It's funny how I had convinced myself that I'm OK. I am most definitely not.
This past weekend we had a barbecue and invited the moms that I've become friends with over the last two years of mommy and me classes. We invited another couple we're friends with who are dealing with primary infertility and I was so worried about them dealing with FIVE 2 year olds running around that it didn't hit me how hard it was going to be on me.
At one point, the men were out in the yard playing with the 2 year olds while all the women sat on the patio. That's when it hit me -- EVERY OTHER WOMAN HAD A BABY IN HER LAP. They all had children the same age as the lowercase and a second child between 7 and 10 months old. Another family came later with their 2 year old -- she is currently 26 weeks with twins. A friend we met when our first children were in the NICU together couldn't come because her OB has her activity levels reduced to try to prevent her 2nd daughter from being born prematurely, too.
And then I find out that my epileptic friend (the one with the recently diagnosed autistic son, the one who has been told that her medications are being linked to autism in the offspring of mothers taking it during pregnancy) is 5 weeks pregnant.
It's official. I am the last one. The only one that I know. Hell, even the bloggers that delivered in the same time frame that I did are either pregnant with or already have had a second child.
And it hit me this morning. I am still angry at my body. I am still upset with what it can't do. I look at the lowercase and I am beyond grateful...yet I still feel that my body did fail him. That it did cause him to suffer in his early days in a way that he never should have had to. It's caused my husband to be very reticent to do this again -- he lived through the miscarriages and the NICU just as I did and he's so afraid that any attempt to have another child (regardless of method) is just opening us up to greater pain.
It has caused me to hate my body. I still haven't lost all of the weight that I gained with the lowercase. I'm actually a bit more than 20 pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight (which was 10 pounds over my pre-3-miscarriages weight). I feel fat and unattractive, but despite saying I want to lose the weight (and knowing that I, in fact, do) I've done nothing. I counted up some points for a few weeks, lost about 8 lbs...and am slowly gaining it back. I just don't have the desire to actually do the work to get what I want. I think in part it's because my body has let me down so mightily that I just don't think it's worth it. (Why yes, yes I would cut off my nose to spite my face, apparently)
I was reading Zoot's blog today and saw that she was doing this 100 pushups thing -- so I thought, "Huh...wonder if I can do any at all." I impressed myself by doing 8 (girl style). Mr. W came upstairs and I told him that I could, so very proud of myself. He laughed and said he didn't think he could do any anymore and, disbelieving, asked me to do one. So, I did. And then he said, "Yeah. Kind of. But um...isn't your back supposed to be perfectly straight? Haven't you seen real people do them?"
I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for about 20 minutes. I didn't speak to him for even longer -- we got in the car to go get lunch at a Mexican place I like. I told him that I wasn't actually mad at him but very hurt -- here I am trying to find something that my body can do and that I can be proud of it for and he trashed that in one breath -- further proof that my body can do nothing.
I'd like to say that I'm in a better place and that I'm on my way out of the low place. I'm not yet. I ate taco salad and guacamole and lots of habanero salsa. I'm still crying as I think about it.
I want to put myself back together...but I just haven't figured out how to do it yet. Am I always going to feel this disgust and distrust of my own body?
