oh, the gravity of it all

I don't shelter myself from babies anymore. Lately, I notice I am trying harder to get little glimpses of them in their car seats, in their parents' arms, in shopping carts and baby carriers. I can't get enough, almost. With each one I contemplate their tiny little features and wonder if this baby will be anything like them, just like I did with you. But there was a time in the not so distant past that even the sound of a baby from across a store would cut through me like knives, tearing at that gaping wound that was struggling to heal and bringing me down to that breaking point, letting that dark, looming sadness right back in like an old friend.

So many healthy babies in this world, and yet mine was not okay. Why couldn't you have been okay? But you had other plans.

Today at work, after witnessing a sweet new family, mom carefully attending to her baby in his car seat, I made a silly statement to the universe, or whoever happened to be in the general vicinity at the time.

"I want my baby now."

My coworker laughed. "You're tired of being pregnant already?"

Already, I suppose. But I will have been pregnant for most of a year next month, and I still have no baby to tend to. Plus, it's not so much that I am tired of being pregnant, as much as I am so anxious to have your brother here safely, healthy, well, alive. I am more aware than ever that I do not have control over this process. And how do I give my trust to my body when I have not quite forgiven it for what it failed to provide for you?

"At least you still have your freedom right now...you can go do whatever you want. After you have that baby..." and then the look, that grave look that means something along the lines of everything changes. You will have a different life.

And what people don't understand is, there was another baby, but she died. And what I would give to be caring for that baby, for you right now, to be living that different life. My freedom? Certainly. My sleep? Certainly. Absolutely anything at all, to have you here, safe and healthy and whole, the way I imagined you.

I know that wasn't how it was supposed to go, but it was more clear to me today than it has been in a long time. I consciously stopped thinking in "should be's" a few months ago, but I wanted so badly to revisit that form of misery today. I should be mothering you right now. I should not even be at work! I should already be "tied down" by that squishy, gurgling, screaming baby.

Of course I am grateful for this new pregnancy, for your growing, wiggling brother who has made a game of pouncing on my bladder every time it gets full. Of course of course. There is no question that I cherish him equally, that I cannot truly wish things were different anymore, because it would mean that he would not exist.

But there was another baby. And you just seem so damn far away lately. There are new people I know that do not even know that you existed (at least not yet). Together your dad and I broadcast your memory with permanent ink in our skin, and there are those silent scars in our hearts, but you are still so...absent.

I guess this is what it will be like. The rest of the world will see my living children and comment on my beautiful family, but to me it will always be incomplete. There will always be someone missing.

What do I do with all this love I have for you? It is so big, so much bigger than I even have room for, and there is nowhere to put it. I ache to hold you again, in a way I haven't in months. But you are just dust and memories and sometimes a presence that is even less tangible than the air I am breathing, so subtle that I could just be imagining it. I want so badly for you to exist in some form, but I don't really know if things work like that. I want to believe it though. I almost have to. You cannot really just be gone, can you?

Your brother is growing so quickly. He is almost as big as you were when I held you. In fact, it was around this time in my pregnancy with you that we first saw you and the world began to slowly unravel. It seems like years, lifetimes ago, and at the same time like yesterday. It is a strange place to be, a healthy thriving baby in my belly and the one who wasn't so lucky in my heart.

People ask me what my plans are now, and I have no answer. Just let me get this baby here first, let me survive this strange cloudy haze of uncertainty, and then we'll talk.

on the other side

It's hard to put into words what the last week has been like for me. A week ago I was anxiously awaiting word from a friend on whether or not they were able to learn the sex of their baby after a follow up ultrasound. I was admittedly stalking facebook, waiting for her update, but when it finally came, it was not at all what I had wanted to see. Mid-conversation with my mom, her words took my breath away. They were having a son, but he was not going to make it.

Right away, there were tears. I scrambled to write something coherent to her, though I knew, I knew so well, there was nothing I could say. That short message that felt so inadequate at the time has blossomed into a week long ongoing conversation that is just...amazing.

