Little Squeaker's second tooth finally broke through today and, to make things even better, my mom somehow managed to get him to take a bottle of formula, so hopefully there's now a little more sleep coming our way.
. That was the highlights of the day and, it's been down hill from that point.
First off today I got a glimpse of what could have been and, a reminder of what I don't have...
Alex's cousin, Joel is here. He is 10 years old. He is also the baby that was born right around the time when my baby should have been born... The baby who lived in spite of pre-aclampsia and in spite of being born with the umbilical cord around his neck... The baby who made it against all odds... When little Andreas didn't..
This morning he spent an eternity standing by little squeaker's crib, trying to keep him calm. He was just talking away to him and, stroking his head. Squeaker was making little sounds as if he was answering and, In the end those 2 where going back and forth as if they were having a real conversation. After a while Joel came to me and told me that our little miracle is the cutest little baby ever...
The scene rung my heart. It would have been... Should have been... Just like that... Another little 10-year-old should be standing there, talking to his brother...
It's been a while since I felt like that, but sometimes I so long for what could have been.
Strangely enough, It didn't bother me when Joel was a baby. Perhaps because I was determined not to let it. My sister was so supportive of me during that time. When I was hoping against hope, she hoped with me and, when my little one didn't make it she cried as well...
I think it started that Christmas when me and T lost our second baby and, I decided that there would never be another one...
It was an early miscarriage that time, just 9 weeks along, so it was nothing like the first time and, yet in a way it was, cause there was still a heartbeat when I first started bleeding. The doctor gave us a bit of hope and sent me home to take it easy. She even scheduled an appointment for me on Christmas day to check again, but when we came in that morning that little life had given up on me as well... And so I gave up too... I was done.
3 months later I had moved back to the south, without T. I was done with relationships too and, it took me 5 years to change my mind; until B came back to Sweden for the second time in January 2009. It would take me 3 more years before I wanted to try to have another baby, even though that tumor they removed from my uterus in 2007 was the likely cause of my loss of Andreas, as well as my 2 miscarriages in the first trimester.
T Had changed over the 3 years since we lost our first and, he had longed for this baby too, but I just couldn't forgive him... I'm not sure I have till this day, we could never have made it as a couple, but we're the best of friends now, just like before we fell in love.
When I made the decision to quit trying for another baby, I was no longer on guard against a certain type of thoughts and, I often found myself sitting with my sister's son on my lap, wishing with all my might that he was mine.
I had Alex of course and, I know that I was lucky to have him. He gave me something to live for at my darkest hour. But I will always wonder what it would have been like to have his brother here with us; and what would he have been like? Who would he look like? What would his laughter sound like? How would his little hand feel like in mine? So many questions; and I'll never know the answer...
Today I finally asked my mom how she survived after losing my brother at birth. She had her mother she said. She was such a nice and caring person my grandmother and, I know that she too had lost a baby at 7 months gestation, so she would have known what my mom was going through.
That in it's turn makes me wonder who was there for her. Perhaps she lost other babies too... It is 10 years between my uncle and my mom you see and, that wasn't very common back then. I hope somebody was kind to her, cause I know that my grandfather probably wasn't and, nor was her mom...
My mind is taking me in so many different directions today, but I'll finally get to describing the rest of this terrible day...
As I have mentioned before, my son attends the music school here in the city and they're setting up a Lucia concert at the concert house to celebrate hope and light every year.
Chrissie and her fiance and sometimes my dad will always come with me to these events,but things were going to be a bit different this year...
My sister's fiance had to work this time, so she had to come on her own and, as for my dad, we're very glad that he made it to the baptism, cause he really needs to stay home and take it easy.
He recently had a slight heart attack... So slight in fact, that he didn't even experience any pain and, the doctor things that he probably had it in his sleep, since all he's noticed is that he's been extremely tired lately and, that he's been getting out of breath for no reason. He wasn't even going to go to the doctor at first...
Isn't that like a man...
