where do I even start?

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind of revelations and sadness. If you're tired of hearing about my miscarriages and related troubles, you probably want to move on. I promise the posts for the rest of the month will turn to happier subjects.

On Tuesday, I got a positive pregnancy test. It was so faint that we really thought we were just seeing things, so we didn't tell anyone and quietly hoped. I did call my OB and got an appointment to come in for bloodwork the next day.

On Wednesday, I got more positive pregnancy tests, this time much more obvious. I had my blood drawn to test my HCG levels, then headed up to my first visit with maternal/fetal medicine. Dr. K was pretty awesome; she actually has the same OB/GYN as me, which was great. We went over everything my test results showed, which was more than I had originally thought.

I knew that I had one genetic marker for Factor V Leiden, a disorder that can cause blood clots. Dr. K was pretty sure this was why G only weighed 6.3 ounces at 38 weeks and why I got pre-eclampsia with him. She was amazed that I didn't get pre-e earlier. :( Another reason I'm so so thankful for my healthy toddler!

However, I discovered that I have two markers for MTHFR. I didn't hear which kind, but she said it was not the "worst type" but the "medium." Since MTHFR blocks the absorption of folic acid, this might have been what caused baby #2's base of the brain problems. We'll never know for sure, but there you go. I also have two markers for PAI 4G/4G, which she said wasn't a big deal except when combined with other factors.

So, awesome, right?

Anyway, we formed a game plan for my next successful pregnancy:

• 4000 mcg extra folic acid
• 40 ml of Lovenox in a daily injection
• 500 mg extra calcium (once I start Lovenox)
• 1 daily baby aspirin during pregnancy (and for the rest of my life)
• Lovenox is started as soon as we get a heartbeat at 6-7 weeks. I would get bloodwork and an ultrasound done every month to check the baby and my red blood cell counts. At 32 weeks, the ultrasounds become bi-weekly.
• Switch to Heparin before delivery so I could have an epidural if wanted or stay awake during a c-section.
• Induction around 38 weeks. I would then switch over to blood thinner in the form of pills for the next 6 weeks.

Whew! A mouthful, right? But it's worth it, if it'll get us another baby... Wednesday was also baby #2's due date. I did break down in Dr K's office because there was a lot of talk about baby #2. Also, the office was the same one where we had our extensive ultrasound to diagnose baby #2's miscarriage. Stepping into that waiting room literally took my breath away (we had no idea), and I'm pretty sure the hubs cursed.

On Thursday, I had another positive pregnancy test, but it was fainter. I called my OB for my test results. The nurse called back to say that my blood HCG test had came back negative. In fact, my HCG was only 3. Of course, I was shocked. I thought maybe my tests were too faint and they weren't getting darker, but I thought maybe the baby was just a late implanter. Not so.

Later that day, I started having horrible backache and spotting.

Today, I'm still spotting. I took one pregnancy test this morning which was negative. I'm guessing I'll get my period eventually... or the miscarriage... or whatever you call it when it's a chemical pregnancy (which, by the way, is a nasty term for a very early miscarriage). Should I call it baby #4? I don't even know. Maybe my body just wasn't ready to be pregnant again two months after my last miscarriage? I don't know that either. All I know is that I'm tired of being on the shit side of life's percentages of chance. I want something to go right for once. I need it to go right.

Anyway, I'm gonna take a break from talking about all of this. We'll start trying again immediately, but of course it'll be about a month before we know if we're successful. All of this waiting definitely doesn't help.

the story of miscarriage

This post has graphic descriptions of miscarriage. Read at your own discretion. ~Alicia


I started bleeding for my second miscarriage on the four month anniversary of the D&C for my first. I don't know what to say about my body except that it has timing.

I knew it was likely coming. On Saturday, I started spotting brown discharge. By the end of that day, we had decided to call my OB's office and cancel the D&C scheduled for early Monday morning in the hopes that I would miscarry on my own. Late Sunday morning, I wiped and saw small red streaks mixed in with the brown. My cramps were becoming more like cramps than a persistent aching.

