I made my first major blunder. No I didn't drop her nor did she roll off from an unsafe surface. Actually had the worst happened, my mistake was way worse, but I guess we learn from it and move on. I had lunch and shopped today with my MIL. We had lunch and I fed her and changed her at at the restaurant and then we walked around town for a couple hours and shopped. She started getting fussy, I knew she was hungry and I was out of bottles so it was time to go home. She had a blanket on because it was chilly and rainy today.
So I get home and I go to change her....whoops, she wasn't strapped in to her carseat! Holy crap! I didn't strap her in when I put her back in after her diaper change since I knew we weren't getting in the car anytime soon, and then with the blanket covering her and wanting to get home to feed her, it totally slipped my mind.
Thankfully nothing happened, and my new rule is she gets strapped in no matter what, even if she doesn't go in the car anytime soon (but I do always strap her in for walks, go me). But still I feel bad. I don't even want to imagine had we gotten into an accident. However I also feel bad because pre-baby, I would have judged a parent that didn't strap their kid in. Oh how I am eating my words of everything I said I would never do, or judged others for. Motherhood is very humbling.
My big one was babies at nicer restaurants (and by nicer I mean you have a waitress). But now we go out all the time, and if she cries oh well, people can deal with it. However I did luck out and get an awesome public baby. At home not so much (just kidding, she's still awesome, but she cries while being awesome) but out in public she either sleeps or she just looks around all doe eyed and sweet looking. People just eat it up. Yeah, she totally knows what she's doing. Now when she is a little older and is more capable of misbehaving, we'll likely not go out as much, or she'll learn to behave.....or I'll eat my words again and we'll say screw it and she'll be running all over the Olive Garden like an escaped monkey!
So enough about my downfalls, let's talk about Em's accomplishments. It makes me sad that she isn't a tiny newborn anymore, but it's so fun watching her develop new things. She no longer screams bloody murder (or any kind of murder) during baths, and unless she's really hungry she's quiet during car rides too. We haven't been on many walks recently, but I'm betting she's better with those too. She's grabbing stuff now; burp cloths, my finger when I feed her, the drawstrings on my shirt....and last night she rubbed her eyes when she was getting sleepy. So cute!
She's smiling a lot more now too. I'm pretty convinced that they are real smiles, but so far I can't find the magic thing that makes her smile everytime. Rubbing her cheek sometimes does it, giving her a big goofy smile works, but the same thing never works twice in a row. But man, when she does smile or better yet, laugh, my heart soars. I could never be in a bad mood after that.
So the movie Return to Zero airs this Saturday on Lifetime. I'm excited, yet nervous to see it. I know I will cry. For those that don't know, it's about a couple that is expecting, only to discover the baby died in late 3rd tri and they deliver him stillborn. Petitions were going around about a year ago to get this movie made, so I am glad to see it was. I thought it would be at the theater, but at least it will be on period. People need to be able to see the impact that a stillborn has on your life. I mean, before it happened to me I was so ignorant. I actually, clearly remember the day I was out with my husband in his snowplow truck and we were plowing out this lot, and somehow got talking about a woman he heard of that lost their baby, and how some places give them dolls to take home, because coming home from the hospital with empty arms is just so horrifying.
He also said sometimes they bathe them and rock them in the rocking chair...the babies that is, not the dolls. Not being judgmental, but I was saying how I just couldn't imagine wanting to do that. But in the moments before Kayla was born, I had no doubt in my mind that I wanted to hold her and take pictures. She was my baby. But as we were having that discussion, my heart hurt and I just couldn't imagine what that would be like to go through, to go through labor and childbirth, knowing you don't get your baby at the end of it. I never in a million years dreamed it was something that would happen to me in a few years. I knew stillbirths happened, but I had no idea how frequent they still are. I thought they were something that happened 60 years ago, not in 2013 with all of the medical advances they have now.
So I'm very glad this movie will be on, and I hope it can educate some people. Emily gets a lot of attention when we go out (haha, except at the vet, they don't care about the hairless human babies) so I've been asked "Is she your first" many times in the last two months. So far I've only had the strength once to say no, we lost our daughter last year. Though I found it really interesting that the one person I did tell, which was a new nail lady doing my pedicure, was someone who understood. Her best friend had lost her baby, actually in the same way I did, and she herself was on bed rest since 18 weeks with her last baby due to threatened pre-term labor. It's like in my heart, I knew I could answer truthfully and she would understand.
I know I have to answer in a way that makes me feel comfortable, but still I feel that pang of guilt when I say yes, she's my first. It literally hurts to say that...but sometimes, most of the time I just cannot tell them. Especially a man, I don't think I could take the awkward, uncomfortable look they would likely give me. Maybe as Em gets older I can grow the courage to tell the truth more. I'll have to, we want her to know about her sister, so we cannot lie about it in front of her. But on top of the guilt I feel, I have this sense of responsibility for others like me. Nobody talks about stillbirth, it's not a pretty topic and people want to forget that we live in a world where babies die. We are often treated poorly because it makes people uncomfortable, and we want to break that silence, so I feel guilty for that too, for lying to not make the other person uncomfortable, and in turn myself uncomfortable.
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