Thinking of Tash and her Maddy.
xxoo
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
The space between
It's been raining babies here in db land. I'd like to say that all have had the happy endings but as we all know, that isn't always the case. A new member of our club joined up, I read about her over at Aunt Becky's place, her name is Cynthiaa and you can support her here. Striking to me about her was that she was already blogging before it happened. Her blog was full of the shiny happy pregnancy story. In fact, the post before it happened she had written about her last baby shower and shared pictures of the new crib and other gifts she had received in anticipation of her baby boy due in two weeks. And then the shit storm descended. We all know that storm, the shock, the disbelief, the unbelievable agony. I wondered tho as I read her blog, which has a pretty substantial following, what the impact will be on the unsuspecting readers.
Most of us here came here specifically to write about our loss. Our blogs were born out of the death of our babies. Our followers, for the most part, are other dead baby moms. For her, she had the ordinary life, the ordinary pregnancy and was expecting the ordinary baby all along. So were her readers. Now they all have witnessed the shattering of the illusion of ordinary. They have all seen that stillbirth does just happen out of nowhere. There are no warnings, no indicators, no "Oh yeah, I saw that coming." predictions. It just drops in and steals ordinary away from you, along with your stability and belief in the rightness of the world. And they all were there to see it happen to her. I know the outpouring of support has been enormous so that is one thing that she will have that so many of us didn't. So many people to reach out and talk to without having to explain any of it. They already know. And of course there's us. I know some of you have already left her messages and invited her over here, to the dark side. She'll find plenty of good company here, I know that.
I hope that for the people who were just following along, just reading her words and expecting the mundane happy ending they thought was a sure thing, that the idea of stillbirth happening only in quiet corners of the world to people who deserve it or to babies who must have been sick or to mothers who must have done something to cause it....is changed forever. While I know none of them have the first idea of what she is going through, I know they all know now how quickly the mundane can turn tragic. And I hope she finds her way to us so we can wrap ourselves around her and show her how we learned to live with that tragedy.
For me, as the days take me farther away from my "that day", I find myself grieving more selfishly. By which I mean I am grieving more for me now and it is exhausting. I think alot about how changed I am, about the sadness that is always lingering just on the outskirts of my consciousness. It's a dull fog resting on the horizon that I can always see, even when I am standing in the brilliant sunlight. I know it is there, waiting to creep it's way in, to slowly envelop me and cover me like a cool blanket, blocking the light and chilling me to the core. When I lived in San Fran.cisco I used to love to stand at my window and look out to the ocean where the fog came into the bay under the Gol.den Gate Brid.ge. It would sit out at the beach and then as the wind blew it would slowly cover the avenues, street by street, making its way up and over Gol.den Gate Park and then crawl up to where I was in my window and I would watch it blow past the antique street lamp on the corner, the mist of water reflected in the yellow cone of light that shone across my street, and marvel at its beauty. It had a calming effect on me, it was mesmerizing and beautiful. Not anymore.
These days it feels suffocating. Not so much the feelings as the reality that the feelings will never go away. That this grief is now a part of who I am. It won't ever become something that I am used to. It isn't like a bad break up where in a few years time you can remember the good times and smile at how devastated you were and see how far you've come. It isn't like when you lose a grandparent and it's awful and sad and you cry and you miss them but in time you come to terms with the natural order of things and you make peace with it.
There will never be a time when it feels ok. I still can be driving in my car listening to my kids laugh or sing or talk or argue, or cooking dinner, or holding Cason, or walking down the street, or breathing and I'll be fine but then something will trigger a memory of that day and the tears come, the tightening in my throat, the tensing of my muscles, the darkness. I've gotten better at hiding it, I've gotten better at riding it out and not letting it take me all the way down on a slow spiral out of control, instead I just leap, hit bottom and start the crawl back out. Because I know I have to and I know I can. But I hate it. I hate that it will last forever, that I will always have this crushing sadness that lurks around every moment in my future. And that is what feels so selfish. Because in those moments it isn't Caleb that is making me melancholy, it is the knowledge that I have to live with this, always, that does it. It's separate from the sadness over Caleb, it just feels all about me. About my life being different, about my happiness being dulled, about my joy being limited, not limitless, because there will always be this to fence it in.
I have my grief for Caleb and now I have my grief for me. They exist on opposite sides of my world. One feels sadly appropriate, the other, indulgent and greedy as though it minimizes his death and instead says look what you did to me, see how I have to live now because of this. But it isn't anger I feel, it's resignation. It's the exhaling and sighing and acknowledgment that this is who I am now and will be forever.
