Infant Loss Rememberance Day

A few weeks ago it was infant loss remembrance day.  As the days and weeks bring us closer to November and closer to Thanksgiving, I can feel my mood start to change.  I can feel it in myself, and I can see it in my husband and I can see it in my son too.  November 26^th was the day my daughter was born.  It was also the day she died. 

Stillbirth is a different loss than any other.  I often think about those differences.  Its not that the differences make it any easier of harder.  All I can say is that stillbirth is its own sort of grief and its so very hard to describe.  Normally, I suppose that when you lose someone, you mark their birthday.  You can find some comfort in recalling happy memories that you had with that person.  And hopefully, other people remember too.  With stillbirth it’s not that way.  Her birthday is the day of her death.  Her birthday is the day of my worst nightmare.  A nightmare that I had to live through and I nightmare that I don’t wish to revisit (although I do all too often.)   With stillbirth, you get only moments to hold one of the most important people that you will ever know, and you have a lifetime of empty memories that fill your head.  You think about every milestone, every smile, and every little accomplishment that you never ever got to see.  I have a dream all the time.  It starts the moment the nurse took her out of my arms and walked out the door.  In my dream, I realize that I need more time.  I realize that what she is taking away is a piece of my heart.  And I know in this dream that that hole will never be filled and that I will spend every day dealing with that emptiness, so in the dream I go after her.  I follow her down the hall and take my beautiful daughter wrapped in her pink cable knit blanket, back into my arms.  In the dream, I feel her weight, I feel softness of her blanket, but most importantly I feel something that I have never felt in these past 2 years…I feel completely and utterly whole. 

I am not saying that after 2 years I don’t feel joy.  I’m not saying that each day is a black void of nothingness although I remember the days when this was true.  I’m only saying that the emptiness is something that you learn to live with, or live around.  Not everyone understands this.  Maybe it’s because she was only on this earth a short time.  Maybe it’s because for 9 months only I felt her and thought about her every waking moment.  Maybe it’s because in reality nobody knew her but me.  Maybe she doesn’t feel real to them because they never saw her smile, or made any memories with her….neither did I.  But that’s the emptiness I’m trying to explain.   When the nurse took her away, that’s what I was left with…. An emptiness. A permanent lack.  A depravation.  So when people look at me now, two years later, and they see my baby son and they say things like “See, it all worked out”,  it shocks me into silence.  It is incomprehensible that they don’t understand that nothing about that situation will ever “work out”.  They don’t know that she crosses my mind all day long in the same way that my living children do when we are apart.  They don’t know that there is a permanent emptiness in my arms even when I’m holding my living baby.  They don’t know that although feeling and joy has come back into my life, there is a numb space in my heart that cannot be reached by anything.  All I can think to ask is which of their children I could take away and replace with another, but I never do.  I just smile and wish I could be as happily ignorant.

So, I think an infant remembrance day is a good thing.  It is a day to acknowledge that is not quite as painful as the exact day your worst nightmare came true.  It is a day to let people that you know who have lost an infant, know that you remember.  That even though maybe you didn’t hold that baby, or see that sweet smile, you understand that their loss is as real as any other.  It’s a day to reach out and say that you recognize that she lives her life with loss every day.   I know, and maybe you can understand a little too that a lack of memories doesn’t make her any less “real”….she was 5 pounds and 3 oz..  She had her brother’s exact chin.  She had the same huge arches that my feet have.   She had a perfect little black crib, full of baby shower gifts, and a loving big brother waiting for her at home.   She was and is my beautiful perfect baby daughter, and nothing in this world will ever fill up the lifetime of empty memories or the hole in my soul that was created the moment they took her from my arms forever. 

Today was one of those days.  It’s not that it’s totally unexpected.  It’s just that you can be doing the same thing, having the same thoughts and in the same sort of situation that you face all the time and have learned to handle easily, but somehow one little thing will happen and tear every defense you have down.  And it happens in a split second.  You see, I am doing okay.  Most all of the time I can hold it together.  By now, I can even shop for my presents for my friends who are having girls.  I have gotten to the point where I can be excited for them.  I remember not that long ago that I too was shopping for pink outfits and bows and little shoes… and I can do it again while remembering the happiness of expecting my daughter and not just the pain of losing her.  But today it was a number that punched me right in the gut.  All I was doing was taking Lewis into the bathroom to change him and there was a young mother changing her tiny little sleeping newborn.  She was beautiful and I couldn't help but admire her as I held my own baby who looked so huge in comparison.  The other women in the bathroom were admiring the baby too and taking turns asking questions as the mom was struggling with all the clothes and accessories that come with a newborn.  Whats her name?  How old is she?  She is so tiny!  How much does she weigh?  Mom dutifully answered all the questions.  “Ella”  “Two weeks”  “6 pounds, but when she was born she weighed 5 pounds and 3 ounces because she was 5 weeks early” she said as she finished putting her things in her bag and cradled her little baby to her shoulder.