By the end of that day, I asked my mom to come up. I hated asking her to drive the two and a half hours to Nashville from Alabama, especially because she had already been traveling that weekend. But when you need your mama, you do your best to kick your pride and guilt to the curb.

My mama arrived at 6:40pm. At 7:00pm, as I hugged G goodnight, I felt a sudden wetness between my legs. I rushed upstairs to the bathroom and sat on the toilet in time to pass a large clot and a few gushes of bright red blood. The miscarriage was definitely happening.

I called my OB's office and spoke with the on-call doc from the group (who happened to be the one who had delivered G!). I told her what was happening and just asked her to give my OB a message for in the morning. My OB had asked me to call before taking my Cytotec, a drug to induce cervical contractions that she wanted me to talk as soon as I had bright red bleeding. The on-call doc said my OB's nurse would give me a call in the morning to check on me, but I shouldn't hesitate to call back if I had any problems. I know I've said it before, but I love my doctor's office.

By the time I hung up the phone, the contractions and cramps were coming stronger. I put three Cytotec pills in my cheeks; I would take another three after those dissolved. My mom, Dave, and I all gathered upstairs to play a game and distract me. I sat with my heating pad, alternating it between my tummy and my lower back. Every 15 to 30 minutes, I would feel a little wetness and taking off quickly to the bathroom. Usually, I would pass a mass of clots and blood on the toilet before joining the others back in the room.

By 9:30 or 10pm, the contractions/cramps were strong. I was on hydromorphone and strong Ibuprofen pills, and I was still in a lot of pain. After a while, I couldn't concentrate on playing games anymore. My mom and the hubs distracted me by sitting with me on the floor and chatting for the next few hours. I spent most of it rocking back and forth, a motion that really helped, and heading to the bathroom to pass some more clots. Nothing during this time was as big as that first clot.

Around 11:30, I noticed that my cramps had lessened. I was worried about this because I didn't feel like I had passed anything that looked like the gestational sac - it all had looked like clotting. Mom and Dave argued about who would stay up with me; finally, my mom won and Dave headed off to try to sleep for a few hours.

At midnight, I decided that the cramps weren't strong enough to keep me from sleep. I sent Mom off to bed and crawled in next to a passed out hubs. I laid there until 1:30am, dozing, waking with cramps, dozing again, until the cramps/contractions became bad enough to send me to the bathroom again. I passed my biggest clot then, though it still didn't look like anything but blood.

I stayed up by myself until about 2:30 before deciding to try to sleep again.

My mom and the hubs got up when G did, around 6:30, and I stayed in bed a little later, closer to 7:30. At 7:55am, my OB's nurse called to check on me. I told her what happened overnight and answered her questions. They decided to have me come in for an ultrasound to see if I'd passed the fetal tissue. We went in for one at 10am, and the ultrasound technician found only blood clots. It looked as though I had passed all of the sac already. This was great news, and we were all very relieved.

This morning, I did end up passing a large piece of gray tissue that had a large clot attached to it. I'm guessing it was hidden on the ultrasound or something because it was definitely different than only blood. Today's bleeding, after that tissue, has been much more period like with almost no clotting, so I hope that means I'm in the clear now.

All in all, the experience was more positive than my D&C. I hated having to go to the hospital and spent a lot of time there by myself, whereas miscarrying naturally at home meant I could be surrounded by those who love me. I'm so happy my mom made it in time to help me out. The worst of the miscarriage only lasted a few hours, but having her as a distraction made things so much easier. It was also wonderful that the miscarriage happened right after G went to bed, so everyone was able to focus on helping me through it.

I did get emotional at the beginning, but overall, it was less traumatic than my D&C. I'll definitely choose a natural miscarriage over a D&C if I have to in the future, at least for early miscarriages. This miscarriage has sucked so hard because it was my second in a row, but this baby likely never even had a heartbeat. The fetus never looked very baby-like on the screen, likely from severe defects. And maybe after losing baby #2, I'm too jaded to feel like I could be pregnant with my take-home baby.