Our stories have been paralelling one another in so many ways. She had to make the choice too. She saw the same genetic counselor, the same perinatologist, likely the same ultrasound screen, the same look in the doctor's eyes. She had to make that drive to the only city in the state who would allow her to let her precious son go. She had the IV, the epidural, the horrifyingly uncomfortable labor and delivery bed. She had those wonderful, terrible, heartbreaking moments with her tiny baby. She had to leave him behind.

And six months ahead of her, I felt it all again. I felt all of those moments more clearly than I have in a long time. And I hurt with her, for her, for us.

But I have been happy to be able to be there for her in a way that most other people can't. I know I can't do much, but being there to say "yes, I felt that too" is reassuring for both of us. I just wish she didn't have to feel it, that big indescribable pain and everything that goes along with it.

How strange it is to be on the other side. How strange to be the one who survived, who is still surviving, somehow.

I have so much more to write, there are words bouncing around in the back of my head all the time, but right now I don't have the power to organize them the right way.

the 9th again

Today is six months. Six months since we said goodbye. Can it really have been half a year already since I held you, since I let you go? The significance of today rushed in early this morning, as I was getting ready for work. The tears hovered in the corners of my eyes, but I did not have time for them then.

Work was too quiet, far too little distraction, and the tears continued to spring up in unexpected moments of silence with a persistence that they haven't had in months. I was barely able to get on top of them, and I realized that I was feeling that weight again, the gravity of everything that has happened, everything I am missing.

I am trying to shake myself free of this weight, as I should really be rejoicing. We found out this week that your sibling is, in fact, a brother, and so far, he is healthy. He flaunted his beautiful spine and healthy brain, and while I am beyond thrilled that I will have the honor of chasing after him as he makes use of those fully functional legs, I feel as if I am grieving the loss of you all over again.

If I am in fact capable of making a healthy baby, why not you? Why couldn't you have had a healthy brain and a beautiful spine too? There is still so much guilt there.

We always imagined we would have a daughter first, and we did, I just never realized it would be like this. I didn't know that we would never get to raise you, that we would have to say goodbye without ever getting a chance to know you. I never dreamed that I would be telling your brother about a sister he will never meet.

I miss you.

resurfacing

I don't know what it is--maybe all the writing I've been doing, maybe all the thoughts that seem to be constantly zipping through my head, maybe the hormones that are pulsing through every inch of me--but the grief has been resurfacing a bit this week.

All week I have been feeling uncomfortable in my body. Stir crazy, almost, except that I can't escape it, it follows me everywhere. I get incredibly angry at the tiniest things, just like the early days. The house is a disaster and needs to be unpacked, cleaned, vacuumed, and yet I can't bring myself to be remotely productive. I did 2 loads of laundry today (well, more like 1 and a half) and justify to myself that at least I accomplished something.

And then I read and remember and cry, and yet I can't cry as hard as I want to. And then I get angry at myself because there is the new baby fluttering in my belly, and I should be rejoicing in these moments, cherishing them, because next week we learn whether this baby is healthy, and the world could easily come crashing down again, just like that. The wait is agonizing, because do I even really want to know? Certainly if there is bad news to be heard, I would rather pass.

I am tired. Pregnancy is wearing me out, even though I have had an easy one so far, and I am frustrated since I went through all of this not so long ago and all I got was a tiny box of ashes and a big gaping hole in my heart. I want to scream at the next person who tells me how much my life is going to change, how hard it's going to be when the baby comes. I doubt it will be worse than giving birth to a dead baby. I want to tell them that I will gladly, enthusiastically, give up every second of my free time to tend to a screaming baby with a fully functional body. Don't talk to me about hard times until you have held your child's cold body and lived to tell about it.

