I've been thinking about Delphi's comment on this post. Should have versus could have. I do totally get what she means and completely understand it logically. I guess I just don't totally believe that it in my case it is really could have instead of should have. I really do think that I was a little negligent, that I didn't keep up the good care taken in my pregnancy until the end. It's like I dropped out before the end of the race.
It's something my doctor has said to me. That it disturbs him that I consider myself responsible for life and death. Maybe that will change one day.
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It's CD 29. I didn't have a temp drop this morning, but I think AF is probably on the way. Next cycle I will temp more accurately at exactly the same time every day and observe my CM more consistently. I will put this one down to a learning cycle.
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Last weekend I was very angry. I googled my own name. Come on, you've surely all done it. I've always been bizarrely proud of the fact that nothing comes up for me when you google my name. I don't want my identity to be accessed by just Any Internet User. Anyway, this time, I was utterly shocked to see my name, DH's name and Moksha's name come up. How could this be?
On the day of his birthday, I called a good friend, blurted out the news that my baby had died and asked her if she could inform people. See, a lot of people knew I was supposed to be induced on Saturday. I just did not want a bunch of calls asking me how everything was and whether I had a boy or a girl. So I kind of dumped it on her. Even now, when I think of how she must have felt, on receiving that call and my request, I feel very moved for her, to have to call people we knew mutually to tell them such shocking news. On the other hand, I think it gave her a concrete way to help me and to feel like she was doing something. But it must have been REALLY hard for her.
The day after, she called me at home and told me she had called a lot of people. I was very grateful and I asked how it had been. She said people had asked her questions about what happened, but she didn't really know and so was at a loss as to what to say. DH and I decided to write a short text explaining it and to email it out. See, I was a very organised person (I am less so now) and already had a spreadsheet all ready for DH with all email addresses in it for our happy announcement. I had also been very bored at home for the last few weeks of my pregnancy.
So we wrote it out and emailed it to our friends. It helped us too, to write it. We wrote that we were in no shape to receive a ton of phone calls yet but that if people wanted to send us a message they could send us an email. A lot of people told us later how much that text had helped them faced with such terrible news.
Much later, I realised that since it was sent by email, it was inevitable that some people would forward our text to other people who we wouldn't necessarily have chosen to send it to. But it didn't really upset me that much and it didn't seem to have been forwarded a lot.
Anyway, when I googled my name last weekend, it was this text which a colleague of DH's had put on her blog using our REAL names WITHOUT permission. I was furious. I emailed her a pretty harsh request to take it down immediately. (It's been there since last August). She took it down straight away and sent me an apology but who knows for how long it will stay cached in Google's servers? I know she didn't post it maliciously, she did it without thinking, but I was still totally outraged that she would put something so personal up on the internet without asking or even anonymising the text. Even DH was outraged, and he usually says I'm over-reacting.
6 years ago
4 comments:
Just got my long comment erased somehow...so this is a test!
OK - well that worked! (the new blogger is messing me up....). Anyway, I will have to post later, but the summary was - I know how you feel!!! And thanks so much for the contrats post. I really appreciate your positive energy...and I need it!
I should mention, which I didn't before, that the transition from should to could has been a long and arduous process for me. And the transition is not complete. I have been working on that for over two years now. The guilt and sense of responsibility doesn't ever go away completely, that I am coming to realize. But I am working really hard to internalize that I did the best I could. I should have gone to the hospital the moment that I new I was in labour. That was my choice not to (that's what the books all said to do, after all, wait until ctx were 4 min apart). I have to live with the possibility that C. would have lived, saved by emergency intervention, if I had been aware enough of his activities to notice that he wasn't moving as much. But what did I know? I had never been in labour before. I had no concept that a perfect, textbook pregnancy could end with the death of your baby. So, when they asked when I felt him move last, I lied and said an hour before, so they would try to save him (of course, he was already dead). The honest answer is that I don't know. And I don't know if the "movement" that I felt that hour before was him moving. He might have died the night before (more likely, in my opinion).
Anyways, the point is this (excuse my language) - I am still really fucked up about the whole thing. But one of my tactics for dealing with my sense of responsibility is to use that word replacement.
Also, about the other thing - the email posted on the blog... I would want to throttle that woman. I had a slightly similar experience with a "friend" that chose to share our news via email with a group of people. I think I will post about it, so truncate this LOOOONG comment NOW!
I am thinking you can probably contact google and ask them to get rid of the link. If not, it will be a few months i think.
Once there was an embarassing post of mine about pregnancy symptoms which had showed up on usenet and been archived under my real name for some unaccountable reason. Of all people, my MOTHER found it. The archive removed it as per request and a few months later it disappeared from google also.
Also, yeah, what delphi said in her comment. In some sense, the guilt is always with us. As mothers, we feel a responsibility to have saved our children even though logically we may 'know' it is not our fault. It is not unusual at all to feel this way....and it does lessen over time as we process what has happened. But yeah, it is always there, i think.
Funny thing, i didn't feel responsible at first when Nicolas died -- for me the crushing guilt came several weeks and months later. When he first died, alot of people said to me 'it is not your fault', and i said 'damn straight it is not!' because i had done everything 'right' the way the books say to. My guilt came later, as i slowly learned all about what the books and happy magazine articles don't talk about. See, at the time i thought i was informed. Ha ha, joke is on me!
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