She Brings Joy

When my daughter died I was holding her. Not many people experience the death of their child, and fewer still are holding their child when they stop breathing.

My daughter died in my arms, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I have photographs of her living in my arms, her eyes like slits and her tiny mouth open. She was so light in my arms. I couldn’t make her stay.

One hour and forty-seven minutes after she left the womb she left this world.

There were no hysterics, and it was peaceful. I think shock overcame us then.

I had not been able to get a hold of Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep for a photographer in the immediate time preceding her birth and I wasn’t thinking of it immediately after. We did take photos of her, mindful of the realization that they were the only ones we would have.

My hair was a mess, my glasses were broken, and there were wires and tubes coming out of both me and Bea. The photos that the nurses took of the three of us were blurry and messy.

Each and every photo we took is precious. I love them all.

I don’t know how long we kept her with us. A nurse kept coming in and out and I wanted her to leave us alone. My husband was grateful because he had seen me bloodied and opened and he was frightened. All that I knew was that she was interrupting my solitude.

We took our photos and unwrapped my daughter’s tiny body. Some mothers choose to keep their baby’s bodies covered because LBWC can include some horrific defects. We were at the minimal spectrum, and I wanted to see everything. I knew that I would wonder later, what her body looked like. I took a photo, because I knew, again, that I would wonder, later.

I neglected to look at her backside- at least, I don’t recall looking at her backside.

I regret it. I know that may seem strange, but in such an important moment, I can’t believe I forgot something so basic. I will never know what my sweet little baby’s behind looks like this side of Heaven.

But I guess those things won’t matter there- although the idea of her mooning me as I walk (or float?) up to the pearly gates is interesting. Who knows?

I think we may have kept her with us for only about 2 hours or so after she died. I didn’t know that I could have asked for her to go with me to my room. I didn’t know that I could have kept her with me for 10 hours, if I had wanted to.

Strike 1, against the hospital.

Before the nurse took her from me, I asked her to make sure that she brought me back her small hat and her blanket.

She walked out with my daughter in her arms, and my husband and I fell into one another and our grief.

And……

Then the nurse brought her back in.

Strike 2, against the hospital.

(I know you’re thinking- wait, strike 1 was not telling you that you could have her back, or keep her for 10 hours.

If we had known that we could have her as long as we wanted, we would have kept her longer. But once the decision was made to let her go, we had made the decision to let her go. It was extremely difficult to watch her walk out the door with my daughter.

And then walk back in.

She interrupted a private moment between my husband and I.

And I’ll tell you why.

Bea’s hands were folded, like in prayer. I had put them that way, as she was slipping away.

The nurse thought that she was just so adorable. She thought we may want a photo of her with her little hands folded. My husband took the photo. It is the only photo I have of my Bea, in which my husband or I are not touching her. Where we are not caring for her. I hate it, but I can’t get rid of it, because it’s the last one I have of my Bea.

That’s why it’s a strike 2.)

After about 5 minutes, the nurse came back in with Bea’s box of belongings. I opened it.

Her tiny locks of hair.

Her hat.

Footprints.

And a brand, spanking new receiving blanket, which was most definitely not the one my daughter was wrapped in.

Strike 3, against the hospital.

I hit the call button.

Many times.

She came rushing in. I handed her the blanket, and told her I wanted my Bea’s.

The one that was colored with birthing fluid, the blood from IV pokes. With my daughter’s epithelial cells all over it .

The one that served as the only clothing that she would wear while she was living.

She had to dig it out of the garbage.

Strike 4, against the hospital.

(Two separate strikes- one for trying to foist some false item on me, and one for throwing away anything that had touched my daughter’s body so intimately. Anything that had held her while I held her.)

So, back to the rest of what happened after.

She left. Again.

I was unbelievably calm.

A man came and wheeled me out of the recovery room, and into a private room. I was placed on a floor for women whose babies were in the NICU. Or were stillborn. Or were only alive for an hour and forty seven minutes.

My husband eventually left to care for the living. I stayed in my hospital bed.

I stayed in the hospital for almost a week. Drs. and social workers and food people all came in and out. I didn’t cry. I almost did once, but a nurse walked in. I couldn’t cry in front of strangers.

They brought Bea home the day before I left.

My husband made arrangements for her to be taken care of. While he was sitting with the funeral director, he explained the story of our situation. The funeral director asked him,

“And you never thought of abortion?”

My husband said he almost left, but answered him, “no.”

The man got up and hugged my husband, and told him that 8 months before we lost our Bea, that he had lost a daughter. He and his wife had made the choice to carry to term a pregnancy in which the baby had been diagnosed with a severe case of Spina Bifida. I can’t post the name of someone else’s child here, but I will say that her middle name was Joy- it’s interesting- many carried to term babies have a name that references Joy.

For the first time since our pregnancy ordeal had begun, we finally had someone who knew exactly what we were going through. It was the right thing, at the right time.

The funeral home that she went to is on the corner of my road. I have to pass by it every time I leave my house. I think of the quietness of the room where we sat with her. I think of my youngest son holding her so sweetly. I think of saying goodbye to her. I think of how I was the last person to touch her, after everyone had gone. I think of her hat that was too big, and her small fur-lined pink boots. Her dress had a cupcake on the front. It was so sweet and tiny.

As far as the birth and death story- that is basically all. There are small details that I could continue with, things I have missed, that I could add later. But right now, there is no more involved in the story of her life.

I am left here only to keep my grief now.

I miss her so.

