Behind the laughing

If any of you know me by now, you know that most of my laughter is followed shortly thereafter by what's really bothering me. I laughed a lot in therapy today, so I'm checking in here to talk about what I wasted my money on ignoring in that hour.

I'm reading a book. Pregnancy After a Loss. It is a good book I think. I'm about halfway done. There have been parts that I could have written myself, parts that were lightbulb moments, and parts that comforted me greatly.

There is one part though, that I cannot for the life of me get out of my head.

Awhile back, I joked about all the illogical reasons that I could blame myself for the loss of our baby, but in reality, that mental torture has never gone away. To this day, I still wonder if there was something different I could have done.

Then I read it in this book that is supposed to be helping me heal.


"Babies born with anencephaly have a severely underdeveloped skull and brain, a condition that is nearly always fatal. These conditions occur when the tube that forms the brain and spinal cord in a baby does not cloes completely by the end of the sixth week of pregnancy."


Do you know what you take to help ward off this fate for your child?

Folic acid.

I didn't start taking it until I was almost 7 weeks pregnant. Long enough so that my baby's nueral tube could have had defects.

God. The logical part of me is just writhing in agony. "How can you still be doing this, woman? Haven't you gotten it by now? You didn't do this. It's not your fault."

And yet, I still wonder. If I had taken the folic acid, would I be 21 weeks pregnant now?

So I take the vitamins everyday. For Cleatus' brother or sister that we keep hoping for. But some days - some days I want to throw them across the fucking room. I reach for that bottle on the shelf and want to just clear the whole shelf with my arm. Send everything crashing to the floor.

How could it be 2007 and I not know that you can buy prenatal vitamins from Target? How could I not know that they aren't just prescription? How could I not know that you should take them even before you get pregnant?

How could I be so incredibly stupid?

The incredible shrinking therapist said today that Guy needed to refrain from comforting me as I talked. Or something like that. We sit on this couch and she sits in a chair, and when I start to cry, he will dry my tears or rub my head. I'm not sure exactly why this is bad or how it was helpful to have him stop doing this. All I know is that as soon as he stopped, I didn't really want to talk anymore. I'm sure I just answered my own question somehow, but am too close to see it at this point.

I just want to get to a point where I don't feel the need to constantly analyze how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, and why on God's green earth I lost our baby.

We don't talk about the baby much at therapy. After all, what is there really left to say? I could just chant, "I'm so freaking sad," for an hour, but I'm thinking that would get old for everyone.

I just don't seem to know what to say unless my fingers are doing the talking these days.

The one thing I did say that was truthful in therapy today was, "I annoy myself."

*sigh*