Friendship . . . Or the Post I Have No Idea What to Title

For the last couple of months, this feeling has been stuck in the pit of my stomach and I haven't been able to figure it out.

After conversing briefly with an online friend, I finally realized what it was.

So on top of the anxiety and the fear and the hormones, I realized today that I'm lonely. I hope that if I can number the ways I'm lonely, I can also find a way to reverse some of the causes.

1. Most of the women in my infertility groups have at most one living child. I have 2. And any time I mention either of them, I feel guilty that I've not been content with having the 2 that I have.  That I've lost 5 other babies and been on this rollercoaster for over 11 years doesn't seem to weigh as significantly as the knowledge that I have two perfectly healthy daughters to these women. It comes out in the wording of their comments and I'm not so blind or out of touch as to not pick up on their subtleties.

2. I'm afraid to talk to my husband about the baby. It feels like he has done everything he can to distance himself from this pregnancy to protect himself. I understand his need to distance himself after what he also went through with our son, but it has left me feeling an overwhelming burden to leave him alone when I'd rather sit in his arms and cry or let him feel the joy I have in those moments where Dash is letting me know with every possible movement that she's there, she's alive, and she doesn't plan to go anywhere anytime soon.

3. The women who were pregnant with me and didn't meet a similar tragic end all get to hold their babies each night. They're posting picture after picture of their beautiful and growing bundles of joy and I see them and think about the moments I had to hold my son while being horrendously afraid that I won't get to hold a healthy little girl in the coming months. I have no such pictures to share and that hurts.

4. The new "crop" of pregnant women in one of the groups I'm in seems to have a different child-rearing and prenatal care philosophy than I and the group of "pregnant-together with Jackson" seem to have shared. Each time I try to offer my thoughts, I feel attacked. It's sort of like "I spent years trying to get pregnant and now I'm going to take what I feel is the easy way out so keep your 8+ years of motherhood and 11+ years of health research out of my way. I don't want to listen to it."

5. Let's face it: the number of close friends I have that live locally is Zero. This isn't exactly new to me--all of my closest friendships (apart from my husband and our best man) have been long distance. Even as a child I wasn't the kind to keep a friend very close on an emotional level. It's just not my style. Or it was, but I got burned pretty badly one too many times and learned that distance was less painful. The hard part is that sometimes I really do want that friend, the one who can read between the lines and come knocking on my door to take me out to lunch, or give me a hug, or go for a walk around the lake. But there isn't one within a 1,000 mile radius.

6. Here's the big one: I miss my mother. Horribly. Painfully. Daily. And I miss my dad, too. I realized last night that I hadn't heard from him in 6 weeks. I have no idea why. In the last couple of years he's become very distant. He doesn't always answer text messages, rarely returns phone calls, and never emails unless it's something very "businessy".  After over a year of feeling like an afterthought, I've come to the realization that I'm not that important to him and neither are my children. It hurts. I don't know how much of his distance is related to the loss of my mother and how much is his balancing his newish marriage and trying to get to know his stepkids.  But I do know that I'm tired of trying to find parental support on those rare occasions when I feel I need it and finding that I don't matter enough for a returned phone call.

So yes, I'm lonely. I have tried seeking help from a therapist on several occasions but find that nobody wants to take insurance anymore and someone who understands the framework of my religious beliefs as well as that of pregnancy loss is impossible. My budget isn't so loosey goosey that I can fly to Utah, where such therapists actually exist.

And I'm not allowed to fly, anyway.

What to do . . . what to do . . .

1. Recognize that my hormones sometimes get totally out of control. Today is one of those days, but at least it helped me to pinpoint an emotion I hadn't been able to pin over the last few months.

2. Leave the mommy-to-be group. I deleted the majority of my comments and posts and left the group. There's a decent chance I won't be missed (like I said, the current crop has very different feelings about things than the group I joined with last year!) and I'm totally okay with that.

3. I can't bring my mother back, but I can wait patiently for my mother-in-law to retire (less than 2 years!) so that I don't feel like I'm bugging her in the meantime when I feel the need for mature support. She's not Mom, but she's absolutely wonderful and I'm so very lucky to have her in my life.

4. I'm not sure what to do about my husband. He values his emotional independence just as much I do and has been that way for as long as I've known him, and based on family stories, has been that way his whole life. He has a lot of things on his plate besides just worries about Dash, and I respect that. But I think he and I also need to sit down at some point and start talking and planning for the months ahead. For one, Dash needs a real name and I'd prefer she have one picked out before she's born. I just need to find the emotional and physical strength to get the conversation started.

5. Everyone experiences loneliness at some point in their lives. Just because I feel alone doesn't mean that I am. I still have my Heavenly Father and even if he's all I've got, he's the best to have.

Saturday was a bit of a lazy morning and I didn't shower until about noon. When I stepped into the shower, I had every intention of spending the rest of my day watching Once Upon a Time. By the time I was grabbing my towel, I knew I was going to the temple instead. My husband took a look at my dress when I went down to the basement and knew exactly where I was headed, knowing it was clearly something I needed to do.

While there, I intended to spend my time and thoughts focusing on strength for me, something that is fairly normal for Latter-day Saints to do at the temple.  Instead, my thoughts kept turning back to another mother in my ward. Her trials make mine look like a cake-walk. So instead of praying for myself and my baby girl, I prayed for Ann.

My loneliness may take time to heal, and it will likely take some significant effort on my part, but at least now I know what I have to deal with, and that's always half the battle.

On a side note, it is totally possible that some of what I'm experiencing is postpartum depression . . .