He Said, She Said

We always cast an astrological chart for each of our babies when they're born.

I'm not a "believer" in astrology as a tool for prediction. But I do think, like anything, it can be used to see patterns in our lives and personalities. And most people who aren't "into" astrology don't understand that your birth chart involves a great deal more than just your sun sign (Aries, Aquarius, Scorpio, etc.) Your birth chart is different from the simple horoscope you read every day in the paper. It's actually a very detailed thing, and provides a great deal of information about someone. In some ways, it's like a snapshot, an image of the soul - or an image of the potential of the soul.

I wanted William's chart. I wanted to see what type of person he would have grown up to be, what his soul looked like at the moment of his birth.

But there was one problem. We didn't know what to use for his "birth" time... because he'd died before he was born. So M. started asking some more experienced astrologers their opinions, and this is what he wrote to me...

*** 

HE SAID:  

The consensus is just about unanimous from the astrologers in the astrology groups I've joined.William's birth time is the best choice.  I feel really angry because, to me, the first breath is so important, like breathing in the world and breathing in your life and connecting with your life...breathing in and saying YES to your life...and he didn't...he didn't do that or he didn't GET to do that.  

I don't know why the breath is so important to me...I mean, aside from the obvious.  I just can't imagine the selflessness of a little soul coming into the world wholly and completely as a gift for us, for others...just as a gift, maybe not "for" anyone or anything...just as a gift.  Maybe we all do, maybe we all come in that way before we take a breath and get bound up in the whole bittersweet mess of it...maybe we get mixed up in the world and have to remember what we really are before we die.  Maybe there are other ways to say YES besides our breath, and maybe there are other ways to breathe, I don't know.  Sometimes saying YES to this, to life, just really hurts. 

And you told me to breathe and let go. 

Part of it is anger that some people don't feel he was alive, or even really "born," if he didn't take a breath.  As a father, I feel I failed him and I failed in general if he wasn't able to say his YES.  One of the first marks man ever left was his hand print...I am so incredibly grateful to you for giving me that drum. We have pictures and locks of hair and ashes...but the thing that holds the most of him for me, the most energy and  power, I suppose, is his hand print on my drum...and his feet prints.  He was here, in this world.  He made his mark.  Death didn't win.  Death didn't stop life.  He lived inside you...his full life...and he made his mark in the world...not the hand print, but his mark.  Death didn't stop life.  It's the best way to die for an Aries, doing that, knowing that.  There is nothing that can ever erase that YES. 

A lot of people have said and written a lot of things to me about William, but the one that has touched me the most has been something so simple...just this morning, one of the astrologers who responded to my question about stillbirth birth times in one of the groups simply wrote..."How very sad, M. "  Haven't been able to stop crying or swallowing down tears since. 

***

SHE SAID: 

He did breathe - through me. I was his breath. 

His YES was the moment you and I joined and said YES to one another. His YES was every moment he spent living and growing and exploring the inside of my womb. He made his presence known to me from his tenth week of life - I think he wanted me to know him, to feel him, as soon as possible. Nine months is an eternity on the outside. Three whole seasons. Why wouldn't it be, too, on the inside? What difference? He opened his eyes, he felt us poking him, massaging him, he heard our voices... all within me. He swallowed fluid, and "practiced" breathing - his chest rose and fell, even in the womb. 

And his heart did beat. For nine months. It did.

And he will, literally, always be a part of me. He's in my blood. 

I love you.

And it is sad, M. So very, very sad.  

***  

HE SAID: 

"His YES was the moment you and I joined and said YES to one another." 

That's the best answer.  That's a full circle...inhalation and exhalation.

Freecycled

I just Freecycled my entire living room set. Couch and loveseat.

Why?

Because I was lying on the couch and looking across at M. and the kids sitting on the loveseat watching while the midwife was checking for the heartbeat and not finding it. I'd had all my prenatals in that room, on that couch, and I couldn't stand looking at it anymore.

Every morning I sat there and felt him moving, waking up with me, his sharp little elbows poking me from the inside, making me gasp and shift, and prompting M. to ask, "What?" and me to just shake my head and smile and mumble, "Baby."

That morning was when I think I knew for sure, some part of me did, as I sat on that couch and didn't feel his little elbows. Quiet day, I thought, and tried to remember a morning when I hadn't felt him...and couldn't. My midwife appointment was that day, I rationalized. He's just tired from all the contractions last night...

Then we couldn't find his heartbeat, no matter how long we looked. He was gone.

And I hated that couch, hated that room, hated that suspended moment in time hovering above me forever. Now I sat there every morning, and I remembered. Maybe some childish part of me believed, if I got rid of the couch, I'd get rid of the memory. Totally crazy, irrational thoughts, more magical thinking, but I did it anyway - I posted on Freecycle, sending my couch and loveseat to a good home, bidding them a fast farewell.

Now the room is empty...but my womb is still empty, and my arms are empty, too.

It didn't change anything, not really, but for some reason, when I walk into that room now, I can take a full breath. For that first instant, I don't think about that horrible day we found out he was gone. It settles in mere seconds later, but for that one, brief moment in time, the memory is held at bay, a momentary reprieve - a short, bittersweet taste of freedom from the weight of my grief.

Even that, just that, is a relief.

Good Enough

I'm a horrible mother.

That's the reason he died. God or the universe or the powers-that-be figured he'd be better off dead than have me as a mother.

On my worst days, that's my secret fear.

Today, the kids are insane - screaming, throwing things, hitting each other, instigating, taunting, no matter what I do or say, the minute I turn my back, they're at it again.

I have no patience right now. I had little to begin with, frankly.

All right, kids, you wanna hear screaming...?

Oh I can scream. I can scream until my voice is hoarse and my throat is sore. I can throw things, too. Their things, my things, anything.

I told you, I'm a horrible mother.

When I was studying for my psychology degree (yeah, I actually have one of those, believe it or not... you might not, on days like today) we read books in the field of infant and child psychology by a guy named Donald Winnicott. This guy had the idea that a mother was inevitably imperfect, but that she could be a "good enough mother" - someone who could generally do a "good enough" job that her child just might have a chance to grow up normally.

I hated that guy.

What a thought, that your child might grow up to say, "Well...my mother wasn't perfect. She wasn't great. But she was... 'good enough.'" Is that what we aspire to, as mothers? Being good enough? At the time, I was offended by the concept. (And funny, how Winnicott never developed a reciprocal 'good enough' father theory... it was all about the mommy, and whether or not she was good enough, and the implication was, of course, if she wasn't, her children's problems were all her fault... *ahem* but I digress...)

Doesn't every mother want to be perfect for her children? Of course we know we can't. I suppose Winnicott was trying to take a little of the pressure off. You don't have to be perfect, mama... you just have to be "good enough."

Does 'good enough' include screaming? Throwing things? Collapsing, sobbing, on the floor and telling your kids, "I can't do this anymore," and later having to explain, "No, I didn't mean I couldn't be your mommy anymore, I meant..."

I meant... something else.
I meant I can't breathe without hurting anymore.
I meant I can't go to sleep without thinking about my dead son.
I meant I can't wake up in the morning without seeing his lifeless face in my head.
I meant I can't go anywhere or do anything, including parenting, without realizing he's gone.

I meant all of those things and said none of them.

"I meant I just needed a break for a minute. A mommy time-out. Think mommy should get a time-out? Want to put me in time-out?"

A chorus: "Yeah!"

There's the solution to sibling discord, right there. Turn the kids against their parents.

My "time-out" involved whatever they wanted, so popcorn and a Disney movie later, my son turned to me and asked, quite earnestly, "Mom, how come we don't get popcorn in our time-outs?" and I had to laugh.

Sorry, Winnicott. I'm not "good enough" for these kids. I'll never be good enough, for these living children, for my dead one, for any of the souls of any more babies out there that might be waiting to come into my life. No one could possibly be "good enough" - and I'm not even going to try anymore. What a strange thought, a silly concept.

What I am is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, very, very human mother...

who loves her children, very very much.

Out of Nowhere

Things come out of nowhere.

