Remembering Caleb Michael

Several weeks before William was stillborn, an online friend developed very very severe preeclampsia and delivered her little man too early. He was on the edge of viability, and they have been doing everything possible to keep him healthy in the NICU since. I have been following her journey and rooting for that sweet little boy... I want her/them to be a success story. My heart has a vested interest in that.

A few days ago, she announced that her sister's baby, nearly full term, was stillborn. Went in for an NST and no heartbeat.

I just stared up at the sky and said, "Really?!?!?"

I mean, come on, universe/God/whoeverorwhateveryouare... REALLY!?

How much grief and heartache can you heap on one family? That is just... all kinds of wrong. Where is the justice? Where does it end?

Hearing about another baby gone just brings it back, makes it so immediate again. I remember. I remember. And I want to reach out to that mama, so grief-stricken, in pain, or maybe numb and still in shock. There is so much I regret. She doesn't quite know what's coming yet. There is so much I want to tell her...to tell my friend to tell her sister...

Tell her to hold him. Hold him as long as she wants. If she's afraid, tell her its okay. Encourage her to hold him anyway. The fear is worse than the reality. The reality is soft and precious and hers. All hers. Tell her she's not crazy for wanting to hold him and love him. Tell her he's beautiful. Tell her to gently open his eyes and look at their color. Tell her to unwrap him, all of him. Talk to him. Sing to him. Remind her to look at everything, everything, every little tiny part, because this will be the only chance she'll have. Get pictures that way, too. Every detail. Hands and feet. Encourage her to give him a gentle bath, to dress him, to sing to him, to talk to him and tell him how much she loves him and wanted to meet him. Have pictures taken of him without all the wrappings, too... she may think she won't want to remember him that way, but she will regret not having them later. And get pictures of the tiniest things... the soles of the feet, the palms of the hands, the top of his head, his little spine and bum, all of him, as much as possible. And video, too, if someone has one and can do it. She will want it. She will. If he has a lot of hair, remember to cut some for her and put it in an envelope. Say his name out loud. A lot. Tell her how beautiful he is. She'll know it, and she'll feel it, but she may be afraid to say it until you do. Acknowledge how perfect and amazing he is.

If they don't do professional photos at the hospital, consider NILMDTS.

Help her with those decisions you have to make right away - funeral services or no? Cremation or burial? They're hard. I regret not having a service. I thought I couldn't face it, but I wish I had been braver.

You can give her a book to read later:

Life Touches Life
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
The Next Place

You can also make up a list of web resources for her. She'll probably want to connect with other mothers who experienced a loss like this - it becomes such a wonderful lifeline. I spent hours reading blogs of stories of stillbirth after my William was gone.

MDC Pregnancy and Loss Board
www.missfoundation.org
www.stillbirthalliance.org
www.babyangelpics.com
Glow in the Woods
Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Infant Loss Directory
Missing Angels Memorial Pictures
Stillbirth in the News

Tell her you love her. Tell her you're listening.

And keep listening. And loving.

And always remember....

CALEB MICHAEL
JULY 29, 2009

William Sleeping v 1.0

The reborn artist has finished painting sleeping "reborn William."

Every time I look at their pictures side by side, I'm amazed at how much this sculpt looks like my boy!

Now she just has to root the hair and of course attach it all to a body.

He might be ready to come home as early as Saturday!

Under Cover

I can't do it. I can't be smiling and happy and chatty around people I don't know. I just can't do it.

I've never been an extrovert, one of those people who strikes up conversations with strangers at the playground. That's not me anyway.

 But now? Now it's more than being introverted and quiet. Now it's avoiding. Every time someone looks my way, I feel exposed. I want to hide or run away. I feel as if, every time someone opens their mouth to speak, their words are potential weapons. Anyone could say anything at any moment that could hurt me. Every interaction holds the possibility of pain.

I feel like someone who gets stuck with needles all day, constantly on the lookout for the next poke.

