u/WaterFiles

I'm seeing lots of posts already about MILs forcing OPs to come to MIL's Christmas for grandbaby's first Christmas. Not round here, partner!

We do every other Christmas with my family and his. However, I am newly pregnant and no one knows yet. I offered to spend Christmas with his family again this year even though we did last year. This way, next year, when MIL tries to pull something, i will have ammo to say "well, we went to yours twice in a row. It's my parents turn."

Oh I'm experienced in her guilt trips at this point. I'm planning Christmas 27 already, MIL! And it's not about you! Christmas this year is gonna be so sweet knowing that my baby won't have to spend it with her next year. It's a bummer that she has made me have to be so conniving, but I'm not going to spend such a special first with her and her opinions.

I was roughhousing with my nephew the other day (he's 8). We were "karate" fighting on the couch and I accidentally came down on the side of his neck. He cried out and we stopped. I checked his neck and gave him a little neck massage and he was fine. I must have pinched his muscle. That was in the afternoon. Eventually he went home with his mom.

That night as I was trying to go to bed, I couldn't stop thinking about how my nephew might go to sleep in the night and never wake up in the morning. Maybe I tweaked his neck in some weird way where there were no intial signs, but some kind of delayed issue that would cause death. I freaked out and was bawling for hours and couldn't sleep all night. It took everything in me not to call my sister and check on him. I knew logically that there was no reason to suspect death and I didn't want to scare her. It wasn't real, but the emotional tole it took on me was very real.

The next morning, my sister came over with my nephew and he was fine. Seeing him walking around was such a relief to the emotional side of my mind. That night was the worst one I've had since I lost my son to a cord accident in March.

I think I might just be scared of death. My baby died all of a sudden. He was perfectly safe and then his cord moved slightly in such a way that caused his death. Now it feels like children can move slightly wrong and die. I am so afraid. Maybe part of me believes that my baby's death was my fault. My nephew's neck pain was my fault and maybe that is why I reacted in the way that I did. I don't know what to do with these thoughts.

I had a 39 week stillbirth in March (cord accident). It feels wayyyy too soon to get excited, but I am. I can't help it! I am still very much so grieving my son, but it feels like a dream to think that this could really happen. I really, really hope that I get to keep this one. Is there anything you late-term loss moms would have wanted to know early on your second time around?

I am not really looking for other movies/shows with MGG. I am more so hunting for other tortured genius characters to swoon over. What do ya have for me??

Losing my son was its own agony. Now knowing that I won’t ever have a child of my own is a whole other kind of nightmare.

I don't talk to my MIL. She has made it clear that I am not family, that my only use is getting information about my DH, so I don't come around anymore. She and my SIL have a close relationship. MIL needs to make every decision in SIL and DH's life. If she doesn't get to, she pouts and cries, breaking down. DH doesn't care. He lets her pout and moves on, ignoring her until she's done. SIL can't handle it. She always folds and does what mom says.

So what do I care?

The thing is, I like my SIL. Outside of her family, if i would have met her independently, i think we would have been friends. SIL has been reaching out lately more and more since I stopped talking to MIL (about 4 months ago). I thought she wanted to be closer, to become friends with me. All of a sudden, SIL wants to go shopping. She wants to get coffee. She wants me and her to take her son to the pool. I thought she was just wanting to hang out. That she liked me?! But then she started mentioning groups, inviting me out to things "with the girls." Now, every time I see her, she asks me if I want to do something with her and MIL later that week or the next week. I am running out of excuses why I can't go. Why I was able to come to coffee with her, but i don't have time for dinner with her and MIL.

I know that MIL just wants to see me because she can't control DH anymore. She thinks that she can control him through me. She probably wants to launch some bright idea for his life on me and get me to agree that she knows what's best for him and I should get him to do whatever it is. It could be a small as deciding he needs to wear a certain shirt she likes more, to as big as he needs to work on repairing his relationship with his father. Either way, girl, I'm out!

Its just a bummer realizing that SIL didn't really care about getting to know me and this is probably just her mom pulling her strings trying to get me in the same room with MIL.

It has been 5 months since we lost our baby. I wanted to be a parent, but my husband really, really wanted to be a parent. When we came home from the hospital after the loss of our son, DH was a warrior. He packed up all of our son's things so I wouldn't have to see them all over. He doted on me after my c-section, helping me sit, stand, and lay down. He talked to me and didn't clam up. We discussed our feelings and worries. He was such a blessing to me in the worst time of our lives.

Fast forward about two months after loss and I was feeling better physically. I was also in therapy; still devastated, but talking to someone about it. This is when my husband started to go downhill. He finally let himself breathe in our loss because he didn't have to take care of me as much. Work started to be hard for him. He had anxiety about everything. DH decided not to go to therapy because he had a bad experience with it when he was a kid (parent's divorce).

Fast forward to now, 5 months, and DH's friend told him that his wife is expecting. These are long-term, couple friends of ours. DH was angry, jealous, and hurt. It was a blow. He was suddenly having panic attacks at work and feeling like he couldn't breathe at home. He decided that it was time to go to therapy. He's been to one session. IDK if it has helped so far. I know one session won't solve it, but I guess I was expecting him to have at least a positive reaction to it and he didn't.

