Baby Stuff - Fears of Postpartum

When I tell people my story, or tell people who know my story about how I'm feeling, or just in general when I express myself these days, I very often get some variation of the following comment:

"Once that baby comes, everything will be okay, and you'll have some peace".

This sentiment comes at a lot of different levels- some people are wishing it for me, and praying for it.  Some people just fervently believe that having the baby will make me happier.  And others still believe it so much that it seems as though they can't imagine that I would have trouble believing it myself.

The truth though is that the baby, beautiful little miracle that she is, won't solve anything.  I know that she'll help, but having her is not the finish line - it's not some turning point after which everything will be better.  In the very best case scenario, she'll bring me a kind of happiness I never knew before.  This, I think, is what most people are expecting.  But what she won't do is bring back the kind of happiness I had before, or heal the wounds of losing the love of my life.  Those things are permanent, and there's no changing them. I learn every day to live with the knowledge that my old life is gone and there's no getting it back.  What I stand to gain when the baby comes will be a different kind of happiness - one marked by loss, but full of the hope of a new future.  And just about every mother I speak to feels that this, at least, will be an instantaneous transformation in my life; the doctor will hand me the baby, and I will be aglow.

Reality has taught me though that not everything is always what we think it will be.  Statistics vary depending on where you look, but somewhere in the neighborhood of one in seven new mothers experience postpartum depression.  These women range from those who are susceptible to depression to perfectly normal, healthy women who simply feel no connection to their children.  Or, after the baby is born, they simply don't have the euphoric feeling of the love of new motherhood that so many other women promised they would feel.  I've been going through extreme emotional duress for the past seven months, brought on by the shock and trauma of not only losing my husband, but actually being in the room when it happened.  As one of my doctors bluntly put it, "many women get postpartum depression for no reason.  You have a reason."

Luckily, my doctors and family know my situation and are aware that they need to monitor my closely, so I know that I'll be taken care of.  But it still terrifies me.  What if I don't feel the euphoric new motherhood thing that everyone promises?  What if I feel no connection to the baby?  I doubt that either of these things will happen, but they weigh on my mind and heart as I try to prepare for every eventuality.  And every time someone promises me that I'll feel a certain way once she arrives, I try to put those comments in a little file in my brain that I don't open.  I can't take any more broken promises.

For nearly eight months now, I have been living for this baby, terrified of losing her, of something being wrong, and yes, I've been terrified of what happens when she comes too.  I've always had a picture in my head of having a child, of how my husband and I would tell our families about the baby, how we would go through the pregnancy together, and how he'd be there during the birth and after.  When Ryan died, I had to change the picture in my head- but it's hard to know what to replace it with.  I don't know that what I'll feel will be unadulterated joy.  More likely, it will be extreme happiness mixed with extreme emotional pain. I've gotten somewhat used to feeling opposing emotions at the same time over the past eight months, but this will be a more extreme level of it.

I'm scared about something else too, something difficult to explain.  Ever since Ryan died, there have been different milestones that I've set in my head.  Sometimes they're simple dates (a month after he died, our anniversary, six months after he died, his birthday), and sometimes they're difficult events that I've had to struggle through (the first time I slept at our house, the first time I took a trip without him).  Often I set my sights on a milestone like this, and I think, this is going to be hard, but it will be better once I get through it.  Then, I make it through, and I wake up the next morning, and nothing's better.  In the most extreme circumstances, I  sometimes get my brain locked on the idea that I just need to make it through this particular test, and then everything will go back to normal, and Ryan will be here again.  And of course, he never is.

Having our baby all along has sort of felt like the finish line.  I just need to make it through this, I need to take care of myself so that she can be born healthy.  Once she's here, everything will be fine.  When everything isn't really fine at the end of my labor, and I'm still living in a world without Ryan in it (still), I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to take it.  Even as much as I can prepare myself for it, I just can't explain the depth of pain repeatedly waking up to this life I've been left with.  I can absolutely know and accept that Ryan is gone, but sometimes this little kernel of hope starts to grow inside of me, and when reality proves it wrong, I feel like I sink back into a deeper level of hurt.  The thought of going through that again when the baby comes is too often on my mind.

The Fall

Fall started this week.  Another new season without Ryan.  Like the beginning of any new season, it's brought with it another round of memories, visceral ones, of a life that's not mine anymore.