M. has been gung-ho lately about making "playdates" for the kids since it's now summer and we don't have any kids around for them to play with. I know it's selfish, but I have such a hard time with it. I don't want to talk to other mothers, women who have all their children alive. And I definitely don't want to be around other mothers who have babies.

Even normal conversation hurts.

"Hi, how are you?" Crappy, my baby died. "Fine. You?"

"Gorgeous day, isn't it?" No, not in my world it isn't. The sun might be shining on your side, but it's dark and raining over here all the time. "Yeah, the kids love it."

Smiling hurts my face. I wear dark glasses all the time, even inside, like I've been beaten and am trying to hide the bruises, when what I'm really hiding are my constant tears.

Although most of the time I do feel beaten. Beaten up and beaten down. I don't want to look into anyone's eyes. I don't want to have to pretend it doesn't hurt and I don't want to have to explain my pain. I don't want to see the pity in someone else's eyes. I don't want to know they're feeling sorry for me. I don't want to be afraid, holding my breath, waiting for the next unintentionally hurtful thing.

Because it's coming. I know it's coming. And the anticipation is always worse than the reality. When I'm out in the world, I'm always wary, watching, crouched and ready for the next blow. At least when I'm alone, I don't have to ward off attacks from anyone but me and my own conscience.

And I do a good enough job, I think, at beating myself up. More than good enough. I don't need it from all sides. I really, really don't.

An Open Letter: My Mental Health

An open letter to those of you who have inquired after my mental health, upon learning I'd commissioned a "reborn" doll that looks like my son... 

Clearly, this idea bothers you, or you wouldn't be writing me about it, inquiring about and fearing for my mental stability. And as a psychologist, I can totally understand why. I didn't enter into this decision lightly. My husband, too, is a psychologist, and we talked a long time about it, and what it would mean, and how we would handle it, if I decided to get a "reborn" of William done.

Anything, truly anything, can be done in the "right" or "wrong" way, a "healthy" or "unhealthy" way. Anything can become an object of obsession. I could become obsessed with one of my daughter's generic dolls and carry it around and pretend it's William.

So when you talk about something crossing a line, certainly, there is one, I agree. But the existence of a reborn doll, or even a mother having one made to resemble her baby, isn't on the "unhealthy" side of that line. What falls on the unhealthy side of that line is when it moves into obsession.

When you lose a baby to stillbirth, you have very, very little time with your baby. I have so many regrets, so many things I never got to say or do with him. Not as a "live" baby - he was born dead, and I accept that - but to love him and honor him after he was gone. I never opened his eyes, I never rocked him and sang to him, I never got to dress or undress him, and I certainly didn't get to hold him long enough.

For me, this doll is no different than having pictures of my son - which I do have. And some people think THAT crosses a line, that it's weird and morbid to have pictures of my dead baby. But that is where my memory resides... and having his picture helps me remember him, it helps me mourn. So does having this doll - it's like a picture I can cuddle. :)

As for my children, they are healing, and the reborn has actually helped them a great deal. They've talked more about William and their feelings about their little brother and his death more in the past week than they have in the past three months.

And you have to remember, this is just three months after my son's death. We're still taking baby steps in the mourning process. Some statistics say you don't fully recover from the death of a child for six to eight YEARS after they're gone.

I totally understand your hesitation, but I can reassure you that I'm very aware of the possibility of something like this (or anything, really) becoming an obsession, and I have plenty of safeguards in place.

Thanks, though, for your concern!

Death To All Bunnies!

I planted William's garden back in April, just after he died. I was looking forward to watching the little seedling grow tall, and they have! 

The past few weeks I've been waiting for the flowers I planted to actually bloom. I wasn't going to post pictures until we actually had flowers, because otherwise it's kind of just boring green stuff. :) I usually go out and check on it every day. The poppies have been our first bloomers. 

But today, I went to look, and guess who had been in the garden?

The left side of the garden was just as tall and lush as the right side yesterday! Apparently the bunnies have been feasting!


If I could get my hands on Peter Rabbit today, he'd be stew!