We went out to dinner and had a pretty good time. I didn't cry, even behind my menu, at the restaurant. It felt almost "normal" to be out, among people, again. We even took the kids to get ice cream. I could almost have convinced myself that I felt...not happy. Not that. But...okay. Functioning. Able to breathe without too much effort and pain.

Then, on the way home, Harry Chapin's Cats in the Cradle came on the radio, and M. and I were both in tears by the time we pulled into our driveway.

Things like that, they come out of nowhere and punt you right back.

***

M. read my blog for the first time in weeks yesterday. And if I say that I'm angry and resentful that he hasn't been reading it all along - would it matter? It will be weeks before he reads this, if he ever does. I'm trying to be understanding, I'm trying to make sense of his process of grief, and taking the advice everyone seems to give - "Be gentle with yourself, be kind to one another." I'm trying. But trying hardly ever works. (Ask Yoda...)

And I don't know why it makes me angry, but it does. And this anger, it comes out of nowhere... I know he's got a right to read or not read whatever he likes. I know it must be painful for him to read my blog. Hell, it's painful to write. After he read my blog, he said, "Every time I read your blog (me: all... what, three times now?) my neck and back get incredibly tight." His body's usual response to anxiety and anger. It was about all the feedback I got. That, and he said I was glad I had the community I did, and he wished that it was what he needed, too, since it was so readily available. And good for me for finding it.

Good for me. Right.

There are times when I can understand why so very many couples end up divorcing after the loss of a child. Even when you're trying (yes, Yoda, I hear you) to be gentle and kind, it just isn't easy. Even if you manage to keep the lines of communication open, there's a lot of static and it's hard to hear each other through it.

***

And now, out of nowhere, a new job has fallen into M.'s lap. Someone at his work was so angry about the way their company treated him following our son's death, that she gave him a name and number to another place and talked him up to this new company.

So, in the midst of all of this, he's cutting back on his hours at the place he's at now down to four days, and then picking up two more days at this new place, in order to begin building a caseload. That means he'll be gone six days a week, for as long as it takes for him to get enough clients to quit working his old job.

The timing is terrible. But I know he's unhappy where he is, and I do want him to get out of there. I just wish he could quit outright and start at a new place, but health care in America sucks, especially mental health, and there's so not much out there anymore that offers a psychologist a salaried position. Unless you want to work for the government. Or the place he's at, where they treat their therapists like used cars salesmen competing for the top position.

The world is a really twisted place.

***

So I'm paranoid. Can you blame me?

This swine flu thing is giving me anxiety attacks, and now they're reporting a possible case in our state. Like I don't have enough to worry about, now there's a pandemic! (Thanks, Wilbur!) The littles are in school today, but I think I'm keeping them home tomorrow. And the rest of the week. And maybe forever.

We had been considering going back to homeschooling in the fall anyway. I hate the school they're in, and I'm starting to see all the signs I did with the older two of school sapping their spirit and energy. And they, too, are beginning to hate it and dread going (a sure sign it's time!)

Of course, William's death decided me. I want my babies as close to me as possible for as long as possible.

But I was going to wait the school year out. Now? I don't know. This flu thing makes me tremble inside. What if? I know the odds are saying the risk of death is low... most flus kill infants and the elderly. (Should I be grateful I don't have a newborn in my arms right now? Ha. The ironies in this world can knock the wind out of you in an instant...) But I have been on the wrong end of "the odds" now, and my perspective has changed. Considerably.

Where did this thing come from? I feel like I'm being blindsided, out of nowhere, over and over. Maybe it's because I've begun this horrible journey into darkness. I can't see what's coming. And I hate being so afraid.

But just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you...right?

Body Memory

My hormones are shifting.

All the normal patterns are coming back. Migraines have returned, skin changes are happening, my weight is stabilizing. My breasts no longer leak milk every time I cry and think about him. Everything is slowly adjusting to pre-pregnancy levels. Pre-William levels.

I feel as if I'm losing him all over again. My body's mourning is coming to an end. When that happens...what will that do to my heart's grief? Will that dissipate too?

When I close my eyes and try to remember his face - so very clear to me just a week or two ago - the image is soft and bleeds around the edges. I keep his picture close now, not for the same reasons I did at the beginning - the instant relief and relaxation of every muscle in my body the moment I saw it - now I keep it near to remember, because I feel as if I'm beginning to forget.

I don't want to forget.

Last week I asked, horrified, how long anyone could be expected to walk around like this, with every nerve ending on the outside, exposed and raw and tender to the touch... today, I'm terrified at the thought that I might not feel his death this way forever. The pain of his immediate loss was better than this slow losing of his memory. I can remember little things still...the curve of his belly, the wet flop of his umbilical cord, the soft, dark remaining hair on his shoulders that would have fallen out as he grew outside of me instead of inside... but the whole becomes fuzzy in my memory when I try to put them together. I don't want William to deteriorate into a few details. I want him whole, I want to feel his weight, even if it means carrying him like an anvil in my chest.

I want my grief back, open and bleeding, like it was. Today, it feels muted, softer. I'm getting used to the hurt. My eyes are adjusting to the color in this world. I'm starting to be able to see in the dark. I'm no longer afraid of losing my way... I'm afraid of finding it. Yes, I know he will always be with me. But it's changing. The world isn't just moving around me anymore... I'm moving with it. That's disconcerting, after being so still for so long. My muscles ache from the stiff, aching posture of mourning.

Today, a friend offered me something in the way of comfort in this new phase of my grief:

"Did you know every time we carry a child, they leave their DNA in us? So if someone takes enough of our blood, they can find traces of every child we've carried within us, for the rest of our lives. I love knowing that. Because you were pregnant with William, he is part of you forever. You have your own indelible blueprint, your own map physically and permanently stamped inside you, of William. He will always be yours, you will always be his mama. Not even his death can take that away. Maybe we don't know it, but it's a way for them to come back to us sometime down the road..."

I had no idea. But it's true. It isn't just a story, something made up. It's a scientific fact. According to the article I read:

It's part of a process known as fetal microchimerism, in which the mother and fetus exchange certain cells during pregnancy that live on in each other's bodies for years and years.

The fear of losing him began to dissipate the moment I read that, no matter how much my body was changing, adjusting to a state of being without William inside of it. My hormones might be balancing themselves out... but there was a part of me that still held him. Would always hold him, for the rest of my life - he was in my blood, swimming in my veins, pumping through my broken but still beating heart.

The article also said:

One thing researchers have learned, Dr. Gadi said, is that we can no longer be so certain where one person's identity ends and another's begins. "There's no fine line dividing our identities," he said. "It's completely intermingled."

It also adds new meaning to the bond between mothers and children, Dr. Gilmore said. "The old saw is that mothers are closer to their children because they carried them, and in a way that's actually true, because mom is carrying a little of you and you're carrying a little of mom for the rest of your lives."

For the rest of our lives... and perhaps, just perhaps, beyond that. Maybe my friend's right - maybe he is part of me, and I am part of him, and we are all, in some sense, part of each other. And when we go on, however we go on, he will be me and I will be him, and we will be... we will be.

It might be. It just might.

Weathering Storms

I was supposed to go out and plant William's flowers today, but by the time I got my act together, it started to rain. But it wasn't just any rain... it was a sudden storm. My email is set up to tell me about storms, but I wasn't on the computer at the time. (M. calls me "weather girl" because I always know what the weather is going to be - he asks every morning, "What's the forecast, weather girl?")

And this one gave us very little warning. One minute, it was sunny and beautiful. The next, it turned dark, the winds picked up, and the sky opened and began to pour. I called the kids in - they came running - and we hurried around the house closing windows and doors and then stood shivering at the doorwall, watching the lightning and listening to the thunder. Both kids huddled with me, one on each side, and I realized how frightened I am now in the face of nature.

Standing there, I put on a brave face for the kids, but inside, I was trembling. One of the reasons I always check the weather is so I can plan. Another reason - the real reason, if I'm being honest - is so I can believe I have some modicum of control. If I know what's coming, surely I can get out of the way...

But sometimes there's no warning. Sometimes lightning strikes anyway, even if there is a warning. And always, nature wins. Tsunamis, tornados, the new swine flu, a landslide, a house fire, cancer, a stillborn baby... who can fight against that? It's like punching clouds, flailing at fog, snapping at rain, screaming into a storm. What good does it do? 

