Scared to sleep.

Since the end of February I've been scared to sleep. Every night I dread going to bed, every morning I wake up in cold sweat, glad the night is over.

It is March. We are approaching the one-year mark with lightning speed. The year was so long, the days of misery, the nights of nightmares. Now it's almost over. I wonder what will be on the other side of March 25, 2012? Will it get better? Is there some magic button that makes memories of Amelia easier and dreams of her happier? I doubt it.

Last few days I've been relieving many memories of Amelia's week with us. The seven days she was ON earth, from the Friday of her birth to the Friday of her funeral. While I always remembered the events of that week, my mind seems to have hidden the little details from me, to save my sanity I guess. It took almost a full year to grief-work through the onion layers that hid the horrors of THAT week.

The memory of how I allowed my midwifes to bathe Amelia, her one and only bath that I didn't do, because I just gave birth and after trying to gain energy from fruit juices was, well, doing a projectile vomit of said juice. I knew our time was limited and could not get up, so it was best for them to wash her and bring her back to me after all the juice was gone. Still, I never got to wash her myself. Ever. Never.

On the day of her funeral we had an hour to spend with our baby, just one hour. I held her little hand in mine the whole time. Somehow I never picked her up, never held her in my arms before saying goodbye to her little body forever. I was scared. As a new mom I wasn't ready to bury my baby. I was ready to cloth-diaper and breastfeed, attachment parent and love and cherish. I was not ready to bury her.

So tonight, at 3:22 am I don't want to go to sleep, I don't want another memory to come up, I don't want to accept and let go of yet another thing I DIDN'T do with Amelia.

But I do accept these two things. I do have a choice not to and if anyone dares to tell me otherwise, they can just pretend to be me for a year and then we'll talk. So I make a conscious effort to accept an let it be. Still, I will be waiting for the sun to rise tonight.