Meltdown

It was such a great morning - I wrote, I had a decaff latte, I was invited to chat with some young mums (question of the day: are you going to be an attachment parent? -- well I'm going to be an attached parent...).

I decided to talk a walk to Mrs. Tigglewinkles (cool toystore) to pick out a book for witch baby. I did this with Emily: it was Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I read that to Emily most days the last trimester, and I read it to her at Sick Kids, punctuated by alarms going off from her ventilator. (Yes, it was ironic that it was a transformation story.)

Gah I'm getting teary again.

Anyways, I wanted to do the same thing for this baby but for obvious reasons pick a different book. I am not in fact sure that I will ever get through reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar again, ever. And today I thought would be a good day for that - we know witch baby can hear, we're entering the third trimester, blah blah blah.

I didn't expect to have a complete breakdown in the toy store, but I did. It wasn't that I looked at Eric Carle books; in fact I was pretty careful not to. But it didn't matter, it just welled up in me, remembering reading to Emily when she was safe, and when she was dying and drugged out and fucking deaf, just because I believed that she might in some mysterious way know I was there reading to her. I just started crying and left.

God I want my baby back so bad. She'd be almost a toddler really, but it's the her I held I want back for now. And I hate, hate hate that it keeps me from picking out a goddamned board book to read to this new baby, which isn't fair - not that the baby cares, but it's still unfair. I couldn't hack it. So I left. I'll go back, but it sucks for today.

Shandra