Funeral Plans

In three days, I had gained back all of the fluid the reductive amnio had removed for me. Six pounds in such a short time... then more and more as the days passed. On the actual date that I was 30 weeks along, my body was technically under the stress of a 36 week pregnancy. That left four weeks from the date of my last appointment until I would most likely go into labor. It was a scary thought. We hadn't finalized plans at that time and we weren't ready to face the ordeal of birth just yet.

Thankfully, it's been a week and no particularly poignant signs of labor. We met with Dr Breland and he suggested we get another reductive amnio to ease the strain. He was going to look into what it would take to get the necessary tools required for the procedure, but he wasn't sure we could actually go through with it here in town. I've been dealing with the pain and haven't felt the absolute need to get the procedure done again. My hips are badly pinched and they do their wonderful socket-jumping routine quite often. It gets hard to breathe, mostly at night, and my enormous belly has grown exponentially in just a few days. My body was so stressed one night that my leg randomly cramped up and I managed to pull a muscle while trying to relax it. I'm a mess. Walking more than a few feet is nearly impossible now and I'm back to maneuvering around in public in a wheelchair.

My hormones are absolutely crazy and I find myself falling apart at the smallest things. Our children have been coming down with random fevers the past few days, and our daughter's new symptoms had me so panicked, I literally collapsed into tears while hiding away in her room. It's nothing serious, in fact it was just a few mosquito bites, but the fact that it -could- be something serious had me inconsolable. I was fine after just a few minutes of the absurdity, but it shows just how nuts the whole situation has made me. When you realize that your children -can- actually die, it puts a terrible strain on every waking day. I'm terrified something stupid is going to happen and I'm going to lose another one of them. Every time we're in the car, I'm sure we're going to crash. Anytime they climb too high on the slide, I'm sure they're going to fall. Anytime they disappear around an aisle, I'm sure I've seen them for the last time. I'm in constant panic mode. My body is already pushed to it's limit and now my mind is getting that way, too.

To sort everything out and make sure we were ready, we visited the funeral home today. Felicia, the woman handling the arrangements for us, was sweet as can be and was really very understanding about our babbling and complete lack of knowledge. We picked a casket right away, signed the necessary paperwork and asked a few dumb questions. When Felicia asked us if we had any songs we wanted to play at the service, we were dumbfounded. What do you play for someone who's never heard music? She has no favorite song and we can't exactly pick out a tune that reminds us of her, since we haven't met her yet. There were just a lot of little things that usually happen at a funeral that -won't- be happening at hers. We still need to plan the programs, but everything else is done.  We looked through some examples of programs and were shocked at how many infant funerals they had organized. Many of the front covers were photos of deceased children, covered in makeup and posed gracefully. It was horrible. All I kept thinking was, "We can't put her picture on the front." Felicia treated that fact with great poise and offered us a few suggestions.. rubber ducks, clouds, her name in yellow, things like that. I'll be working on putting something together for it later tonight. It's a daunting task.

All together, the funeral is only going to cost $1,400. That's a HUGE chunk off of what we thought it was going to cost, but the funeral home isn't charging us for any of the services. They're only charging what it's going to cost to pay for it - the price of the casket, the price of the plot in the cemetery and the payment to the gravediggers. Everything else is free and we couldn't be more thankful.

So, now, it's all ready. It's just up to Beckett when she wants to show up and start the terrible process. Every day I'm sure is -the- day, but we still manage to go about our lives relatively normally. We've finished decorating for christmas and our children even got to see Santa today. We're working on our recipes for thanksgiving and i'm especially thankful that we have the sanity to do so.