And since I have been spending so much time wasting my day on the internet, I came across someone who just received a poor prenatal diagnosis and has decided to carry to term. Which is, of course, a completely admirable choice that I respect totally. But then I read all the comments, everyone commending her for making the "right" choice, for being so brave, and I started to get angry. While it may be the right choice for her, there is no overall, black and white, right and wrong about the decision that was handed to her (us). And why is it that those people who choose to carry to term, no matter what the outcome, are celebrated and praised for their bravery and strength, while the rest of us, the ones who make the other choice, are quiet, usually giving few details about our situation for fear of being judged by even our closest friends and family? What is THAT? Are we not equally strong and brave in making the choice to let our sweet, much loved babies go? What is the right choice for one person may not be so right for the next, and it often shocks me that so much of our society is so small minded that they cannot fathom such a basic concept.

I am getting to that point in my healing where I want to be a voice, I want to make people understand, I want people to realize just how common it is. And at the same time, I wish I didn't have to. I wish I was nursing a 6 week old, not knowing that it all could have been different.

Maybe a shower will wash some of this insanity out...

birth? death? birthdeath?

It has been almost six months now, and I have yet to find the words to write the story of your birth. Not ironically, it is those moments--the last flutters, the foreign sensations, the tears, the cradling, the love, the heartbreak--that lurk in the corners of my mind, presenting themselves at the most awkward times and bringing me back. Bringing me right back. Six months of wrangling such memories has taught me to give them boundaries, however. I do not dismiss them, as that is essentially impossible, but instead I tell them to wait. Not now. I will deal with you later. I will visit you again when I have time, space. I will visit you when I can feel that pain with the intensity I need to, when I can cry those tears freely, as long as I want, because my baby died, and I'm not over it.

But I am okay. In my logical mind, I know that everything is as it should be. I know your soul is whole and well and part of my life for a very important reason. We probably planned it this way. And yet, that very human, very mortal part of me, that instinctual mother, does not understand. They say when you have children, it's like watching a piece of your heart walk around outside of your body. It's like that, exactly that, only you are gone, and so is that piece of me. There is an emptiness in this world, my current, tangible reality, that will never be filled.

And still your little life, your death, your absence, have changed me in ways I could not have imagined--changes that I am now grateful for, that I would not give up if I had the chance. Your birth and death were a beginning and end for me, too.

I started to write it a couple weeks ago, and it just comes out wrong. I cannot find the tone, I can't find the words. Do I just write it, the standard play-by-play of events that traditionally ends with pictures of squirmy newborns, a lament about sleepless nights and the new found love that comes with the discovery of your child? How do I put it that, in the moments after you were born, everyone was crying but you? That I witnessed my own father cry for the very first time? That there were no apgar scores or measurements, just a nurse bringing you in your blanket and asking if I wanted to see your defect? How do I explain the last time I felt you move, that I still wonder if it was the last time you moved at all? Are there even words?

a hope and not a promise

I was so honored to learn that I was chosen for the spring award at Glow in the Woods this morning. I have found so much comfort in the writing there over the past 6 months, and to think that others may benefit from mine as well is a wonderful feeling. It is a group that I wish none of us ever had to belong to, but I am so grateful to have found it.

The award prompted me to read through your letters again--something I rarely do. As I said in my very first post: sometimes I want to reach out and grab someone and make them understand, bring them with me to that place and make them feel the terror, the sadness. The heartbreak.

I certainly succeeded, at least with myself. Every post took me right back to those moments, quickly reintroducing me to that dark gaping hole that I have so successfully been distracting myself from. It was if I was reminded: oh yes, this happened. Oh yes, it hurts. Oh yes, it will hurt forever.

And then I get angry. How could I have let myself forget? I think of you every day, and yet I somehow manage to evade that all too familiar, consuming heartache that goes along with your memory on a daily basis. How is it that the flood of tears that came today, the gut-wrenching sobs that are seemingly beyond my control, have come to feel right? Necessary. Comfortable? Perhaps it is that they are all I have left. If I am not grieving you, then did you really exist?