I looked at the little baby peeking at me through sleepy eyes over moms shoulder.  “She is beautiful” I said, already feeling the tears stinging my eyes.  All I could hear was that weight “5 pounds 3 ounces” ringing in my ears.  My daughter was 5 weeks early.  She weighed 5 pounds 3 ounces.  I have spent so many months… nearly years now, consciously pushing the “what ifs” out of my mind.  I've trained myself to never, never even start with the thought….but here it was.  The “what if”… What if the ultrasound had seen the cord around her neck?  Remember when I said I just didn't feel right.  What if somehow I’d noticed before?  What if something, anything could have been done?  All those “what if’s” were peering at me with those sweet little sleepy new born eyes and all I could do was lay Lewis on the table, cover my eyes and cry.

New beginnings

So it’s been a very long time since I have written on my blog…..and there are so many reasons for that that it’s hard to even start to explain.  The biggest reason though is probably the most important to explain and is the hardest.  After our daughter’s death, we felt such an outpouring of love and support.  It was truly incredible.  Looking back at my blog entries, I can still feel the emotions and the heaviness that was in my heart.  I remember the awful emptiness but also that I never felt alone.  In those weeks after, I always felt the loving presence of my friends.  I felt their prayers, and most of all I felt close to Jesus with his spirit and strength flowing through me.

But a few months later, around when I stopped writing, I started to feel empty. Those connections were gone.   It was a kind of emptiness that I didn’t want to talk about with anyone.   It was an emptiness that couldn’t be filled by friends, by activity, by love and… much to my fear….even couldn’t be filled by prayer.  It wasn’t that I didn’t try all those things.  I pushed myself to be with others, to join in, and to talk about her even when I didn’t really want to.  It wasn’t that I even felt bad.  I could do everything that I had ever done before that terrible tragedy befell us, but I was like a robot.  I was going through the motions.  The only way that I could describe it to my husband, who is the only person I really discussed it with, was that I felt someone had turned down the volume on my life.   Everything was still there, but the joy was so muted that to me, I was unrecognizable.  It scared me.  The only thing that helped was that my husband felt it too.  He described it as being in a desert.   Just feeling nothing.

And to my horror, that muted, nothing feeling extended to my relationship with God.  I would pray,  I went to church,  I read scripture, but it was like the words bypassed all emotions and when straight into that black empty pit.  I tried so hard to focus but it was like sand through my hands and at times I felt almost desperate.  I never felt like God turned his back on me though.  There was just a void that I couldn’t bridge and I still don’t know why.  I just know that I always tried to remember that God knows what is in my heart.  He knew that I was longing to be close to him and all I could do is pray that he would open up a new path for me.

And in June I found out that I was pregnant again.

It was something we had hoped for… had actively tried for, but the reality of it that morning staring at the test strip brought me to my knees.  I had no idea what I would face, how I would feel, and how…maybe even if…. I could ever manage.  I have the perspective now of hindsight, with my baby son sleeping peacefully in the next room as I write, but those early days were tough.  I didn’t tell anyone for sure because I was not ready for their reactions and I wanted to be ready, to have down exactly what I wanted and needed from them ready to say.  So, I just existed.  I didn’t do a lot of hoping or dreaming, I just made it through each day and counted down the day until each bloodwork result, until each ultrasound.  And with each test, came encouraging news.  I knew that nobody could tell me the end result.  There was no crystal ball that could show me what my life would be nine months from that point so I just clung onto each piece of evidence of a successful pregnancy and looked no further.

And each night, I asked for God to give me strength and I thanked him…literally thanked him each day for the emotional pain that I knew I would I have to endure because the alternative…of never having another chance to bring life into the world…. To expand my family…. To show my son that a baby coming into the world doesn’t always bring the awful pain that he endured… was much, much worse than any pain that this wonderful and awful period in my life could ever bring.