I'm still mourning baby #2, the one we lost at 14 weeks, so comprehending the loss of a second baby has been very difficult for me. How can someone hold that much grief? How can you mourn two babies when you never got past mourning one? When I think about baby #2, my heart clenches tight. When I think about baby #3, I just feel numb. Maybe I can't deal with even more loss so I'm shutting myself down to keep from feeling the pain. I can talk about this miscarriage easily with my husband and my mom, but when I try to talk to anyone else about it, my throat tightens, my jaw clenches, and tears rush into my eyes.

Does it get easier, the more losses you have? Or do you just utilize your well-worn coping skills?

We get to start trying for baby #4 after I have a regular period. I don't know if I'll be conceiving my second living child or my third angel baby.

love letters to my children

I've been trying all day to write one letter to G and one letter to second-baby, the baby we lost in February. I will write a paragraph, then delete it. I will sit here, on Blogger, for 30 minutes, unable to write anything.

I have so much I could say to G, in these last hours of Mother's Day. But I feel as though this entire blog is a love letter to my first born, to the one who taught me how to be a mama, the one who keeps me going in the waves of loss-caused depression. I love him so much I feel as though my heart could burst. When I lost second-baby, some of my early thoughts to God were "If you take Grayson too, I'll never forgive you."

Because I couldn't. G is the reason I don't linger in bed, the reason I head downstairs instead of showering first, so I can see his little face grinning at me between the bars of his crib. His smile is my strength, and his laughter lessens the knot that constantly sits in my chest. When I hold his hand, I feel like those smooth, soft fingers are tugging me onward.

Whenever he wants comfort, I hold him close and think, yes, this is my purpose.

Losing second-baby meant that I lost a lot of myself. My bits of future and family, my confidence, my innocence that had never touched grief. I large part of me never wants to fill those holes because I'm too afraid of losing the only connection to second-baby that I still have. As soon as I move on, I have to admit that baby is dead. As soon as I move on, I no longer have that part of baby inside of me, the grief that weighs me down but constantly reminds me of the life that's gone.

And I never, ever want to forget that life. I don't want to forget the grief of losing baby. I'm the mama to two children, one downstairs asleep in his crib and one whose body was incinerated with countless other babies and body parts but whose soul lives on in my heart and in heaven, waiting for me to get there.

I want both of my children to only and always know love from me. No matter that I have to put on my parental hat whenever he gets into trouble. No matter if I could never hold him or her in my arms. I want there to be only love in my actions and in my life toward them. I want them to always, at least, know that I loved them.

I guess, in that, there is my love letter.

those pictures of us

I'm wishing, at this moment, that I had taken more pics of me pregnant with baby #2.

My father-in-law got married to a lovely lady on Saturday. I'll post pics soon, especially of G because he was so stinkin' cute in his bow-tie and hat. My mother-in-law was the photographer and she asked me to be a bit of a second shooter for her. A few hours before the wedding, I cleaned off my SD card to make room.

As the photos, about 800 of them, were deleting off the card, I caught a glimpse of me pregnant with baby #2. I was 10 weeks at the time.

A huge wave of panic hit me. I thought I had copied all of the photos off my SD card, but I knew I had to check for my own sanity. I pulled up my folders, scanned through the past three months, and found only one from that photo session, the one I had used to blog that I was 10 weeks pregnant.

I had been meaning to take another maternity photo of myself, especially after I hit the second trimester mark a few weeks later. But I never did. There are no photos of me earlier along than that.

In a blink, I had deleted all of the rest of those photos from that 10 week session. There were a few others, a few of me with G as well. The lost of those hurt the worst. How stupid was that of me? Tears immediately glossed over my eyes. I didn't want to lose it, knowing I had to soon get ready for the wedding, but I could feel the grief welling up inside me all over again. One photo. That was all I had of me pregnant with baby #2. I already had an overwhelming sense of having nothing to remind me of second-baby, especially the lack of a body to bury. This was just one more heart-wrenching kick-me-while-I'm-down moment.

I took a deep breath and traveled further back in my stored photos. To 2011. To Christmas.

Here, here is a picture of me pregnant. The morning of Christmas Eve.

And here, another one. The evening of Christmas Day.

