Thursday 8th April: Annoyances

Obviously Salome being dead is the worst part of all this, but let me tell you about some of the minor negatives that go with it. I'd rank them as annoyances rather than greivances.

1. I have gained weight: As a 36 year old woman who had her third child 10 weeks ago, this is not a surprise but it certainly is an annoyance. I gained weight through both other pregnancies, but I found that it came off after 6 months, partly I think due to the breastfeeding. I won't have that working in my favour this time. I am eating more than the average greiving person because I am so glad not to be nauseas, and I don't have the pregnancy/breastfeeding dietary restrictions. As X said the other day "When you had Salome in your tummy you got a big bottom. I can see it." Consequently....
2. My clothes don't fit: Today I put on the jeans I bought for myself after X's birth. These are my comfy slouchy jeans, which sit low on my hips most of the time and need to be held up with a belt. Today I can't have the buttons done up and sit down at the same time. No belt needed! No 'sitting on the hips' look now. More 'jeans aiming to cover my hips, but not making it'. I've got 4 outfits that fit me OK, and a cupboardful of reasonable clothes that may never make it out of the house on my body again. Not really important, but annoying.
3. Autopsy results aren't back yet: We had a call from the lovely NICU specialist Koert recently. He said that at the end of March NICU was receiving results from autopsies conducted in November and December last year, and at this pace it may still be 6 weeks before Salome's autopsy results are back. When they come back we will go to NICU and talk with the team about any new information resulting, and have a NICU debrief about Salome's birth, life and death. Until now I haven't felt ready for this meeting, but I do feel ready for it now. The waiting is starting to shit me off.
4. Admin and funeral tasks: We both want to get the memorial cards done and the tombstone organised, but we also don't want to start the process. At least with the funeral related decisions, the funeral itself gives you a timelimit. I can understand now why people don't send out the memorial cards for over a year after the death. The death of a loved one is all consuming if you don't watch it. Some admin tasks have to be done, and they take up the energy quota. I want to do the memorial cards and the tombstone, and I want to do it well rather than doing it too soon and doing it half-arsed, but I am also getting fed up with all these things that go with having a death in the family. Obviously we will leave it a while before we take any action, but it is still there needing to be done.
5. Life rolls on: This is annoying in it's own way. Bills still need to be paid, the car is playing up, and this morning we blew an electrical circut and now the washing machine won't work. Hasn't anyone told our washing machine and car that our daughter died? We can't be doing with this!

Literature about supporting a person who is grieving usually advises not to drink alcohol with a grieving person or suggest that they drink alcohol. 2 friends of mine broke the rules last week and indulged with me in some deliberate alcohol consumption. I am so glad they did, because getting drunk and having a laugh did me the world of good. I'm not sure my friend's cats liked it, but they never liked me anyway (I'm told that when I am drunk I overestimate my fine motor skills). You can imagine what sort of tolerance for alcohol I've got these days. I've always been an alcohol lightweight and then I went for 12 months without any alcohol at all. Any more than 2 wines breaks me, and I suspect that I exceeded that quota last Friday night because the next day I felt like a 14 year old who'd drunk a case of passion pop and eaten 2 minute noodles at 4 am. It was worth it though.