I can't fight it, I can't avoid it, I can't predict it. I can only stand and weather it, whatever comes. There's no doppler radar, no early warning system. Life is going to keep on rolling, until it doesn't, at least for me, anymore. It's going to keep on keeping on, no matter what I do, what I want, whether I'm here or not, whether my child is dead or not. My fear won't stop it. My anger won't either.

It's a humbling and awesome realization.

A Mother's Heart

I have a necklace I'm wearing in William's memory. I took some pictures of it. (Those are also the blanket, hat and booties he wore in the hospital...)

It's a heart I wear over my own, and it opens, like a little envelope. There's a thin silver heart inside with an engraving.

It didn't feel right to have his name engraved on it. It felt disloyal to my other children, and I didn't want them to feel William had a different place in my life and heart than they did. He is my child, as they are, and always will be. I love them all.

So I had it engraved with this: 

A mother's 

heart knows 

no time

Rainbows

My mother had a child die before I was born - her name was Denise, and they called her "Denny." She was three when she was hit by a car. I was told about it, and there was a grave, but my mother never visited it. She never talked about it much. I knew that I'd had another sister, but that was about it. When I was older and could drive, I went to visit the grave. I was the only one who ever did, as far as I know. My older brothers and sisters (who had been there when she was hit) never talked much about her, either. 

My mother did keep her picture on the wall with ours. She was beautiful - a little blonde pixie with dark brown eyes. But there was no yearly memory of her (I didn't even know her birthday until I was an adult). I always wondered, especially after I had my own children, how someone could lose a child and not acknowledge it that way. I imagined the pain was so great, maybe she just had to block it out as much as she could? 

Of course, now I know what it feels like. But I still can't imagine doing what she did... living as much as possible in denial. I'm sure she thought she was "moving on," but I don't know if she really did. Especially since she once said to me, "When you came along, I was afraid to get close to you, because I'd already lost one child." And I've always been estranged, in that way, from my mother. There's a wall there she put up after her daughter died, and there's no getting past it for me, the daughter who came afterward.

There's a name on this journey for babies born after a loss - they call them "Rainbow Babies." The loss of a child has been like the longest, raging storm, a dark, harrowing place we weather as mothers of those born without breath, but as the clouds begin to clear, the sun finally shines, and there is a rainbow that finally appears...

I was my mother's "Rainbow Baby." But there was never any real joy in it for her - only fear. Fear to risk, fear of being hurt again, fear of loss, fear of loving me. 

I don't ever want to do that to another child.

The other day I was watching Oprah (it's amazing what I'll do to distract myself nowadays...) and the father of Susan Smith's children was on (remember her? The one who put her two little boys in the car and pushed it into a lake? Don't get me started...)

Anyway, he went on to get married again and have another baby... and he held that little baby for the first time and whispered -  I promise you, I won't let what happened to my boys make me afraid to love you. 

That's what I want to be able to say to another baby. I'm not there yet, but I hope to be. As a mother, you always wonder if you're going to be able to love another baby as much, after you have your first and are pregnant with your second. And after you lose a child this way, there's that fear... how can I ever let myself love another baby, get close again? My mother made the choice not to. I don't want to do that.

I don't ever want to let fear get in the way of loving another baby. 

Blame Game

There have been times I've listened to my intuition. When M. had an abscessed tooth a few years ago, the dentist told us, "You might see some swelling in the jaw in the next few days." We were waiting a week, for insurance to kick in, for him to get the root canal, and he was on antibiotics. But that whole week, as the swelling got worse and M. got sicker, I kept thinking something was wrong. The dentist told us to go to the hospital by Monday, if the swelling hadn't gone down, for IV antibiotics. Sunday night, we were going to bed, and I said, "We're going to the hospital now."

That little intuitive voice spoke up and said, "Go now." We were going the next day anyway. M. looked at me like I was nuts. But that voice kept saying, nownownownownownow. So I listened. I insisted. We're going. NOW. And we did. 

Later, the doctors told us that the flesh-eating bacteria he had would have killed him in just a few more hours. I would have woken up next to a dead husband. The infection was 1/4 inch from his carotid artery.

You'd think I would have learned. Following my intuition=good. Not following intuition=bad. Still, I doubt. I look to other people to validate what I'm feeling. I don't trust myself. I told my midwife, "This really isn't my pattern. I think something's wrong. This isn't normal." But she normalized it all for me. Dismissed what I was feeling as just a pregnant mama's irrational fears. I listened to her instead of that little voice.

I can't seem to stop playing this blame game. And I know, it's hubris. I'm not in control, it's not up to me. As much as I'd like it to be. 

I shared the above story with a friend (she knows who she is ;) ) who sent me the following in response:

As mothers, we create and nurture and hold life within us and so we think we really hold the power to life or death within ourselves. We are uniquely qualified to torment ourselves when we can't sustain it because after all, we created it. I'm not religious, but I know by now there is so much more to it than that and it is very rarely truly within our power to control it. We just have enough consciousness to sense that it could have been , should have been , and this gives us just enough rope to hang ourselves with. Don't stick your neck in the noose. Don't take the blame. Your instincts saved your husband, and like any other mother, I'm sure there are dozens of incidents where they've saved your other children over the years. If your baby was able to be saved, they would have saved him, too. I know you can't see it this way right now, but I hope you'll try. No mother should try to bear that blame for something she had no control over.

I know. I know. Logically, I know. *sigh*

I'm going to paste this up somewhere I can see it every day

Because I really, really want to believe it. Truly believe it, and not just tell it to myself to make it all better, or cover up the pain or guilt or regret.

The Monkey's Paw

I used to love the story, The Monkey's Paw. One of my all time favorites. Nothing so creepy as the thought of something dead coming to the door. Something you invited yourself.

It isn't so much creepy to me anymore as sad. And I get it. I understand that mother's wish. If she had just wished BETTER, I think. If she had just been more specific, more clear in her magical thinking...

I understand more than ever the wish for a real monkey's paw, to have the power over life and death, to be the one in control. Would I make the wish? In a heartbeat. Would I die to do it? In a heartbeat.

In the end, the mother who made the wish says to the horrified father, "You're afraid of your own son? I'm coming! I'm coming!" as she runs to answer the door.

But I get it.

It's insane, it's twisted, it's wrong beyond any natural order of things, and yet, I know her pain, her longing to see her son, to hold him in her arms just one more time, dead, alive, undead, who the hell cares?

Today another mother who lost her child lamented that she didn't have a handprint of her baby. I lamented that I didn't have a picture of William's little feet. Or his whole little body, without all the coverings. We don't have a monkey's paw, we can't wish them back. And yet we're still left wishing for little things we can't have because the cruelty of time has now passed - a handprint, a photo we forgot, a bit of their umbilical cord.

Today, mothers with live babies wished for a full night's sleep.
Today, I slept until noon.
Today, mothers with live babies wished for time to take a shower.
Today, I could care less how I smell.
Today, mothers with live babies wished for time to eat a meal in peace.
Today, I forgot to eat.

Today William would have been three weeks old, if I'd pushed him out alive.

Death Dream

I dreamed he died.

The night before we lost his heartbeat, I woke up from a dream that William was born dead.

I dreamed I was in the birthing tub, in our bathroom, and I pulled the baby up and knew he wasn't breathing. The midwife reached for him, but the cord was still attached and I couldn't hand him to her. It was a very short cord. He was lifeless in my hands, floppy, and I knew he was dead, and she wouldn't be able to save him.

I woke up shaking and got up to pee. Just a dream, I told myself. Just a dream.

Now I'm dreaming the nightmare onward - wide awake.

Missing Migraines

You don't know what you've got until it's gone. That's the phrase, right?

Well, sometimes you don't know what you've been missing, until it comes back, and you realized why you weren't really missing it so much...

William gave me the gift of being migraine-free for nine months. 

Thank you, baby.   

Today, the migraines are back - with a vengeance. I can barely move my head.

Might be the weather. Horribly dark and rainy here. But probably the hormone shift.

And crying - either from grief or physical pain - so does not help a migraine. I can't win.