But I want to hope that even if I don't get to live in the sunlight anymore now that that fog is lingering there, that eventually, maybe, I will get to spend more time living somewhere in the space between.
Most of us here came here specifically to write about our loss. Our blogs were born out of the death of our babies. Our followers, for the most part, are other dead baby moms. For her, she had the ordinary life, the ordinary pregnancy and was expecting the ordinary baby all along. So were her readers. Now they all have witnessed the shattering of the illusion of ordinary. They have all seen that stillbirth does just happen out of nowhere. There are no warnings, no indicators, no "Oh yeah, I saw that coming." predictions. It just drops in and steals ordinary away from you, along with your stability and belief in the rightness of the world. And they all were there to see it happen to her. I know the outpouring of support has been enormous so that is one thing that she will have that so many of us didn't. So many people to reach out and talk to without having to explain any of it. They already know. And of course there's us. I know some of you have already left her messages and invited her over here, to the dark side. She'll find plenty of good company here, I know that.
I hope that for the people who were just following along, just reading her words and expecting the mundane happy ending they thought was a sure thing, that the idea of stillbirth happening only in quiet corners of the world to people who deserve it or to babies who must have been sick or to mothers who must have done something to cause it....is changed forever. While I know none of them have the first idea of what she is going through, I know they all know now how quickly the mundane can turn tragic. And I hope she finds her way to us so we can wrap ourselves around her and show her how we learned to live with that tragedy.
For me, as the days take me farther away from my "that day", I find myself grieving more selfishly. By which I mean I am grieving more for me now and it is exhausting. I think alot about how changed I am, about the sadness that is always lingering just on the outskirts of my consciousness. It's a dull fog resting on the horizon that I can always see, even when I am standing in the brilliant sunlight. I know it is there, waiting to creep it's way in, to slowly envelop me and cover me like a cool blanket, blocking the light and chilling me to the core. When I lived in San Fran.cisco I used to love to stand at my window and look out to the ocean where the fog came into the bay under the Gol.den Gate Brid.ge. It would sit out at the beach and then as the wind blew it would slowly cover the avenues, street by street, making its way up and over Gol.den Gate Park and then crawl up to where I was in my window and I would watch it blow past the antique street lamp on the corner, the mist of water reflected in the yellow cone of light that shone across my street, and marvel at its beauty. It had a calming effect on me, it was mesmerizing and beautiful. Not anymore.
These days it feels suffocating. Not so much the feelings as the reality that the feelings will never go away. That this grief is now a part of who I am. It won't ever become something that I am used to. It isn't like a bad break up where in a few years time you can remember the good times and smile at how devastated you were and see how far you've come. It isn't like when you lose a grandparent and it's awful and sad and you cry and you miss them but in time you come to terms with the natural order of things and you make peace with it.
There will never be a time when it feels ok. I still can be driving in my car listening to my kids laugh or sing or talk or argue, or cooking dinner, or holding Cason, or walking down the street, or breathing and I'll be fine but then something will trigger a memory of that day and the tears come, the tightening in my throat, the tensing of my muscles, the darkness. I've gotten better at hiding it, I've gotten better at riding it out and not letting it take me all the way down on a slow spiral out of control, instead I just leap, hit bottom and start the crawl back out. Because I know I have to and I know I can. But I hate it. I hate that it will last forever, that I will always have this crushing sadness that lurks around every moment in my future. And that is what feels so selfish. Because in those moments it isn't Caleb that is making me melancholy, it is the knowledge that I have to live with this, always, that does it. It's separate from the sadness over Caleb, it just feels all about me. About my life being different, about my happiness being dulled, about my joy being limited, not limitless, because there will always be this to fence it in.
I have my grief for Caleb and now I have my grief for me. They exist on opposite sides of my world. One feels sadly appropriate, the other, indulgent and greedy as though it minimizes his death and instead says look what you did to me, see how I have to live now because of this. But it isn't anger I feel, it's resignation. It's the exhaling and sighing and acknowledgment that this is who I am now and will be forever.
But I want to hope that even if I don't get to live in the sunlight anymore now that that fog is lingering there, that eventually, maybe, I will get to spend more time living somewhere in the space between.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
My lips were sealed...
Coggy has some news...and I am over the moon with joy for her. She was there for me when I joined this club and I am honored that she let me be a part of the last few days, even from all the way across the pond, as she truly labored, to bring something so beautiful into this world. Stop by and and take a peek. Bring a tissue and she'll provide a smile to go with it.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The perfect gift
It was in a blue velvet draw string pouch. I could hear the delicate tinkling of the rattle before I let it fall into my hand.