I was 6 1/2 weeks pregnant on Christmas and already showing, my belly bloated and swollen, my face already filling out.

And here, on my 30th birthday. Four weeks pregnant and I knew.

I knew so so early in that pregnancy that there was a new life inside me. I tested positive on a pee stick 8 days after ovulation, when I was only 3 weeks and 2 days pregnant.

There may be others, other photos that other people took of me when I was pregnant, and I cling to these photos because it's all that I have left. I have my hospital bracelet sitting on my jewelry box. I have the scar on my wrist that may never go away, one inch to the left of the IV scar from G's birth. I have second-baby's first ultrasound pictures, and a morbid part of me wishes we had images from the ultrasound that diagnosed the miscarriage. Second-baby had been so utterly beautiful to me at that moment.

I hate so badly that I deleted those photos of me 10 weeks pregnant, except for the one above. I wish I had taken some when I was 13 weeks pregnant, a week before all of that baby was lost to me. I promise myself that I'll do better with the next one, but that doesn't erase the heaviness that always lingers on my chest.

It's been almost 8 weeks since the day we found out about the miscarriage. Sometimes it feels like it never happened, especially as I sit here in my very not-pregnant body. Sometimes it grasps at my running heels as though it was yesterday.

a lesson on grief

If I was still pregnant, I would have been 20 weeks along today. We would have found out the gender of our baby yesterday.

The following blog post was originally written as a guest post for Annie over at Letters to Mo. I've edited it a bit before deciding to post it here. It's heavy stuff, but it suits my mood for today as I think back to that moment six weeks ago when we realized something was very, very wrong.

...

The day before my doctor's appointment, I threw up in the car on my way to work.

It was the morning of Valentine's Day. I had to drive back home with chunks of food hanging off my wrist and bile seeping into my pants. I thought, today can't get worst, right? I thought, damn pregnancy. I'm almost 14 weeks. The nausea should take the hint already. I thought, I gotta call the school and tell them I won't make it. Awesome.

Later, I'd regret most of those thoughts.

The evening of Valentine's Day, my 20 month old son decided to bend over to pick up his sippy and busted his eyelid open on our coffee table. Oh, the jokes! Once stitches were ruled out, anyway. How'd you not see that coming, G? Seeing as how it hit you in the eye. People would sympathize with our toddler, about how he had fallen on the coffee table. Oh, no, we would say. He just bent over. Ha.

This was the day before my doctor's appointment. I still wish I could go back to that day of barf and blood and four hours in the emergency room. That day sucked so hardcore, but I would trade it in an instant with any of the others that have followed. I cursed my pregnant body, thinking nausea was the worst of my woes. I held my toddler close, silently tsking at his random injury that cost us $400.

But that day, my 14 week old second-child, baby #2, my son or daughter, Grayson's brother or sister, was probably still alive. Because by the day after Valentine's Day, second-baby just wasn't.

I have learned a lot about grief in the weeks following my missed miscarriage.  

One. There is a lot of silence you'll want to fill up. Your doctor will search search search  for that damn sweet little heartbeat you were supposed to hear for the first time that day. The flatlines of your baby's no-heartbeat won't make that low tone of the movies that signals that life doesn't exist - it'll simply show up on the screen, smooth lines where there should be waves. The ultrasound technician will check the baby over and barely speak a word to you. You'll be handed so many tissues, the white wads of paperthin stuff spilling out of your hands, but no one will hand you a "your baby died" or "you miscarried" or "sweet Jesus, life will really suck for you for a long time now."

No one will even want to tell you how far along the baby was before it died, and so you'll have to ask. 14 weeks exactly. The horror of that will never go away. It could have happened only moments ago.

Two. A D&C makes things a little quicker, a little easier, than letting nature take its time. But when you wake up from anesthesia with tears streaming down your face, your hands outstretched even though you don't remember lifting them, mid-sentence of "give me my baby back," no one will look you in the eye. The nurses will ignore you until they decide it's time for you to pee now and get out, thank you very much. The minutes between consciousness and when your husband walks into the room feel longer than they are. He says your doctor heard you say, "the baby waved at me," when you first woke up, but you'll never remember saying those words. Only dream every fuckin' night of a tiny red hand held up in the air.