So now I'm in a dark, quiet room, waiting for the meds to work. It's been an hour and if I could remove my head and hand it over to someone else at the moment, I would. Just to stop the pain. I forgot how bad it could get. And I forgot to appreciate being migraine-free when I had that time, in the three seasons I spent with William, and to thank him for the lovely hormone shift that left me blissfully without that horrible pain.

I miss being pregnant and pain-free (at least, in the migraine department...) 

But I would give my head on a platter to have him back again. 

Alone

M. says life and death aren't opposites - birth and death are. The only guarantee of birth is death. And who gets to decide how much time a soul spends earthside? We certainly don't. Time is irrelevant. Who says William's life wasn't full, then, M. argues? Who says the time he spent wasn't the time he was supposed to spend? 

We live life in the continuum. And can only see some things in hindsight I guess. 

But me, I can't help but think of what his life "should have been." To imagine that his whole existence was "meant" to be spent in my womb... what kind of life was it, then, I wonder?

What was it like, living inside of me? Feeling my heartbeat, my emotional tides? I wish I’d laughed more for him – although there was one night I peed myself during MST3K. ;) I wish I'd been less distracted, more focused on the time we did have together. I didn't know it was going to be just that, just those three short seasons, that we would spend. I didn't know, and I guess that's the point isn't it? We never know. We just never know how much time we're going to have.

I did spend time every day with my hand on my belly, just feeling him, sending him love. I knew he was going to be my last, and I wanted to remember the lasts. Like the last first flutters. He let me know he was there very very early. The doctors and nurses and even the midwives looked at me doubtfully when I said I felt him at 10 weeks... but I did. There's no mistaking that sensation, not when you've had as many babies as I have. 

Did he know somehow he wasn't going to get as much time with me, and so he wanted me to know he was there as early as he could manage? 

I knew him from the very first. I loved him before the moment he was conceived. It sounds crazy, but I felt him one morning in bed, half awake, half asleep, about a week before I was even due to ovulate. This sudden warmth and peace and knowing came over me, and I knew it was our baby. I didn't know his name, I didn't know what gender he was... because he wasn't anything, and yet, he was. He existed, hovering, present.

Am I just telling myself stories now, to make myself feel better? I have no idea. I really don't know. 

But I know that when he was with me, inside of me, I was never alone. Even when everyone else was gone for the day, the kids at school, M. at work, William was with me. And that relationship remains probably the most connected I'll ever be with another person. I felt him completely. I knew his waking cycles, his sleep cycles. I felt his little hands up by his face every morning as I sat on the couch while the kids got ready for school, his elbows moving sharply sometimes above my pubic bone, and I just knew he was sucking his thumb or his fingers. His older sister and his brother had, too.

Now I sit in the same place every morning and remember that time with him. It was my time, only mine and his. No one else could have understood it, or felt that same sweet connection, that knowing, that tender feeling of love and care, knowing he was comforting himself until I could comfort him skin-to-skin, flesh to flesh, finally on the outside.

I remember every ultrasound, ever peek I had into the window of my uterus. It was the only time I saw him moving, alive. I so wish M. had taken the time off work to be with me at the gender u/s now. I was the one who discovered we were having a boy - it was the ultrasound tech who laughed and agreed, "Yep, that's a boy." I wish he could have been there for that moment. I do have the video, though. I can see William kicking, turning, rolling, such an active little man. He was communicating with me, even then. He always was. 

Then why couldn’t he tell me, at the end? Why couldn't he tell me he was going, going, gone? What happened to that stream of communication? 

Did he try? Was he trying, all the way up until that very last moment? 

I think he was. 

I think I stopped listening, I was distracted by my own pain. I didn't listen to my intuition. I didn't trust my body, my own authority, my instinct. I lost that connection, I let it go, just for a moment, and I lost him.

I failed him. 

I’m so sorry, baby. 

Spring

Yesterday, I cleared space for William's garden.

Last year, we had vegetables. Last year, the kids helped me plant and water and harvest tomatoes and cucumbers, broccoli and spinach, zucchini and eggplant.

This year, since I don't have my babe in arms and I'm not too busy to dig in the dirt like I thought I would be, we're creating a forever garden for our William. I chose my favorite perennials - daisies, black-eyed susans, poppies, lupine, yarrow...and, of course, forget-me-nots and sweet william.Today was for digging, preparing. Next week, I'll plant flowers and leave room for a marker, something with my little man's name.

I can't choose what yet. Not yet.

Being outside hurts. Everything is coming to life, and watching flowers come up instead of watching my son grow is going to hurt, too, I imagine. But I want something for him, something that will remind me, when the pain begins to change (I hear it does, I'm holding onto that hope) that I did something to remember him. I want to have somewhere to go, a place to honor his memory a year from now, two, three...

Three seasons I spent anticipating this one. I got pregnant in late summer, and packed and moved our whole house last August. As the leaves turned, I finally unpacked the last box, and by the time the snow fell, I was growing big and playing "games" with my baby - poke and prod. I shivered my way through February and thought, "Spring will be here soon. My baby will be here soon." Just a few more months. One more turn of the seasons.

Now spring is here, and my baby is gone.

But the robins are everywhere. Everywhere. I saw the first one on the day William was born dead, hopping across our back lawn, cocking a curious black eye in my direction. Harbinger of spring. Messenger of death, now, at least for me.

I sat in a chair on the patio for over an hour yesterday, watching them. An hour. Still and quiet, I just sat. I didn't think about all the things I needed to do, or feel moved, even, to get up and do them, like I normally would. I sat and watched the wind move the trees, just starting to show the buds of their leaves. I sat and watched the robins searching for food - they were incredibly happy I'd unearth a smorgasbord of worms for them to choose from in the dirt for William's garden. I sat and watched the shadows change as the sun moved.

Nothing seems important now. All of the work I did in preparation for his arrival - keeping the house clean, just in case I went into labor that day, stocking the house with food, catching up and getting ahead with work - none of it mattered. Who cares now if the dishes are done? Who cares if the floor needs vacuuming? Who cares?

Now I just sit and stare and cry and wonder how I missed it before, how incredibly vulnerable we are, how fragile life really is. Nature wins. Now I can't do anything but breathe and feel alive, even if it hurts. I don't have a choice anymore. That veil has been pulled aside, and I can't unknow what I know now. I can't even keep the tears from falling, like rain to wet the soil.

My New Normal

I can't think.

It isn't just time that's slow. My brain is, too. It's like watching television in some slow-mo without the sound. I go to say things, and my mouth won't form the words. My brain won't even make the connections to give me the right phrase. It's not even on the tip of my tongue - it's just gone, as if I never learned the language in the first place.

It's probably good I don't have to talk much. Although there are a few people I wish would call.

My midwife was supposed to be here Monday. Last Monday. We had an appointment at eleven. She didn't show, and she didn't call. I finally called her on Thursday to ask if she wanted to reschedule, and she still hasn't called me back. I'm pretty shocked by her lack of response, I have to admit. Is she blaming herself? Has she just decided to move on to her more important clients, the ones who are having live babies?

My older two kids are angry with me, I think. My oldest son cancelled coming here this weekend. When I asked why, he said, "I'm tired, and I can't sleep over there with the kids running around in the morning." Yeah, it sounded like a lame excuse to me, too. My oldest daughter, who was incredibly excited about the baby, hasn't called or returned a call since I initially told her what happened.

I'm pretty sure they blame me for killing their little brother. Not that I don't get that. I blame me, too. Some part of me would like to be angry at someone. Have someone to blame it all on. Someone besides myself, I mean. I think every mother in this situation takes that on. It's part of being a mother, that mother-guilt and regret. We do it with our live children, too... why would the response to a dead one be any different?

But I do feel abandoned - already. Two weeks out, and people have moved on. Even people whose lives were directly effected by William's death. Going on with life. Finding someone to hang it on or shrugging off any mantle of responsibility, and moving on.

But I can't move on.

I can't think, I can't speak. I can't function at any sort of human level. And this, they tell me, is my "new normal." I'm tired of being sad. Exhausted, in fact. But I don't have a choice. There isn't any "deciding to have a good day." The woman at medical records in the hospital had that posted above her computer. "You can decide to have a good day." Right. Maybe most people can. But I can't. I really, really can't.

