I would like to point out, more the benefit of my partner's FL than anything else, that there is more to it than this. I know it is a problem and to a certain degree it is just me working out my own shit. But, we have two kids. One of them is fruquently in bed with us. We work opposite shifts. I know that this is perhaps a list of excuses for my own failure in this department, but damn. I know that it is just a matter of making time, no pun intended, but I am often so dead tired from both my job and my kids that there isn't a lot of energy left.

I know, I need to get over it. This being said I know and care about the health of my marriage and am trying to work on it.

So what's the solution? Whatever happened to my libido? Have I buried it in excuses both physical and emotional? I feel self conscious so I shut down. I feel depressed and don't want anyone to touch me? My medication has obliterated my sex drive whilst making me not so sad? Did I ever have a libido? Am I a self absorbed piece of excuse making crap? I have done a great deal of thought on how to address this issue and fix it and yet at the end of the day all I want to do is collapse. I want to be warm dry and rested in the morning.

What is wrong with me? I like sex usually, and yet I obviously have not been making it a priority.

Maybe no one is right here.

This is going to be something of a brain dump since I haven't posted in a bit and a lot has happened over the last week or so.

1. I had a lovely visit with my dear friend Ursula. Somehow despite the fact that we became friends in the immense turmoil of crazy, destructive respective adolescences, we are still friends. Even after almost ten years of not seeing each other we were able to pick right up where we left off. How rare is that? It is also incredibly pathetic how long it has been since I went out with a friend. I know children dramatically alter your landscape, but perhaps it is time that I found some other facets of my identity again.

2. I give my husband immense credit for relaunching Rocky Horror. It went incredibly well and I feel like a heel for not thinking he could pull it off. The energy was really good. It was nothing like the depressing protracted death of Rocky at the Orpheum. How amazing a difference being back in a good space can make.
In a a related note there was this huge cross section of old friends dating back to my degererate high school days. Some I hardly recognized with how much they had changed. Others will never, ever change. I am not sure what is more discombobulating, the people who have changed dramatically (I think I fall into that category,) or those who are in the same mindset they were when they were 17. I know I wouldn't want to be like that anymore. If nothing else it is exhausting. Perhaps the nicest thing about seeing old friends is the ones who have kept all the good stuff and matured out of the badness. All in all it is making me remarkably introspective about who I am and who I used to be. Not exactly existential ennui to borrow a phrase, but some akin to it. I am almost thirty and it it seriously time to grow up and start doing something with myself.

3. I am having something of a culinary renaissance in my kitchen. I made a resolution that I was going to try to cook as much as possible. I have been having fun making soup and pie and all kinds of wonderfulness. Today it is Meyer lemon angel food cake and Pad Thai. Tomorrow I am making ginger carrot soup. I am pondering making my own preserved lemons and then making a preserved lemon and green olive chicken dish for my birthday. I know it is kind of bad for the birthday girl to make her own birthday dinner, but I am seriously getting to a point with my cooking skill that I feel as though I could cook just about anything. I am not sure if the skill is actually there or just the confidence. But it is kind of heady to think that I can likely reproduce my favorite restaurant dishes at home for better and cheaper. Also I love the internet.

4. We have a spanking new president. I can not really form words as to how amazingly happy this makes me. I have become something of a politics junkie this season and it is nice to have something to focus on and be passionate about.

5. After much thought and introspection I am going to apply for the MLS program at UW Madison. I guess I never thought I wanted to be librarian when I grew up, but it feels me with silly glee thinking about it. I am slut for books and an absolute nerd at the same time. I also inquired at the library about what it would take to apply for a job there. Apparently it involves taking a test with the city and would also include a pay cut. I am not sure if this would be worth it right now, but maybe when I am back in school. Whether I pursue the different job or not, it felt nice to at least ask the question.

6. I am trying to chalk up the ridiculous illness that befell me over Saturday night and all of Sunday to not enough sleep and it being negative stupid outside on Friday and not karmic comeuppance for attempting to have a social life. Whichever it was, I was really motherfucking sick on Sunday and called in. This puts me, once again, on final for absenteeism. It rolls off in March which isn't really that long, but it is not a nice place to be. Sigh. At least I am no longer on death's door.

7. Sylvia has lost another tooth. I have joined the parental conspiracy of deception and fulfilled my role as tooth fairy.

