I’m too sappy for these shows now

Tonight’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy has me weeping into my tissues, and my nose is already runny enough what with this cold. I won’t spoil it for anyone in an earlier time zone or people who have used their Tivo and won’t see it until another day, but the basic gist of the storyline is that Miranda Bailey’s young son is brought into the hospital after an accident and requires emergency surgery.

I’m only halfway in and so I don’t know what will happen to Tuck yet (but of course I’m hoping for the happy ending) but watching tough as nails Bailey completely break down over her baby is killing me. I can’t handle these storylines anymore. I have so much trouble with TV shows and movies where a child gets hurt or sick or dies or is in danger of dying. I used to love Law and Order: SVU because I love the characters and the actors who portray them but it’s rare that I can sit through an episode now because most of the stories involve horrible, god awful things happening to kids and it’s more than I can stomach.

When my first daughter was not even three months, I sat up in bed at odd hours of the night, breastfeeding her with the television on low to CNN and I sobbed hysterically over Lacey Peterson, not just for her, but because of her unborn baby.

These things all bothered me before, it’s not like I didn’t care, but the incredible internalization that happens now when a child (even a fictitious one) is hurt or killed, the stabbing feeling in my stomach when an Amber Alert is issued, it’s all just overwhelming. I have tried three times to read The Lovely Bones and I’m sure it’s as good as everyone says, but I would have needed to read it before being a mother because I have never made it further than the first 50 or so pages because it’s too hard to read; I’ve given up and placed it on the “give away” pile.

Do you internalize too? Does it ever go away when your kids get a bit older?