I can't pull myself up by my bootstraps... I can't even find my boots.

According to the stats, people get over a loss outside of their own immediate family within two weeks. And even when the loss does involve immediate family, people get back to functioning after about 1-2 months. When the loss involves the death of a child? That period of time is extended... to 18-24 months.

Are you kidding me? Two years. I can't do this. I can't do this for two years. I can't go around unable to think, speak, function... how do people do this? How?

Justice - Not

My baby is dead, and she leaves hers alone to wander and play in traffic.

Great.

So much for justice in the world.

Bad Ideas

We have Netflix, and the last three movies we picked out and received in the mail arrived before William died (and then was born...) 

One of them is Reservation Road. I went to put it in, and read this: 

Ethan Learner (Joaquin Phoenix) and his wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) are consumed with grief after their son Josh (Sean Curley) is struck by a hit and run driver.  

Uhhhhh...never mind. Bad idea. 

*** 

I went to the hospital today. I went to sign a release form so I could get the lab results, the pathology report, all the information that might tell me what happened to William, why he died. 

Bad idea.  

I didn't realize how much it would bring things back. The memory of walking up to the main entrance, afraid of what they would tell me, my belly heavy with my baby - heavy in a way it had never been before, different, wrong somehow - was as fresh and dizzying as the smell of wet paint in a closed room. It literally made me nauseous.  

At least I didn't have to go to labor and delivery. I didn't have to see or hear any babies. I just had to endure the tight-lipped smile of the woman who handed me the records and had me sign the form. The look in her eyes said, "I'm sorry, but let's not talk about it, okay?" And so we didn't. I thanked her, took the envelope, and slowly walked back to my car thinking that I never, ever wanted to go back there again.

***  

Just a piece of advice, in case you ever have the awful opportunity to pick up your dead baby's pathology report - do not, under any circumstances, open the envelope and read it in the car. Trust me on this. It's a really, really bad idea. Reading phrases like, "Intrauterine fetal demise, denies pregnancy complications..." is just not conducive to driving.

***  

I had a message on my phone. My prenatals were still at the pharmacy, waiting to be picked up. I thought about going to get them. It wouldn't hurt to keep taking them, I reasoned. So I stopped on my way home from the hospital.  

Bad idea.  

The pharmacist remembered me.  

"Where's your baby?" he asked, noticing my empty belly...and my empty cart. 

It was the first time I've had to tell someone aside from family and friends. What do you say? You know you're about to shock someone, you're already anticipating their reaction, their "I'm sorry" is a foregone conclusion. I felt bad having to say it - but I didn't want to lie.  

"He...he was stillborn two weeks ago."  

Everyone stared at me. The pharmacist, the other women behind the counter, even the people waiting for their prescriptions. Is it so shocking? Babies die. It really happens. Every single day. Why doesn't anyone want me to talk about it? 

He mumbled "I'm sorry," I said an obligitory, "Thanks," and I didn't even notice how much I was shaking until I got into the car and tried to start it. My key kept missing the ignition.  

When I got home, I went back to bed and had a long, exhausting cry. 

That was the only good idea I've had all day.

Targeted Marketing Sucks

I've been doing lots of Internet surfing the past few weeks, and most of my searches have involved both pregnancy and birth...since they're inevitably a part of a stillbirth.

Yahoo, apparently, thinks this is an open invitation to bombard me with their advertising.

I don't know which is worse, this "First Reponse" ad:

Or this "March of Dimes" one:

Targeting marketing really, really sucks.

The Unborn

The Unborn
By Sharon Olds

Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads,
Like gnats around a streetlight in summer,
The children we could have,
The glimmer of them.

Sometimes I feel them waiting, dozing
In some antechamber - servants, half-
Listening for the bell.

Sometimes I see them lying like love letters
In the Dead Letter Office

And sometimes, like tonight, by some black
Second sight I can feel just one of them
Standing on the edge of a cliff by the sea
In the dark, stretching its arms out
Desperately to me.

Dear Abby: Bite Me

I haven't been here long in "dead babyland" (and if you haven't heard the term yet... don't ask) so most of you who've been here a while have probably seen Dear Abby's view on stillbirth baby photos. 

My husband hadn't seen it, though. And when he did... well... let's just say I think he's entering the "anger" portion of the Kubler-Ross grief stages... 

Here's his response: 

Dear Abby,

Regarding your column entitled DESK PHOTO OF STILLBORN BABY CREATES AWKWARD OFFICE ISSUE:

For the record, I am a licensed pscyhotherapist and grief counselor with over a decade of experience, and also the father of a stillborn son.  Although you were smugly well-mannered in acknowledging that a person's desk, in most cases, is essentially private territory, you were surprisingly presumptuous and uneducated in suggesting that the woman who kept the picture of her stillborn child on her desk should put the picture in a drawer or in her purse.

If the woman had a picture of her deceased husband or parent or cat on her desk, would your response be the same?  If the woman had a picture of her child with an unfortunate visible  degenerative birth defect, or her sister who had been severely burned on her face, would your response be the same?  If the woman had a picture of her grandparents with tattooed forearms who were later burned or gassed to death in Auschwitz (yes, such pictures exist) would your response be the same?  If the woman had a picture of the starving, bloated and fly-specked child she sponsored in South America or Appalachia or Somalia, or a picture of her gay brother near death with Kaposi's sarcoma-ridden AID's, would your response be the same?

Shame on you for being primarily concerned about the shallow discomfort of the woman who feels awkward when faced with something that she is in denial and defensively offended about.

You and the woman who wrote you the note in question need more education about denial, defense mechanisms, respect, empathy, acceptance, grief, death, dying and stillbirth, and in humanity and compassion.

M.
Licensed Psychotherapist
Grief Counselor
Father Of A Stillborn Son

One of Those Days

He doesn’t ask me how my day was when he comes home.

He doesn’t have to.

He can tell just by looking at my night table.

If the Kleenex are piled high, he knows. 

It’s been one of those days.

Two Weeks

Grief makes one hour ten.  ~William Shakespeare

Time.
Goes.
So.
Slooooooooooooooooooooooow. 

Yesterday was my first day alone, really alone, and it wasn't a good one.  Z. and D. went back to school, M. went off to work...and I stayed in bed all day. I ate something around noon. I brought it back to bed with me. Finally, around 3pm, I took a shower. The kids were due home around quarter to four.

And still, I didn't really get out of bed. I stayed there while they went to play outside. I got up to get them snacks, dinner. I forgot to eat again. Drank a glass of milk. That was good enough. Stopped the gnawing.  Then back to bed. Listened to the rain. Watched TV. Flipped channels, mostly. Surfed online, reading more blogs, doing more research on stillbirth. 

And every time I looked at the clock, I was surprised how little time had gone by. A minute. Two. Ten. 

And today, William would have been two weeks old. How can two weeks have passed? How can it feel like an eternity and yet like yesterday, all at once? It's been two weeks since I held him, kissed the soft spot on his head. Just two weeks since the dreams of our last baby were born and died all on the same day.

His ghost is everywhere, all around me. I wake up in the morning and see the shadows beside my bed and think it's his cosleeper, and he must be sleeping in it. I stand at the sink doing dishes and my belly doesn't bump up against the counter anymore...but there's no baby in a sling there, either. In the morning, as the kids are getting dressed and ready for school, I sit on the couch where I found out he was gone, and remember how he used to kick me every morning. I think about how I used to imagine nursing him there on the couch while they got ready, but there's no baby in my arms, at my breast. He's just a mirage, a flicker, a glimpse out of the corner of my eye.

Two weeks gone. I don't know how I've managed to get here. And I have no idea how to get through the next minute, the next hour, let alone the next day, the next week, the next year... the rest of my life... without him. I don't know how I'm doing it. It defies all logic and reason. 

Addicts say recovery is one day at a time. Grief isn't like that. It's more immediate. It's one breath at a time. And every single one is like sucking in razor blades.

Startastic

My seven year old daughter knows me pretty well. Whenever I make some wry comment, she turns to her six year old brother and says, "Mom's just being 'startastic!'"

Yeah. That's me. Always appreciating life's little ironies.