8. Morgan is full on crawling and pulling up. He also is at the everything must go in the mouth phase of things. He is fascinated by the cats and their food and water dishes. Wacky baby. He's cute though even with a dirty sock in his mouth.

There is more I think but my brain feels deflated right now.

My Mommy loves me and is going to make me this wonderful, amazing thing for my birthday.
http://www.laine-a-tricoter.com/picture.php?cat=search&image_id=984&search=keywords:Mission

It's a beautiful brisk shortest day of the year. I awoke before the sun and hauled my quailing family out of bed. Sylvia was not enthused and had a full scale meltdown. So it also being National Haiku day I wrote poetry to honor the occasion.

Good Morning Sunshine
Tiny Tempest Wants to Sleep
Provokes Howls of Rage

At a chilling negative ten we had to scrape the inside of our windshield and windows free of frost. I hope to god that next winter we will have a better car. I guess I better get on that credit improvement plan.

Cold Snow in My Boot
Frost scraped from car interiors
the god is reborn

All in all however I am well pleased with the way this season is going. It could be warmer, the house could be cleaner and we could motivate ourselved into actually decorating before the holidays pass us by, but we have our health and two amazing wonderful children.

I wish all of you the happiest of holidays no matter what you celebrate.

So last night my mother came out to me. This isn't huge news or anything. I've know that she was bisexual since I was in eighth or ninth grade. She and my stepfather had a protracted year long end to their relationship in which my Mom was seeing all kinds of people on the side men and women. But back to last night. She told me this story about falling madly in love with a girl when she was fifteen. This girl died tragically from an allergic reaction to anaesthesia while having her wisdom teeth out. My mother claims she was so devastated and heartbroken that she didn't want to pursue any more relationships with women. Now I know that this friend existed. I've seen pictures and a yearbook dedication. I know that if she hadn't been talked out of it my name would likely be Dana and not Jessica. Not that I would expect my mother to tell me in detail the story of heartbreaking teenage lesbianism gone wrong or anything, but that subtext was never there.

I have a feeling that she is, once again, rewriting her own history to fit her current circumstances. She has had myriad dysfunctional relationships with men her whole adult life including two failed marriages. But I think that while some of the men she chose were clearly not together people that the main reason for the dysfunction has more to do with her own lack of clarity and mental health rather than her really being a lesbian who couldn't admit it to herself. I wonder if this is just an excuse for the fact that is is not an emotionally healthy person. It makes me feel bad for the new woman she is seeing. It makes me wonder what she is not telling her.

As for my Mom being gay, or not. I don't really care. It isn't the kind of thing that really phases me either way. My brother Eric and I are grown and my brother Ben will be eighteen in six months. She isn't breaking up our family. I just worry that this is more of a fad and an exploration for her rather than a distinct lifestyle change. I worry because she is my mother I love her and most of all because she is mentally ill.

I have been bitten by the much famed "mommy jinx". Morgan started consistently sleeping through the night with a 7 o'clock bedtime and I was overjoyed I began to tell everyone how I had won the "baby sleep lottery". This is what I get for my hubris, a whimpering little boy in his crib at quarter to ten at night, a surly husband who now doubts my powers as the boss of bedtime, and a discouraged and exhausted me. He somehow got his head bumped earlier and now Ian is trying to put ice on it. Now he is screaming. Lovely.

For those of you who don't know or care I EP. This means exclusively pump milk to feed my child. This is fine, I have gotten used to it. It does require hardware however. Some of this hardware are small rubber membranes. These are easy to lose via washing down the drain, they rip after prolonged use and my fantastic breastpump has no suction without them. They are also fairly inexpensive and I would think easy to replace. Not so much. Target doesn't even carry them. Babies R Us is out of stock of the packs of replacements but I was able to get two attached to the the valves. This makes absolutely no sense.

Add to this, a car that is on it's last legs (or should I say wheels?). It makes incredibly eerie sounds when we drive faster than 15 miles per hour. We can't afford to get it fixed and we really need to trade it in. I am not sure how to fix this and we really need the car.

My job sucks and my job search is going nowhere. It is very frustrating.

What a day. And they still won't give me my meds. I hate my life.

I wrote this as a comment on someone else's blog entry about postpartum depression and reading it I realize how I have never written about this and how important for my own health it is to get it down.

