Let's skip it

I look at my calendar, and it approaches rapidly. December.
Or what used to be my favourite month of the year.

- Sinterklaas, still celebrated in our family, even if I stopped believing in the holy man long time ago. Mom baked gingerbread every year, I received little chocolate figurines.
- Our wedding anniversary - last year, my parents surprised us with a breakfast basket that morning.
- The Christmas market in Leuven. My mom and I made a tradition out of it. We went every year, ate oysters and drank champagne first, followed by pancakes and hot cider.
- My birthday. She made my favourite cake year after year. Last year, she brought it to Brussels through a snow storm. Almost none of my guests turned up, and I had to throw most of it away.
- Christmas, spent every single year together with my parents on holiday in a chalet in the Ardens.
- New Year, or lunch at my parents', and exchanging all the gifts under the Christmas tree.

I want to run away from it all. Of all the memories it will bring, of all the "missing" I will feel.
No, December will not be pretty.

Traces

An email: "beautiful pictures darling. Didn't know you took one of me as well. Kisses, mom"
A text message : "Big hug, and welcome to the little man from grandma & grandpa".
A card : "dear children, happy 2011. May all your wishes come true".
A picture she took of me, the last one, with my big belly.

Everywhere I find little pieces of my mom. Just like the bread crumbs Hansje & Grietje left behind to find the way back home in the Grimm's fairy tale. I open my closet, and I see all the clothes we bought together. I go to the supermarket with my dad, and the self scanner greets my mom.
She's everywhere - and at the same time, she's so far away...

Flowers

Does it make any sense to give flowers if the person for whom they're for, cannot receive them?
I don't know.
It's the first of november, meaning that the cemeteries in Belgium are abundant with flowers. And I don't know what to do. Yes, I want to give flowers to my mom. But I want her smile when she gets them. I want her to take them in her hands, unwrap them, and put them in a vase. And I want to hear her say "oh, how beautiful" and "you shouldn't have done that". Now all that is left, are silent pictures.

How was it 35 years ago?

Victor is lying beside me, in his “doomoo”, babbling away – apparently he’s exceptionally talkative for such a young baby. And I realize that with each new thing he does, I’ll have the same thought “if only my mom could see / hear this”. Yesterday, we were at a birthday party of another baby who turned one. The whole time I had to hold back the tears, because the only thing I could think was “my mom will never be at one of V’s birthday parties”.


The other day I was at P’s mom , and the subject was “babies’ sleeping positions”. Some 30 years ago, all babies slept on their bellies. Now, the “policy” is to put them on their back. I was asked how I slept as a baby, and there you go. I have no one to ask – and I don’t know. How often did I wake up as a baby? I don’t know. Was I easy, difficult? I don’t know. My dad belongs to a generation where fathers never changed one single nappy, so he’s not a great source of information. I have my “baby book”, so at least I know when I had my first tooth – but I’ll never know how many sleepless nights for my mom that took.
P's mom is now of course talking non-stop about how P was as a baby, and showing all his baby pictures, comparing him with V. And I miss the other side - in what ways is V resembling me, when I was a baby? I'd like to know...

I know my mom didn’t breastfeed – simply because it was the Seventies, and almost no one did. But I also remember her saying she didn’t have enough milk. And voilà, here I am – in the same situation. So if only I could share all this with her.

The first week that I wasn’t together with my baby, the stress, the emotional shock, the fatigue…it all contributed to “failing boobs” from my side. From V’s side : we tried night after night, together with a nurse from neo-natal to learn him the trick – and the little man tried and tried. But his “sucking powers” were never really what they should be, and he got so tired from trying, that after a few minutes he always fell asleep. So feeding became synonym to waking V up every minute, and trying every single trick in the book to keep him awake.

We tried for almost 6 weeks : I breastfed, I gave bottle supplements after each feeding, and I used the breastpump several times a day (to stimulate, to produce more milk, to have more breastmilk for V). If there’s one image I didn’t have of motherhood, than it was me – sitting at this machine for several hours a day, a sucking cap on each breast squeezing every single drop of milk out of my boobs – and feeling like an utter failure if I didn’t get the required ml. of milk out. Almost every single minute of my day was spent on “feeding” – and I couldn’t take it anymore. So I talked to the pediatrician – who wondered why I'd kept this crazy routine going for so long already.

I felt a huge relief when we found a compromise : breastfeed in the morning, give a bottle the rest of the day. So starting last Tuesday, that’s what we did. Next day, V had some skin rash. Two days later, the skin rash became worse. Three days later, V started to refuse his bottles. On Friday morning, the skin rash was so severe, that I completely panicked. One phone call to the pediatrician, and apparently V’s allergic to the formula milk I’m giving him. So there goes the rest and peace we’d found in our “compromise”. Add guilty feelings too. And add more fatigue, as V now first refuses to drink, but is then hungry every two hours – day and night. P working late more than one evening this week, and coming home after the whole evening routine is over, and V and I are already in bed, was also not helping.

So, to summarize :

- every day, I miss my mother more and more.
- I feel like a failure because the feeding is not working.
- I feel guilty for making V sick (and one more day to go, we only know tomorrow what new milk to give him).

- I’m more tired than ever because I try to breastfeed him again throughout the day and night, asking my body more energy that it simply doesn’t have.
- I almost didn’t sleep (feeding every two hours, not being able to fall asleep again, trying to console little V who has painful cramps because of the damn formula milk, crying for my mom, waking up screaming from a nightmare I had in the one hour I did sleep).
- The physical damages are not gone – somehow I have to squeeze in about 4 doctor’s appointments per week.

