After Last Week

Last week was pretty sh.it. I just felt awful and depressed for so much of it. To be fair to Michael, sometimes i can be a real B"TCH. He should be allowed to have A-H"LE days too. I just worry that we will have a family that includes living children, and I will lose myself more in holding the peace between Michael and the world. I hate that he feels the need to give out put downs all the time, and doesn't even notice. I do feel scared that he will do the same to our kids just as he does to me, my neice, our pets (and yes, I know animals aren't that intelligent, but he uses a 'tone' with them, they get confused so easily when they haven't done anything naughty).

He does love me, and I guess I do love him, although the focus these days is on the tangibles of our relationship - kids, house, budget etc.
The first months of my pregnancy, I had attachment issues myself with the baby, I didn't feel affectionate towards it, and the exhaustion, the inability to eat anything, and all the other stresses involved didn't help any. I felt awful sometimes at how badly I wan't to love my bump, but couldn't. I even bought a book called 'How to Bond with your B.ump', which only made me feel worse and cry. It was full of suggestions for doing physical activities which my doctor had banned me from.
Those first months, I was struggling to settle into a new, perfect job with the uncertainties of how child-rearing would affect that. I was struggling to make plans for my baby, when I felt so much resentment for the physical discomforts I was experiencing. Michael and I argued a lot. Being pregnant made me immediately do the best i could to look after myself, albeit with a lot of days when I just didn't have the energy to pack a healthy lunch, go for a walk and get home to do the housework after a an 11 four work day. Being aware of pregnancy makes you a parent. It's up to you how you live up to that.
Michael and I argued over the deadline to parenthood. He felt that we would only become parents AFTER she was born, I struggled to explain that actually, our lives had already changed; staying out late and going to pubs wasn't really my something I could do anymore. Nor should he. Same goes for getting smashed at home every time he had a bad day. If he wanted to, he should go out with his mate on the way home from work, disappear for hours then come home drunk in the middle of the night. According to him, we could think about all the preparations later, it wouldn't take much to get ready to live with a baby, His new life as a father didn't start until she was in our arms.
I'm sure we aren't the only couple to argue like this, but it got so bad he would pack his little bag and sit at the train station after the last train had already left, pretending he was going to visit his friend, then come home again. Sometimes he went away for a couple of days at a time, wouldn't speak to me. It was bloody awful, the more I tried to impress upon him how important it was to sort it out, the more he pulled away and acted like a complete tool. We discussed abortion. I have been cautious my entire adult life to avoid becoming pregnant before I was ready. I never wanted to be a single mother, sharing custody with a dead-beat loser Dad, but that's how life was looking. He wouldn't talk seriously to me, I couldn't get a straight answer when I wanted to know If he wanted to work out our problems, or give up on everything, including our baby. I didn't want an abortion, but no way could I have lived like that for much longer. He said he didn't see the need to even talk about it, to think about what we should do until we had passed three months without miscarrying. I'm also fairly certain our fears of another miscarriage added to the uncertainty for both of us.
We eventually managed to work it out, after a month or so of fighting. By the first trimester screen we were both very happy and excited, looking forward to the journey to come. We had even made a few trips to baby shops together, checked out all the cool stuff, the expensive stuff, the stuff we never had time to buy.

When we found out what was wrong with Olidea, he was wonderful. It feels awful to say it, but during the hardest times, the weeks before and after her birth and death, He really was amazing. We found a closeness in our grief that we struggle to feel in our everyday lives. He's not the easiest person to live with, and neither am I. We are both bull-headed, stubborn and self absorbed at the best of times, but it's good to know that when we really needed each other, when we were tested so hard, we made it. And we are a better couple because of it. I don't like to think it, but the loss of our baby has given us something I never thought we would have. A future together.