I have PPD. I had it with Sylvia, and I have this time too. It, like others have said, came on me very gradually. I kept telling myself it is stress, it is situational, and to a degree that was valid. I was in my senior year of college and working part time. After my daughter was born I stopped working and during that time my husband injured his back severely, and lost his job. I was so out of it I didn't take him seriously. I was so busy freaking out about having no money, and new baby that I just didn't take him seriously about how hurt he was. All I could see was that he wasn't supporting me and our daughter. Meanwhile he wasn't seeking treatment, could barely walk and was taking care of the baby full time while I was working. I would cry nonstop, I began to have these little thoughts about how much easier it would be for everyone if I died. I would find myself thinking horrible thoughts about all the ways in which I could harm my fragile little daughter. I would then snap out of it thinking, what in the world am I contemplating? I began having panic attacks, that were also left untreated because I was so sure what I was feeling was normal. That our situation sucked and that was why I was going crazy. I would fantasize about calling my mother asking for a plane ticket and taking myself and my daughter to her house leaving my life and my job and my husband behind. It was the most horrible grueling year of my life and it never even occurred to me that I had postpartum depression until after her first birthday when I began to feel better. I did eventually get on prozac but that was after most of the storm had passed. It is a miracle that my marriage is whole and sound and that my daughter is now a healthy precocious five year old.

My son is three months old and while things are pretty tight financially they are nothing like the black abyss of poverty after Sylvia was born. I am unhappy in my job and also in having to work when I would much rather be a SAHM. Yesterday I started crying in the middle of my shift, in front of customers. Not good. And some of those little thoughts about harming myself or the baby and how much I hate my life have resurfaced. It isn't bad yet, but it could be. I need to call my doctor.

Okay I am a whiner. I admit it. However, things kinda suck right now and I should acknowledge that. We are broke. Broke, broke, broke. This is what happens when you decide to take an extra two weeks at home with your infant son, it bites you in the butt. I had gotten so used to actually not being in the poorhouse that even though this isn't anywhere close to being as bad as it was when we were broke before, it feels worse. But things are improving slowly. We are dealing with the splendiforous amounts of medical bills. We are now on Badgercare Plus which means I can drop my job's lackluster and expensive medical coverage. We get paid at the end of the week and while most of it is promised, we will survive. I have worked out a payment plan with MGE for the stupid amount of money it cost to heat our condo last winter.

I miss my kids and I hate my job. After seven and a half years I make less money than my husband who has been there for one. This makes me so angry. The only thing to do is find a new job. The thing is, I don't know how. I got a form letter from Epic, so that is a no go. I am trying hard not to feel like a complete failure who can't support her family. I am such a mess right now. I have also been ruminating about graduate school, though it would have to be in something that would actually make me money. I would love to have another English degree, but that feels kind of masturbatory right now in the light of how hireable I am with my humanities background. I feel professionally stagnated and mired down by bills I don't know how I will ever pay. Sigh.

And to top it off, I desperately want to be a stay at home mom. My son is three months old and I feel like I am going to miss all the milestones while I am at work. He misses me. I miss him. Sylvia needs the reassurance that her mother is there for her. Right now I get home from work hold the baby till he goes down for the night, wrassle Sylvia into bed and collapse. I have no time for myself or for being more than an adequate place holder of a parent. And having time for my marriage? Forget about it. I find myself crying each day about leaving the kids behind and the days that I am home I am crying about having no energy to do anything constructive or useful.

I'm not sure if this is PPD rearing its ugly head or not but at least now I can afford to fill a prescription for antidepressants should I need them.

I am back at work. I don't want to be, but here I am. Every day that I leave, my infant son gets this wounded, betrayed look on his face. "You're leaving Mama," it says. "You're not supposed to go." And I wish I could stay, I do. Unfortunately that just isn't a possibility right now and explaining foreclosure and reposession to a 12 week old is something of a challenge. I know I should just accept that this is what my life is right now and move on, but it is hard. Being separated from my son aches in my stomach, in my too full breasts. When I return my formerly mellow, placid child cries incessantly unless he is in my arms making things like dinner preperation and care of my daughter next to impossible. In Canada new moms get a year off with their babies and they don't have to face towering medical bills for their births. I can't move to Canada right now, but I wish I could believe that whatever new administration takes over in 2009 could do something to fix the problem. I doubt it they are all to busy fighting over diminishing nonrenuwable resources and lining their own pockets to really look at what is really going on in the world.