Oh, by the way, you'll throw up in the car on the way home, just like you did on Valentine's Day three days ago. But this time it's not from pregnancy hormones but from the anesthesia that kept you asleep while they took your dead baby out.

Three. Everyone and their sister has lost a baby just like you. A tiny few are worse, a few were further along or stillborn, and your heart can't even consider that pain. But most came early, way early, and you'll wail inside, I saw my baby at 9 weeks and baby was fine. Baby was healthy. Baby was kicking its miniature feet and tossing that head - oh god, its brain wasn't growing right and we didn't even know - and we should have heard a heartbeat that day, not silence.

You'll learn that people are awesome, even the ones you barely talk to anymore. You'll learn that your boss gets nervous, in a way you've never seen him in the past 12 years, when he brings up that in an effort to be a friend, and you'll be really touched. You'll learn that you can't keep your mouth shut about it, and it's not that you want to broadcast to everyone that you miscarried, but that it's all you can think about.  

Four. You'll grasp at any way possible to keep that baby alive in your life. Could I get a tattoo, when I have never considered one before? Could I get a special necklace or ring? Could I print out a picture of the 9 week ultrasound, put it in a pretty frame, and stare at it day after day? Could I get a stuffed lion, second-baby's birth sign would have been Leo, and cry into its fur in the middle of the night?

You'll have nothing but some old ultrasound pics and a hospital bracelet and three extra pounds that won't fit into your old jeans and a $4000 bill. And you can't change that. And you've never felt so helpless.

Instead, you'll cling to your toddler's life, your throat closing up anytime you let yourself pause. Every time he stumbles, somewhere deep inside, you gasp with fright. You'll have nightmares and think he's not breathing until you turn on the light and shout his name and shake his shoulder like a lunatic until you hear his sweet wail because you scared him you freak.

Five. Your toddler has an incredible ability to heal you from the inside out. When you come home from the hospital, he will sit in your lap and not want to leave, touching first the IV bandage on your left wrist and then the hospital band on the other, a furious look of concentration on his chub-chub face. He will hug you tightly and often, sometimes refusing to be parted by your side except for food and sleep. How does he know, you will wonder, that this is exactly what I need because he's not even two and he doesn't even talk yet. Maybe it's because you talked so often about the baby in your tummy and suddenly you didn't. Maybe he just knows in that psychic baby-just-knows-his-mama way.  

Last. Eventually, people stop talking about It, and you don't bring It up anymore because you'll sound depressed or obsessed or something else that makes people uncomfortable. Those on the fringes of your life will nod and think everything is okay now. Those with the down-low might know better. Really, it's because you become better at hiding the crack in your armor, the knowledge that perfect life can so quickly become broken life.

Eventually, or maybe instantly, you'll start to obsess about getting pregnant again in 1 or 2 months. Every twinge in your body becomes a sign of ovulation, and you'll count the days until a possible period over and over. And every once in a while, you'll stop and cry and promise second-baby that you're not trying to replace it, that if you had any choice you would still have him or her snugg-a-bug in your belly and dreaming of finding out its gender. Dreaming instead of refusing testing on the body so that you'll selfishly never know because your heart probably couldn't take it.

Eventually, or at least hopefully, you'll get pregnant again and give birth to a healthy baby with a healthy brain, and in the darkness of 2 am, with that baby tugging at your breast, you'll whisper, You had a brother or sister that we lost. Second-baby was so *beautiful*. 

And the memories, out they will spill.

that female thing we go through

I'm currently on my period.

And before you all run screaming to the hills - "oh my gawd, Alicia, TMI!" - let me say that I'm currently on that period. Oh yes, the first aunt flo after my miscarriage.

I feel kinda betrayed by my body. I'm still grieving, but my body decided almost two weeks ago to ovulate as though the past five weeks were the same as any normal month. It's like my D&C was the first day of my last period, and I ovulated right on time, and here I sit, having my period like it was any normal month.

