For something non-baby and non-sad....

Just sayin'.

Ten months.

I hate these month posts.

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I haven't been moved to write as of late.  Life at school has been crazily busy, and that's taking a lot of my time.

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Another BFN last week.  But I'm still without AF, which is really frustrating.  I've never been irregular in my entire life, and have been since the pregnancy.  Makes it a lot more difficult to plan when I'm ovulating.

At the same time, I hate that I'm doing that.  I hate that I'm obsessing, and worrying.  We didn't have a problem getting pregnant before - only took four months!  But I'm doing it.  I'm thinking about it all the time, planning on when we should try, and that's not very fun.  I mean, really.

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Really happy for my buddy CurlsOFred for her pregnancy, though.  She's gonna be my role model. :)

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Family wedding last weekend where a 10-month-old boy was the ringbearer.  My niece, one of the flower girls, pulled him up on a big two-seater wagon.  The minute I saw it I knew Olivia would've been there and been a flower girl, and it just made me hurt.  All of these family things that she should be experiencing and that we should be experiencing with her.  This sucks so much.

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I'm already thinking about what to say to my students when I get pregnant again.  I said I was obsessing, right?  I mean, there's a whole new class of students this fall who have no idea what we went through last year.  And I feel like I need to prep them, but also prep myself so I don't get the inevitable "is this your first baby?"

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Miss you, Olive.  Every day.  We're learning to survive and thrive without you here physically, and have both grown separately and together so much in this last year.  We'd trade any of it to get you back, though.

Love you.

Square one.

I'm having one of those hard days; one of those days where I feel like I've been catapulted back eight or nine months in the grieving process.

I'm so down today.  I think part of it is that I'm PMSing, and that almost makes it worse, because then I'm not pregnant.   Just having one of those days when I feel like a complete failure.  Failure as a mom, failure as a wife, failure as a woman....everything.

Will I ever stop feeling guilty?  I don't know.  My brain knows I didn't do anything wrong, but my heart and soul agree with that very little of the time.  I just feel like I failed her.  That I failed her, failed my husband, failed our families, failed everyone.

I feel like hell, I look like hell, and I just want to crawl under the blankets and sleep for days.

Pressure, pressure, pressure.

I'm getting a little obsessed with TTC.  And I HATE that I'm doing that.  I keep looking at my body for those subtle changes I noticed in the first seven weeks, hoping to see something.

However.

I don't think this is all my fault.  The question I've gotten asked the most this fall is, "Are you guys trying again?"  It sorta seems like people think on some level that us having another baby will make our world "normal" again.

To these people, I offer up a hearty FUCK YOU.  Another baby will never replace our sweet Olivia.  Yes, it will give us a chance to have all of those experiences of having a baby that we didn't get to have with Olive, but another baby will never be Olive.  He or she will be his or her own perfectly flawed entity.

I do know, though, that I'm putting pressure on myself.  That, when and if AF comes to town next time, I'm going to be heartbroken.  And I wish I wasn't doing this - I keep trying to reason with myself, and then I catch myself thinking about it again.

Sigh.

Random ups and downs.

I haven't written at all for almost two weeks.  We've been so nuts with school - that's good, I suppose, but I do miss the down times of the summer.

J. and I are both down today.  Neither of us really know why, and early I was thinking about what things I could do to cheer him (or me!) up.  And I started thinking of all of those things I would have laughed at before but never will again.

I know they always say having a child changes you, and we were prepared for that.  But I was never prepared for this kind of grief and the ongoing stark realizations.  I will never be the same person again.  And I MISS that me, that version of me that was more carefree and more genial.

I really hope we get pregnant soon, although I know that will bring on a completely different set of challenges and worries.  But I'm hoping that the optimism and the excitement of that will help.  That's a lot of pressure to put on a child-to-be.  But he or she will be related to us, and we are TOUGH. :)