It started out fairly well. I got Morgan to sleep next to me in bed last night rather than on top of his father on the couch. Sylvia was bright eyed, busy tailed and ready for ballerina camp at 7:30 am. It seemed as though I had the whole day ahead of me. Two hours later I nodded off in my chair while the baby slept on my shoulder and the next thing I know the house is dead quiet and I have no idea how long I have been asleep. Sylvia is not in the house, our backyard or our neighbors yard. I left the baby sleeping in his swing while I put on some clothes and fortunately found her quickly with no apparent harm to anyone involved. I feel stupendously lucky that my amazingly impulsive child didn't run in front of a car or run off with some stranger she thought was her new best friend. The kid loves and trusts everyone so much and it scares the pants off of me. So we had another talk about keeping in the backyard, telling me when she is going outside, and that strangers with candy are not our friends. I have no idea if it sunk in at all.

Now add that it is in the upper eighties and humid and I have to walk the kids to ballerina camp which is a 15-20 minute walk away and I am totally out of shape so by the time I got back home I was a sweaty wreck. And then an hour later I had to turn around and walk back to get her. To her credit she did better at ballet camp today. No temper tantrums and maybe she is starting to get the whole personal space not hugging and kissing every child she meets thing, we shall see. However I saw how she was shadowing some of the older girls trying to be part of things and how those girls were rolling their eyes and keeping their distance. It breaks my heart and reminds me of myself as a child. I am terrified that she is going to have identical social problems in school to me. My grade and middle school experiences were terrible to put it mildly.

I got us home with fairly little incidence and Sylvia took a nap while I watched "The Aztecs" an episode of Doctor Who from the sixties. Of course this child never naps during the day except when she is sick, so I was a little worried.

I waited until she woke up to start dinner which was maybe my biggest mistake of the day. I suggested turkey burgers but she wanted spaghetti. Dinner was more than half done when I decided that the sauce needed to be bulked up and attempted to open a can of tomatoes. We have the crappiest can opener in the history of the universe and in an attempt to get the top off I drenched myself, my daughter and my kitchen in tomato sauce. I turn off the sauce and try to get us in the shower. Meanwhile Morgan has started screaming in his swing. I try to say that we should get in the shower together, but she will have none of it so I wash up and then get her in. However after sucessfully showering on her own a few times she has decided that she hates it and all baths by association. Not wanting to argue I draw her a bath and wash her hair while she cries "don't drown me Mama, I don't want to die." The baby is still screaming. I get back into the kitchen to discover that instead of turning off the burner under the sauce I turned off the one under the water and I have burned dinner to something resembling charcoal briquets. I proceed to break down in a puddle on the floor.

I got my head together, ordered chinese food that we can't afford, and things have mostly settled down, thank god. Of course how we are both going to eat and pay the mortgage this month is beyond me. My house still looks likes world war three has been staged across it five rooms. My breastmilk supply is getting smaller though still entirely within normal limits. I get three oz out of each breast, but I was getting four last week. I go back to work next week and am so not ready. Our energy bill just went up by 130 dollars. I am terrified about the economic downturn. I am stressed out.

I've been reading these Mommy blogs in which these women describe their days and the creative and wonderful ways in which they parent their children. This makes me feel like a terrible mother when I feed my daughter sugar cereal for lunch plant her in front of the tv and put the baby in the swing. I feel inadequate and I don't know what to do about it.

the proud owner of a Mirena IUD. No pregnancy worries for five years. I say WOO! My son is having a lovely time rolling about on the carpet while Ian picks up Sylvia from ballerina camp. The day is warm and it is my last week of maternity leave. I really don't want to go back, I'm gonna miss my boy so much :( But with much fiddling and driver installation our new computer is up and running. It can burn dvds and I am excited. I know in a week life is going to become incredibly insane so for now I am going to enjoy my bubble of peace.

