen a number of dogwoods during my walks around the neighbourhood, and none of them went pink so it can't be something environmentally specific to this area (like red clay, as I first suspected).

So what's the deal? Anyone? Anyone?

It's a cop out, but at least it's pretty

Good God. I've started this post three times now.

I have many things to say and nothing's coming out quite right.

I can't even make it to the next paragraph. Started that twice.

Oy.

Perhaps I'll just leave you with a picture of Thomas' tree since my words are failing me so cruelly tonight.

Last year the tree turned red, but as you can see this year it's orange and yellow instead. I knew he would have been a mischievous little imp, that boy.

It was fun, but I'm glad it's only once a year

Another Halloween come and gone. Surely one of the cruelest holidays for bereaved parents with no little ones at home.

We treated an endless stream of adorably clad princesses, pirates, monkeys, witches, tigers, assorted dead things and even a chicken during the course of the evening. We figure we welcomed at least 80 little Halloweenies last night.

80 children that belonged to other people.

And oddly enough, we had a really good time. After all, what could be cuter than a tiny lion peering wide-eyed and unafraid at the giant spider on your door. Or "pido", as she called it.

I guess if you can't manage a live child of your own, having 80 of them come to your door isn't half bad.

Except that it kind of is. It kind of hurts like tabasco sauce in an open wound when you're on the outside looking in at a holiday made especially for the one thing that seems increasingly out of your reach.

But we made the best of it, laughing with our neighbours as we sat on the porch and handed out Tootsie Rolls and Doritos to the spooky hoards.

I thought about my Thomas a lot last night. He and I had a quiet little chat in the living room before things got too busy. I told him he'd have been the cutest little trick or treater on the street, and I told him for the 9 millionth time how much I love him and how desperately I miss him.

Then I bundled up and went outside with My Beloved and smiled into the night; into the street lit with pumpkins and alive with the sound of shrieks, squeals and children's laughter.

I know you meant well, but shut up

So it finally happened. The ugly old, "maybe it's not meant to be" phrase finally lurched its way into our quiet little world of loss and infertility. A friend of the family uttered the unthinkable to my mother.

She meant well. She's a sweet, sweet woman who has been nothing but kind and wonderful to my parents, particularly since Thomas was born.

But all good intentions aside, it was an awful thing to say. Just awful.

Those words have no place coming from anyone but me or My Beloved. We decide when things are winding down - when hope is well and truly lost - not someone else. Not anyone else but us.

We're very well aware that people all around us are getting pregnant with ease. We're well aware that both of us are another day older each time we rise with the sun. We're well aware that I have problems that make conceiving difficult. We're well aware that my biological clock is winding down.

We're well aware that maybe it's not meant to be. Trust me.

We don't need people to remind us. Those thoughts run through my mind in a disturbing and unrelenting inner monologue 24-hours a day. I know what we lost. I think about him all the time. And because I know what we lost, I know how devastating it is that we can't seem to have that gift bestowed upon us a second time. I'm painfully, in fact agonizingly, aware that that we might never have another child of our own. I know that. I get it. I'm not stupid nor am I so Clomid-addled that it hasn't occurred to me that all this might be for naught.

Maybe it's not meant to be.

But please, please don't remind me.