I think fall used to be my favorite season in our house, but of course, I thought that about both spring and summer when they rolled around this year too.  The truth is that every season had something about it that made life special and different, and there was always something to look forward to.  As I've mentioned before, Ryan was a teacher, and the first signs of fall for me were when he would start going in to work to prepare for his upcoming classes.  Once classes began, there would often be a lot of reasons for Ryan to be out later than usual, so it was more likely that I would come home to an empty house for a little while.  I used to love that- a night to myself, to make whatever I wanted for dinner and have some quiet time.  But then, Ryan would still always come home and we'd still be able to have our nights together.

The start of the NFL season was one of the first things that made me notice the change of seasons this year.  Ryan loved all sports.  He always said that his favorite time of year was that brief period in the fall when football and hockey had both started and baseball was in the playoffs.  I could go many nights without seeing much of him in these times; he'd spend his nights in the basement flipping between the games, and I'd be upstairs watching the new fall seasons of my TV shows.  Now I wish that we'd spent more of that time together instead of separately in the same house.  However, I actually think it's one of the things that really made our relationship work; we loved being together, but knew how to be apart.

Nearly every Sunday revolved around football, whether we were going to one of our parents' houses for the games, or watching together at home.  When it was chilly we'd curl up under a cover together and watch the games, or I'd multi-task and do housework between plays.  Since Sunday was often a long day home, I'd often cook a more complicated meal on that day, and we'd eat together in front of the football game.  I'll never forget the expression on Ryan's face when I'd make my minestrone soup, which I think was his favorite.

Then on Sunday and Monday nights, we'd habitually watch the night time games together, especially when one of our teams was playing.  We'd start watching in the basement, and after halftime go up to bed and finish watching in the bedroom.  Inevitably, I'd fall asleep sometime around the beginning of the fourth quarter, and wake up either to Ryan turning the game off, or to some super strong reaction he would have to the game.  Then I'd turn over, snuggle up against him (especially once it got cold), and fall back asleep.  I think now of how comforting that routine was.  For the first few weeks of the NFL season this year, I've pretended on Sundays that football wasn't on.  But I do keep accidentally catching glimpses of the nighttime games, and it's amazing how visceral the feeling of memory and loss is.

Beyond sports, there are quite a lot of other triggers that come with the new season.  When I got my first pumpkin spice latte this season, I thought of how I never could get Ryan to appreciate the pumpkin phenomenon.  He didn't want to even try it.  I considered it a great triumph last year when I made pumpkin muffins and actually got Ryan to taste them.  He didn't like them, but there you go.  Oddly, he did like Sweetzels Spiced Wafers, which I also had to force feed him, and I consider that to be a similar flavor palette.  For those of you who don't know, these cookies are a Philadelphia area fall staple, and they are very, very crispy.  Ryan used to take one and gnaw on it, imitating a squirrel cracking open a nut with it's teeth.  One of his goofy animal impressions.  When I noticed Sweetzels back on the grocery shelves, I again felt a sharp pain of loss.

We'd very often take at least one weekend trip.  I have a job where I can't take off in November or December, and I'd be quick trying to use up a couple of vacation days before then.  Since Ryan would be back to teaching, we'd usually be limited to the long weekend thing.  A few years ago we did a Boston/Fenway park trip in early September.  Last year we went to Washington D.C.  All of our many vacations were wonderful, but I particularly liked the quality time we'd get to spend together this time of year.  I always knew that we would get very busy closer to Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it felt like early fall was the last chance we'd have to get away together.  I can thankfully say that we didn't take those times for granted.

As the calendar turned to September this year, one of the biggest apprehensions I've had was knowing that I'd soon have to make it through Ryan's birthday, which is September 27th- tomorrow.  In any other year, I would have spent most of the month trying to find the perfect gift for him, something that would make him light up.  It wasn't hard to do, but I'd stress out over it every year.  I set the bar too high when I'd bought him an X-Box the first year we lived together.  Ryan loved giving and receiving gifts.  He'd want to do it first thing in the morning on Christmas and birthdays.  I loved how excited he'd be when I really hit the mark.  I've felt empty all month not having the fun of shopping for a gift for him.  Every time I walk through Macy's (which is a lot), I see things I want to buy him, and then remember that I can't.  This year, his birthday is on a Friday too, and I imagine that if he were still alive, I'd be trying to figure out a way we could have celebrated with one more weekend trip away before the baby came.  Maybe just a few nights in Philadelphia with a nice dinner at the German restaurant we never made it to, or a weekend in Atlantic City.  Either one of those places would be close enough to home that I wouldn't have to worry about the travel.  Even though he's gone, it's impossible to stop myself from planning what we would have done if he were here, and I find that with just about everything, especially at the change of seasons.