So I was reminded yesterday that my short term disability checks will stop the week of July 2. I do have the right to a full twelve weeks off of work per FMLA, but how we are going to survive a month on one income is beyond me. This being said leaving my baby in the care of others at twelve weeks old fills me with complete revulsion and despair and at eight weeks seems even more dire. I know that I have to go back to work, we can't afford our life if we don't, if I could somehow spend my days taking care of the kids and letting Ian work I think I could be really happy. Sigh. I think that the current solution is to take the hit for most of July and go back a week earlier than expected. I don't like it, but what am I supposed to do? This time is going far too fast and I feel like I am in this bubble of non-reality. I feel that going back to work is going to be harsh and difficult and I am going to have to figure out an even more insane level of functionality than I have already and that is kind of scary. I also have to figure out childcare. Our weekday person shouldn't be an issue, we pay her. But while she hasn't said it I am certain that my mother-in-law is less than enthused about the idea of taking care of both kids on the weekends. There is probably some shuffling that can be done with our schedules to minimize the need for that, but the fact that she is sending out that vibe bothers me kind of a lot. Of course I could be wrong, but every time the in-laws see the baby they complain incessantly about how all he does is sleep and that he is boring. He is a newborn baby people, get with the program.

In other less than stellar news, I owe UW health a whopping 2700 dollars for my c-section. My insurance only covers 80% and with a twelve thousand dollar procedure, 20% is a lot. I am really not sure how we are going to afford another large debt, and I am tempted to just blow it off. This makes me feel even worse. Have I mentioned that our healthcare system sucks donkey balls?

And lastly I don't know if I mentioned this but Morgan was born on Ian's late grandfather's birthday. We had already mostly decided to give him the middle name John to honor said dead relative, but that Morgan was born on his birthday kind of clinched it. Now there is a contingent of Ian's family that have some notion that this child is some incarnation of Grandpa John or that "Grandpa John is looking over this child from heaven" or whatever. Basically a lot of mumbo jumbo that we as a family don't believe in. The thing of it though is that Ian's Grandmother has blatantly stated that, "I don't care what they named him, I am going to call him Johnny." I can not stress enough how not okay I am with this. Yes it is one of his names, but there was a reason that we didn't choose it as his first name. It was to honor an important person in Ian's past but I just don't love the name John enough. It also completely disregards our choices as his parents and states clearly that they don't approve of the name we chose for him. I am so mad and there is really no way to address this without creating a huge shitstorm of conflict. I guess we only see these relatives a few times a year, but I like them and I don't want to spend those times seething with rage as they confuse my son about what his name is. If Morgan chooses, when he is older, to go by John that is his choice but I will damned if he is going to programmed that his first name is a bad one from the start. Grrr!

This just seems like another step in Ian's family disregarding my part in my kids lives. Whenever it is suggested than any of my kids features look like mine or my family's I am told how I am wrong. For example, my kids have curly hair. Me, my mom, little brother, grandfather Aunt and numerous cousins have very curly hair. It is a dominant family trait, and when I even suggest that it might come from my side I am reminded that Ian and Katrina had ringlets when they were little. I know it isn't meant this way but it feels as though they are suggesting that I was just the incubator for Ian's immaculate seed and that I had nothing to do with who these kids are or who they will become. It is maddening.

Anyway, rant over. I don't even know if I have cause to be upset or if I am just riding the crest of the hormone storm. I hate feeling this way.

4 hours of sleep + a baby who won't nurse + my mother arriving this evening = a very stressed out Jessica.

I'm kind of going out of my mind and so is everyone else in my house. I figured since Sylvia was relatively easy when it came to breastfeeding that I wouldn't have a problem this time around. I think if I spend one more hour lying in bed with my son who just finds my nipples intimidating and frustrating I am going to seriously go batshit insane. I am slso really tired of being married to my breastpump I usually like the husband I have and he is usually much kinder to my body.

So after up and down insisting that we would deliver no earlier than 39 weeks because sometimes babies have issues if taken too early, my fantastic doctor has decided that we should deliver Morgan at 38 weeks 1 day. This is fine with me, I am sure by then I will be at the point where I just want this kid out of me, but five weeks seems so much shorter than six. Less than a month. I told my Mother this evening and she got really pissed off as she just put in her work request with the dates I thought were solid. She rather petulantly complained about how she guessed she was never going to be there for me giving birth. She was really rather a bad sport about the whole thing and I'm not really sure how to react. I mean on one hand I get what she is saying, but this is my birth and it is really very important to me that my actual doctor delivers this baby. He was the one who delivered Owen and has been with me throughout this entire pregnancy. He has a wonderful manner and is also an excellent surgeon. I want him delivering my baby and if the only time that works for him is 6 days earlier than anticipated so be it. Just has to get that off my chest.