Rebirth - Part One

I did a lot of soul-searching when I first discovered the idea of “reborn memory dolls.” I saw someone else’s, actually, another baby-loss mama who’d had a doll made to look like her little stillborn girl.

If you don’t know about or haven’t heard of reborn dolls… well, there’s a wiki for everything isn’t there?

According to Wikipedia, “reborning,” as it’s called, started back in the 1990’s. At first, they used already-created vinyl dolls, stripped them down (took off all the paint) and then painted them again, rooted hair, and created a doll that looked incredibly lifelike and real. Nowadays, artists actually create pre-made doll kits, which include the vinyl doll head, arms and legs, and a soft body to be stuffed, that are designed to be “reborn.”

Here’s a picture of a reborn doll.

There is a very large market for these dolls among collectors, although if you look at the comments here, there’s also a lot of controversy. Lots of people clearly think they’re creepy and “wrong.” The media coverage has focused a great deal on people who use reborns for emotional or therapeutic purposes. Those people, usually, who have experienced some sort of infant loss, or perhaps struggle with infertility.

In my former life, even as a psychologist, I think I would have judged this as morbid and even a little unhealthy. Of course, that was before I had a dead baby.

From the outside looking in, I can still feel the judgment, even my own. But when I saw a reborn for the first time, I knew I had to have one of William. I didn’t know why I felt so strongly… and I struggled with the feeling. Was I crazy? Would I turn into one of those sad women who carry around a fake baby everywhere?

I talked about it with M, who was, thank god, totally supportive. I’m so loved. :) I also talked about it with a girlfriend, who collects reborns. (Okay, so maybe she was a little biased…) But she reminded me that if we still lived in close community or in tribal cultures, I’d be holding other mamas’ babies all the time,  probably even nursing them, and it would be part of the mourning process.

My arms ached to hold a baby. And if I couldn’t have William… of course, I couldn’t… why not have a facsimile I could rock and cry over now and then? Something tangible to remember him by?

So I started looking into it, doing research, and found an artist (Marilyn Kangas of "Miss Marilyn's Orphanage) who had experience doing "memory" or "portrait" reborns. Basically, you submit pictures of the baby you want “reborn” and then together you look for kits/sculpts. The reborn artist suggested some, and I looked for some myself, searching for the best sculpt to match William. I found one, with the eyes closed, that I thought was very close. I spent hours comparing the pictures side by side, and meticulously chose this one.

But it wouldn’t be available for two months (it was still in production.) Still, I decided to wait. Because it reminded me so much of the pictures we have of William.

Then I found this sculpt, and I knew it was William... with his eyes open.

I’d never seen him with his eyes open, but my heart melted the moment I saw it and I knew I had to have him.

So now I was in it for not one, but two reborn dolls of my dead baby. Was I crazy!?

The artist was totally understanding… she ordered the eyes-open kit and started on that one right away. She sent me pictures of the progress as things went along, and I chose his eye and hair color.

There are all sort of extras you can purchase with these dolls - things like beating hearts, a magnet inserted so baby can have a pacifier, a spine, a "squishy belly" that feels more real, a belly or bottom "plate" for posing for pictures (reborns generally have soft suede bodies which makes for better cuddling.) They also have voice boxes, breathing mechanisms, heat packs, magnetic umbilical cords... it’s amazing.

The artist took about a month to finish the eyes-open sculpt, and it was just in time – the eyes-closed sculpt had just come in. She had intended to send them both to me at once, but I couldn’t wait, and had her ship him.

Here he is, home in my arms:

I have a slideshow of pictures I took, but they honestly can't do this doll justice. 

SLIDESHOW

You truly have to experience it. My husband and my oldest son (fifteen) were just wide-eyed at how real he looks and feels. (I could barely get him away from my eight year old daughter!) He is totally like holding a real baby. I felt weird leaving him alone in a room, he's so real-looking and feeling. I actually ordered a (much much cheaper) reborn on Ebay for my daughter so she could have her own to carry around. But already, so much healing has happened just in the time she's held our reborn William.