Autumn comes before winter, and Ryan passed away in the winter.  It's hard knowing that the next time I have to go through a change of seasons, it will be the last new season I have to go through.

Abandoned

I never stop feeling lonely, even when I'm surrounded by people.  Sometimes though, the feeling goes beyond loneliness to something else.  It doesn't happen often, but I've been feeling it most of this week, as I've worked to try to make a lot of important decisions about my future.  I feel like Ryan's abandoned me.

I think the first time I noticed I was feeling this way, it was my Mom who brought it to my attention.  I can't remember now what triggered it then, but when she said that she thought I might be feeling abandoned, I recoiled.  I thought that was ridiculous at first- how could I be feeling abandoned?  That sounds like it's placing blame on Ryan, and he didn't do anything wrong.  His life was taken from him, way too young, and he never would have left on purpose.  But when I thought about it, I realized she was right- that's exactly what I was feeling, and it's what I've felt periodically ever since.  When I say it out loud, or write it, or sometimes even when I think it, I still feel ashamed.  It wasn't his fault.  But I do feel left behind, and I'm angry about it, and sometimes I'm angry at him for leaving.  This is mostly when I'm thinking about how difficult life can be.  Ryan doesn't have to experience those difficulties anymore, and he can't help me with them either.

In the past week, I've been dealing with a lot of issues regarding our house and my future, and I'm working on making a lot of decisions alone that I would have had help with before.  I've been dealing with this all along of course, but the closer it comes to my due date, the more pressure I feel about it.  It sort of feels like I'm on a deadline.  Making the big life choices without my partner is incredibly stressful.  I was never good at the big decisions to begin with, and having Ryan by my side always helped me to know that we were doing the right thing.  Now I just don't know.  What's the right thing?  I am facing selling our house, finding a new place to live for myself and the baby, figuring out the finances, and raising a baby alone.  In some of my worst times, I ask how Ryan could have left me behind with all of this.  Or, I ask God how he could have done this to me.

It's the little things too.  Ryan made me a lot of promises over time.  When we started trying to have a baby, I gave him a long speech one night about how once we had kids, he'd have to help more around the house.  He promised he would.  When we started talking about moving to a new house, I told him that I wanted nothing to do with packing up and moving his vintage 1980's toy collection.  He promised I wouldn't have to touch a single one of them.  Of course, now both of those things are on me.

A lot of people want to help me.  I'm lucky to have that, I know many single mothers don't.  However, and I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but it's just not what I want.  I'm an independent person, and I've never wanted to have to rely on too many people.  It's always been important to me that I could take care of myself, and be on my own.  Relying on Ryan was okay, because he relied on me too in a lot of ways.  Each of us had strengths that we brought to the relationship, and with him I could do more than I would have taken on by myself.  We'd formed a strong partnership.  Losing it feels like losing half of myself.  I've lost the ability to stand on my own, but I desperately want to.

The feeling of abandonment isn't just about the responsibilities of life of course, it's about the joys of life too.  I was a happy person with Ryan.  Even though I wasn't happy about every part of my life, I always felt good knowing that I had him, if nothing else.  Lift him out of the equation, and it feels like my anchor is gone.  I've been left behind without the person who brought me joy.  To have Ryan hold my hand, or wrap his arms around me, or to hear his voice saying that he loves me, those thing brought me such happiness and strength before.  Now I don't have those things anymore, and making through a difficult day is impossible.  When I have a bad day at work, I have nothing to look forward to at home- nothing that would make the stress melt away the way Ryan could.  When the pregnancy gives me a backache, Ryan cant be here to rub my back.  When I just need a break, Ryan can't be here to suggest that we just order a pizza and watch a movie.  I'm left alone to find ways to relax, and nothing compares to what I had, so real relaxation never seems to come.