And here comes the icing on the cake (if you’re still reading, that is, and are not completely fed up with me complaining by now) : P is going to be abroad for work the next few days.

So, feeling like a failure once again, because I don’t see myself staying all alone for four days & nights with a tiny baby who refuses to eat, I’m going to stay with P’s mom. Bottles, breastpump, diapers, baby bath, buggy, etc, etc,…are all moving from one place to the other as of tomorrow.

to be continued…

Missing

I miss my mom so much, now that I'm home alone with Victor.
Just because I now fully realize what an enormous support she would have been, if she'd still been here. Someone I could share all my health problems with, someone who could give me tons of advise, who would be happy to babysit if I have yet another doctor's visit, who would help me out with all the rest of the household chores. And who would have loved to do all that. And now, I cannot even call her.

P's mom is helping, she really is. In lots of ways. For which I'm very thankful.But there's just no such thing as your own mother. I mean : who else can I call when I'm in tears, just because I'm having a bad day, and I haven't slept more than an average of three-four hours the last month and a half? There was just one person who would always pick up the phone (never an answering machine), who would always listen, and always say the right things to comfort me: right, mom.

I've been trying to be so strong the past 4 weeks. And I have been. I can count the times that I really cried on one hand, and even then I fought back the tears, or had to "get a grip" to take care of Victor and carry on. Today, I just feel I'm losing the battle a bit. One wrong word and I feel guttered. A wrong look and I start to cry.

God, I miss her. There are just no words to describe the feeling. It physically hurts. Heartache, in every sense of the word.
One of my mom's best friends gave me a hug at the end of the funeral, and told me, very kindly and honestly "You know the worst is still to come, don't you?". He was so right. The longer she's away, the more I miss her.
What will I do in a couple of months, when it's my birthday, Christmas, etc? When traditions that I've known since I was born (like spending Christmas with my parents in the Ardens) will stop altogether? When I will not even hear her voice on the morning of my birthday?

If only I could just cry my eyes out for a couple of days, and sleep for a couple of nights to recover from the exhaustion that intense emotions inevitably bring with them.
Someone told me this morning : "other women do the same thing, and are able to do all that" (so in other words : why can't you? What's wrong with you that you don't seem to manage?).
Maybe I have a little bit more on my plate than "other women". That's just the facts, not self pity.
If I'm weak now, than that's only because I've tried to be strong for so long.

I miss her - but saying or writing it a thousand times still won't bring her back.

N's life 2.0

They say you're never the same after losing your mother.
They say you're life will never be the same after becoming a mother.
So what happens if those two life-changing events happen at the same time?
Let me tell you : you're lost, and you don't know how you get through it - but somehow, you wake up again in the morning (even if you haven't slept), and life goes on.

People say "I didn't know she was that sick" as an excuse for not having called, not having been in touch. Well, she had cancer. Not a cold. It's a deadly disease. What part of that didn't they understand?

People say "Little V will comfort you, and will make it easier". Well, on the contrary. V doesn't make it any easier - he makes it all far more difficult.
- when I laugh because he does something funny, I feel guilty. Who's happy when their mother has just passed away?
- when I cry because I miss my mom so much, I feel guilty. Now that I finally have what I wished for for so many years, I feel sad most of the time.
- I slept two hours the night before my mom's funeral, and the same after that most exhausting day. V's hunger doesn't take into account the fact that strong emotions already make you very tired.
- When I tried to say goodbye to my mom by going through her little things in her room, I got called away. V was hungry. No time for mourning.
- When V threw up minutes before we had to leave for the funeral, I had to leave him behind. No time to feed him, we had to be at the church in time.
- V was born and had to stay in neonatal intensive care for 7 days. At the same time my mother went to hospital for her last days. I had to choose between staying in one hospital to feed my baby, and spending what were possibly the last hours, days, in another hospital, with my mom.
- Breastfeeding can go seriously wrong because of fatigue, stress, and emotional shock. So, yes, on top of everything else, I didn't have enough milk anymore to feed little V. Resulting in feeling guilty and failing, and even more time spent on "feeding".
- the past two weeks, my life was made out of three things : trying to produce milk, being forced to rest or sleep the time in between, and doing the practical stuff for my mother's funeral. Almost no time was left to enjoy the nice things that come with a baby, like going for a walk, receiving visitors, collecting all the gifts we received, etc. I feel like a prisoner in my own apartment.
- V's birthday, and the memory if his birth, will forever be linked with the loss of my mom. I waited almost ten years to fulfill my dream - and now, sometimes, it looks like a nightmare.
- "Take good care of your dad" was one of the phrases I heard most yesterday. When or how am I supposed to do that? Believe me, in other circumstances I would be with him day and night. But as it happens, I have a three week old baby. So while we're at it, throw that as well on top of all the other guilty feelings.

So no, by no means, does V make it "easier".
But he is our little man, and I love him with all my heart.

What's left

What's there left to say, after my previous post?
"I knew it?"
"I was right"?
"I felt it"?
Yesterday , the doctor told my parents that there's nothing left they can do for her. It's the end of the road.
I seriously don't know how to get through this. I wish I could just erase my life - go to sleep toninght, and never ever wake up again.