I just don't know what I can do to help him. He was such a blessing to me in my time of need which was in those initial first few weeks. I want to be able to be a blessing to him in the same way now since my head is a little more stable. What do I do? I know that men grieve differently than women, but I am not sure how. I am not sure if more or less talking will make things better or worse... if i should distract him with activities outside the house... if i should leave him alone. I don't know.

I (32f) have a personal relationship with Jesus. My husband doesn't. When we lost our son in a stillbirth at 39 weeks, my church was wonderful and brought us meals every day for a long time. Some women from my church came to pray with me about once a week. I remember a few different women asking if I was angry at God. I told them each that I wasn't angry at God, but it felt like he was angry at me. It felt like I was being punished for something I didn't understand. If God has a plan, then why was this the plan? Did I do something wrong?

Now it’s been a few months and I don’t think that anymore. I don’t think that my baby’s death was a punishment from God. I still don’t know the reason (or if there even is a reason), but I don’t place the blame on God or the doctors or myself. My baby’s cord accident was just an accident of nature.

What brings me to Reddit is: I have had such a hard time going to church lately and have been skipping a lot over the summer. Everyone at my church knows about my tragedy. When I was pregnant I asked on-stage for the church to pray for me for an easy and uncomplicated birth. Now when I come to church, it feels like people are upset by the sight of me. I don't know if that's really how they feel, but it feels that way. It feels like I am a reminder that God doesn’t answer prayer or that he doesn’t really protect us. I don’t know how to shake this feeling. People used to light up when they saw me at church and they just don’t anymore. I don’t know if it is just in my head or if that impression of me is real. Will I ever feel like I belong at this church again?

My husband has always been timid of travel. I would like to start him out by traveling nearby. We are from MN and have a pair of dogs. I would love to take a road trip in Aug/Sep for a week and bring our dogs with. We both work remotely, so I figure we could pack up the dogs, drive over the weekend, work from a new place for a week and see the sights in the evenings, then drive back the next weekend.

Where should we take our dogs? This would be late summer. I think outdoors is best. Anywhere beautiful that we could walk our dogs or even a really impressive dog park would be cool. This trip would be mostly about getting out of the house and used to being in a new place for awhile. I'm thinking about putting the dogs in daycare one of the nights so we can do a fancy restraunt or something, but the rest of the time we would have the dogs with us. Where should we go?

I used to be able to search by a location. I would use instagram to research how cute locations were for almost every trip. I would even search places like my local arboretum and sort the pictures by "recent" to see if the tulips had come in yet to see if it was worth going yet.

Also, now you can't even see the pictures as pictures anymore. If you search, all of the results show up as reels. It takes longer to save things and transition from one picture to the next. So annoying!

Instagram is now built to show off professional pictures and videos to support scrolling through the algorithm. I can't use it to help me curate my own pictures for travel anymore.

It has been almost 4 months since my son's stillbirth. Am I regressing? Consistently for the last week I have been waking up in the night and can't get back to sleep. I go to bed around 10 or 11pm and usually wake up at 7am. Lately I've been waking up between 3 and 4am and I can't get back to sleep. Tonight I woke up around 1:30am. What?! I got a drink of water and thought "surely it is early enough where I can get back to sleep!" No. Now it's near 4am and I'm still awake. I don't know what's happening.

When I try to get back to sleep, my mind remembers some new, random thing that I had forgotten from my loss and it keeps me up. Tonight I was thinking about this random doctor that came in the next day after my c-section. He was young and swaggering around the room making small talk and asking questions with a big smile. It was so annoying. Who the heck even was that guy? Not my real doctor that did my c-section that was incredible. Just some random next-day doctor. Read the room, buddy! I had forgotten all about him.

I lost my son on March 27th at 39 weeks. One of my oldest friends gave birth to her daughter on March 26th, the day before. This boy would have been my first and this girl is her fourth and final. We live in different cities, so we don't get together much, but we texted and talked all throughout our pregnancies. It was so fun to be pregnant with her. She was already three kids deep and knew everything.

I was still in the hospital recovering from my c-section when I got an incoming video call from her. I didn't pick up. She hadn't told me that her girl was born yet, but I knew that the video call would be of her with her new baby. She kept calling each day until I finally called her on the phone a few days later and told her about my loss. She just listened. She was incredible. Since then she has helped me grieve and I have felt so comfortable talking to her.

I think it was in May when I finally went down to visit my family (she lives in the same city) and met her for brunch one of the days. She asked if she could bring her baby and I told her that I would love that. The time together was wonderful. We both talked about our birth stories and caught up. Her daughter was so beautiful. I felt no sadness in the moment.

Then I went home from that trip and bawled my eyes out for 3 days straight. At least 3 days. I guess I don't remember.

