Four months tomorrow...

It has been 17 weeks today. Four Months Tomorrow. 17 weeks ago I woke up pregnant. I went to work pregnant, I went to school pregnant...and then I after talking to the doctor who ultimately delivered Ryan I checked myself into the hospital just after 11:30pm pregnant. What if I had gotten myself to the hospital earlier that night, or even that morning or the day before.....would everything be different? What if we had decided to have the c-section earler...would he be in my arms right now? I wonder this each and every day. Only five short hours after getting to the hospital my son was ripped from me (quite literally). APGAR=0. As I was laying on that table I realized he should have been crying, but still I told myself he'd be fine.....you see it on TV all the time, it takes a second and then everything is fine.....It wasn't until Joe looked me in the eyes, tears streaming down the face of a man who never cries, and told me he had died that I realized he was really gone. As I sat there...staring at him, listening to the doctors and nurses talk as they sewed me up, it was as if I was having an out of body experience. I watched what everyone was doing but I wasn't a part of it. There is a quote I often find myself relating to..."Looking back, I've often thought the doctors should have written a death certificate for me as well as my son, for when he died, a part of me died, too." No...I'm not suicidal - I could never, would never harm myself. But that doesn't mean I don't sometimes think that if something had happened it wouldn't have been the worst thing. Not for me. It might have been better if I had, I could be with my son. It's true. I had a c-section. It's a serious surgery. I could have died. Even though I didn't, I still feel like I did. I live every single day feeling hollow - like there is something missing and without what's missing nothing really matters much anymore. Truth be told it is slowly getting better. I have to admit that. But it will be a long time before I can laugh without feeling guilty, a long time before absolutely everything doesn't make me think of Ryan (and I mean EVERYTHING...movies, laundry detergent, a pencil...EVERYTHING), and Im not sure that Ryan will ever not be the first thought on my mind when I wake up and the last thing on my mind before I go to sleep.

I wish I didn't have to work tomorrow...its going to be a very hard day...