So, I'm in a little better place now than I was this morning. It's a relief to not be crying over everything. For me, and probably everyone else around me.
The appointment at Kids Path was difficult, but helpful (??). My contact person, Kate, is very kind and understanding. She looked through the decisions we'd made for the birth plan and said she would type everything up and have it ready by next week. There are still two decisions that we haven't made, but one can wait. It can even wait until c-section day.
The other decision - much bigger, and much more difficult to think about. Picking a funeral home.
Is there another name for those? Because I can't keep typing that. I may just refer to it as 'f.h'.
Maybe (HOPEfully), we won't need to actually use an f.h while we're in the hospital. BUT - Kate did encourage us to think through it before Elliana is born. Because although it's excruciating to think about it now, it will be even worse if we wait until we actually have a need for it. When she was asking about the f.h., I just cried. Couldn't even speak. She asked if I might be able to have a friend make some calls for me, just to gather some information. I couldn't think of anyone. I don't want anyone to do it.
So Kate is going to do it. (HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF) She's going to make some calls to f.h.'s in and around our area to gather some information. And she'll have it ready for me next week to bring home and look over with Jason. I can't fathom doing that. Maybe by next week, I'll be able to think about it.
Kate asked about how our children are doing. This was probably the most helpful part of our conversation. We've noticed some things going on with several of the kids recently, and it didn't really dawn on me until yesterday that maybe they are struggling with how to respond to all of this. Elijah knows a lot. He's a thinker - he doesn't like to talk through things very much. Levi understands some of what's going on, but I think most of what we've been seeing in him has to do more with how he's responding to my emotions. Seth and Missy don't understand quite as much, but Seth has been clingier recently. Especially at home - he wants to be held more, carried more, just close to us. Missy can be hard to read - she's been struggling with defiance and sass for a while. Not sure how much of that is related to what's going on.
Kids Path offers counselling for older children, starting at about age 4 or 5, depending on maturity. We may go ahead and get Elijah in to talk with someone in the next few weeks since he's already trying to 'deal' with this. It might really help him. And us. They probably wouldn't see Levi until later on.
It did help to talk with her about the kids. Hearing her say that a lot of what we're seeing is normal for children who are going through something like this really helped. Maybe our kids haven't actually been possessed for the last week or two.
I think the last 7 days have been full of too many difficult things - ultrasound, birth plan, research study, check-up, Kids Path. I'm tired. Spent. I wish I could just push pause and take a break from all of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment