and your angry eyes, just in case

My therapist told me I was experiencing grief. Well, I’m officially in the anger phase. Because I am so mad little one. I don’t know what to do with this. What’s happened is nobody’s fault, there is no one to blame. So my rage is just free-floating, I can’t even go for a jog and cry angry tears because my knees are still popping and my incision will tear open.

I’m so angry that I keep missing your firsts. Your first diaper change, your first bath. Someone else got to touch you and hold you first. Your first feeding, your umbilical stump falling off.

We have been robbed of something precious little one. And it makes me so mad, I want to bite something.

I tried to explain today to your older siblings why it’s so important that I see you every day. It’s hard on them, my visiting you. I think they’re still traumatized by my hospital stay, so they all get a little panicked when I take too long getting back.

I try to explain how I feel, how sad and tortured I feel leaving you, and how unfair it is that you don’t get what they did, what every baby deserves. That you have to spend your days with strangers. And as wonderful as they are, they’re still not mommy. I reminded your big brothers and sisters that when they were newborn, they were held next to my body night and day. They didn’t have painful medical procedures to endure.

They can’t understand the guilt I feel. That if I only had you, I would be by your bedside all my waking hours. But now, when I visit you, I worry about them, but when I’m home with them, I’m anxious and feeling sad and guilty about not being with you more.

This is so hard. I’m ashamed of my feelings. A lot of moms in my situation don’t have their babies. I have mine, and he will someday come home.

You were so animated today. You were noisy and vocalizing and doing little push ups on my chest. You flipped your head to the other side and got comfortable. Your nurse said you were doing “highs and lows” with your oxygen levels, playing games just to get attention. I think it’s because they started feeding you again, so you have energy to spare. You’re so cute when the nurse puts drops of milk on your lips and you smack gratefully.

These next two months are going to be longest of my life. I am getting so sick of the drive to the hospital. Sick of the breast pump. Sick of being torn in two all the time.

I want to punch something.

Today I had my follow-up appointment at my OB. I had to wait 90 minutes to see the doctor and that made me even madder. And I was literally walking out the door, muttering “screw this” under my breath when the doctor walked in.

And I felt sad the whole time I was there, remembering how frightened I was the last time I was in that office, desperately worried about your health. And I was still pregnant then and I should still be pregnant now, and there was a woman in the waiting room with her baby in a plastic bucket and I felt all judge-y, like would it kill you to actually *hold* your newborn or is it too much to ask?!

The sadness just sneaks up on me.

Like the other night when your father came home from a visit with you and he woke me up to show me this beautiful little picture book one of your nurses made for you and it was so sweet yet and I felt so sad because once again someone else is doing all your firsts and I’m jealous, and who is that weird, wrinkled alien baby? Because he’s not my beautiful little newborn who smells so sweet. I can’t look.

I want to wake up from this nightmare.