blue

i need to work out. i feel my muscles turning to jelly under my skin, the ache of atrophy. i know that even a bit of activity would help me sleep better, feel better, lose a little bit of the 'twin gut' as i so affectionately call it. i can't get motivated to do anything really, except cook and bake and shop.

the sleep problem persists. i lay awake for hours, though usually my body will relent by 5 or 6 am, i didn't get to 'bed' today yesterday until almost 9 am. i was up when T's alarm went off, fixed him his tea, watched both jimmy kimmel and jmmy fallon from last night, and still wasn't tired. i've tried staying up all night, in the hopes that my internal clock will reset and allow me the tiniest bit of normalcy, to no avail. i've tried nyquil, benadryl, ambien and flexiril. nyquil rendered me comatose for all night and half the next day, not tired at bedtime so no help.
with benadryl and ambien i wake up two hours after i fall asleep (if i fall asleep.)
flexeril used to put me out in ten minutes. nothing at all from the flexeril. 
i am willing to become a reformed night owl, i just don't know how.

i woke up today at 2 pm tired and aching. i couldn't sleep another wink but i was exhausted. i'm hoping i will be able to sleep tonight--maybe before 3am? that would be heavenly.


in the beginning i wondered if my body was responding to having just given birth, expecting i would be up every couple hours, a hormonal kick in the sleepy ass if you will. 
but after two weeks of milk spilled and wasted on my shirts, and five of untimely and unwelcome lochia, awake i remained.
as the cloud of grief shifted me from overwhelmingly confused couch mush to an only slightly less confused and partially upright shell of my former self, the nights only got worse. my semi-clear consciousness allowed me the delight of reliving the events of my hospital stay and the deaths of my children.


my girls died every night for almost two months, and every night i would remember another lost litte shard of information that would serve to cut my heart just a tiny but deeper.

i remember pretending my mom was in the ambulance with me. i could see her face. i smelled her perfume. i needed her comfort and i found her, conjured from a million instants together and the knowledge that she was in her bed, in the middle of the night praying along with me for our little girls.


i remember the doctor struggling to get one last measurement on the worst-case-scenario ultrasound (it was always such a lovely thing, an ultrasound, until you have the one where your babies are still alive, but going to die. i don't recommend) he was having a hard time because my daughters were clinging so tightly to one another he couldn't tell where one ended and the other started.


i remember the wail i let out when the doctor broke my water. it was one of unmistakable sorrow, a mother's desperate plea. i never did ask if any noise came out, or if it was just my heart screaming. i'm not sure i want to know.


as for now, i am in a slight, persistent, fog which makes it difficult to think about things, (like should it be a slight persistent fog or a slight, persistent fog or do i have it right with the two commas? please kate, edit me. so sad...i am college educated, i am a teacher for christ's sake) spell words correctly, process information. im wondering how much of this is sleep deprivation and how much grief. i'd like a nice definite percentage on that one. 
my thoughts are more at rest though, even as my body rebels. my babies don't die every night anymore. they are at rest too, finally settled into their little pink box. 

they don't get to be kids and i don't get to be a mom. i get it.
but someday, some way i will be someone who is living's mom. i will give them the gift of knowing i am always with them, if only in spirit. i hope it comforts them.

for now, no matter how much sleep i get, im going to the gym tomorrow. i am going to run on the treadmill or the elliptical. i can't decide. i have to start living again.