"If I'm drowning.."

within your open sea, save me, save me" --Over the Rhine

I don't know how to put into words what I'm feeling.

People have said how well I'm handling Hazel's death. But I don't feel as if I am. I feel like I'm falling apart. There are times, every few days, when I think, "If I let myself fall into how I'm really feeling right now, I don't know if I'll be able to claw myself back out."

I think there are some people who are expecting me to be over Hazel's death already. After all, she was never born alive; I never nursed her; I never bathed or dressed her.

OH, God! But she was my baby, my precious little girl who I dreamed about for YEARS. How can I just get "over" her? I believe she's in heaven. I believe I'll see her again some day. I believe she's perfect. But it's not enough. She's missing from our family. There will always be a missing part of our family. I will always ache for her. Always. There are people who think I'm being melodramatic, but I truly don't believe I am in this case. I've read enough of what people go through to know what to expect. I've talked to enough mothers who have lost their babies, pre-birth, to know how hard this will be.

The date of my expected c/s is coming up, as well as her due date. I'm as afraid of no-one remembering as I am of people remembering--it's just so very hard. I'm so tense that my back and neck hurt constantly. I don't know how to "fix" those physical symptoms. I thought I was getting sick, until I realized how tensely I'm holding my body all the time. But how do you relieve tension? Seriously? I've never been this tense before.

How can people not realize how hard this is??? Just because she never breathed? Because she was born 2 months early? Because she never lived outside my womb?

Oh, I ache. I ache for her.