I know I should be oh-so thankful - and I am! that my body didn't take forever to get back on track. Some women take months to get their first post-miscarriage and some need help from hormones to jump start their system. Some were never regular in their cycles to begin with, and I have never skipped a cycle, never been late. Got pregnant with G in one month and second-baby in two. I certainly know all of this.

And yet. And yet.

I was so happy when Fertility Friend, an awesome site for women who want to know more about their cycles, put up my crosshairs showing that I'd ovulated. Even more thrilled when I felt those tell-tale signs of a period approaching and then it started right on time. We want to start trying for baby #3 soon, and the sooner I started my period, the sooner we could start trying again.

And yet, there's a huge amount of bitterness that hangs in my mouth during all of this, a clench in my heart, a melancholy blanket that settles over me now and then. It's the period that never-should-have-been, another reminder that I'm not pregnant anymore.

I guess that feeling never goes away, does it? Everything will remind me of that, every period I have between now and when I (hopefully) get pregnant again. Every child I have after. Every time February 15th, the day we discovered the miscarriage, and August 15th, second-baby's due date, rolls around. Every time people ask me how many kids I have, and I struggle between saying one or two because that'll open a whole can of soap opera.

I was lucky that I never saw the blood of my actual miscarriage. The bleeding I had after my D&C was just leftovers, like what you have after giving birth. So my period is just that - a period. The bleeding all of us women go through in our lives, the bright red that's so normal for us.

At least for my body, it's just a period. My body has decided it's back to the usual business of being a woman, no matter what my heart says in protest.

last Friday night

I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about this.

It was by far one of the scariest moments of my life. It was also not one of my proudest. I let my fear take over me in a way that I rarely do, and I had to confront once again what happened to me the day after Valentine's Day, when we went in eager to hear our baby's heartbeat and left with having to make a decision of the best way to help my body miscarry a tiny child that had passed away only days before.

It happened deep into the night of last Friday, the first week anniversary of my D&C.

That Friday morning, Grayson had started running a fever, and by his nap, it was 101.6. He had a terrible but long nap, waking several times not moving and only crying, falling back asleep after I shushed him and stroked his sweaty hair off his neck. By the end of the day, he was still running a fever, yet we had no other symptoms that anything was wrong. I thought maybe it was just a cold about to manifest itself since I had just gotten over one, but we just didn't know.

Grayson went to bed early that night, clearly not feeling well. We watched him as we stayed up a few more hours. He barely moved from his stomach-down position besides turning his head side to side.

I woke up sometime after midnight to what I thought were Grayson's cries. They sounded weak and pitiful, like a baby trying to cry out but unable to muster up much strength. I rolled over and turned on the video monitor.

G was still in the same position he had been when we went to sleep. He was clearly not crying.

I stared at him for what seemed like a long time, trying to blink the sleep from my eyes and concentrate on his back. I stared for the tell-tale signs of his back slowly rising and falling, or for a twitch of his feet, or for any other sign of life. I stared and stared and saw nothing.

I was still calm. I touched Dave who was sleeping next to me, and he woke up easily. I asked him to look at the monitor to see if G was breathing. Dave watched for a while and never said anything.

I still stayed calm. "I'm going downstairs to check on him," I said. "Let me know if he moves." I put on my robe and went downstairs. I opened the door to G's dark room, and as I walked to his crib, he never moved. My hand didn't tremble as I placed it on his back, but I could feel my heart thudding in my chest.

His body was a little warm beneath my hand. I waited, expecting to feel the movement of his breathing, and I waited, but I couldn't feel anything.

My hand moved to his shoulder and I shook it gently. Nothing. I called his name softly, expecting him to shift a little in sleep. Nothing. I shook his shoulder harder, rocking his little face-down body side to side, and called his name again and again, my voice becoming louder and more shrill.

Still, nothing.

"Dave!" I ran to the door and turned on the light. I heard Dave moving upstairs. I turned to run back to the crib and made it halfway across the room when I heard it.

Grayson's wail.