When a loved one dies, we often comfort ourselves by recognizing that they are in a better place.  They are happy.  When I get to thinking about this, and I feel selfish and guilty admitting this, I feel even more left behind.  If Heaven exists, and Ryan is there, then he's in paradise.  He is happier than he's ever been.  On my worst nights, I still beg for him to come back- I beg God to let him come back and to let everything go back to normal.  If Ryan is in a better place though, and he's happier than he's ever been, then I shouldn't be asking for that.  Sometimes, when I think about the afterlife, it feels as though he's left me for something better.

Often, before falling asleep next to each other, I'd hug him tight and say "I don't know what I'd ever do without you".  He'd reply "Don't worry, you'll never have to find out".  A promise made, and unintentionally not kept.  And now here i am, going through the most difficult time in my life, when I could use him the most, and he can't be here to help.

Travel Journal - San Francisco

One of the things that drew Ryan and I together was our shared love of travel.  One of the things that kept us together was that we actually became very complimentary travel companions.  We liked doing a lot of the same things on vacations, hoped to go to similar places, vacationed at a similar pace, and both liked to travel at a respectable budget.  We wanted to go everywhere together; our list kept growing and growing.  Ryan had done so much travel on his own that he was going to have to make a lot of duplicate trips in order to satisfy me, but he didn't mind.  Thinking about our trips together makes me ache.  I can't believe we won't be going on any more of them.  A memory, even a happy one, feels very different when you know that it's totally in the past, and there's no chance of getting it back.  Even more, the person I shared these memories with is now gone, so there's no one else who I can reminisce with.  I find myself trapped in memories sometimes.  Over time, I'd like to write down the memories of some of our trips as a way of sharing some of my happiest times.

Our view of San Francisco from the ferry to Alcatraz.

The very first vacation the two of us took together was to San Francisco.  It was in March 2007, and Ryan had decided to take me on a trip for my birthday.  He gave me two choices - either we could go to Miami or San Francisco.  Being more of a city person than a beach person, I eagerly accepted the trip to San Francisco.  For the only time in our relationship, Ryan planned everything.  He got the flight, the hotel, and the rental car.  It was, by far, the nicest birthday present I'd ever received from a boyfriend.

We flew into Los Angeles, and spent a day with a cousin of his who I hadn't met before then.  Ryan has a very large family, and I come from a very small one.  I was always nervous to meet his relatives, but I never had any reason to be - I was always pleasantly surprised by how great they all were and she was no exception.  After the brief stay in L.A., we drove up the Pacific Coast Highway towards San Francisco, stopping at Hearst Castle along the way.  Ryan had sprung for a convertible at the rental car facility, something that seemed like a great idea in L.A., but the farther north we went the less it seemed so.  Along the way we stopped to enjoy local cuisine.  By this, I mean In and Out Burger.  Ryan marveled at the efficiency of a fast food restaurant that only had four menu items.  Even though he didn't really like burgers, he went on and on about how great the place was.

Ryan at the Japanese Tea Garden in 
Golden Gate Park.  I have no pictures of the 
two of us together on this trip, as we had yet 
to master the art of asking strangers to take 
our picture..

When we got to San Francisco, we found that our hotel was a little off the beaten track.  Luckily, we both liked to walk a lot.  Unluckily, I found out on this trip that I had fallen pretty out of shape.  One of the first places we wanted to go was to the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, and based on the location of our hotel, it looked as though it wouldn't be too far of a walk.  So we set out on foot.  It was really about double the distance that I thought, through the rolling hills of the Presidio park.  I got winded and had to stop so many times, that I was afraid of what Ryan must be thinking.  He later told me that he was surprised how out of shape I was.  In hindsight though, I was probably having a hard time keeping up with Ryan - one way we didn't travel well together was that he walked about double my natural pace, and was not easily slowed down.  Either way though, my embarrassment from the trek is part of what inspired me to start running.

There are a lot of stories I could tell from this trip, and it's hard to pick just a few of them.  If I made a generic list of things we did in San Francisco, leaving out the specific names of the places we went, it could probably be applied to any other vacation we took afterwards.  We saw historical sites, I indulged Ryan by going into a military museum, we window shopped, we went to an art museum, we went to tourist traps, and we got lost at least once.  We talked for hours on end.  We created inside jokes.  We had one very nice dinner out.