A simple, sterling silver piece, fashioned as a bracelet almost. With a ball that connects the two ends of the ring.
I held it in my hand and saw on the rounded surface of the ball, Cason's initials engraved, tiny and perfect, just like him.
I started to thank her and she, a dear friend of my mother's who had brought this to me, told me to look closer.
I turned it over in my hand and there, tiny and perfect on the other side, were Caleb's initials.
Instead of saying thank you, I cried in her arms.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Survey Says
A while ago, way back in the early days after I lost Caleb, I came across an article that referenced a survey being done in order to examine the experience of parents(mostly mothers) who had lost a child to stillbirth or neonatal death. The purpose of the survey was to give the medical community, i.e. doctors, nurses, technicians etc., insight into the impact of the loss, not only as a life changing experience, duh, but also what the importance of the actual giving of the diagnosis was/is. Simply put, the author of the study was looking to see how crucial the initial delivery, pardon the pun, of the news was to the grief process. Not just the diagnosis but how it was handled be the news giver, what information should be given, how the information should be dealt with by the provider and other issues related to the first part of the experience for the parents.
Additionally, she, the author, inquires as to the lack of information made available to pregnant parents as to the risk of stillbirth in pregnancy and how that affects the parents who later are on the receiving end of that diagnosis.
I participated in the study, taking the 25 minutes or so to answer her questions with the hope that my voice, my experience with an inept medical group, might one day help another mother escape the same shitty handling I had.
The other night I got an email from the author, asking for some follow up information and asking if I wanted to see the preliminary report. To be honest, I had completely forgotten I had even done it(thank you xa.n.ax) but her email recalled the memory for me. I answered her follow up questions and I asked to see the study. Her results are akin to what we all would have told her. That having a compassionate caregiver, who is willing to discuss, for as long as we need, the death of our baby, makes an enormous difference in how we grieve. Her results are a four page study with sexy graphs and other fancy data but the bottom line is that the medical community needs to reevaluate how they treat mothers, parents, of stillborns and neonatal loss babies.
She is still compiling data for the study as it is still a work in progress so she continues to collect data. Which is where YOU come in.
I offered to post the link to the survey on my blog for her so that she could gather more input from dead baby moms. I know so many of us were treated poorly by the medical people whose duty it was to care for us. Here is an opportunity for all of us to let them know what needs to change and how they need to do better when treating the families who are experiencing the tragedy of the loss of their child.
If you want to participate in the study you can find it HERE. And let others know on your blog too. Link back to me or post the link on your site.
The more of us who speak, the louder our voices become. Maybe they will hear us and actually listen.
A girl can dream, right?
Additionally, she, the author, inquires as to the lack of information made available to pregnant parents as to the risk of stillbirth in pregnancy and how that affects the parents who later are on the receiving end of that diagnosis.
I participated in the study, taking the 25 minutes or so to answer her questions with the hope that my voice, my experience with an inept medical group, might one day help another mother escape the same shitty handling I had.
The other night I got an email from the author, asking for some follow up information and asking if I wanted to see the preliminary report. To be honest, I had completely forgotten I had even done it(thank you xa.n.ax) but her email recalled the memory for me. I answered her follow up questions and I asked to see the study. Her results are akin to what we all would have told her. That having a compassionate caregiver, who is willing to discuss, for as long as we need, the death of our baby, makes an enormous difference in how we grieve. Her results are a four page study with sexy graphs and other fancy data but the bottom line is that the medical community needs to reevaluate how they treat mothers, parents, of stillborns and neonatal loss babies.
She is still compiling data for the study as it is still a work in progress so she continues to collect data. Which is where YOU come in.
I offered to post the link to the survey on my blog for her so that she could gather more input from dead baby moms. I know so many of us were treated poorly by the medical people whose duty it was to care for us. Here is an opportunity for all of us to let them know what needs to change and how they need to do better when treating the families who are experiencing the tragedy of the loss of their child.
If you want to participate in the study you can find it HERE. And let others know on your blog too. Link back to me or post the link on your site.
The more of us who speak, the louder our voices become. Maybe they will hear us and actually listen.
A girl can dream, right?
Saturday, January 24, 2009
I may look different, but I'm still me.
Not so long ago, I wrote about sailing for another port, about the journey taken from dead baby land through pregnancy and into, as it was, hopefully, motherhood on the other side. Having reached what I thought was a destination, my destination, I now find that really there are no final stops, no place where you disembark. Yes, I arrived, but my pilgrimage continues. While it seemed to me at the time as though I had to choose, stay in the familiar or let go and embrace the unknown, it really was only for the crossing.