Since we don't live in the same city, usually me and my friend text to keep in touch. Not every day or even every week, but she is always there. When we do talk, it is like no time has passed... but I just don't have the energy for it lately. I haven't reached out since we got together. I can't make myself come up with things to say. If my son had been born, I would be texting her constantly. I would be asking questions about what the heck to do with him. I wish I had more words to reach out and keep her close. I wish it didn’t hurt so much to think about her and her new baby.

Yes, after the fact, it was very hard being around her new baby and her baby will always be a constant reminder of my lost child, but I would never want to lose my friend.

I don't know the point of typing this all out. I guess I am just feeling conflicted. It was probably a mistake to visit my friend and her new baby so soon after my loss. I don't know. I'm glad I got to see her and I'm glad we got to talk. I miss her.

She is just another thing that this loss has taken from me.

Hey you guys <3

Has anyone had luck with finding friends IRL with similar loss stories? I live in MN and I have been hunting for some kind of IRL group to join, but I have been getting discouraged. I found two events to try but they both were let downs.

The first was a "parents of stillborn babies" group about an hour away from me. I was told when the meeting would be and I made the drive, but then no one showed up. I texted the leader of the group to see if I was in the right place and she texted me back that I was, but less people go in the summer. She told me that I should try to come back next month, but she didn't know I was from far away.

The next place was this "bereaved parents" event at a breast milk donation place that I had donated to. When I showed up, I felt dumb for not realizing that there would be children there. Usually I am fine around children, but at that place specifically I kept feeling reminded that I was the only one there without a living child and I couldn't handle it. I left without making any connections.

IDK I just want to be able to connect so badly, but I can't seem to find anyone else that does. Is this a crazy, impossible ask? Maybe most moms who have gone through stillbirth don't want to talk about it? Maybe they don't want to leave the house? I wish I could find someone else like me that I could see with my eyes and talk to.

A little back story: the doctor that delivered my son was incredible. He was just the random doctor that happened to be on call when I found out that there was no heartbeat. I had my c-section the same day. It was such a mercy to have a doctor that was so sensitive to my situation and great at clearly explaining everything. I would love to go back to him, but at my 6 week pp appointment he told me that he was moving and switching to a hospital that is almost an hour away. I was crushed. I can't make that work.

The OB that did all of my clinic appointments is still there, but... idk.. I can't go to her. She was fine, but I just can't face her.

How do I find a new OB? I have an appointment with a nurse practitioner at a new clinic near me to try to feel out the place. What do I ask to find the right doctor? Is there a way to feel out if a doctor will be sensitive to stillbirth before seeing them?

My first time around, I went to a few different OBs before I picked one, but I wouldn't want to have to do that again.

My parents and sister live about 2 hours away. Usually on mother's day and father's day I go home and spend the day with my parents, sister, and her kids. We bring our dogs. It is always fun chaos.

But not this year. This year I stayed home with my husband and we watched movies all day. Mother's day wasn't as bad as I thought. I didn't feel much more pain than normal. I guess I was distracted, which was for the best.

Around mid-day my mom called me. We usually talk on Sundays. I felt so guilty for not calling her. I love her so much. When she called, I wanted to tell her to have a happy mother's day, but the words wouldn't come out. I kept feeling like I was about to cry when I thought of mentioning it. She told me about how my sister visited and how her kids were having fun splashing in the hot tub. There was some silence. I didn't bring up mother's day and neither did she. I'm glad she didn't. I would have started bawling.

I wish I lived closer to my family. I wish I could go visit for an hour whenever I wanted. There have been times when I have just wanted a hug from my mom, but I can't drive for 2 hours crying and blocking my vision all the way to get there.

I don't know. I am just sad today and every day and I am missing my mom. I still feel guilty about not wishing her a happy mother's day and not thanking her for being such a wonderful mother to me. I want my mom!

I'm new(ish) to reddit. Sometimes when I am reading a random post, the comments of the post will be like "this is a bot" or "nice try, bot." Something like that. I don't get it. Why would there be an automated post anywhere? Do people get paid for posting and so they want to post a lot? Like an AI generated post maybe for views?

But that doesn't really make sense because I've noticed that one of the "clues" that it's a bot is that it is a new account, so they can't be getting paid to a new account, right? What's going on here? And why???

Look, I've always been fat, alright? I wasn't ever worried about that. I've always thought my body was sexy at my plus-sized weight. I loved my shape.

However, this new body has taken some getting used to. Even when I was pregnant, I wasn't liking it. My breasts got all droopy and I widened out at the hips in a way I wasn't used to. I didn't like it and I still don't. I don't know if losing weight would even help. It feels like my overall shape has changed.

When I was pregnant, I kept telling myself that it would be fun to be this cute, older, pudgy mom wearing bright colors and smiling a lot like a cartoon character. I even bought some heart-shaped glasses that I thought were so fun. I stopped caring about being sexy and was leaning into this idea of being "kooky" and bright instead. I consoled myself by telling myself that a woman could have the body I have and still be fun and important as a mom.

Now that there's no baby, I have no solace in my new body. I am so embarrassed to look this way. I know that I'm "still a mom" and whatever, but now my body feels like such a burden, just frumpy and old and... different for no reason. I guess my sense of identity has changed. I don't know how to get my confidence back.