I’m completely and utterly overwhelmed by the response to this blog. I really only expected a few close friends to read it. I wanted to do this for myself, as a therapeutic outlet where I could just let my feelings out, but the support you’ve all shown me (over 1300 visitors on my very first day) has given me the encouragement I need to go on.

I’ve been seeing a psychologist. She came to see me in my hospital room the day after Everlee was born. Well, she’s been seeing both Darcy and I. I’m in awe of him. He opens up so easily, he knows exactly how he’s feeling and how to compartmentalize those feelings. He understands why he feels a certain way and knows how to cope. he has a list of things to distract himself and a list of accomplishments. So far in our sessions he’s really been doing well in talking to her. I, on the other hand, sit there like a shy and quiet child who is being punished. I don’t know where to begin. How to look at this stranger and tell her I feel like I’m a failure as a human being – I failed to do the one thing we’re designed to do. It seems easy to write that here, but to look her in the eye and say that seems like the scariest thing I could do. I know she’s not supposed to judge me, but at this moment, I feel like the whole world is judging me.

I keep having horrific dreams. I often wake up with my hand on my stomach after dreaming I’m still pregnant. I rarely sleep longer than 20 minutes at a time. I’m jolted awake by my own fear. Most often though, I dream that different people are mad at me. Close friends. My family. My doctors. Darcy. They’re mad that I failed them. Everlee wasn’t just mine, she belonged to so many people. So many people eagerly awaited her arrival and so many people loved her. That means so much to me. That other people loved her. As Darcy said in his eulogy a week ago, she was never tainted by this cruel world, all she ever knew was love. But in my dreams people are mad that I robbed them of her.

When most people pass they leave something behind; memories, something physical, a favourite object or article of clothing. Everyone has their own feelings, their own thoughts, their own grief over the one who was lost. With Everlee, she never got that opportunity. You never got to know her, only through me. Your grief is for me – for Darcy.
Your love is for us, your sadness is for us. You’re watching me in pain, in sadness and in grief, but you can’t quite grasp what the pain is, because you didn’t know her, you had never met. That’s why this is so lonely and isolating for us, and for me especially. I was the only one who really ever knew Everlee. I knew her personality, her patterns, what she liked and didn’t like. In short – I guess – I am her mother. I knew her best.

People promise that I’m going to have good days and bad. They say that things won’t get easier, but I’ll learn how to live with the pain. I’m still waiting for those good days. Problem is, at the moment I don’t have much to look forward to. Everything for the past nine months has been about Everlee. I don’t have any hobbies, any pastimes, anything I really want to accomplish in the short term to help pass the time and numb the pain. The only thing I can really focus on is trying again, on making her a big sister. But that doesn’t have a time line right now. With an endless array of doctors appointments on the horizon I don’t know when I’ll be given then ok to try and when it will be physically safe for me to be pregnant again.

And then there’s the fear.

I just know I’ll live in constant fear of failing again. Of failing to bring my baby safe into this world.

If I can get pregnant again.

Life is just a big question mark right now. I don’t have any answers. I barely have questions. All I have is overwhelming, all consuming grief and guilt.

When do I get a good day?