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.

The Next Place

Of all the books I've read about stillbirth and grief and loss in the past month, The Next Place is the one that moves me the most.

It's a poetic, poignant look at what comes after death... the next place. It's not religious - no mention of God or angels - but it's not secular either. 

It's written as a children's book, and I've read it to the kids several times (and even made it through without sobbing *all proud*) but this book truly transcends age, or gender, or... well, everything. It's one possible image of what might be next, if we are truly energy... and if that energy can't be created or destroyed... how that energy, our "soul," might continue on, in the next place.

Bittersweet and truly beautiful. 

More of Mother's Day...

This is what William's ashes came in. We kept them close to us, in our room - because that's where he would be right now, if he were alive, sleeping with us every night. His ashes are barely enough to fill the corner of a plastic bag. It's a huge container for the amount it holds.Then again... I don't know if any box could possibly contain what that one really holds - which is all that's left of our dreams, our hopes, our future for our son.

Over the past month, we've created a sort makeshift memorial on top of the box his ashes came in. M. put the knife he would have cut William's cord with on it. I added my birthing statue, and the kids chose a shell. I love the shell because the top of it reminds me of the top of William's head, the sweet whorls of his hair...

And several people gave us "angels" as gifts.

M. ordered a beautiful urn for his ashes, and a gorgeous cedar box to place his other keepsakes in.

The velvet heart box opens to display the urn.

Although we will probably keep it in the box, along with his other things, like the knife, and the bracelets we made and wore, intending to cut them off when he was born and his cord was cut. They're here, still whole.

To give you an idea of how small this urn is, how little of my sweet William there is left in the world - those are my daughter's hands holding him. She's seven.

 

We bought matching urns for each set of grandparents to put a bit of William's ashes in.

M. is going to order a tag and chain to hang around them with William's name and birthdate.

Today, we went to give these to each set of grandparents. 

William's ashes joined my father's in my mother's livingroom. 

I thought there couldn't possibly be a more horrible feeling in the world than seeing my live child holding the body of my dead one. But I was wrong. Seeing her holding his ashes was worse.

 

But I can think of worse things I could have been doing on Mother's Day.  It's true. Thanks to the death of my son, I can imagine a lot of worse things in the world. 

M. said to me this morning, "Well, you've experienced more of motherhood than any mother should have." Maybe so. But while the "happy" in my Mother's Day was relative today... I think it always was. I just didn't know or understand it in the same way I do now. Now that I've experienced more of motherhood than I ever should have...

 

We passed an accident driving to the grandparents' today, and M. and the children were annoyed by the delay, but all I kept thinking was, "It could be worse. That could be us." And I hid my tears as we passed the wreckage, knowing on a visceral level now in a way I never had before, just how much worse it could get on Mother's Day, or any other day.

 

The day William died, the heart of the world cracked open, and I saw its beating red pulse. It opened me up to all the pain in the world, the ache of potential loss of everything in every moment. It also opened me up to all the love there, too, just as vast and infinite and beyond comprehension. 

 

Thank you, William.

I love you.

My Gift

This was my Mother's Day gift from my husband. 

But my real gift, 

my secret gift, 

was his broken heart 

beating today with mine 

and our children 

breathing in their beds. 

* * *

the promise of morning
by M.

mothers are carved out of stone, cleaved
and grieving from the earth; their children, too

winter statues frosted and alive

alive and cold angel food iced with tears of a knowing

that is toward winter and toward those other lengths of last breaths: 

cut flowers and June bugs such brief kisses;  Indian 
Summers and cider pressed fresh; April snowmen 
and a boy named William whose eyes never opened -- 

and how can they be gone, never here,
and how can they be, how.

the world will die, placid and cooling, under a dying sun,

and be still, as it had been still before its birth,

as it had been still before the primordial conflagatory urge: 

the dawn pushes out the sun, awed and yawning, 
through the red fire horizon edge of earth;

and what mourning would there be if he slid out inert, 
all gasses unexcited and quiet, and floated to his place, still, 
in the dark sky, the warmth of her earthen womb dissipating 
as his heavenly body returned to the wild homeostatic forever -- 

even the sun will die, and her earth with him,

and each morning she gives him birth

she will take his ashes in her hands --

            “this is how you were born,
            and I have outlived you from the beginning.”

Baby Story

I must be a glutton for punishment.

I've started watching "A Baby Story" on TLC again. I'm tired of the "judge" shows, and I can't stand the soap operas. (Besides, it seems like everyone on those is pregnant or just had a baby, too!) But I'm not quite ready to turn off the TV and do something else, either. The TV brings a little bit of normalcy during the day, and the noise, if nothing else, is a good distraction.

When I was pregnant, I watched birthing shows like Deliver Me and A Baby Story all the time.  I watched babies being born every day - babies were delivered in hospital beds, in birthing tubs, on birth stools, in bathrooms, even in cars. Some women didn't even know they were pregnant before, oops, look at that, I just had a baby! (I glanced down at my gi-normous belly at the time and wondered just how that was possible? Denial isn't just a river in Egypt?)

