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. 

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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.