Holding pattern

I need to write something. Anything.

Ironically enough, for the next month I'm getting paid to write as I slip back in to an old position with a local newspaper I used to work for. This is a much more relaxed arrangement though. All from home and just two days a week. It is ideal for me right now with the irony being, this is exactly the sort of work I would have been seeking out when Hope was one year old. Something easy, something I knew and something I could do from home. All perfect really. Just that she's not here. The story of my life I suppose. Everything good just with someone very important missing.

So here I am, blogging on the job. But the work has been a bit slow though. Coming in dribs and drabs while I sit by the phone and email waiting for it to land in my virtual in tray. I want to make the most of it though. We need the money. And I need the distraction I guess. At least that's what everybody says.....

So as I sit here twiddling my thumbs, I feel a burning desire to write here today. But it struck me: I'm not even sure what to say. I'm 31 weeks now. Saw the ob yesterday for a check-up (after a two hour wait at the hospital on the world's most uncomfortable chairs) and all, as I predicted, is perfectly fine. Just as it was with the little girl who came before. I try and take comfort in the fact I'm having another dream pregnancy, but it is hard when I know how quickly it can all change.

I don't know what to say about Hope, my grief and my sadness anymore. I feel like it has all been put on hold, as this pregnancy is kicking my butt, sucking me dry and not leaving me with much in the tank. I'm spent, and I still have the best part of seven or eight weeks to go. I have no idea how I'm going to do it, but at this point I know I don't have much of a choice. As much as I'd like to meet him RIGHT NOW, I know it is still much too early. And we are also an awful long way from being ready, in a practical sense. So much shit to do here and I really can't bring myself to do it. The putting the car seat (back) in. The (re)washing the clothes. The sorting through things. The (re)making the cot. I did this once before. I know what needs to be done. I just...... can't. And its not that I want or need help with doing it. I can manage just fine on my own. I just can't go there. Not yet.

I don't cry anymore. The grief hasn't smacked me down for weeks. But truth be told at this point, I can't let it. I don't have the resources to deal with it right now. This pregnancy has been tough physically, but I know a lot of that comes from the mental strain as well. I'm all over the place. I'm feeling so much, but yet so many of my feelings have been put on hold. On the back burner. And if that doesn't make any sense, well try being inside my head. I have no idea what to do with myself right now. I'm surviving, but some days it feels like I'm barely clinging on. The slightest breeze could blow me over the edge right now.

I'm exhausted. I'm excited. I'm in denial. I'm terrified. I'm faking it. I'm procrastinating. I'm happy. I'm fearful. I'm optimistic. I'm worried. I'm calm. I'm a mess. And I'm everything else in between. Most days, that's even before breakfast. Then I have to somehow try and get through a day, finish the day then sleep. And bedtime has all of a sudden become much, much earlier. All that crazy talk in my head does make a girl tired.

Everything hinges on this now. This little guy. His safe arrival. So much is at stake. So much is on the line. So having the time to be sad for my daughter has taken a back seat, and I'm not sure I always like it.

Because I think to myself, when he's here, I'm all of a sudden going to have LESS time and be MORE tired. How am I going to find the time to be sad then, when I'm up to my armpits in breastmilk and nappies? I really don't know. I know a lot of other mothers have been through this, and they're somehow surviving but I still worry for me. How do I parent two children when one is no longer here? This is such a crap way for me to enter the world of "real" parenting. I really wish I knew what sort of a mother I might have been to the living version of Hope.

And thinking about the worst case scenario? While the prospect of it seems so real I can almost smell it, I really don't let myself go there too often. Because I just can't. The fear is real, the risks are there, but I push those thoughts aside as much as I can. It would ruin me. I don't know how I'd go on from that point. The thing is though, if it did happen, I feel as though I'd be better prepared. I'd know exactly what to do this time and what not to do. After all, I'm an expert at this. Dead babies is all I know. But then, I have to stop. Squish those thoughts like a bug. Because they don't get me anywhere and worrying about something that hasn't happened and wont likely happen is a waste of my energy and right now, I don't have much of that.

So I continue to exist in this holding pattern. And I wait. And I tap away. And I think, and over think. And I wait. But what I really want to do is go to sleep. Someone please wake me when this is all done.