The nice dinner out was one of my favorite parts of this trip.  Since Ryan had decided to pay for the entire trip, I made him promise me that I could take him out for one very nice dinner.  We found in our guidebook a place called the Tadich Grill, which claims to be the oldest restaurant in the city.  Ryan was sold on it right away for the historical value.  It was a very long, narrow restaurant with a three-sided bar that ran the length of the place.  We had to wait for a table for I think over an hour and waited at the bar - I think it's the longest I ever got Ryan to wait for a table.  The bartenders all wore white coats, adding to the turn of the century feel of the place.  The place was pricey, the wait was long, and the food was not memorable.  But Ryan loved it for the atmosphere and the history.  He talked about it for years afterwards, and I always thought that some day we'd go back there.

I thought this about a lot of places we'd been.  It's always seemed to me to be a romantic idea to return to places that were a part of our story.  Most of the time, we never did.  We kept wanting to go to new places, and, of course, we thought we still had decades together to get to return to these places,and to go everywhere else we wanted to.  I can't believe that we won't get to.  While writing this entire post, I've been thinking about the things we won't get to do.  We  never did get to Miami together.  We always talked about driving the rest of the Pacific Coast Highway one day - we never did that either.  I can't believe that I've lost my travel partner.  I've loved to travel for many, many years, since long before I knew Ryan.  Somehow now though, the idea of travel seems pretty empty, knowing that I won't get to do it with him.  This trip to San Francisco was the beginning of a lifetime of travel experiences together that was cut way too short.

Fatigue

Getting out of bed is getting harder and harder for me.  I've never in my life been this tired for this long.

Yes, pregnancy is tiring.  Almost any mother will tell you this- sometimes over and over again.  But my fatigue is something different.  I am dealing with the fatigue of pregnancy plus  the fatigue of grief.  And the fatigue of extreme grief is like nothing else- not just a physical lethargy, but a mental, spiritual, and emotional exhaustion that doesn't go away.

I was tired going in.  Two weeks before Ryan died, I had been asked to work out of Trenton, NJ for a few days a week, which, in rush hour traffic, is about an hour and a half away from my house.  The weekend before I started doing this trek, I found out that I was pregnant.  The combination of the first trimester of pregnancy and three hours in the car each day was incredibly tiring.  Plus, of course, I had cut coffee out of my morning routine.  Then, two days before Ryan died, his family and I threw him a graduation party, which I worked all weekend on.  By February 18th, my birthday and the day before Ryan died in the early morning hours, I was wiped out.  That night, we watched the season finale of Downton Abbey together, and I fell asleep on the couch.  Then I ate my birthday cupcake and Ryan and I went to bed- I'm sure I dozed off within a few minutes.

But that tiredness I felt before that night was nothing compared to what I would experience over the next few months, and what I am still experiencing now.  For the first few nights after Ryan's death, I didn't sleep well at all.  I couldn't bring myself to sleep in a bed, so I spent about a week sleeping on my parents' couch.  It wasn't comfortable, but my sleep was worse off because of the dreams I was having and the anxiety I was experiencing.  I could hear my Dad snoring down the hall, and it would wake me up in a cold sweat, because of how similar it sounded to the noises Ryan made while in seizure.  Every time I closed my eyes I would see flashes of things that had happened that night, like the way Ryan's face looked at different times.  It was terrible.  Between the lack of sleep and the fact that I couldn't eat well, I was making myself more and more physically tired.

The emotional and mental exhaustion increased more gradually over time.  Getting through things like telling all of Ryan's friends what had happened, planning a funeral, going through the funeral and accepting condolences from an endless line of people, meeting with an estate lawyer...it was all very tiring.  Once I was through all of that and life started to calm back down, the reality started to set in that Ryan wasn't coming back.  I had gone through all of this, and now that it was over, the truth was that it wasn't really over.  It never will be.

Every morning I wake up, I wake up without Ryan next to me, and have to remember everything all over again.  It's not the same as before- it's not the first thing I think about anymore because I don't really forget about it overnight anymore.  But, I do spend the entire morning thinking about things- different things, but always Ryan things.  By the time I'm out of the shower, I'm already emotionally worn out.  As my pregnancy has progressed and I've started carrying more and more weight, I also find that I'm physically exhausted by the time I'm dressed too.  That's all before I go to work.  It gets worse over time, because I feel like the longer I'm without him, the more real it gets, and realizing the reality of it is part of what's tiring.  The more I know that Ryan's not coming back, and that part of my life is over, the sadder I am.  Knowing that I will never see my soul mate again in this life drains my spirit.  I feel like I could get so much strength and energy back if he could just put his arms around me and hold me for a while.  Then, knowing that he of course can't do that drains me even more.

