This arrived in the mail today:
Michigan is one of only twenty-one states that offers a certificate of stillbirth.
I feel lucky to live in a state that will at least acknowledge my son's birth, even if it isn't an "official" state or federal document.
No mother who goes through this should have to fight to have her child recognized as a "baby" and not a "fetus." And yet, in twenty-nine states, there are mothers who don't get to have this. They don't happen to live in one of the few states that offer a stillbirth certificate.
And while I feel grateful... I really do... I'm also outraged. Why doesn't every mother get this? At least, at the very least, why doesn't every mother get some acknowledgment that her baby was born?
I think it's both tragic and reprehensible that I feel lucky to be holding a piece of paper instead of my baby.
M. and I met online back when AOL charged by the hour. Luckily for our bank accounts, we were local to each other, and quickly switched to phone conversations. And those often lasted long into the wee hours of the morning in those falling-in-love days.
Last night was reminiscent of one of those, a sweet surprise.
M. and I started talking when we got into bed and didn't stop until the birds were starting to sing outside our window. It's been over ten years now since those first phone conversations, and I love the man I married more now than I ever thought possible.
But those ten years have been filled with a lot of ups and downs - especially the last six or so. We've had a great deal of trials thrown our way in those years, and William is the last (but certainly not the least) in a long line of tragedies and calamities that have come along in the past decade.
I've had people comment on how strong our marriage is, how amazing that we're still together. I know couples who would have fallen apart or turned on each other instead of to each other in our circumstances. I'm grateful for what we have, believe me. We each have plenty of faults, but somehow we manage, even in the midst of pain, to keep loving each other.
But there are times I forget how blessed I am. There have been times when I was ready to give up. There have been times when M. was, too. There have been times we've been mean, or distant, or indifferent to each other. There are times, sometimes long stretches of time, when we take each other for granted.
Last night wasn't any of those.
Last night we connected, spooned in the darkness and talking into the first light of morning, in a way we haven't in a long, long time. We reminisced, we waxed nostalgic, we laughed. For the most part, our conversation wasn't about William...but it was because of him.
What a gift, in the midst of the pain of our baby's death, to be open to such love.
Thank you, William.
I love you.
I don't leave the house.
I rarely get out of bed before noon.
There was a time when I took somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 steps a day. I know, because I have a step counter I used to put in my pocket just to give me an idea how active I was being... but I haven't used it since William died.
This week, I found it and put it in my pocket, just for chucks and giggles.
Do you know how many steps I averaged a day this week?
600
That's not a typo. That's six hundred, not six thousand.
It doesn't just feel like everything has stopped... it really has. I'm not going anywhere, I'm not doing anything. It's three in the afternoon on a Saturday, I haven't showered or eaten, and I'm still in a dark room sitting on my bed doing basically nothing.
I thought I knew what depression looked like before this happened.
I had no idea.
The bills are rolling in.
First there was the bill from the ultrasound. The dead baby ultrasound. Then there was the pathology bill. The one for the examination of the placenta of the dead baby. Yesterday it was the bill from the obstetrician. For the delivery of the dead baby. Everyone wants payment for services rendered. And I truly can't imagine anything I'd resent paying for more than any of the above.
Oh, well, there was my son's cremation. Fifty dollars to cremate a five pound baby. I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 to cremate my father. M. stared at the $50 bill and then asked, sarcastically, "What? Do they charge by the pound?"
The injustices don't seem to end.
I recently discovered that, although we were required to fill out all the paperwork for William's death certificate, he will not be issued a birth certificate. According to the government, he was never born. He never lived. All those kicks and rolls and hiccups inside of me... what? Never happened? I imagined them? I imagined him?
Apparently, it's a pro-choice/pro-life issue. If a state issued a birth certificate for a 39-week-old "fetus" - they might have to issue a "birth" certificate for a 10-week-old one. You can imagine the disaster of an argument that might make, I'm sure.
So William has to pay for someone else's political argument. He is their sacrifice. Sweet, perfect baby, most certainly "alive" only twelve hours before his birth, perhaps twenty-four.
So instead of being issued a birth certificate, I had to pay for two - a stillbirth certificate (the state's consolation - I'm lucky to live in a place that offers one as most don't) and a death certificate.
The list of horrors we've had to pay for over the last six weeks, the cost of my son's death, just keep mounting.
And I'd give every damned penny I have or will ever have again, just to have him back.