This also means that we have about a month to get the whole house cleaned, our furniture moved out of out bedroom and our painting in the bedroom finished, Sylvia's carpet replaced, and to acquire the rest of the baby gear that we didn't receive at the shower. OMG no freaking time. It also occurs to me that we will likely need to find a place for Sylvia to be some of the time on the likely five days that I will be in the hospital. Wow, this is just so much to deal with all at once. It's not like I didn't know that I was about five seconds from giving birth, but seriously. I guess that I am living in denial.

I would also like to give a big thanks to everyone who came to my baby shower. It was a lot of fun and it was great to see you all. Thanks Deviantouch and Jinxedkisses for hosting, it was lovely.

So if being 29 weeks pregnant wasn't enough discomfort I am sick and have been since Tuesday evening. Sylvia woke up with the same cough and fever and oh if she isn't the most pathetic thing in the entire universe, poor girl. Ian thinks he is coming down with it too, isn't it nice that we all know how to share?

Okay I think this is the flu and I know we all got the flu shot so what gives? I have to go to work today, my only remaining symptoms are my hacking cough and scratchy throat and runny nose, the fever has broken. I wish I could stay home, but no suck luck.

Sometimes I am convinced that the Universe hates me.

Oh the frustration.

So I woke up yesterday morning after another night of broken sleep and was having trouble feeling the baby move. Now I know that it is normal at this point to not feel them all the time, but with my history I panicked. So, I called in to work, called the labor and delivery dept. at Meriter and went in to be seen. All told Morgan and I are fine. I suspected as much, but it is good to have the reassurance. This screws me for work however, they just changed the policy on absenteeism and while I have been trying my damnedest to not miss any work this was, at least in my mind, unavoidable. Compound that with the fact that I was late on Monday due to hellish conditions on the road and my absence yesterday I believe that I will be on final warning for absences/lateness. This is something that will not roll off for 180 days. That's right folks, six months. I am in a state of panic. I can't lose my job, we need the money and benefits. But Jesus H Christ I am seven months pregnant and I can't predict when I am going to have another emergency. I may need to do what I did before and sign up for intermittent leave until the baby is born which is only twelvish weeks away. That isn't that long, but what if I have an honest to god emergency? I could be fired, seriously.

Then to make everything more wonderful than it already was, Ian and I are fighting. We have wildly different ideas on how to parent our daughter. He just gets angrier and more abrasive when she doesn't listen. I just don't think that works. I try to be nicer about it and work with her to stay focused. I thought I was helping last night, he thought I was making things more challenging for him and that I should just back off. We wrangled back and forth and eventually she ended up in a time out that she fell asleep during. This was before we had done anything about dinner. Suffice to say we spent most of the evening not speaking to each other and I at first thought things were better this morning, but now I'm not sure. This is so frustrating. I try so hard to communicate with my family and I feel like sometimes I just hit a brick wall. I am so tired from being pregnant, working full time and whatnot and am under so much stress I feel like I could burst. I am scared for my job, legitimately so. I am scared about the health of my pregnancy, whether I should be or not. And now my home life seems to be imploding. I don't know how much more I can take.

I just read the first of what I expect to be many end of the year Christmas letters from one of Ian's Aunts, he has six for perspective. In it she mentioned Owen and his death. It was two or three sentences, that's all. Now I know that this was hard for everyone around us, and I respect that. She talks at least peripherally about how it affected Ian's mom. However there is no mention whatsoever of what a devastating event it was for our immediate family. On one hand I am touched that he was mentioned even in passing, even though she expressed some extremely Christian views of his afterlife. Being watched out for by Ian's late Grandfather in heaven etc. I can deal with this even though it is not my belief system. On the other hand this was our tragedy, and it kind of feels like a cry of "oh feel bad for me and my family this awful thing happened to us" boo hoo pay attention to me. Maybe it is different for other people, but when people around me have died even my grandmother who I was close with, I was sad but I was okay. When people I barely knew died I had sympathy and compassion for those who were grieving. No one new Owen, except for me Ian and maybe Sylvia. We didn't even know him very well yet. It was a huge loss for us. While I am sure that our loss was hard for Ian's extended family, it wasn't the same kind of loss for them. This isn't to say that we didn't get some amazing support during that hellish time, they were there for us. I know this. Maybe I am making too big a deal about this, there wasn't really anything offensive about what she wrote, I'm just very sensitive. I just wish that there could have been some acknowledgement of our loss and grief as the people who have to live with this everyday. It makes me hesitant to tell them about the new baby. Sigh.