People don't get it.  I know that I can't expect them to, but I do expect them to try to understand that they can't understand.  While I was in my second trimester, I had a coworker ask me how I was feeling.  When I answered that I was tired, she was confused as to why I hadn't gotten a burst of energy in my second trimester like most pregnant women do.  I explained that I am always tired, that I had been since my husband died.  I could tell that she still didn't get it, and I wasn't sure what to do then.  I'm too tired to try to pretend that I'm not tired.

For a while I thought it would get better once the baby is born.  I won't be pregnant anymore, so even though the fatigue of grief will still be here, the physical pains of pregnancy won't be.  Then one day I realized that I'll be trading the physical strain of pregnancy for the exhaustion that comes with being the mother of a newborn- midnight feedings and the like.  At least right now I'm sleeping well enough, but that won't last.  It feels a little like there's no end in sight.  I'm not sure how long the emotional exhaustion will last, though I'm sure it can't last forever.  It's all a  part of getting used to a new normal, which is not as good as the old one.  Missing my old life and regretting the future that I'd planned and lost is part of what makes me so tired, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Back to School

Ryan was a teacher, both by profession, and in life.  By this, I mean that teaching was what he was meant to do; he was made for it.  He was one of those rare people who not only knew exactly what his calling was, but also actually managed to find a job doing it.  He was fantastic at his job, and he loved it.  This time of year, it's hard to get away from all of the back to school advertisements and chatter, and I'm finding that they are serious triggers for me.  The thought of a new school year beginning without Ryan being a part of it truly saddens me- it feels like the world is out of order.

Ryan came by teaching as a career in a roundabout way, but he came alive once he discovered it.  I think he initially hoped to teach at a university, but after just a few months teaching at Montgomery County Community College (Montco, for short), he decided that he would be happy working there until he retired.  The college loved him just as much; I think that if you spoke to any of his colleagues, they would tell you that Ryan was among their finest faculty members, and if you spoke to almost any of his students, they would name him as one of their favorite teachers.  His loss was felt intensely at the college.  It must be strange for them to be starting up the new semester without him walking into the office.

Ryan, doing what he did best and loved most.

The beginning of a new semester was always an invigorating time for Ryan.  I see so many teachers complaining around this time of year that their vacation is over, and that they have to go back to the grind.  Not Ryan- he was always excited to be starting up again.  On the first day of classes, Ryan would usually be up before me, in a great mood, energized and ready to go.  He always looked so handsome and professional, but the running joke was that he could have blended in with the students because of his age and the youth in his face.  After the first day of classes, he'd invariably come home to me and tell me over dinner how he had a great group of students and he was optimistic about the semester.  He particularly loved working with students who went out of their way to learn- people who were passionate about education, like he was.  Working at the Pottstown campus of Montco meant Ryan had a lot of non-traditional students- single mothers, war veterans, retirees, and the like.  He loved making a difference in their lives in particular.  He got enjoyment out of the bad students as well- catching cheaters became one of his favorite things.  I loved the glint he'd get in his eye when he'd caught a plagiarist that day.  I think he got a lot of satisfaction out of the detective work that went into it.

Strangely, as good as he was at his job and as beloved as he was, Ryan was always terrified of doing something wrong and getting fired.  I think this was a natural reaction to having everything he wanted, and being able to think what it would be like if he didn't have it anymore.  If something had gone wrong at work
that day, he'd go on about it to me for what seemed like hours, listen to my advice (which was usually "you're worrying too much), and then proceed to call his mother and go through the whole process with her too.  When I told him that he needed to relax, he'd admit that I was right, but explain to me how important his job was to him.  He'd say it was the most important thing in his life, then quickly rephrase to say that I was the most important thing in his life, and then the job.  He'd told me many, many times that he'd read that the emotional stress of losing a job was a close second to the emotional stress of losing a spouse.  Ironic.

There was a lot that made Ryan good at his job, but I think the fact that he loved what he did was the biggest factor.  I've never met someone who loved their job so much, and I was envious.  I've never been able to find that perfect thing to do with my life, the thing that would bring me the kind of fulfillment that Ryan had.  I think I told him often that I was jealous of his career.  I'm not sure if I told him often enough though how proud I was of him.

