Faith, Infertility, Holidays. A Typical Rambling Post.

****
FAITH:

Thank you to all who sent prayers and messages of support to baby Faith Margaret who had open heart surgery today. I just received word that she is out of surgery, and that her parents are waiting to speak with the doctors. I know that your prayers and messages helped to get her over this latest hurdle, and so on behalf of my cousin, Thank You.

****
I should probably warn you all that this post might be jumbled, incoherent, negative, or just generally not make sense. I am under the weather in a gross, coughing, wheezing, sneezing, freezing, stuffed up, runny, sick, sick, sick kind of way. It's nothing serious. I will survive. But the timing of this bug right before the holidays certainly leaves something to be desired, so in the haze and fog that is a massive head cold/sinus infection, you get posts like this one. Feel free to bail at any point...

****
INFERTILITY:

I went yesterday to have a bunch of blood drawn to help determine what is causing my infertility. I had to fast for them, and the line at the lab was sort of long. Waiting made me hungry and cranky. "Good practice for when you get pregnant," the tech told me with a smile. "I have been pregnant, twice." I responded. "I wasn't cranky." Can you see just how much fun I have been to be around lately?

Anyway, I think that all the blood drawn may have contributed to me getting this sick. I was already feeling a little something, but maybe losing all that blood on an empty stomach exacerbated things?

Monday I have to go for a dye test to check the status of my tubes to see if they are closed and that could be causing the infertility. From what I hear, the process is less than comfortable. It is called a Hysterosalpingogram. Remember that one next time you are playing Scrabble. Mel, over at Stirrup-Queens does a really good job of describing the test, better than I could especially under my germ induced fog, so if you wanna read about it, go here. The sick irony is that to have the test I have to check into the same department at the hospital where I went to have Peyton. Talk about a less than ideal situation for someone suffering from PTSD.

****
HOLIDAYS:

Christmas is here, again, without Peyton. How do we do this year after year? How do we march on into forever, when each new day, milestone, and holiday is a reminder of what is missing? I guess the answer to that, as we (and so many of you) are learning, is that we just do.

I have not been looking forward to Christmas, for the obvious reasons. I didn't want to send out cards, mostly because I didn't know how to sign them. I left it up to my husband who actually found the right words when I couldn't. He signed them, Love, Krissy, Dru, Our Angel Peyton, and Charlotte the Mini Lab Rescue Puppy.

Our cards didn't go out until this Tuesday. Very late by anyone's standards, and delayed by hours and days of worry over how writing Peyton's name on the cards might be received. I think sometimes I worry too much about whether or not my grief is convenient or uncomfortable for other people. In one respect, that is the only thing that has kept me censored to a point where I haven't run everyone away, in another, like automatically saying "good" when people ask how I am, it is just another layer of the false facade that the grieving live behind, because let's face it, no one wants to be around the truth that is grief. "How am I doing? My kid is dead. I am infertile... You?"

In some ways I cannot believe the holidays are already among us. That means that a full calendar year without her, a full calendar year of living on this little known side of the universe, has passed. I don't have much to show for this year. We don't have another baby, and pregnancy seems hard to come by. I haven't found the healing that I would  have hoped a year would bring. That being said, we are still here. My husband and I, we are still here, together. I guess on Christmas, when watching the lights twinkle and the gifts being opened beneath the tree, I will try to focus on that rather than all that we are missing. Will I miss my baby? Of course. Will I ever feel complete or right or completely at peace without her? No. But we have survived what once seemed impossible. That is what we have, and this Christmas, that will have to be enough.