Okay so I am a horrible mother

I went to church yesterday, which I should be doing more often but monkey has been a terror in church lately, which makes it hard to justify going.  That being said I had planned to go with a couple we are friends with and they were there to pick up the fish in the the couryard pond, like they do every winter, then they return them in the spring.

Funnily enough in an off shoot of the the story they returned the 3 fish last spring and now there were 9-10 of them, they were getting busy aparently.

So after church we all went down to the pond to catch the fish and bring them back to their house, then have a nice lunch.  Monkey decided to run around the sundial in the courtyard, which was fine till she saw the fish in the pond, and she loves fish.  She came to the edge of the pond to look, and then no one knows what happened, until we all noticed she fell in the pond, bare legs and all.  It was not a deep pond, like maybe 3-4 inches and her head never even hit the water, but man was she mad and COLD.  So we immediately got her out and got her out of her wet clothes and wrapped in our jackets and sweaters.

The part that makes me a bad mom is the fact that I could not stop laughing, it was just so funny to me.  The couple who are also expecting a child in March had to laugh too, she is a graduate of the child care program at CEGEP and loves children, but she was laughing too.  I did have some dry clothes for her in the car, not a dry diaper, but clothes are a good first step.  So I feel horrible for laughing,and it still makes me chuckle now.   I am a horrible mother, can you forgive me?

It's okay to talk about it

It's always been the elephant in the room.  People who know don't talk about it because it upsets them or they think it will upset me.  I have come to terms with what happened, why hasn't everyone else?  I know you think it is impolite to bring up such matters around me, but I welcome it.  I cherish the times I get to talk about it, and answer questions, and be open.  Time has passed and my life has gone on, I know it has affected me and it always will but the pain has lessened.  People who I considered friends, now have stopped talking to me because they think that their having children will make me sad or god forbid I touch them because something might happen.  This is not a disease I can pass on, this is not something I would wish on anyone else.

That being said I was worried when she was born, I was paranoid about everything.  I cried more then than I had in a while, but that time passed as she aged.  Now I have the oldest among all my friends, and they are starting to start too.  And yet people worry that this will happen to their children, that because they know me.  If their children happen to be in the NICU too, I can't reminisce about how great the staff there are, and how friendly and helpful they are.  No because that wouldn't be okay, that means they have to think about things that happened.  Why should it bother them more than it bothers me?  I understand people don't want to be sad, that it is painful for them to think of.

I am tired of there being an elephant in the room.  I am tired of friends walking away, and people tiptoeing around me because they don't want to hurt me.

And I do think of it everyday, but my life has moved past the trauma, and this elephant is getting annoying.  I want to be able to say how great the time was, and that I see him in her eyes and smile.  That I am sure he would have been a neuroscientist by now.  But in saying that I know that we wouldn't have her, and she lights up our lives everyday.

I know if it hadn't happened my entire family would be different, people would not have had the problems they did and I feel badly enough, that in essence I caused the problems for them.

I know if it hadn't happened that I would not have become close with the friends I have now, because so many friends ran away as fast as they could, when all I needed was them to be close.

So I am asking and pleading for my "friends" to banish that damn elephant, and get real.  I am here and present ready to be your friend, where are you?  It's like waiting at a train station and the damn train keeps not coming.  I am putting in my effort, where's yours?