Angry and sad.

With Shaughnessy's birth has also come the emergence of the 'Motherbeast'. The Motherbeast personifies all the primal, raw feelings of protectiveness and nurturing that have flared up in me. It's overwhelming, to say the least, and sometimes kind of scary. Seeing my daughter endure all the things she's had to endure so far in her tiny, short life has been like poking a stick at the Motherbeast and I get truly angry. There's so much frustration and helplessness in having a preemie that you just want to BLAME someone, take it out on someone and make them FIX it. I literally want to resort to violence at times, and I'm surprised at myself.

Which brings us to the other side of things. Because when I'm not feeling the protective fierceness of the Motherbeast, I'm feeling the frightened guilt of a puppy who knows it's done something bad and that there's a reckoning coming. I did it wrong. I didn't carry my baby until she was ready to come out. My body was so inhospitable that I couldn't make it a safe place for her to stay. I FAILED her and she has to suffer for my inadequacies. Isn't someone going to punish me for that?

It's been drilled into me by many people (doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, nurses) that these feelings of guilt and shame and self-blame are normal, that every mother who suffers from pre-eclampsia has the same thoughts. Intellectually I am thankful to know that. Emotionally, it's hard to hang on to it. I know that my part in this wasn't easy, that it wasn't my fault, that I could have died from the pre-eclampsia as well and that having Shaughnessy when I did saved both of us. But I visit the websites that tell me how she should be developing in my womb, still safely tucked away in a warm, pain-free environment until being born a fat, healthy full-term baby and I mourn that for her. And for me. And for Andrew, who has had a painful few weeks and has had to juggle work, illness, worry and stress around all the hospital business, not to mention having to quarantine himself away from his brand-new daughter almost this entire time. He hasn't been able to comfort himself with sitting at her bedside, giving her hand-hugs, holding her from time to time. He's had only pictures and my reports on her sweetness to satisfy his paternal instincts and it's just not enough.

I know this will all get easier. We'll look back on this time as difficult but necessary, and it'll seem like such a short blip in the bigger picture of her life. Right now, though, it's fricking hard.