Upon reaching my other side, that 'place' we all look to as our ticket out of db land, I was made brutally aware that while I was given a beautiful child, he wasn't a pass off the ship but rather a passenger traveling with me. And as many may have thought or even noted at the time, a part of me would always remain steadfastly in the land of dead babies. There is no 'get out of db land free' card in this place.
And really we're all straddling the horizon, looking back and looking forward, sure of where we have been and so unsure of where it is that we are going.
In some ways I suppose the dead baby mom label has become quite comfortable. As the poem "Shoes" says, some of us will at some point have walked in these shoes for so long that we will go days and they won't even bother us at all. Reading that poem in the early days after losing Caleb, I couldn't imagine ever having a day pass where I wasn't consumed by his loss. But now, they have and they continue to. I don't feel like less of a dead baby mom because of it, I just feel farther removed from the shock of his loss. I have trekked many miles in these shoes and the wear is beginning to show.
I don't know who I would be now if Cason hadn't joined me. I don't know what my grief would look like or feel like. I know many IRL assume that because you get your live baby you must be complete, fixed, all better now. Even my husband said to me recently when I was talking about the goings on in db land, "Well , you can't really call yourself a db mama anymore can you?" He smiled when he said it and I know, having lived with him all these years, that he meant no harm in saying it, but I looked right back at him and asked,"Did Caleb come back to life? Is he here?" That wiped the smile off his face. But if even my husband thought it, him, the father of Caleb, I can only imagine what others who are farther removed from me must think.
I guess to almost anyone, even a fellow dead baby mom, my rights to the whole package of all things db may seem diminished by the live baby. That makes sense, it really does. Not that I am not allowed to grieve for my loss but that I do have something marvelous to cherish now. It has not gone unnoticed by me that not everyone here has gone on to have another baby, some by choice and some by shit awful circumstance. Even here in the world of dead babies, we all travel a different course. Even though we all deny the existence of the 'pain Olympics' it can't go unsaid that truly some of us have a harder load to bear, face a different challenge, bear the weight of different decisions for the future. And yet, we have this one shared thing, this life altering moment, a bond born out of motherhoods cruelest fate and because of it, we walk or sail, together, (choose your metaphor), always.
While I now carry a live baby in my arms, I will always carry my dead baby in my heart. And even though I may look different on the outside, I'm still here, I'm still me.
Upon reaching my other side, that 'place' we all look to as our ticket out of db land, I was made brutally aware that while I was given a beautiful child, he wasn't a pass off the ship but rather a passenger traveling with me. And as many may have thought or even noted at the time, a part of me would always remain steadfastly in the land of dead babies. There is no 'get out of db land free' card in this place.
And really we're all straddling the horizon, looking back and looking forward, sure of where we have been and so unsure of where it is that we are going.
In some ways I suppose the dead baby mom label has become quite comfortable. As the poem "Shoes" says, some of us will at some point have walked in these shoes for so long that we will go days and they won't even bother us at all. Reading that poem in the early days after losing Caleb, I couldn't imagine ever having a day pass where I wasn't consumed by his loss. But now, they have and they continue to. I don't feel like less of a dead baby mom because of it, I just feel farther removed from the shock of his loss. I have trekked many miles in these shoes and the wear is beginning to show.
I don't know who I would be now if Cason hadn't joined me. I don't know what my grief would look like or feel like. I know many IRL assume that because you get your live baby you must be complete, fixed, all better now. Even my husband said to me recently when I was talking about the goings on in db land, "Well , you can't really call yourself a db mama anymore can you?" He smiled when he said it and I know, having lived with him all these years, that he meant no harm in saying it, but I looked right back at him and asked,"Did Caleb come back to life? Is he here?" That wiped the smile off his face. But if even my husband thought it, him, the father of Caleb, I can only imagine what others who are farther removed from me must think.
I guess to almost anyone, even a fellow dead baby mom, my rights to the whole package of all things db may seem diminished by the live baby. That makes sense, it really does. Not that I am not allowed to grieve for my loss but that I do have something marvelous to cherish now. It has not gone unnoticed by me that not everyone here has gone on to have another baby, some by choice and some by shit awful circumstance. Even here in the world of dead babies, we all travel a different course. Even though we all deny the existence of the 'pain Olympics' it can't go unsaid that truly some of us have a harder load to bear, face a different challenge, bear the weight of different decisions for the future. And yet, we have this one shared thing, this life altering moment, a bond born out of motherhoods cruelest fate and because of it, we walk or sail, together, (choose your metaphor), always.
While I now carry a live baby in my arms, I will always carry my dead baby in my heart. And even though I may look different on the outside, I'm still here, I'm still me.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
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