Today, I was sitting on my bed, packing away all my maternity clothes, and I happened to look over at the box with William's ashes in it. For the first time, I noticed the word there:

CREMAINS

Oh, isn't that just the cutest thing you ever heard? Right up there with "Bollywood" and "Mockumentary." How quaint.

*ahem*

And then, I was researching something about stillbirth, and came across this little fact:

"Because many families invest thousands of dollars to prepare for the arrival - then, sadly, the funeral - of their stillborn baby, Governor Janet Napolitano signed into law SB1003, a one-time tax exemption for families who experience stillbirth during the year in which their child was born."

Aren't they soooo lucky in Arizona?

Oh don't mind me... I'm just being "startastic"...

Mars and Venus

I don't understand men.

I don't mean I don't love them, or deeply appreciate them and their differences from women - I do.

But sort of in the Venus/Mars tradition, I often feel their masculine viewpoints are so alien from my feminine ones that they're actually as unrecognizable to me as hearing someone speak another language. I just don't get it.

My husband told me last night how he looks at William's death, and I was left literally speechless.

"I've never been a believer in 'shit happens,'" he said. "To me, that's the coward's way out. To say that William's death was an accident... well, there are no accidents. I have to take responsibility for the worst possible scenario, and that would be the fact that I could have done something to prevent what happened. Not to take responsibility for that would make me a coward."

woppitywoppitywoppity < --- sound of my head shaking in disbelief

"So, you think you could have done something to prevent his death?"

"I know I could have," he said. "We all could have. You could have, the midwife could have, the doctor we saw for the ultrasounds could have. For example, you could have spent the entire nine months on a fetal monitor, and it could have prevented his death."

Okayyyy...

Any men out there who can explain this perspective to me? Because I go immediately to believing that a) I did something to kill my son (which is, as he says, the worst case scenario and a possibility) and b) my husband blames me for killing my son (which is an even worse case than the first, and a possibility...)

He obviously blames himself on some level - and believes he could have done something to prevent it. His "taking responsibility for that" probably does make him more courageous than I am. The thought that I could have prevented William's death leaves me shaking and paralyzed with regret.

His logic went on to say, all death is preventable, except for death by old age. Every death, he argued, could be prevented by a different choice. A differently lifestyle, a different diet, a different way to work. But of course, we can't always live our lives that way. We'd end up like the boy in the bubble. We can only make the best choices we can with the information we have, based on our own values and beliefs, right? And, he said, if those choices cause something bad to happen, then we have to take personal responsibility for that.

Not to do so would be cowardly. Like his mother, he said, telling herself "stories" about God taking angel-babies back to heaven before they're born. Or those people who have said, "It was meant to be" or "It was for the best." Denial. Coward's way out, he says.

Well, then, I guess I'm a coward. Granted, I'm not telling myself stories. I'm looking very closely at what happened, and wondering what I did, what I could have done. But how can I take responsibility for something I don't know could have effected the outcome? Hindsight is 20/20, and everything I could have done is just conjecture, isn't it? Just Monday morning quarterbacking, to use a masculine metaphor.

I do get that he's taking things to their absurd, logical conclusion - this was all, actually, in defense of having another home birth, if we decide to have another baby. In some weird way, this argument was meant to justify our choices, to say that we made the best ones we could, with the information we had, and we would have to do that again, if we chose to have another baby. And then take responsibility for those choices.

I sort of get it. But it comes through garbled, and feels like it needs translation. He asked this morning if what he'd said made sense, and I was honest when I told him no. It doesn't make sense to me. Nothing about the death of my son "makes sense." I've felt like people were talking Albanian around me since he died, and I just kind of look at them, hearing the sounds, the inflection, but not understanding the words.

He seems to be making some sense of it for himself, and I don't begrudge him that, and I'm not saying his perspective isn't valid. But wrapping my head around something so... huge... so all-at-once, it feels removed to me, and I think this is one of the ways the masculine and feminine differ in the way they grieve.

My grief is immediate - I had the personal experience of having William inside of me, and I knew him, on a level no one else did. My husband didn't have that. Aside from his knowledge that I was pregnant and carrying his son, and his own connection to him through me - feeling him kick from the outside, my talking about the baby's movements - M.'s experience was more removed. Fathers bond more with babies after they're born, and William never took a breath. My husband's dreams were born dead... mine died inside of me.

The difference is stark. I want my baby back - my loss is experienced on a "now" level - my breasts want to nurse the baby who was just kicking my ribs, my arms want to hold the weight of my tiny, perfect son. My husband, on the other hand, has lost the future - teaching our son how to read, how to fish, how to hit a baseball.

I think, from what I'm reading about other mother's (and father's) experiences, that women experience our child's death in the "now" forever. We might imagine what they would be like at one year, two, ten... but it isn't until those anniversaries come up that we experience the loss of our child at that age. Fathers, I think, have that loss all at once.

Don't ask me which is worse. They're both too awful to contemplate.

All I know is that I'm not really understanding him, and it makes me wonder if he's understanding me. Maybe we're both talking, but not hearing each other. At the very least, it feels like a lot is getting lost in the translation.

Martyrville

I wish I could say I was in Margaritaville for Easter, but I seem to have ended up in Martyrville.


Part of it is, I guess no one knows what to say.

I prepared myself for an outpouring of sympathy. Just in case. The strange image that kept coming to me was Illyria from Buffy - armored and distant. I just decided to pretend I wasn't human. I'm just a visitor here to your planet. No feelings at all. What is this strange thing you call sadness? That was the most drastic thing I could think of, to keep the grief at bay. Otherwise, it's like trying to plug the Hoover Dam with bubble gum... (and we're all out of bubble gum?) I knew I would just break down and flood the room with my mourning, and what good would that be for everyone, including me? So... I was prepared.

But from the time we arrived at our little Easter gathering, most of my family didn't even mention it. Not even my brother-in-law in his before dinner prayer, who almost always mentions something personal, even if it's just "keep us all safe on the journey home," etc. Yesterday's prayer was the shortest and most general I've ever heard him deliver.

I brought my pictures of William and waited for the subject to come up. And I waited. And waited. I finally realized no one was going to say anything unless I did. Probably because they didn't know how I would handle it if they said something, I rationalized. So I finally showed my mom his pictures, and gave her the ones I'd had printed for her. I also asked her if she wanted some of his ashes - we decided to give some of William's ashes to the grandfathers he was named after. She said she did.

Once she was looking at the pictures, then my sisters and my niece wanted to see as well, and we talked about him a little, and about what happened. But I found it really interesting that none of the men - my brother-in-law, my nephew - wanted to hear about it or see him. They left the room in a hurry, and it ironically reminded me of whenever I have a newborn and start nursing them in public.

I think women understand on a more visceral level. Men are so bodily and experientially removed from it, it's probably even more horrifying and terrifying to them. Not that some women don't say all the wrong things...

My oldest sister told me how strong I was, that she was a mess when she found out, and she was glad my niece (in-law), S., was the one who came to the hospital to be with us, because she didn't know if she could have handled it. And my 2nd oldest sister told me all about how she had to pull over when she heard the news, because she was so devastated and crying so hard, but it comforts her to know that, "Dad got to see that baby first up in heaven." *sigh*

Not that I begrudge them their sadness... or their comforts. I know it's sad. People I have never even met face to face are sad about it, and I get that.

My mother-in-law took the prize for worst response, though. Three days after we'd called to tell her what happened, she called us. Not to ask if we needed anything. Not to inquire how we were doing. No. Instead, she calls my husband's cell (she wouldn't dare call mine and do this) to scream at him, "You haven't called me in three days and you obviously don't want to talk to me!"

WTH?!


M. didn't even tell me she called and said something. It wasn't until I overheard him on the phone with her, telling her how inappropriate her comments had been and how much he didn't appreciate it, that I realized. It's not like this is the first time she's done something like this - it's just that I can't think of a worse time and circumstance. I knew she liked to play the narcissistic martyr... but now? Really? In the midst of the mourning of the death of my child, she's going to play the martyr card and make us take care of her feelings?

Honestly, I can't do it. I've obviously been willing to before, seeing as I have so many of these types of people around me. In the past, I've been willing to suppress my own feelings to take care of everyone else's feelings around me, to let them think they were bigger, more important, than my own. But this grief is too big even for me to contain. I can't do it.

