the TWW

So as it began, it ends, with the two week wait. That's where I am now. Back in March when I started the official tww I got to kill some of the time hanging out with the lovely Ms. C., my first ever IRL meet with a db mom. We talked for hours as though we'd known each other for, well, ever. She got to drink cocktails and I had a Spr.ite. I told her I didn't think I was pg but that I wasn't willing to risk the guilt of a few stolen alcohol laced beverages if I actually was and then lost the pg later. As we sat there late into the evening talking all things db, I never thought for a moment that some nine months later I'd be nine months into a pregnancy. It never did. I remember thinking what a shame it would be when the next week I had to shop for more tampons and how pissed I'd be that I'd missed a great opportunity to throw some back with the perfect drinking partner for a db mom, another db mom.
I left C., that night feeling better than I had in months. Lighter and almost giddy from being able to sit and really let it all hang out, no pretending, no covering or protecting the listener form the gory details of having a dead baby. I left her that night feeling happy. That happiness and new found friendship carried me over the next days and every time I felt a cramp or some other symptom, real or imagined, that told me there would be no need for a pg test that month, I thought to myself, it'll be ok, I have company, I have a friend who knows and who will be there when I need that cocktail...cuz everyone knows I love my cocktails.
I ran all the scenarios through my head. How I would react, what I was going to do if the news was bad. If I was going to go to the doc and seek intervention, if the husband would even want to go that far. Every plan I made had to do with how I was going to react to the bad news. Preparing myself for the negative outcome, not the positive. Then came the day. March 17th. I peed on the stick and got the shock of a second line. The tww was over and a whole new, much longer wait had begun.
And now, I am right back there again. Sort of. TWW. I'm scheduled for two weeks from today. I find myself right back where I was mentally in those days of March. Preparing myself for every possible bad outcome. Every negative result. I can't for the life of me imagine the good outcome. When I try to , I am so overcome with sobs and tears I have to stop. It literally is easier for me to plan how I will react to a dead baby than it is to plan how to react to a live one. My family and friends are all helping to get things ready, shopping and painting and running errands for me and all I can think is we shouldn't be doing any of this until we know, for sure. I am trying to keep things actually brought into the house to a minimum, the less we have to take back out is what my mind says. We've made a list of names, which I told myself, either way we have to have names, so this isn't like actually planning for an actual live baby. Not really.
Even when I do imagine a real live baby, I am convinced there will be something horribly wrong and I will lose it anyway. Or we will be forever challenged with a lifetime of guilt caring for this ill child, because we wanted to have another baby when the universe was obviously against it and us.
And then in the moments when the crazy isn't smeared all over my brain and I am able to imagine this baby, unencumbered by the legacy that created it, I think how awful it is that this tiny creature has done nothing so far but grow and thrive and blossom within me and still it is shrouded in the tragedy that preceded it. I wonder, if it does make it out alive, will cutting the cord relieve it of the enormous burden that is it's past? Will I be able to separate this baby from the loss of Caleb and let it live a life free from his death? If I can get this baby to a safe place outside of me, will that release us, all three of us, from the ties that now hold us so closely together that I can't extricate any of us from each other?
The mind games are exhausting. The waiting, eternity. It's enough to make a girl crazier than she already is, trying to explain to people how, "No, you're not excited yet." People don't get it. How can you not be excited with only 2 weeks to go?????? Oh, I can tell you how, you just won't like the story. You'll think I'm crazy. And you'll be right.
Let the countdown begin...