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.
Showing posts with label postpartum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label postpartum. Show all posts
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Sacrifice
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.
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.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Yellow Day
A good day.
Beautiful, bright.
A full breath day.
Most days since William died it feels like I can't take a full breath. Everything is shallow, fragile. Mostly, it feels like I have to move carefully or things will just fall apart.
Today was a long drive, loud radio, singing at the top of our lungs day. M. and I held hands and laughed and talked about silly things. Jack Johnson on the Ipod. Upside Down:
I want to turn the whole thing upside down
I'll find the things they say just can't be found
I'll share this love I find with everyone
We'll sing and dance to Mother Nature's songs
I don't want this feeling to go away
We played "yellow" - a car game where you keep track of all the yellow cars you see on the trip - every yellow car is one point. School busses and construction vehicles are exempt. Yellow motorcycles are two points. Yellow slugbugs (VW beetles) are three points. Yellow Mustangs and Chargers aren't extra points but they make M's eyes light up anyway.
A yellow day.
A mellow, yellow day.
And when Cats in the Cradle came on the radio, I was quick to change the station this time. (It did... I'm not making that up. It really did come on the radio... ;)
It was the first time I'd made the conscious choice since William died not to be sad.
I said "no" to sad today.
It showed up in that moment, but I gave it quick once-over and sent it back out the door.
Not today.
Today I want to breathe and be something other than blue.
Yellow.
A million points for yellow today.
A million points plus infinity.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The Land of Milk and Tears
I heard a baby's heartbeat for the first time since William died.
I thought my own heart would stop.
There we were, sitting and waiting for the OB to come in, and in the next room, there it was, a sudden racehorse gallop... It didn't last long. Twenty seconds, maybe thirty. I froze. I felt like someone had plunged me into ice water. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move. The nurse came in a moment later and I blinked it away.
Last night I dreamed of that sound, like a drumbeat calling me. I was searching in the darkness, and every breath I took felt as if I'd swallowed glass. Then the sound stopped. It just stopped, and I stood there, paralyzed, unable anymore to follow the sound of his beating heart.
There was just the silence, a stillness beyond measure, and I stood alone, unable to go on. Frozen. Directionless. Lost.
I was crying when I woke up - already crying, my pillow wet.
It was that instant, when we looked for his heartbeat and found only silence, that will forever mark the moment in time I fell, tumbled, was pushed into this land of the lost. Mothers wander here, calling for their babies. The land of milk and tears. We search in vain for the sound of our child's beating heart as a guide. But they are gone from us, silent, behind the veil, no longer in the place where hearts beat and lungs draw breath. They were born into silence, into this world but not of it, their time here spent only as an empty vessel, a tiny boat sailing onward toward infinity.
Like my dream, I cannot follow, but I cannot move forward yet without my heart, the heart that was William, the heart that was supposed to go around my whole life beating outside of my body in his.
I am stuck, frozen in this liminal space, unable to follow the sound of his silent heart and unwilling to leave this place I knew him last.
For me, now, this place is all there is.
This is where I live now.
The land of the lost.
The land of milk and tears.
I thought my own heart would stop.
There we were, sitting and waiting for the OB to come in, and in the next room, there it was, a sudden racehorse gallop... It didn't last long. Twenty seconds, maybe thirty. I froze. I felt like someone had plunged me into ice water. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move. The nurse came in a moment later and I blinked it away.
Last night I dreamed of that sound, like a drumbeat calling me. I was searching in the darkness, and every breath I took felt as if I'd swallowed glass. Then the sound stopped. It just stopped, and I stood there, paralyzed, unable anymore to follow the sound of his beating heart.
There was just the silence, a stillness beyond measure, and I stood alone, unable to go on. Frozen. Directionless. Lost.
I was crying when I woke up - already crying, my pillow wet.
It was that instant, when we looked for his heartbeat and found only silence, that will forever mark the moment in time I fell, tumbled, was pushed into this land of the lost. Mothers wander here, calling for their babies. The land of milk and tears. We search in vain for the sound of our child's beating heart as a guide. But they are gone from us, silent, behind the veil, no longer in the place where hearts beat and lungs draw breath. They were born into silence, into this world but not of it, their time here spent only as an empty vessel, a tiny boat sailing onward toward infinity.
Like my dream, I cannot follow, but I cannot move forward yet without my heart, the heart that was William, the heart that was supposed to go around my whole life beating outside of my body in his.
I am stuck, frozen in this liminal space, unable to follow the sound of his silent heart and unwilling to leave this place I knew him last.
For me, now, this place is all there is.
This is where I live now.
The land of the lost.
The land of milk and tears.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Postpartum Appointment
Six week postpartum checkup today with the doctor who delivered William.
She wasn't "our" doctor - not the doctor I went to up until week twenty to get tests and ultrasounds. After that, we switched fully to our home birth midwife for prenatal care. This doctor happened to be the one on-call when we walked in the door on April 1 saying, "We can't find a heartbeat."
I'm really glad she was.
Although the appointment was rather strange up until she came into the room. The nurse who weighed me and took my blood pressure was very nervous. She couldn't look me in the eye for two seconds, she was incredibly fidgety, and after she went to get the blood pressure cuff, she came back and started apologizing profusely for putting me in a room that had a picture of a pregnant woman on the wall. Do you have a room without one, I wondered? It was an OB's office, after all!
M. and I tried hard to put her at ease, but I've never seen anyone react quite that way to our situation before. I think she was glad to get out of there.
The doctor, on the other hand, was very kind and compassionate and matter of fact. I gave her my "list" of questions and the blood tests I wanted run. She suggested, because of insurance (stupid insurance) that I get a referral to perinatalogist, who could justify and run all of the tests I wanted. So, that's the plan. Another few weeks before I get any blood tests and maybe some answers, I guess.
I know nothing can bring him back but I don't like living without knowing. And the worst part is... even if we run all the tests, we still may never know. But at least I can say I did everything I could to find out. I think I owe that to William. I suppose it's the least I can do now.
She wasn't "our" doctor - not the doctor I went to up until week twenty to get tests and ultrasounds. After that, we switched fully to our home birth midwife for prenatal care. This doctor happened to be the one on-call when we walked in the door on April 1 saying, "We can't find a heartbeat."
I'm really glad she was.
Although the appointment was rather strange up until she came into the room. The nurse who weighed me and took my blood pressure was very nervous. She couldn't look me in the eye for two seconds, she was incredibly fidgety, and after she went to get the blood pressure cuff, she came back and started apologizing profusely for putting me in a room that had a picture of a pregnant woman on the wall. Do you have a room without one, I wondered? It was an OB's office, after all!
M. and I tried hard to put her at ease, but I've never seen anyone react quite that way to our situation before. I think she was glad to get out of there.
The doctor, on the other hand, was very kind and compassionate and matter of fact. I gave her my "list" of questions and the blood tests I wanted run. She suggested, because of insurance (stupid insurance) that I get a referral to perinatalogist, who could justify and run all of the tests I wanted. So, that's the plan. Another few weeks before I get any blood tests and maybe some answers, I guess.
I know nothing can bring him back but I don't like living without knowing. And the worst part is... even if we run all the tests, we still may never know. But at least I can say I did everything I could to find out. I think I owe that to William. I suppose it's the least I can do now.
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