There have been times, in the past, I've thought that I should just do something drastic, or check myself into a mental hospital, just to "prove" that I'm not really as strong - at least on the inside - and everyone else seems to think I am. But in this case, it's not a consideration, or a rational thought... it's a real possibility. I cry all day. I sit for hours doing/staring at nothing. I forget to do the most basic things. Like take a shower. Or brush my teeth. Or eat. I hear babies crying. And I'm not sure it's all in my head.

What I want to do is crawl into a closet and stay there. I used to do it when I was little, whenever my parents would fight. It was rare that anyone came looking for me, and I once spent the entire night asleep in the closet. I emerged in the morning, and no one knew I'd been in there. That pretty much sums up how "strong" I am in the face of emotional stress. I hide, and no one notices, and everyone mistakes it for my being brave.

Every day, the closet seems more and more appealing.

Wallpaper

I put William's picture up as wallpaper on my computer screen.

For a week, I resisted, thinking it was too morbid, strange. It would be too painful, I told myself. I wouldn't be able to handle it. It would just make me sad.

But for some reason, I did it anyway. An impulse. Maybe even an instinct.

And I didn't know what a comfort it would be to see him when I opened my laptop every morning. THERE's my baby. My whole body relaxes. I don't understand it, I don't know why, but I can breathe again when I recognize his face. It's like a part of me going missing that I rediscover every day.

I don't know if it's part of the mourning process, or even just the hormones. I remember after the birth of my live babies, taking a shower afterwards, and feeling rushed and anxious. My baby was waiting. My baby needed me. I needed my baby. Being separated in those first days or weeks was excruciating, wrong. I couldn't wrap my head around it.

And I feel that way now. Even though he's dead, even though rationally, intellectually, I know he's gone. It doesn't matter. It's like my body hasn't caught up to my head yet. It still wants what it wants, and just seeing his face makes it better. It relaxes me almost instantly. It's surprising, even shocking to me, that I feel relief and calm instead of pain when I see him. But I do.

My mother-in-law asked me yesterday if we were going to "do this again." This. Have a baby. Again. I can't say the thought hasn't crossed my mind. I also can't say that I'm not terrified at the idea of being pregnant again.

Then she revealed the reason she asked, "Well, I just...I have some little outfits and things for him, but I can't return them, and I don't know what you want to do with them...sell them? Keep them? I don't know."

Me either. "I guess I'll take them...and decide later?"

"Well...I just don't want to give them to you if they're going to make you sad."

Ha. Now that made me want to laugh. As if. As if it could get any worse. Because right now, breathing makes me sad. There aren't any degrees. My life is so twisted, so strange, so surreal, so turned on its head upside-down, that looking into the face of my dead son is the most calming experience in the world to me right now.

If I could have his body still, I'd be holding it, decaying or not. I would. I understand how mother's minds snap, how they end up dressing up and carrying baby dolls and calling them by their dead child's name. I really get that, on a visceral level I never could have fathomed before William was gone.

That's how much I want him.

Soundtrack of our Lives

M. put a James Taylor CD on the other day, and all of a sudden, he was crying.

"Maybe this CD wasn't such a good idea,"  he said.

There's a song that they sing when they take to the highway
A song that they sing when they take to the sea
A song that they sing of their home in the sky
Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
But singing works just fine for me

Goodnight you moonlight ladies
Rockabye sweet baby James
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Wont you let me go down in my dreams
And rockabye sweet baby James... 

I know what he means. I don't yet have "triggers" for my grief - because everything is a trigger. I'm creating triggers with everything I say or do. That includes everything I choose to watch or listen to right now. It makes me afraid to turn on the TV or the radio, to tell you the truth. I don't want to forever associate James Taylor (a man I normally love to listen to sing) with the death of my baby. 

And I know, if I play it too often, I will. I have a soundtrack in my head to all sorts of tragedy and joy in my life. There are songs I associate with all sorts of things, from my wedding, to the births of my children, to the sorrow of losing my best friend to breast cancer. They all have artists or songs associated with them, and they weren't necessarily conscious choices. Weird as it may sound, anything by Sarah MacLachlan is now ruined for me, because it makes me think about the year of my divorce. I almost wish I hadn't listened to her so much during that time...but I did. And now, she's forever associated in my mind to a great deal of pain.

So mostly I sit in silence, or watch reruns of shows or listen to music I never had much chance of liking anyway. But I found myself singing along to James Taylor and feeling something in me opening that I thought had been forever closed. It was almost...dare I say it?...healing, that singing, letting my voice rise and fall, a lullaby sung to comfort myself.  

I wish I had a playlist for this. Do they make one? "Songs for Mothers with Dead Babies." How terribly morbid. And yet...strangely necessary. Any ideas?

Home

M. went to the funeral home to get William's ashes yesterday. I stayed home with the kids to hard boil eggs. The Easter bunny is coming on Sunday, and we have to have eggs for him to hide. Life goes on, even here.

It occurred to me today... I never bought William anything for Easter. Not even a little outfit. Was it just absent-mindedness on my part? Did I jinx myself? Or did I know, somehow, that he wouldn't be here for Easter? 

We stood at the table in a circle around my son's ashes, and my husband said a little blessing. And then he said something that made me want to put my fist through a window. 

"I'm glad he's home. I didn't know I would feel that way, but I feel better, knowing he's here."

You see, I had the exact opposite reaction. 

My son is most decidedly NOT home, and holding a plastic bag full of his ashes made that awful point even more horrifyingly true. William is gone, and only his ashes remain. We might have what's left of him, maybe, but he is not home.

Trust me, I've looked. 

He is not in his cosleeper, tucked next to our bed, nor is he in his crib. He is not in the diapers I lovingly chose and washed in preparation for his arrival. He is not in any of the little onesies or outfits family and friends excitedly bought for us. He is not in his swing or the bouncy seat or his car seat or his sling. He is most definitely not in my arms, or at my breast. 

He is not home. 

He will never be home.The only thing we have are his ashes, an amazingly tiny bit of dust in a plastic bag with a metal tag and a number on it, brought home in a black plastic box placed in a black gift bag. Some gift. Thanks a lot.

Like the memory box, it's just another thing to put on a shelf. Something that will gather dust, that we'll move from place to place. Babies don't belong on shelves. Children don't belong in closets. The life that once started, developed and grew within me is gone. In the black box on my dresser is just what's left of the vessel he moved into, and ultimately, out of. 

The truth is, I don't want a memorial. I don't want William's ashes. I want my baby. I want to hold him, I want to nurse him, I want to watch him change hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year. Ashes don't grow. Ashes don't smile or coo or give wet, sloppy toddler kisses or say, "I love you, Mommy." 

Ashes don't come home. 

My son will never come home.

Outside

I should have known I wasn't ready for the world yet, but it was an experiment. Easter is this weekend, and we were supposed to be bringing our brand new baby to both families so they could exclaim and fight over who was going to hold him next. Instead, I'm going empty-bellied and empty-handed. The thought of being in the midst of so many people, not strangers but family, people who are grieving, too, who might want to talk about him, hug me, comfort us... already I'm shrinking into myself just at the thought. 

So, tired of pulling frozen food out, we went out to a little local diner for dinner. That was a mistake. The first wave that hit me was, "The last time I was here, my baby was alive." I'd been doing that prodromal labor thing that day - it was the first day, actually, and I kept contracting, wondering if this was really "it." Our oldest son was with us, and we all squeezed into a booth. I remember M. moved the table so I could get my belly in.

But now I slid in without a problem, no longer worried about negotiating my bulk or protecting William from the table edge. He was gone. He should have been here beside me, either in his car seat, or tied to me in a sling. Was it going to be like this forever, I wondered, as I opened the menu to hide my tears. Every place we went, would I think, "The last time I was here, my baby was alive?" 

I stared at the menu and I couldn't think. My brain actually wouldn't work. I ordered something. I don't know what it was. M. later said, "I was surprised you ordered that - you had it the night before." I told him I forgot, which wasn't true. It was just the only thing I could think of, because I'd had it recently. The menu was a blur. 

