Wednesday, November 4, 2015

parenting after a loss

It is amazing at what all changes in life with different situations. I guess it is obvious that every new experience changes each individual, but I am a little surprised at how parenting changes after a loss. Well, I think the way we parent changes many times as children grow, I think that it comes with different set of challenges after a losing a child.
Let me just get into it...
Wow are the threes, and fours so far! difficult!!! why again do they say terrible twos? threes were insane and now fours are coming off as equally challenging. I know every parent can relate, and if you can't, let me know what you did with your child to make them not have bad threes and fours! But the issues with dealing with their tantrums in this age is the fact that you still want to throw a tantrum about how life has changed. At least this is the case for me. There is so much anxiety already built up that it is hard to deal with the crying and complaining and throwing fits. I have to try very hard to try to stay understanding and calm, because that is what ALLLLLL the "great parenting" articles say to do! Clearly those who write this stuff don't spend 24/7 with children, because they would see how impossible that becomes to stay calm and collective while you have a little person screaming and throwing fits. Anyway... With everything going on and that has gone on, I personally find it hard to not get stressed out. 4k really has not been helping either, now we have new bad habits and fits over having to go to 4k but now she has started this stage of where she is afraid of absolutely everything. The other day we were in the bathroom at a store and she was freaking out that their were monsters in the bathroom. Why can't you just tell them No monsters arent real! and that would be okay and they would get over it! Man it is so hard to remember kids are kids when you are an adult and have been harden by this dark world.
Well, anyway, our 4 year old has not been able to really stay in her room since Lua passed away, I think I have mentioned this before... We have had literally 5 times that she has been able to stay in her room over night in a year! And I don't blame her, especially at first, wow I wouldn't expect her to... I did think after the move that that would help some, but not really. I know some people say they let their kids sleep with them or in their room until they are 6! But the last week or so, what has started to happen is that she isnt sleeping at all... she would come into our room and lay awake for 4 hours or so. I just found out this was happening this week when we caught her doing it (which meant we were staying up for 4 hours during the night!) Sleep in my opinion is very important and I can see it in her when she hasnt rested well, we get more tantrums. So our options are to keep up naps religiously, which is ridiculously hard when she gets home late and then trying to put her to bed at a routine time. We still do it, but it becomes very difficult and sometimes it just doesn't happen. SO, when the time changed, that night we had a very rough night, and decided we were going to attempt to keep her in her room and reassure her that things were okay. That night was the worst night ever, I think we all got maybe 2 hours of sleep. The worst part is, now the next night we couldn't give in or else we would have to start all over again! The next night came and after reading article after article on how to keep kids in bed and get better sleep.. I decided to keep her in her room and it was another very difficult night, but it was a tad better! Then the next night she got up 1 time!!! Which was great! Then last night she slept the entire night! Ahhh! it was great! she woke up pretty early but hey it is a great start!
I do feel for her though, because if she had her sister, and they were sharing a room, this probably wouldn't be that much of a struggle for her... Or we would have caught this awhile ago and found easier or better ways for her to deal with this instead of making two terrible nights out of it. At times it really makes you feel like a failure of a parent. First, we have the ultimate fail... we lost a child.. You see those memes that say something, "all these parents are over here making colored spaghetti and crafts, I had a shower today and kept my kids alive"  Yeah I didn't do that. If this was a game it would be game over for me. But now add the stress of feeling like you are a failure to your surviving child for not knowing how to handle new issues that come up, that is when I feel like parenting after a loss becomes totally different from regular parenting. Insanely stressful. Anyway, I'm very proud of her though, and me a little! That she was able to accomplish staying in bed a whole night, even if tonight isnt a success, we had one night that was and that is a great start! She has a lot going on right now (Ha, that kinda sounds funny.... yeah my 4 year old has a lot going on in her life right now... she's so busy.. ) But no really, a lot of changes for 4 year olds, new emotions, going to school and learning more and more every day, so much to be confused about and understand. Plus she really wants this baby out, and i really want this baby to be healthy for her! I'm sure she is filled with a lot of different emotions that I can't relate to because I'm not 4! I think over all she is doing well, I think we could all be doing better, but at least we are hanging on and that I think we can be grateful for!

We have an ultrasound tomorrow.. so I am preparing myself to be depressed for the next month until our NEXT ultrasound, or actually at this point we probably wont be having an ultrasound next month but in a few weeks. I keep wishing for an ultrasound that would change something, but then again I just need to accept what is is. His movements are off and on, never a constant big amount of movements. I really hate that we had to pass down such a crappy condition to our babies, but I am trying to prepare myself that we may lose another baby at some point. We may have another baby with a trach and gtube, we may have a baby with a lot of weakness, or we may possibly have a healthy baby.. I am trying to prepare for it all and it is a weird position to be in. I understand that May might be our only child we have living. I know that we might be back into the medical world struggling every day to let our child live. Thoughts I never would have guessed I would have to be going through. You never really know where life will take you I suppose.

His room is coming together though. I said we werent going to put the crib up, but daddy decided he was going to anyway, apparently he doesnt want to do it later I guess. :) 




I seriously can't wait to put these on him!!!
 

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