quite tired from fighting with jon/crying last night. i should not read threads on mothering anymore. there is something wrong with me. i hate birth stories. i hate reading about breastfeeding. of course, i love it, but the birth stories, especially ones that somehow end with everything being right with the world with a perfect babe in arms, make me cry, make me remember my own birth and how it was perfect, but not perfect, how all was not right with the world, but the world was filled with injustice and confusion. if i read about the convenience, simplicities of breastfeeding, i am reminded of being unable to nurse alex. i suppose that i feel very proud of all that i have done - my birth, my pumping for 13 months, and yet at times all i can feel is not confident or proud of how i dealt with all that's happened to me, but beat up by it. how do i shift my thinking? when is it going to stop being about me? is it really only sometimes and that's okay? i'm scared. even as i want so bad to be pregnant, i am terrified. i am so afraid that everything won't be perfect (which of course it won't) and i'm afraid that i'm putting too much into wanting the perfect birth and the perfect child and the perfect nursing relationship to heal what i've lost, to somehow prove that i can do it because somehow i've failed. and the guilt that results in feeling like a failure somehow leads around to feeling guilt for feeling that way - like, it's not about me, stupid, it's alex's life now, he's the one who will have to deal with it; nothing happened to me, it just happened. then all last night i dreamt that alex died and it would hit me suddenly, "he's gone" and i would fold under the weight of it, sobbing in my sleep.