Halloween

When Caiden and Kaylie were born so early, I had not yet started to plan much of their future. I hadn't even found a doctor or daycare for them yet. I hadn't started to dream of their weddings or them becoming a doctor or lawyer (although we had talked about them becoming professional athletes). I hadn't designed the nursery yet. I hadn't put much thought into their Christmas presents. But I had started to plan for Halloween.

Every year we go a little more over the top with costumes for our animals. I enjoy dressing them up. I even enjoy all the eye rolling that I get from family and friends about the fact that we are dressing up our animals. Everyone has told us "If you do all this for your animals, I can't wait until you have kids to see how you dress them up!" With a challenge like that I had to start planning early! I was excited with all the fun possibilities for twin costumes. We had only known for a couple weeks that we were having a boy and a girl, so I had only started to think about costumes, but I had planned that there would be many!

Now that all of those hopes are dashed, I am having a hard time with the impending holiday. I bought a couple of figurines of teddy bears dressed in costumes - one boy (frankenstein) and one girl (a witch) and brought them to the cemetery. They are perched on the gravestone. But I really don't want to participate in Halloween this year. We have been invited to a number of parties, but I don't feel like dressing up and partying. I also don't want to invite trick-or-treaters to my house and give out candy. I just want to hibernate until the holiday is over. Maybe this is me avoiding my grief and it is unhealthy, but who wants to go trick-or-treating at the crazy crying lady's house anyway?

Perhaps I will get some last minute costumes for our animals and we can have our own private Halloween celebration. That way I won't look like a crazy lady if I cry, but I'm also not avoiding my grief.

I am fine*.

It has been almost six months since Caiden and Kaylie were born. Every day is a struggle, but I am fine*. I think that I am coping relatively well. There is not an hour that goes by that I don't think about them. Sometimes I cry for all that we lost. Sometimes I laugh to myself about the good times (our reaction when we saw two heads on the monitor, our families' reactions when we told them the news). I re-live different events every day. Sometimes the good, sometimes the bad. I don't cry every day anymore, but I do still cry often. I have good times when I can accomplish a lot, and bad times when all I can do is put all my energy into a cause that will alleviate someone else's pain (i.e. knitting for An Angel's Love or planning next year's March of Dimes walk events).

I say "I am fine" with an asterisk because all of the above is true only in my little bubble. Anytime my bubble bursts, my "fine-ness" falls apart. My bubble isolates me from all of the happiness of babies. I have "unsubscribed" on Facebook from all of my friends who are pregnant or who had babies after Caiden and Kaylie were born (surprisingly it doesn't bother me too much to see the babies who were born before Caiden and Kaylie - I guess because those were better times). I have distanced myself from all of my friends who have recently had babies. I avoid stores as much as possible (apparently shopping is good free entertainment for young kids because they are everywhere at the malls and grocery stores).

Unfortunately, these measures are not entirely successful and not without cost. I can't figure out how to hide Facebook posts all together, so if another friend, who is not unsubscribed, comments on a photo of someone who is, the photo will still appear in my news feed.  And Facebook is so "smart" that it thinks I would like to see ads about babies. I feel terrible about distancing myself from my friends. I want them to be happy for me when my time finally comes and I feel like I need to be happy for them now if I expect them to return the favor, but when I think about how happy they are (or even how sleep deprived and frazzled they are), it reminds me of how not-happy I am. I believe that they are understanding and will still be happy for me when my time comes even if I can't show them now how happy I am for them, but I still feel guilty.

In addition, my bubble has recently been weakening. My workplace is now full of men adding children to their families (thank God there are no women currently expecting). Soon I will have an empty newsfeed when I log into Facebook because I will have unsubscribed from everyone at the rate new announcements are coming. I can't avoid shopping forever; eventually I will have to get back into a regular shopping schedule. But I am fighting as hard as I can to keep my bubble in tact at least a little longer.

I am sure that this bubble will become unnecessary once I have held our next (healthy) baby in my arms, and hopefully long before that. But I am not there yet. For now, I am fine*.