It sort of makes my skin crawl to think of the new year starting and all of Ryan's coworkers going back to teach, the students coming into class, and Ryan not being there.  Someone else is in his cubical, someone else is teaching his old classes.  Ryan was meant to do what he did, and now he's not doing it anymore, and that seems so wrong.  I know so few people that know their purpose in life.  Ryan had found his, and he got to do it for such a short period of time.  I'm sad when I think of all of the students coming through the college who won't get the opportunity to take his class.  This was a man who was contributing to society, changing lives, making a difference in the world.  He had so much impact, and I refuse to believe that it was his time to go, because he had so much more to give.  He wasn't just teaching his students, he was teaching me too, every day.  I miss learning from him, and I can't stand the thought that our daughter won't get to learn from him- he would have loved teaching her too.  It's simply wrong that he won't get the chance.

Baby Stuff - Birthing Class

I am going to have a baby.  Really soon.

For most of the time that I've been pregnant, I've been working on getting used to the idea of becoming a mother without my husband.  Now that it's almost here though, and I'm going through all of the typical pre-baby stuff, I'm not sure how I'm going to do it.

The baby preparation has been a challenge all along- I told my parents and in-laws that I was pregnant the day Ryan died.  I went to my first prenatal appointment that day as well, and have gone to every one since with my sister instead of my husband.  The first time I went to Babies R Us to register for baby gifts, I cried in the aisles because I was so full of grief that he couldn't be there picking out baby things with me.  Ryan loved toys (see a future blog post which will focus exclusively on this), so it would have been a ton of fun registering with him.  The loss has been there for every stage of the pregnancy, little and big things, good and bad.  There has been no normalcy.  It has, however, always felt pretty distant.

Now though, it's coming happening very soon, and all of the little things that need to be done are happening.  Two weeks ago, I started my birthing classes.  Tracy, my older sister, offered months ago to be my labor coach, so I knew I would have a partner for this.  Leading up to the classes though, I was extremely apprehensive.  How could I handle walking into a room full of young happy couples, ready to have their first babies together?  For them, this would be one of the happiest, most exciting times of their lives.  It would be a room full of what I was missing.  Hospital employees take note: it would be really helpful to offer these classes separately for single mothers.

So, I've been worried about this for some time.  When we walked in the first week, I had blinders on, a coping mechanism I've gotten really good at.  I didn't look at any of the other couples in there, I just walked to my seat and looked straight ahead.  I later counted five other couples, happy new parents times five, plus me and Tracy.  I've found over time that simply explaining my situation up front is often a better course than keeping it to myself; people tend to be really uncomfortable for a few minutes, but it saves me from being uncomfortable for a longer period of time.  So when we introduced ourselves, I explained who Tracy was and why she was there.  After that the class itself wasn't so bad, I'd gotten lucky and didn't get a group full of super bubbly newlyweds full of public displays of affection.  But, the whole thing, just like everything else, was so surreal.  I couldn't help thinking about how if Ryan were here, he would have put his arm around the back of my chair and rubbed my back periodically, or held my hand during the video.  I thought of the jokes he would have made about the emoticons on the "stages of labor" poster, and how we would have gotten a quick bite to eat together after.  At the end of the class, when we did deep breathing, I involuntarily imagined sitting leaning against his legs instead of Tracy's, the whole time being acutely aware that it wasn't.

The second class was worse.  In it, we practiced breathing through simulated contractions.  The focus of the exercise was for our partners to know how to give support during increasingly uncomfortable contractions- mainly through touch and massage.  We sat in front of our partners, so they could massage our backs during the fake contractions.  In the room all around me, husbands comfortably rubbed their wives backs.  And my poor sister tried, as she always does, to do the right thing for me.  But for me there isn't always a right thing to do.  Tears started rolling down my cheeks and all I could feel was cold reality.  Ryan wouldn't be there to rub my back during labor, or to hold my hand, or to kiss my forehead, or to share in the joy of the end result.  Tracy massaging my back just made me think about how Ryan wasn't, and won't.  There's no fixing it or making it better.  I think I feel a little aversion to having anyone touch me at all during labor, though I know I can't know what I'll feel like until I'm there.