I know when I bolted to his side, the light was off again. I must have turned it off before going to him, or maybe the dimmer was on the lowest setting, so that's why I couldn't see him clearly in the dark. He hadn't moved from his belly-down position or opened his eyes. But he was crying the sound he makes when he's frightened.

I had scared him.

His body was limp when I took him out of the crib. He folded his tiny body into me, immediately laying his head on my shoulder, still crying. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Mommy's sorry," I said into his ear. I cupped his head with my free hand, offering as much comfort as I could. My body was shaking. I was trying to hold it together and failing.

He stopped crying fairly quickly. I don't think he ever even opened his eyes. After a while, I put him back in his crib. He found his paci laying somewhere nearby and fell back asleep.

Of course, I completely broke down when I made it back upstairs. I had truly believed for a moment that something was seriously wrong with Grayson, that he was seriously sick or even, so terrible to say, dead. I felt horrible for projecting my own fears onto G, and for so thoroughly shaking up my husband that he barely slept the rest of the night.

After losing baby #2, I feel as though my life is on shaky ground. A 1 in 1,000 chance happened to me, and I don't know how I can ever recover from that. We think, "oh, it would never happen to me," but it did. I hope that night was just a combination of paranoia over Grayson's sickness and some dream I had before checking on him. I hope I won't always be checking over my shoulder with a lack of faith that my life can remain stable and happy, that my children won't be stolen from me without any warning.

That's not any way to live. And I certainly don't want to become overprotective with G, always afraid that he'll break a bone or suddenly run in front of a car. I hope to eventually find peace again.

Bill the Cat: August 1995 - March 21, 2011

Billy the cat seemed fine last week, but we returned from Alabama yesterday, and bam, he had gone downhill fast. He had a long history of health problems, including once when he almost died from liver problems. He wasn't eating or drinking, and he had obviously lost some weight.

We took him in today, and our vet gave it to us straight: kidney failure. Not anything we could do.

Bill was an old cat. We knew his time would be coming up. But it was so sudden. On the one hand, we were glad he didn't have a long time to suffer. On the other, we didn't have a lot of time to sort our own feelings. Walking out of the vet's office with no Bill in the carrier was so difficult.

When I first moved in with Dave, Bill mainly hung out in the office. His brother was a bit of a meanie, and he would chase Bill out of the living room. I spent many months working with him, coaxing him bit by bit. Eventually, he had freedom to move about the house again. Phil, his brother, wasn't a fan of Billy's new-found independence, but Bill didn't care. He'd find any open window and lay in it for hours. Same with sun. He loved in the tiniest bit of sun on the floor.

Bill was a cuddly kitty. He'd cuddle with anyone. Even his litter mate, who lives with my mother-in-law now. He's the larger and darker of the two in this pictures, the one to the left.

 

When Phil (a rather grumpy cat) went to live in a house all of his own, Bill started cuddling with Simon, our younger cat. This is the most current picture of him we have.

He would dry to cuddle with anyone, even if he didn't know them well. He'd try to sleep with whomever slept on the fold out couch, including my mother. Bill just loved to curl up and cuddle, even with a chair.

But he wasn't a fan of being picked up. He'd go all stiff, stare at the floor, and howl his displeasure.

He could be so goofy. The water bowl had to be kept a good ways from the dry food because he'd try to dip the dry food in the water. So weird. He loved to lay and stretch out his little paws. The pic below looks like he's saying, "Pet meee!" Or "Feeeed me!" Or "I will eat your sooooul!"

String was his favorite toy; he liked a good bout with a laser pointer, but string drove him nutso. He also loved to play with Simon before he got to where he didn't want to move around much. When he got really fat after his liver disease, he would back his butt up to Simon and sit on him. Once he could move around more and lost some weight, he would raise his front paws up and body-slam Simon. We'd get so tickled watching this giant cat. 

He was just a big ol' cat. Super fluffy. You could brush him and brush him, and hair would still come out. I loved how much he loved to be pet and brushed. He especially loved being patted on the butt, right above his tail. If you patted it just right, he would topple over with pleasure onto the carpet. I loved that.

RIP, Billy-billy. I miss you already.