He is scheduled for an ultra sound tomorrow, so we don't really know how much damaged the heart attack has done yet, but with the diet he keeps, literally no exercise and, all that smoking he is very lucky that he got off so easily and, the doctor told him so as well.
He really needs to start taking better care of himself. Me and my sisters have been trying to get him to improve his diet and levels of exercise for years. I can only hope that he takes this for what it is; a warning and, a motivator...
In stead my mom was going to come with us to the concert. It would be her first, as she's been too sick to go for quite some time now and, before that her work prevented her from going.
Little Squeaker has a cold and has been miserable all day and, to make things even better it was also poring down out there when it was time for us to go to the bus. We debated back and forth if one of us should stay home and who that one should be, but decided to give it a try and just leave early if it didn't work out.
We had just closed the door behind us when I realized that I hadn't printed out the tickets yet and, then all hell broke lose.
Alex and my brother had borrowed my laptop and forgotten to put the charger back and, of course I couldn't find it.
No panic at the disco however... I just forwarded the email to B and tried to get it to work from his computer instead. It shouldn't take more than a minute...
Except he's got Windows7 on there and, of course, I didn't even know where to find internet Explorer in that OS, so after looking around for a while I had Alex's cousin rung get B so that he could fix it... Still no panic; it'd only take a minute once he got back up here.
Or that's what I thought, cause it turned out he didn't have Acrobat Reader, so he couldn't print out the PDF-file from his computer.
Easy enough to just go download the program right? Wrong!
You see it automatically picks a language based on your location and, of course everything on the website was now in Swedish... Which meant that he had to give the machine back to me...
When we finally got the freaking tickets printed we had 25 minutes to go until the concert was suppose to start...
Then my sister decided that she wouldn't go, cause she just couldn't deal with the stress of walking in there late... This thyroid business has still got her tolerance for stress reduced to nothingness.
My mom decided that she wasn't up to it either, cause she wasn't feeling good...
Alex's cousin wanted to stay here and play video games and, B decided to stay here with Squeaker to keep him out of the rain.
So I went on my own...
I'm not gonna have Alex stand there looking around for us only to be left with the notion that nobody cared enough about him to come to listen and watch.
There's another crucial little detail as well and, that is that he was too sick to go, but he went anyway cause it would be his grandma's first concert. She even asked him to do it for her sake...
In the end it was good that she didn't come, cause there had been a mistake with our tickets, so I had to climb up several stairs to get to our seats and, she would never have been able to get up there, but it was a disappointment just the same and, it may be unfair, but It kind of felt like she stayed behind because she thought that my sister would stay over here and hang out, which she didn't, she just went home....
If truth be told I was so upset about how they all acted that I spent most of the concert choking back tears. I just thought it was so mean to Alex not to at least try. More over, they always start the concert late anyway and, I still had 15 minutes to go when I got there.
It's been a long time since I had trouble controlling my emotions in public. It's not my style. I want to go and hide somewhere and be left alone when I'm sad. But sometimes the tears just fall anyway, no matter how hard I try.
It didn't use to be that way, but now, songs and movies and all kinds of things can make me cry. Gone are the days when "Titanic" was the only movie that had ever stirred something so deep in me that it could draw tears.
I even broke down at a restaurant in Stockholm once during that terrible summer 2010, all because they played a particular song and, I thought it was over between me and B. I didn't sit there and boll obviously, but tears were falling... No one noticed however, that's one of the advantages of going out with blind friends..
As for today, I'm not sure how I made it through without crying. The first part of the concert is always the lucia songs and, it's so beautiful that it brings tears to my eyes even without the extra stress added to it.. Not to mention the months and months without sleep before and after the arrival of our little miracle.
On top of all that I am now also getting sick. I was so cold that I was shaking while watching the concert and, I still can't get warm. Just what I need now with all the preparations for Christmas coming up...
If Lucia is coming around with hope and light this year; she had better hurry up and come on over... If she gets here fast enough she may even get to join my pity party...
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