I know it's not for everybody... and I know lots of folks both in and out of the loss community might think it's creepy... but I'm glad I did it. I've already done a bit of mourning with him, and I imagine I will do a great deal more. It's almost shamanic in a way... very symbolic.

My friend who collects them warns that they're addictive! They actually use them therapeutically with folks who experience anxiety and depression... and artists have donated them to senior centers, too... just holding a reborn can lower the heart rate and calm your breathing and it releases natural oxytocin and seratonin in the brain.

I look at this reborn, and I know it’s not William, but just a memory doll. But my fears definitely resurfaced when I saw him. I wondered if I wouldn't be able to resist him, constantly, that I would project all of my feeling about William onto him, that I would pretend it really was William and that William wasn't dead.

But the truth is I don't find myself doing that. What I do find is that it brings William back into focus for me. Over time, I've found William fading around the edges, and I hate "losing" him like that.

I think the less we remember over time, the less we will be able to remember, at least that's been my experience so far. I can still recall William and my memories of him, but they're nowhere near as clear as they were, and I know they're going to fade even more.

My mother lost a child - it was before I was born, and my sister was three when she tried to cross between two parked cars and was hit and killed. So a few weeks ago, we were talking about William and she said, "I got lucky with you kids, really." I was just stunned by that. "But Mom, what about D.?" She was quiet. "Well... I mean... all of the rest of you survived." Again, I said, "But Mom, how can you say you're lucky, if you lost one? There are women who have eight kids and get to keep them all. That's lucky... losing one... that's not so lucky."

I think she just forgot her for a minute, or maybe she didn't want to remember.

But I don't want to do that. I don't want William to ever not be a part of our family and not be remembered. That's all I have of him is that memory, and if this little doll will help me keep him close in my heart, it's so worth it to me. I know there are lots of women who wouldn't "need" it... I've heard some say they don't even want or need pictures, that the memory of their baby is clear as day and won't ever fade.

But I think because of my mom and watching her dealing with the loss of her child the way she has, I'm defended against that sort of forgetting or denial. I want every bit and piece of him I can manage to hold onto. I don't want to do it the way my mom does, and if I have things that are physical and tangible, it will be harder to push away like she does.

Now, if I need to, I can pick this doll up and remember him exactly, down to the weight of him in my arms and the cradle of his soft, downy head in my hand. And it's a comfort to know he's here, just like having his urn here in my room. I have a little doll cradle he now "sleeps" in at night next to the bed, and it's really kind of calming to look over in the morning and see him there.

Crazy as it all sounds in this "new normal" world...

I know I would have passed judgment on me at one time. But once you’ve held your dead baby in your arms, your new normal doesn't differentiate anymore. The "line" you thought you wouldn’t cross just doesn't exist. I'm the crazy woman who was desperate to run from the funeral home with my baby, dead as he was, I could have cared less. I think we all know, once we've held the lifeless bodies of our babies in our arms, that the line between what's "okay" and what isn't just isn’t clear.

Having some tangible thing to remind me of William is what always sends me immediately back into the grip of grief. Sometimes I open the tiny little Ziploc bag of his hair and I can still smell him, and when I touch his hair... I know, he was real, he was here. It's the tangible things, the stuff I can see and smell and touch, that bring him back to me.

This reborn is that, for me. Not a way to bring William back, but a way to keep his memory, to bring it back to me when I need it - not the rebirth of my baby, which is impossible, but the rebirth of my memory...a sweet and longed-for touchstone. 

Hovering

I've never been a helicopter parent - you know, the kind that hover around their kids constantly, making sure nothing bad ever happens? I've been pretty okay with letting the kids learn by making their own mistakes, falling down, getting scrapes.

And I don't hover even now... but I do push my inner panic button a lot faster than I ever used to.

