Putting the "Ism" in "Defense Mechanism"

I've always used humor as a coping technique.  Whenever things are really serious, I'm the one to be counted on for an inappropriate, frequently ill-timed joke.  It's served me well over the last 32 years, but now I've come across the one circumstance I can't seem to find humorous.

When I was in the hospital waiting for the ultrasound to find Emma's heartbeat, I still didn't realize how serious things were.  I was joking with the nurse as she asked what medications I was on, if I drank alcohol, if I smoked ("Does crack count?  No?  Then no.").  The second we found out Emma had died, I started sobbing.  I didn't know if I'd ever stop.  There was nothing to joke about, no way to make things light-hearted.

Right after I gave birth to Emma, Jeff and I spent fifteen or twenty minutes alone with her before our families came in to see her.  When he came in, Jeff said, "You have to be strong for them."  So I shut it off.  I don't know how I did it, but I shut everything off.  It was like I left my body and was watching the events from someone else's perspective.  It was all very sad, but it seemed far away.  Jeff told me later that I was a rock all day.  I was just doing what he told me to do.  But it was perceived as strength.

So that's what I've been doing ever since.  I have my private moments where I cry, but when I'm around anyone else who is getting upset, I just shut it off.  I keep comparing it to "The Vampire Diaries" when any character "switches off their humanity."  I wish that at 32 years old I had a more profound literary comparison, but my brain has been marinating in pop culture for the last 16 years, and this is the best I've got.  I'm not sure it's the right approach, but it's kept me from weeping openly in public for the last five weeks, so it seems like a good start.

I feel like I should be able to joke or make some witty comment about everything, and it would be better than this shutting down approach.  But, again, there's no humor here.  There's nothing funny.  And it seems disrespectful to Emma's memory to try and find something.  I've laughed almost every day since she was born, and I continue to find humor in the every day.  But not in her circumstances.  Never.  And I think that's okay, that's part of this process, is discovering that I can't resort to my defense mechanism for everything.