The religious and spiritual people in my life are always ready to point out that Ryan will be there with me, and he'll help me.  I believe that too, I do.  But it does not comfort me.  Ryan being there in spirit does not make up for him not being here in the flesh.  Missing his touch, his support, his voice- there's nothing that can replace that, and I'm not sure how I'll make it through.  I just keep telling myself that these are things I can do- that I am strong enough for it.  That's how I got through the birthing class, I just kept saying "I can do this, because I have to".  I'm sure I can.  Like so many things though, it seems completely impossible (not to mention unfair) that I should be having to do it under these circumstances.

Baby Panda Born at National Zoo

This week, there was a baby giant panda born at the National Zoo in Washington.  Baby pandas are always considered miracles because of how endangered the species is and how difficult it is for them to procreate; apparently female pandas are only fertile for a few days a year, making conception and eventual birth unlikely at best.  So this baby panda cub was big news, particularly on morning television, which I watch while getting ready for work.  Matt Lauer and The Today Show crew spent a ton of time fixating on it.  The panda, whose gender has not yet been determined, was teeny, tiny, and sort of rat looking.  But in a few weeks, I'm sure he/she will a ball of furry cuteness.

The National Zoo's new baby panda cub at three days old.
Not yet super cute.  Courtney Janney/NZP/National Zoo

This story would have been great news for Ryan.  Because Ryan, my military historian husband who wrote his dissertation on chemical weaponry in World War I, ADORED cute, furry little animals.

This was something I found out about him prior to our first date, when I worked with him at Borders, and then became a defining feature of our relationship.  It was one of the little Ryan things that made me love him, and that maybe not everyone knew.  I think it started with his own family dog, Lucy, who joined his family as a puppy, and extended to just about any other mammal you could think of.  I think a lot of it came from his intellectual fascination with animals, the way they moved, the things they did.  For example, he loved that Lucy would turn her head when you said her name because she wanted to hear better what you had to say, and the way that she would go through the same routine every time she got out of her bed (stand up, stretch her front legs, stretch her backs legs one at a time, shake her whole body, finishing with the tail, stand there wagging her tail at you).  He loved watching my brother's cat staling in the tall grass, or squirrels running around looking for nuts.  He could get hours of entertainment out of this.

Baby polar bear- the kinds of picture
Ryan would make me look at with
him when we were bored.

Television and the internet of course helped feed the addiction.  Many mornings in the summer Ryan would put on Animal Planet and watch a show called Big Cat Diary, which followed families of cheetahs, lions and leopards in Kenya.  Sometimes before bed he would start looking up videos of baby cheetahs roaring (you should check that one out, it's pretty awesome), or pictures of baby polar bears, or videos of Jack Russell Terrier puppies playing.  And I can't tell  you the number of times that Ryan would yell at me from the basement "quick, Kate, hurry up, you have to see this!!" Then I'd come running down the stairs, nearly falling and breaking my neck, just to find out that there was an adorable wolf cub on television that Ryan couldn't let me miss.  Ryan did goofy little impressions of the animals too; sometimes in the morning when I was putting on my makeup, he'd show up behind me in the mirror, and perch his head and fists on my shoulders and make a cute little face.  Like a little mouse.

So when the baby panda was born last week, despite the little miracle that he/she was, I was a little heartbroken.  Ryan could have taken a thing like a baby panda and gotten weeks of material out of it.  The story probably would have made his morning, and then we would have had to look at pictures of baby pandas, and he'd have looked up a bunch of panda facts, and we'd have talked about that time at the Berlin Zoo when we saw a giant panda at feeding time.  He did a great impression of the panda eating a carrot.  I miss that every day Ryan stuff more than I have words for.  These little Ryan quirks brightened my days. Thinking about it now makes me smile, and then ache. The happiest memories can cause the most pain, because I'll never have them again.  There are no pictures of Ryan making his little mouse face, and I'll never again hear the excitement in his voice when a baby polar bear shows up on TV.

Baby girl's nursery friends.

Ryan's love for animals is something I plan on sharing with our daughter. When we found out about the baby, we decided not to find out the gender.  When I thought about what we would register for in the way of nursery decor, we agreed on gender neutral jungle animals.  To keep with that,  found a great nursery set with monkeys and giraffes.  I got a little stuffed polar bear for her, and am sticking with the animal motif in clothing.  Ryan and I had planned many trips to the zoo with our family- I still plan to bring her once she's old enough.  I hope she likes them too, and her fascination with animals will help to remind me of his.