A few days ago we went to a picnic, and the kids were off playing with all the others on the equipment, in the sandbox. At eight and almost-seven, they're pretty self-sufficient in those situations. We give them clear boundaries, and they've learned over the years to respect them. So when I did my every-five-minute cursory look-over of the playground and couldn't find my son, I didn't panic. I just kept looking, my eyes sweeping over the playscape, the sandbox, looking for his striped shirt. 

"Honey, have you seen D.?" I asked my husband. Was my voice as scared as I felt? My heart was beating fast now, visions of him being snatched dancing in my head. Before William died, thoughts like that might occur to me - but the physical reaction, the sheer panic rising in my throat within moments of discovering him missing, that was new. Because now I knew - we weren't in some plastic bubble. Bad things happened, and they could, indeed, happen to us. They could, in fact, happen to us again... and again.

My husband stood up, doing what I'd done, scanning the park, his brow furrowed, and I knew I'd pushed his panic button, too. We both have hair-triggers lately. 

"No," he replied after a moment, shaking his head. "Where did you see him last?" 

Last... the last time I saw him. That phrase made me turn cold. It couldn't possibly be, and yet the fear catches you, freezes you, makes it hard to breathe, like sucking in broken glass. Please, god, let there never be a "last time" I see my child, ever again, unless I'm the one whose number is up, okay? 

A friend of ours started looking too, sensing my panic, I think, and my husband took three steps toward the playground before he stopped, pointing, "There he is!" as my son stepped out from behind the huge tree trunk that had hidden him from our view. Oh my god, the relief. I sagged against the picnic table, my heart still in my throat. 

"Like I need another thing, right?" I joked to my friend. 

She smiled sympathetically and nodded. "Right."

But I knew better... I didn't get a free pass. Just because one child was dead didn't mean I couldn't lose another one. 

Then, last night, the girl-child was playing with her brother's Legos and decided to try to take one of the pieces off with her teeth. Suddenly she stood up, her face a mask of fear: "I can't breathe!" she choked and then nothing... 

My husband and I both lunged for her at once and she coughed and gasped and spit a yellow Lego brick into her hand, "I got it!" 

M. yelled, "If you ever put anything like that in your mouth again, I'll kill you myself!" 

He was scared, and I think trying to scare her a little. But he didn't need to scare her - she was already pretty scared. He didn't really need to scare any of us. We don't need events like that, anymore, to tip the scales. We're already scared, all the time. We're the walking horrified. The risk is real, too real, the fear beating like a pulse at our throats. We check on each other more often, get panicked when we're home late or things happen that are out of the ordinary and out of our control.

William taught us that life is both precious and precarious. And still, I wish we'd never had to learn that lesson. I wish William were still alive and we were still blissfully ignorant, solid in our belief in that invisible force field surrounding us that never really existed. I don't know if William is watching - it's a nice thought, but I don't quite really believe it, just as I no longer have faith that we're all gonna be okay. It would be sweet to think he's an angel protecting us now... but that thought goes logically out the window for me when I wonder... where was his angel, then? What lazy-ass slacker angel was on watch the day William died, huh? I'd like to get my hands on that fella...

So no... I'm not sure we have an angel watching over us in the form of my infant son. But I am sure that we don't take each other for granted in the same way we used to. Life's moments are bittersweet now but we taste them fully, appreciate them a great deal more. And our eyes and ears are sharp, tuned in to danger, as much as they can be. Even knowing we're not in control. Even knowing we can't always prevent tragedy.

I don't know if William's spirit is here and hovering over us. Sometimes I wish it were true. Days when my children defy the laws of physics or nearly send me into heart failure, I wish I could rely on some guardian angel protecting us. But I can't know that. 

There may or may not be someone or something looking out for us, I don't know. It's the not knowing that keeps me watchful and wary. It's the not knowing that pushes my panic buttons. Because if there are such forces, well... there was clearly no one on watch when William died. Someone fell asleep at the switch and my son paid the price. It's hard to rely on such arbitrary protection. I'd rather keep my eyes and ears open and do what I can... even if it's not enough.

And hold my children close. I've been doing a lot of that lately. We all hold each other tighter these days. A lot tighter.