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. 

Failure

1 in 120. This statistic has been on my mind since I read it. 1 in every 120 births ends in stillbirth. It is extremely disturbing to say the least that this many women have to go through such a nightmare and have to find some way to cope with it. Over the past days since I read it, though, I have found it oddly comforting to think that if that many women go through it and find some way to walk through the pain and carry on with their lives, then I probably can too. It’s a strange sense of connection that I have to women I don’t even know, but it’s such a particular experience, such a particular kind of grief, I feel like I could talk to any of them like I know them. I think too of women in the past. Long ago, when infant mortality was something that was probably sort of expected and a healthy baby and child was not the usual. What those women had to endure….and now so many centuries later and there are still many parts of pregnancy and birth that remain just the same. Some mysteries of that process that still can’t be seen of fixed even with all the technology we have.

The other thing I think of is the silence that goes along with these reproductive problems…problems of all kinds. I can understand it, even though for some reason unknown even to me I have continued on the path of sharing my loss. If something like 20 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, and of those that don’t we get the unexpected statistic above, then a lot of women have to be sharing a lot of the same experiences. I am sure it is that as women, as mothers, we all deal with these things so differently and also, when does it come up in normal conversation? Probably not a lot. There are other reasons too, reasons that I don’t really like to think about. Reasons like guilt and fear. It seems so crazy. How could you feel guilty about something that you had absolutely no control over? I certainly didn’t think I felt guilty, but I have noticed that I inexplicably keep feeling the need to justify what happened …. justify it even to myself. I keep reminding myself that it was a cord accident. That my body didn’t fail me, that there was nothing wrong with me, that it was just simply a terrible accident. This is true, but I keep wondering why that is so important to me? There are many causes of stillbirth, and often, I think most of the time, the reason is unclear even after birth. So why is that distinction so important to me? Fear of being a failure. I know, I know. I am well aware that I am not and that no one thinks that. I mean, I have never heard about a pregnancy loss or someone’s infertility problem and thought anything remotely like that. But still, in the back of my mind, I know that is what I, at least, am afraid of. I am afraid of looking like a failure to other people. I guess there is something so basic about reproduction that we feel like if anything bad happens we are somehow responsible by default. The women who suffer with fertility problems, women who have random disorders that cause problems in pregnancy or women like me who have a baby that is born but never lived on this earth… aren’t they just all random, or bad luck, or part of God's plan in the end? So, of course, failure is a completely ridiculous feeling to have in such a situation. I have a feeling though that just as I know many women stand beside me with all kinds of losses related to reproduction, I have a sneaking suspicion that I may not be alone in my illogical fear of feeling like I failed.

Today is Christmas Eve. We woke up this morning with my son between us. My husband whispered in his ear that Santa was coming tonight. His eyes lit up with the magic of a three year old as he turned to tell me the wonderful news he had just heard. I smiled too, almost totally meaning it. I reminded him that it is also when Jesus was born. “Like baby sister” he said “Baby Jesus and baby sister are like twins.”

These past days have been rolling along a little better….just heavier. I finished reading a book. An Exact Replica of a Figment of Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken. It is about a woman whose first child was stillborn and she writes it right after the birth of her second child. Many things she wrote spoke to me. One passage in particular described in words I don’t have what kind of grief I feel. It is not the same kind of grief as most. It is a special, specific grief when you lose a child that you never really had.

“After most deaths I imagine, the awfulness lies in how everything has changed: you no longer recognize the form of your days. There’s a hole. Its person shaped and it follows you everywhere, to bed, to the dinner table, in the car.

For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We’d been waiting to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old lives.”

The hole for me is baby shaped, but I knew so little of her I can’t fill that hole with memories. Those are mostly awful. I can’t fill the hole with my imagination…imagining what I would be doing now, or how she would look. That would surely kill me. It just remains a hole. A reminder that nothing and everything is missing all at the same time.

On Saturday we took down her crib. I can't tell you how I did it. I would be lying if I told you I did not take one of the Valiums that I left the hospital with, but that doesn't ease the pain. It just gave me the tiny bit of strength I needed to just start, but once I started, I was somehow able to continue. I had planned exactly what I would keep and what I would give away. I only made two changes. One is that I kept her crib. My son still uses his as a toddler bed, so we had bought a very small crib for her knowing that we wanted her in our room for several months. It was plain and black. We didn't decorate it with bumpers and bedding. Just a single pink sheet waiting for my baby to come home. I had planned on giving it to a charity so that another baby could use it now instead of me saving it for who knows when, but for some reason I decided I wanted it. If we have other children will it be a comfort to get out that familiar crib, or will I be too scared to be reminded of the terrible loss to put it up once more? I don't know, but I realized that I will know clearly when that time comes. I gave away all the clothes that I had purchased or were purchased just for her. The ones that I had out, folded in drawers waiting for her arrival. I don't want to get attached to things because my ache is for her. I only want reminders of the life that was, not what life could have been. Her monogrammed sweater and hat, I kept and a blanket to hold on to. Other than those clothes, I was ready to summarily put them all in a storage tote to go, until I saw one little pink dress. It was bought for her by one of my students. I loved it so the day he gave it to me. The card simply read, "I wish her to be like her mother". It made me cry and it certainly makes me cry now. So when I saw it, I stopped. I realized that someday, someday I might have another daughter and I just might give her the dress that belonged to her sister. I realized that maybe that would not hurt as much as it seems it would looking from where I am now. It might be beautiful. I know clearly that my son will always have a sister and my husband and I will always have a daughter. I saw her, I held her still warm from my body. She was mine. She is mine.

I woke up today with my son in the middle of my husband and myself as usual. I was able to sleep...I have been able to sleep. I am not sure how. Maybe its the pain medicine I am still on or maybe it is sheer emotional exhaustion or maybe, and this is my hope, it is some peace in my heart. If it is peace, it is shattered as soon as I wake up. I open my eyes and roll over and see her crib.
I know that today is the day I picked to put many of her things away. I have thought carefully about what I will keep, what will be be displayed in our house, who I will give her things to, but the reality of folding up those tiny clothes - the clothes I unwrapped from their their beautiful packages at her shower and dreamed of putting her in - hits so hard. I grabbed the tiny pink and green blanket that I have been sleeping with and held it tight. I closed my eyes again and thought for a slit second of waking my son up. Just to feel some life. But I know I can't use him to feel my void, I can only be grateful for his presence that helps me through each day. So, instead, I held her blanket and began to pray. To pray for myself. To put the parts of verses and comments and wishes whispered in my ear from from friends together into thoughts for myself until I could get out of bed...knowing that I will get through today...like I did yesterday...like I will tomorrow. I know there will be some joy today, some tears, but the sadness of not having that life inside of me, or outside of me, that loss of the hope I had in her, my baby girl, will be present all this day.

It has been exactly one week since I was told that my daughter died. I was 34 weeks pregnant. Yesterday was her funeral service. When we went to bed last night, my 3 1/2 year old son saw that I had brought to bed a blanket that I had picked out for her. He asked why I was sleeping with it. I told him it was because I missed baby sister. He put his hand on my face and said "I don't want baby sister to be with Jesus". I reminded him that none of us do but that she couldn't be with us. To that he thought for a moment, yawned, and then said "Tomorrow I will fix this. I need your help tomorrow momma...to fix this."