We moved out of the only house you ever lived in last week. It was the same house that became my refuge, my cave, the one place that I was allowed to stay in my pajamas for days and just miss you, after you died. As I swept every particle of dust out of the empty corners, I found pockets of grief that had slipped under furniture, waiting for the moment they might be visited again. Every inch of the house had an energy in it, and it was bittersweet leaving it behind. We are embarking on lots of new beginnings this year, and yet I cannot bear the thought of putting your life, your death behind me, into a dusty mental closet of bad memories. You are more than that. You will always be more than that.

The weeks are ticking away in the pregnancy with your sibling, and I find myself starting to wish time away again. I want it to be July, when we will learn if the baby's spine is closed, I want it to be December, when (God willing) I will hold the little one, I want time to pass for this and that until some little voice kicks in and screams in my head STOP! This could be all you get! And I try to cherish it, but there is still so much uncertainty.

People ask the incessant, obligatory question, "how are you feeling?" and I have little to say. I tell them I am tired, mostly, and they laugh and say "nap while you can, those days are numbered!" I smile, because that is the only appropriate response, but inside I am saying "yes, I can only hope to be so lucky." I can only hope to be spending sleepless nights with a screaming, healthy baby, the kind that most people take for granted.

I can only hope.

I love my baby no matter what

Termination.
Ter`mi*na"tion\, n.

1. The act of terminating, or of limiting or setting bounds; the act of ending or concluding; as, a voluntary termination of hostilities.

2. End in time or existence; as, the termination of the year, or of life; the termination of happiness.

The word felt dirty to me, wrong in my mouth, for the longest time. To this day, I hesitate before saying it out loud. It is so harsh, so final, so totally void of the emotion and agony that went into the decision. Certainly, in the early days after the diagnosis, I resented the word, I danced around it, always calling it something different, because it was different, it had to be. In genetic counseling, it was always "ending the pregnancy" or "interrupting the pregnancy," as if those were any better. I worded it in any other way I could find, I still do. But then there it was, scribbled all over my discharge papers from the hospital, closely followed by fetal anomaly, fetal demise, 21 weeks.

It wasn't until one day, after the diagnosis but before your birth, when I decided to type the word, hating every letter, into the search field of the Baby Center Community, that it began to resonate with me. There it was, a group full of people going through exactly the same thing I was. Suddenly I was not alone. I was not a monster for even considering it.

I cringe when I see people say that termination would never be an option for them. It was not an option for me, either. Even in the initial phone call when Patricia mentioned that the specialists would be discussing my "options" with me, my head spun. What options? This was my baby. There were no options.

And then...well, everything changed. What happens when all the options are awful? What happens when life is not necessarily the best option for your own child? What happens when you have to choose their well being or yours? Just like any mother, you choose your child's.

There is so much misunderstanding surrounding termination for medical reasons. Those who have never been in our shoes and never plan to be, claim that they will love their babies no matter what. As if the decision is simple, black and white: if you love your baby, you will keep them, no matter what. But choosing to let a baby go is perhaps one of the hardest, most sacrificial demonstrations of love there is. I do not know of anyone who has taken the decision lightly. Choosing to let a baby go who would otherwise be born into a life of suffering (or no life at all) is a sacrifice. I will suffer my whole life so that you do not have to feel one moment of pain. I will spare you, even though it hurts more than anything I could ever have imagined. I carry the weight of this so you will never have to.

It is not easy.

As we get further into the pregnancy with your sibling, I have been thinking a lot about how I will handle things if there is a problem again. Some part of me wants to say it doesn't matter, I will keep this baby no matter what. But then, does that mean I love this baby more? And if I consider putting my own well being before this baby's, does that mean I love this baby less? It is so tempting to say that love has nothing to do with it, but essentially it is all about love. You are both my children and I am constantly humbled by the amount of love I am capable of in my new, unique motherhood.

I love you both, no matter what.