When the protection of my menu disappeared, I blinked at the brightness, the sound of conversation, every voice too strident and painful to my ears. It was all too much, sensory overload. I could barely eat my food. I had to remind myself how. Chew and swallow. What was the last thing I'd eaten, I wondered, before William died? What had been his last meal? I hoped there was some sweetness in it.

On the way home, I stared at the cars going by, the strip malls, the gas stations. Life was going on out here, and it was so painful to me I could barely take a full breath. I wanted home, the smallness of my room, the comfort of my bed. I wanted to curl up and die, and if I couldn't die, then at least I could sleep, and if I couldn't sleep, I could cry myself hoarse in the darkness.

I was too exposed out here, too fragile, too vulnerable. I felt as if I had been turned inside out, and all my nerve endings were now on the outside, raw and rubbing up against everything. I didn't resent the world for going on. That was as it should be. But I wasn't part of it, not now, not yet. I was still wandering, lost in the darkness, and coming out into the world was just painful and disorienting. I didn't belong here.

I don't know how I'm going to handle Easter. I'm afraid I'm going to bolt from the room the minute my brother-in-law opens his mouth to pray before the meal. I'm afraid I'm going to burst into tears. Or finally turn to my sister, who keeps saying, "I know it must be easier for you, because you have a knowledge of the birth process..." and scream at her, "Do you think a firefighter mourns the family he lost in a house fire any less because he knows how a fire is started?" 

But I probably won't. I'll probably sit there, blinking at the brightness, the noise, just like I did in the restaurant, and wish I was somewhere else until I can crawl back into bed again and cry.

Snow Family

The kids made a "snow family" with our out-of-season April snow... and included a "snow William" in our little family, resting in my arms. Just where I wish he was... such a beautiful tribute. It brought tears to my eyes.

It's a little melty here, but you can see how they wrapped up the baby to keep him warm...

William's Birth Story 3: Hello, Goodbye

Why had I been so afraid of him? Afraid to see him, touch him, even think of him, after I knew he was gone? Death scares us so much, that constant reminder. We're mortal. We live, we die. We're transient, our time here so short.

But he was beautiful, so very perfect. He looked just like his daddy, and had the most hair of any of my babies. (All that heartburn! Oy! Wives tale or no, he sure had a lot of hair!) Everyone said how beautiful he was. So bittersweet. Tiny little man - he reminded me of his sister, with her long limbs and fingers. He got that from me. That, and his perfect little mouth. Everything else was all his daddy.

I held him and kissed him and whispered sweetness into the tiny curved shell of his ear. He was warm from my body, but I knew he was gone. Gone. He would never hear me call him my sweet little man or turn his head and seek the comfort of my breast. He would never open his eyes, and I would never see if they were dark and deep like his daddy's. How could this have happened? I whispered that, over and over, "Oh baby, I'm so sorry, what happened? What happened?"

When I handed him to M. and saw the look on his face, I thought my heart would break in half. I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I knew it was my fault somehow. My body had broken him, our baby. It hadn't kept him safe. I was a horrible mother, I had failed my baby, my husband, my children. Our perfect little boy, our nine-month dream, was gone, and I blamed no one but myself.

The doctor asked me - I'd almost forgotten she existed - to push the placenta out. I didn't want to. It hurt too much. I told her so, and she said, "Well, I don't want to pull on the cord," and that was enough to motivate me. I pushed out his placenta, deeply stained with meconium. He'd been in stress, that much was obvious, or he'd been gone a while. How long? I wondered. What was the last thing he heard? Felt?

Having a wonderfully overactive imagination isn't all that great at times like these. I can imagine perfectly well what it might have been like in the darkness for him, losing consciousness, losing his life. And all the while, I was oblivious. The one person in the world who was connected to him, who was entrusted to love him, protect him, keep him safe. And I couldn't do it. My body betrayed me. My baby died in the very cradle of my womb and became nothing more than a watery grave.

The doctor announced I had an intact perineum and cleaned me up. She said she wanted to send the placenta in for examination, and we agreed. Then the nurses asked if they could take William, give him a bath, take his picture. I nodded. It didn't matter, did it? I wanted him with me, but I wanted him alive. That wasn't going to happen. Ever.

Another nurse encouraged me to get up, take a shower. Numbly, I did. I hate hot showers - I'm very temperature sensitive - but I couldn't feel it that night. I watched my skin turn red - the nurse said she turned it on full hot to get it warm, warned me I might need to adjust to make it cooler - but I couldn't feel it. I washed. I washed until I thought my skin would slough off, just like my baby's had. I wanted to be dead, too. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face.

He was clean, dressed and wrapped up when the nurse brought him back in. Five pounds, four ounces, she said. Eighteen inches long. Almost exactly the size of our daughter when she was born. The nurse was sweet - so young, her eyes done up with glitter make-up, she reminded me of a fairy or an angel - and seeing her carrying my dead baby in to me was like waking up into some sort of surreal dream. This couldn't be my life. This couldn't be happening. The nurse showed us the pictures she'd taken, quite proud of the job she'd done. And I praised her. They were lovely. She'd done a wonderful job. But it wasn't much of a consolation for a dead baby.

I was supposed to be in my birth tub at home. I was supposed to be lifting my baby to my breast, hearing him wail, feeling him kick his little legs on the outside now instead of the inside. We were supposed to be saying our cord cutting prayer before Daddy cut his cord with his special knife, the knife he would pass on when William was old enough to know and understand what it meant. We were supposed to be taking off the bracelets we made, the ones we'd been wearing for weeks, waiting his arrival.

I was still wearing mine. So were the kids. I remembered them, and M. had the midwife bring the kids back in, and my niece-in-law, S. had tears in her eyes as she took pictures of our little family, still only four instead of five, even though William was there, cradled in my arms. He was gone from us, and would never reach for and pull his sister's hair or throw his sippy cup off his high chair tray and make his older brother pick it up again...and again.

Our daughter, Z., held him and exclaimed over how perfect and adorable he was. And I thought my heart couldn't break any more. Our six-year-old son, D., skipped sad and went straight to angry. "I don't want to hold that," he said. I winced. "Are you sure? You won't get another chance," I reminded him gently. He sat in the chair, folded his arms across his chest, and scowled as his sister cooed over her little brother.

Finally, D. crept onto the bed and held out his arms. I put William in them, and the words, "Careful," came out of my mouth just on reflex as I protected William's little head. But there was no reason, was there? He was gone - he wasn't feeling any of this. We were feeling it all, and it was pain beyond pain. D. cried and kissed him and I thought the world might end, right then and there. I wished it would. Seeing my living son cradle my dead one? I never, ever want to see anything like it again.

We took off our bracelets, and put them in the box the nurse had left us. Little blue box with his pictures in it. A keepsake box. I was going to be one of those mothers with a tragedy put away in my closet. I imagined myself packing it the next time we moved. And the time after that. Instead of a growing baby, a child, I would move a box of things from place to place. It was too horrible to think about for long.

S. went home, then, and soon after, our midwife went home, too. The nurses said we could spend as much time with William as we wanted, but it was midnight now, and our living children were tired - over tired - and it was time to go home. Two hours after he'd been born, we were leaving the hospital without him. They took him away, undressed him and packed his clothes into my little blue box. They included a lock of his hair, his hospital bracelet, a card with his name, the date, his weight and length. And they had us pick a funeral home - we just took their suggestion. Did it really matter?

Was anything ever going to matter again, I wondered?

And then we went home. I carried a blue memory box instead of a baby, and I tucked two children in that night instead of three. There was no baby moving in my belly, no baby next to me in the co-sleeper. M. wanted to move the tub out of the bathroom, take down the co-sleeper, but I said no. Not tonight. Not now. He asked about William's things. Such a pragmatic, masculine question. What were we going to do with them - his clothes, the nursery - but I couldn't talk about that. Not yet.

M. lit a candle for William, and it burned into the night. I resented that candle, that flickering flame, a memorial for the baby I would never hold again. I didn't want a candle, or condolences, or a blue box to put in my closet. In the morning, that candle was a fat, solid wax puddle on the plate, spilled over and burned out, and it was exactly how I felt. In the morning, William was still dead, I was still alive, and our lives were changed forever.