No Sleep.

The last several days I have had so much trouble sleeping.  It's five am right now and I'm still awake... luckily I don't work tomorrow, but I wanted to get things done during the day and now it looks like I may crash and sleep later.

Part of the trouble of not being able to sleep is how your mind doesn't sleep either.  It started out by looking up something on my computer and then I saw something titled Journal.  I opened it because I knew it was mine, but didn't remember what I had written.  But I knew it had to do with Cameron.  I opened it and then I remembered.  I started writing it about a week after I came home after delivering Cameron.  I realized that I wanted to remember every single thing possible about his delivery and the days after and in my state of mind at that time, I knew it would be difficult for me later on.

So, I started actually writing on paper from August 28th... when my world went upside down.  Then I moved on to the computer... struggling to remember everything that happened, but typing in chronological order.  Rereading right now... gosh... it was so sad.  And got me so angry again about how some people reacted.  And thankful for my parents.  But mostly sad.  I'm thinking about posting a few things I wrote on here... I had forgotten how much I ached to hold him longer... how much I was wanting to at the funeral home... and how I finally felt like a mom for the first time at the funeral home!  Isn't that crazy?  But they were really... and almost are the only people even NOW, that have treated me like a mother.  That funeral director was so sweet to call Eric several weeks later to see how I was doing and told Eric they had a necklace they wanted to give me.  It was a golden cherub told hold Cameron's ashes.  So sweet of them.

There was one point, and I think I wrote about it in this blog a while back, where Eric and I came home the day after I delivered him and we were laying down and I was almost going to sleep, but woke up suddenly and sat up because Eric grabbed my hand, but I swore that it felt like a baby's hand grabbing mine... it was only Eric, of course... Oh gosh, I was in a such a bad state then.  I didn't think my grief would end. 

It still hasn't.  In the middle of class last week, I suddenly started thinking about Cameron's hands and feet and how they felt.  And I kept trying to remember it... I had to leave class for a bit and cried in the restroom.  I miss him so much... I want to feel him again. 

Here's a snippet of what part of my journal was from the day after I delivered him... I wrote this this about a week after, but it was about that day, September 2, 2011:

There was also a bracelet made with his name Cameron Conrad Exon-Garcia out of beads and a paper ruler, I guess to show how big he was… 10 inches.  Also a little book of all this prints and info and bracelets.  My baby.  This box is pretty much all I have of him… isn’t that sad?  He’s my baby and I have him in a box.

When it was time to leave, Leah told me to get my stuff ready… we were getting all the things packed when she came in with a wheelchair.  The closer it was getting time for me to leave, the more I didn’t want to.  How could I?  This hospital was where I spent the only time I would ever be able to spend time with my poor baby.  I will never be able to see him anywhere else, but this hospital.  I felt like I was abandoning him.  I wasn’t supposed to leave the hospital without a baby.  The baby was supposed to come with me… but yet, I have empty arms.  I asked for a moment alone before I left… the nurse somewhat hesitated and told me they would wait outside.  I cried and cried.  I didn’t want to leave…. It wasn’t supposed to be like this!  Not at all!  How could this happen?!  I loved him so much and I couldn’t do anything.  I couldn’t do anything.  I failed.  I couldn’t protect him and now I was leaving him.  This was where I spent the most precious moments of my life… with my precious baby.  And I had to leave it.  I stood by the crib he laid in and touched it and tried to remember everything from the night before.  There was a brown napkin, like the ones from school, in there that had his name on it.  I took it for another momento… I’m grasping at momentos since I have so few… I had so few moments with him to cherish, but I had to cherish all I had.  I looked around the room and tried to grasp the reality of what had happened the night before… I gave birth to my baby in this same room.  I felt like it was a different room, but it wasn’t.  I just cried and cried… I didn’t want to leave.  I went to the door to finally exit and the nurse Leah had already begun opening the door.  This made me more mad also… how can you be rushing me out of here?  Yes, I was as ready as I was going to get to leave, but I didn’t reach for the door yet, Leah did.  I sat down in the chair and Eric put all the things in the back of the chair and got the rest of my items out of the closet and my pillow.  

I was rolled without seeing any of the healthy babies crying, but once I got to the lobby area there was a girl in pajama pants walking around with another girl with her IV thing.  I kept looking at her and just knew that she probably just gave birth to a baby and was happy inside.  I wonder if they knew.  I wonder if they saw my tears and how sad I looked.  I wonder if they wondered why someone was so sad on this floor… afterall, this was the maternity ward… this was a happy place.  All the mommies are supposed to be happy, yet if they looked at me, I was the complete opposite.  Could they guess?