::team lead:

I got to be team lead (TL) today. 

It was  big deal to me. 

TL = a job in the NICU.  It changes daily.  Main job is to help assist the nurses on the third floor and try to keep the place under control. 

I have wanted to be TL for years.  But the charge nurses saw some holes in my personality that needed repaired before I would be picked.  They never flat out said that, but that was the reason I worked there four years before being asked to be TL.  (Usually, it takes people about 2 years to be TL.)  They were right - I did have some big things to fix before I was ready. 

But much has changed in me in the past few months...

Click on my infant loss label for the details.

Today was a whipping. 

I RAN around all day trying to stay in front of it all.  For a first time as TL I think I did OK.  I certainly was trying.  Always room to improve.  I got about three times my usually amount of steps on my pedometer. 

I felt good.  Successful.  I took a stressful day and attacked it with my old vigor.

Then the floor dropped out.

For privacy laws and for my respect for the family I will not explain in detail.  But an unfair and very sudden end happened, and I found myself at the front line.

Once the medical aspect became futile, I am really glad that a wiser soul than me led me out of the room. 

When you scratch away the first five layers, I am nothing but a momma who lost her baby and just wants to cry about it for the next year.  And once I left that room, my heart let go and cracked.  But I pulled it back in.  Because I honestly fear that if I ever just let myself GO I will have a long hard road recalling it.

But I still had more time left in the day.  Not much.  But enough that I wanted to finish it out.  I didn't want my first day as TL to end with me leaving the unit to go check myself in to the stress center.  

So, I found some self discipline and I finished the day.  I stayed on task and got it done.  I watched a few funny video's on my phone of Max to calm my brain.  (Josh and I watched the same ones in the hospital with Zack) 

Then I got in my car and started the drive home.

And then I cried so hard I had to pull over and just let it go.  I cried and cried and cried.

I haven't cried that hard since the morning after we got home from the hospital and I woke up with a jolt and for one great second, thought it was all a bad dream.   

I have held back my own pain, but this other mothers pain I could not deny.  The unfairness and suddenness of her loss... Terrible.  Unfair.  It rocked my soul.  So I cried.  For us both.  And I mourn for us both.

And right now I don't know what I want.  Can I still do this job?  If I am going to, especially as the occasional TL, then I have to be able to take the worst of this job too. 

When do I get to stop being a hot mess?  Am I getting any better or just treading water?