dear someone

i dont feel like myself anymore. im living life 2 hours at a time, punctuated by 20 minutes of electronic suckling, and not for much. i have never left less in control or less like myself. im just floating along with no recourse: i cant help the baby, i cant help cassandra, i cant know or make the decisions about what will happen with my job for next school year, i cant force my body to create more milk, im losing my interest in exercise and my diet, i am depressed when i wake up and unable to relate to my husband when he gets home. im just floating away and feel like a shell of my former self. but fuck it, right? no one knows that shit. they just see an irritable bitch or a peppy mother fucker compensating for how she feels.

Olive,

today was a rough day. to begin with i gained another 2 lbs. those damn super bowl snacks. i can feel myself slipping into what feels like an eating disorder. i dont want to eat a damn thing.  ive eaten literally 2 ww points today and its nearly 5pm.

but today got better. i met up with sarah from PTA. she was anther loss mom. her son died at 23 weeks. we talked for two hours and her blessed son ozzie stayed busy for the entire time. then we walked the parks and found 4 rocks. ill give one to your daddy - its a 20 sided die!

i sobbed today after getting a little fucked up on my meds. just sobbed. i dnot remmember why.  then i went out and bought this computer.

i love and miss you
mommy

this has been many years since ive written on here. 4, in fact.  any it has been the longest 4 years of my life. im misreable whre i am now. im sad. im just sitting here and bought a laptop just so that i could pour my thoughts out onto paper.  i want to write about the past 4 years.

id like to start with what happned in 2015 and where my mind went in those years.

at once point i had all my chapters figured out, and knew what id write about but now i suppose ive lost that information.

in 2015 we stopped fostering children.

lets try again for chapters.

kayleigh
dss
moving
death? family death?
palmetto
heather?
trident
weight gain
train travel
ttc in the beginning
the flower - november 2016
michelle ivf
that moment outside with the boys
IVF
heather and drugs
weight gain again
grace
kidding myself
first encounter with real death
green hair and crowfield
healing and chosen
more train travel
heather encounters
ctm
hurricane florence and miles
olive
slipping, but living
OLIVE
grief

"when the sacred is torn from your life and you survive"

memories

I sang Silent Night to Corbin tonight when he couldn't fall asleep.  It was what my Grandmama sang to me every night that I spent the night there and when I called Grandaddy to tell him about it he laughed and said "I used to sing that to your Momma. It was a standard song around here, oh yes." 

What a nice memory to have now.  I feel like I gained something.

We said goodbye to Chandler a week or so ago. Not much to say about that. A lot of sadness and regret - we had been contacting the caseworker to ask her to speed things up since school was starting. 

I love my snugly baby. His birthday is in 2 hours. :-)  Here is a picture of him reading a birthday book.

im a . . .

im a mom.

i am a mommy.

i am a mom.

i am a mother.



___________


when i say it out loud it sounds weird. i dont feel like a mother. i feel like a caretaker. i feel like a regular person that has to take care of children.  i feel like i am simply MADE to take care of these particular babies.

but a mother? i am someone's mother? I guess... C has called me "the best foster mom ever" but in the next 20 minutes i had to reprimand him for something and i felt less than best.  Baby S is awake, and i cant help but wonder if i could had tried a little harder to get her to sleep that MAYBE she'd be sleeping right now. i couldn't be her intuitive momma, right?

i dont know. i dont know what i am doing, really.

"you're the bitch the saved a baby's life"

Alright, so i dont swear too much here. But a friend of mine today who knows me very well reminded me that yeah maybe im a bitch but im the bitch that does nothing that anyone else does: i sit there in a damn hospital room snuggling and laughing and crying with a baby girl that will never be mine.  

I had a terrible time this week - so far it isnt the "letting them go" that hurts, it's the pushing and pulling of my emotions.  first im getting her, then im not, then it's long term, then it's two days, then it's "oh darn, we had a 3 day old, but you've got Baby S." 

And i think DAMN. coulda been mine.

New things

I'm a Disney Travel Agent now.

Just living the dream...

www.momentsofmagictravel.com

Update on C:  Mom has not done anything yet with regards to therapy. still non compliant. Becuase visitations at discretion of DSS, they are witholding visitations until she gets it together adn makes an appointment for treatment.  Caseworker does not think this will happen. She thinks they will end up closing the case. 

If that happened he would be able to be adopted, but the family in another state will be getting him before that happens. The family actually raised him until he was 2 years old, at which point I think dad went to jail, so mom went down and basically took him from family and took him to SC.  When  family found out he was in foster care they began (in the words of the caseworker) "blowing up" caseworker's phone trying to get him back. The placement with family is waiting on paperwork to be filed by caseworker. Once that happens it could be 1-3 months before they are approved, and then another 1-3 months before he moves. The second time period is a time for him to adjust to the new family (im shocked they even do that, but I think it's because they are gearing up for adoption). This second 1-3 months should consist of phone calls with fam, maybe a visit and warming him up to this new situation. again, i am shocked that they are even doing that. DSS ususally sucks. 

I have told the caseworker that I am MORE THAN OPEN to communication with the family before the "warming up" period. COnsidering they raised him until he was 2 years old, i can only imagine their minds are going crazy thinking of him in foster care. it also will set my mind at ease about it. 

how do we feel about this? i feel like this is probably THE best case scenario we will ever see as far as resolution goes in foster care. I am happy about the timeline, i feel like it is just enough time. I am glad to be able to put a number on the time as well. I am ecstatic that family is pursuing this, not DSS. with that said, when the caseworker said she thinks they are just going to close the case i felt like he just slipped right through our fingers. if the family weren't  there, he could have been ours. 

He was almost ours.

And yet sometimes I feel like i don't even deserve him. He's so damn special.