I watched so many births, it actually got a little boring, even as varied as the stories were. Some babies came easy, some came hard. Some came fast, some came slow. Some required more help than others - from inductions to forceps to c-sections. Some babies had trouble breathing at first or were jaundiced or had problems breastfeeding. But there was one important thing all those babies had in common - they lived. It was something we all took for granted, me included. I just assumed, whatever complications might come up during my birth, that I would have a living, breathing baby at the end.

Of course, we know how my baby story ended. 

So I've started watching A Baby Story again, but I watch it now for entirely different reasons than I did before. I watch it now because I know the ending to these stories is going to be happy. They wouldn't dare show an outcome like ours, where a baby was born dead, lifeless, gone. We never got to the happy ending, but at least I know there will be one on TV.

Now I watch, and I wait for it, on the edge of my seat as if I don't already know what's going to happen. It's not boring to me at all - not anymore. Not in the least. Because I've discovered that happy endings don't feel quite so good if you don't know how badly it can end, and I know now just what it's like to not get that happy ending. So when it comes, that moment when the baby flings its arms and legs wide, startled to be in the world, when the eyes open and a baby draws breath and cries - I cry now, too...every single time.

Maid for Mourning

The good thing about my sister coming to visit: I cleaned my house. 

It was a three-hour power-clean, but it felt good not to walk on the floor in bare feet and stick to it.

Yeah, I know... ewwwww! But it had been a month. I hadn't done anything except laundry and dishes for a month. I didn't vacuum, sweep, mop. I didn't clean the tub. Or even the toilet. Yuk.

Problem is, it's getting dirty again. *sigh*

I wish I had a maid.

Okay, if we're wishing for things, I wish I had my dead son back to life, or I could turn the clock back and make him not die, or any various and sundry magical-thinking wishes.

But wishing for a maid seems more...reasonable. Just someone to take over all the mundane everyday stuff that needs to be done, so I can do the real work. The mourning.

And it is work. I had no idea. When you're up every night, replaying everything in your head, trying to swallow around the huge lump in your throat and crying, even screaming silently into your pillow so you don't wake your poor husband, who has to work in the morning... when everything you see, touch, taste, smell or feel reminds you of what you're missing... when nothing, not even sleep - where you dream him alive and dead all over again and again - brings relief... you become so tired. I thought labor was hard? Ha. Mourning is utterly exhausting. At least there's an end to labor!

I should be in some woman's hut somewhere, surrounded by other women, rocking and chanting. I should be rending my clothes, wailing at a wall. I should be focusing on nothing but this pain...but there's no time. There's just no time. I need to make dinner and clean the peanut butter off the counter and reply to emails and make sure the kids are doing their homework.

What I need, really, isn't a maid... it's another mommy. A doppelganger maybe. Someone who can take my place and go through the motions - because really, that's all I'm doing here, on the outside, anyway. I want to slip out of my skin, shed the weight of the world and all of its ties, and just give myself time to breathe, time to heal, time to unwrap his memory, to unfold it and explore every moment before I put it away again.

Somehow I have this belief that if I could do that... then I'd be done. If I could have that time, then this pain wouldn't be so constant. So what I really want isn't a maid, or a dopplerganger... what I really want is to be done with this already. I want to be past this part. I want to skip to the end. A happy-ever-after one, thankyouvermuch.

But I can't. I can't turn the clock back, and I can't turn the clock forward. I'm stuck in the middle, in this horrible place of darkness, pain, not knowing. I hate it here. I absolutely hate it.

And it's dirty, on top of everything else.

I guess I do still wish I had a maid.

But, as my mother always said, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."

So I guess I have to live with it. I'm the mommy. This is my life, and it's gonna keep on going. There's no "other" mommy, no way to wrinkle my nose and make the house clean or the baby un-dead.

In the meantime, I'm dying inside and the dog has ketchup on her ears and the oven smells like burnt toast every time you turn it on and there's something unidentifiable growing in a container at the back of the refrigerator and I'm still dying inside...

Aside From The Obvious

Before William died, "How are you doing?" or "Are you okay?" were pretty simple, face-value sorts of questions. If I looked sad or mad or like something was wrong, M. would ask, and I would answer. 

Now, he asks, "Are you okay... aside from the obvious?"

Because it is. It's very obvious to everyone, not just people who know what happened. Even now, a month later, when I can go out into the world without overwhelming fear and panic gripping me, people know something is wrong.

I was at our little local post office, and the woman there did a double take when she came to the counter. Now, I'm not the chatty type. I'm pretty introverted, I don't strike up conversations and tell people everything - or, really, anything - but I did see this woman a lot before William died, because we have a P.O. box for business reasons that I went in to check about once a week.

This was the first time I'd been back.

"Are you okay?" she asked. I was surprised by the question - and I think she was surprised and even embarrassed that she asked it.

In my head, I heard M's follow-up to that, "Aside from the obvious?" 

But there was nothing wrong, really...just the "obvious." And I didn't want to go into the story, I didn't want to cry in the middle of the post office, so I gave my standard answer:

"I'm fine."

Yep. Fine. 

Aside from the obvious, of course.