Thursday, March 01, 2012
6 Thank You For Visiting

Name

Baby Loss

Tuesday, February 28, 2012
2 Thank You For Visiting

Afterbirth

Baby Loss

Friday, February 24, 2012
2 Thank You For Visiting

Small

Baby Loss

Thursday, February 23, 2012
2 Thank You For Visiting

Stunted Growth, and a New Tomorrow

Beatrix Elizabeth

Spring is coming here. It's one if those things you can just feel. Like the trees are stretching themselves out after a long nap. I feel like I've worn a tight skin for months, and the need to shrug it off has become almost manic.

Last year, I planted a garden for Beatrix. It was pathetic, really. It went untended in my sadness, and in a shady spot. The flowers perked up when I put them in the soil but refused to get any bigger than they were when I had bought them. They were stunted, and most of them died.

This is what I am manic to try again- we had a fall wind storm that felled many of the trees in our yard. The spot where Bea's garden is, lost the most tree coverage. I am hoping that the sun will reach it now.

I am hoping that the sun will reach me. That all of what's stunted in my growth from lack of nurturing will somehow spring to life.

Part of "recovering" from grief is wanting to, I think. It is very comfortable to sit in my dark hole. No one expects anything....."she's grieving," they say.

Grief is addicting. It relieves you of responsibility for your actions. You can claim- "the grief made me do it." When you hit send on that nasty email, hang up the phone and decided that you're not going to speak to someone again. When you behave poorly in public.

In the beginning, when my grief was so raw, I found these were honest responses. But now, I find myself, more and more, using my grief as a block from unpleasant situations.

I just don't want to any longer. Callous people are part of life- they don't just suddenly appear when you lose a child. Staying in this place cheapens my daughter- it makes her nothing more than a crutch.... nothing more than an excuse.

My daughter is much more than an excuse.

Tomorrow, when I wake up, there will be a difference. A change. An owning up to responsibility and a conscious effort to make my daughter more than an excuse for being angry at the world.

I am making an effort to grow. I am making an effort to throw off my stunted skin and stretch toward the sun.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012
1 Thank You For Visiting

Baby Loss

Saturday, February 18, 2012
2 Thank You For Visiting

Poor Showing

Baby Loss

Saturday, February 18, 2012
8 Thank You For Visiting

Sick

Baby Loss

Thursday, November 17, 2011
4 Thank You For Visiting

Spoken word retake....

Year One

Thursday, November 03, 2011
1 Thank You For Visiting

Spoken Word Blog Round-up

Baby Loss

Tuesday, November 01, 2011
8 Thank You For Visiting

Your Lovely Hands

Baby Loss

Today is October 25, 2011. The small ticker on the side of my page tells me it’s been 10 months, 1 week, and 5 days since we said goodbye.

It’s difficult to conceptualize what you have been doing in this time.

I’ve been mourning your fingers. Those tiny little appendages which could be clinging onto mine right now.

Your fingernails would be clean, with moon-shaped beds. I would be tempted to polish them, even at only 10 months old. You have to forgive me; I have never been the mother of a baby girl before. I was so looking forward to caring for your fingernails.

You would have had dimples in your hands. They would be plump and sweaty. They would grab onto things that they shouldn’t be. Then they would hold tightly when I tried to take those things away.

All of my children show strong tempers, so it would become a battle of wills to remove anything you really wanted to hold on to.

I guess that’s kind of how I feel about you.

I should be holding your hands as you toddled around. You would wrap your little fingers around mine, hefting your weight as you take tentative steps- pulling your knees up high and setting your feet down softly, unsure of where you are taking yourself.

But then I remember- even if you were here, there would never be any first steps for you. Doctors called it sacral agenesis. I called it perfection.

Your hands worked just fine though. You usually kept them in front of your face. This made it difficult for us to get images of your face during ultrasounds.

Sometimes, you are so close, that I can almost smell your baby skin. If willpower could bring you back to me, you would have already arrived.

I want those hands, so desperately. I want those hands with little black marks in the creases, and playing in the mud, or in your food…. In all of the things that they’re not supposed to be touching.

I see other moms holding their baby girls. The baby will put her hand in front of mom’s face, and mom will bat it away. I want to say,

“No- stop. You are taking her hands for granted. Can’t you see how magnificent they are? What a marvel your daughter is, all put together with her organs neatly stuffed INSIDE of her body.”

If you were here, I would let you explore my face with your hands like a blind person. You would pull at my eyebrows. I know this because at one point in time, almost a million years ago, I have had babies who lived- and they pulled at my eyebrows. You would pick at the mole on the side of my mouth, trying to remove it because it looks like a speck of dirt.

I would close my eyes, while your fingers trailed over my face, feeling the contours of my skin, knowing me intimately.

I wonder what your hands would have done in the space of a lifetime.

I imagine all of the actions taken by my own hands, and I vow to use them more wisely. I vow to use my hands for things that I would imagine you doing.

But I won’t. After a while, I’ll forget about my promise, and go back to “normal.”

It is difficult not to idealize you, my baby daughter. You would have been perfect, I know. The exact person I thought you would be. All of things that I wanted for you, you would have. You would love my preference for long hair and books. You wouldn’t mind my old-fashioned ways. Your hands would be next to mine, kneading bread and making jam.

I want your hands, right now. Each tiny finger was so valuable to me. I would have walked around in the grocery store, pointing them out to strangers- “look how beautiful her hands are!” And they would have been so awestruck, that they would stand still, silent in reverence.

Your hands would have done so many lovely things. They may have nurtured children. One touch from them may have healed illnesses- or maybe they would have created stunning works of art. People would flock from the world over to gaze at them, in their pristine perfection.

Your hands are one great big missing link in the chain of my life. It is broken, just because I can’t hold them in my own.

And I think I am safe in assuming that I am not the only one who has lost out, in a world where your hands are missing.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011
2 Thank You For Visiting

Bea Bear

Baby Loss

Saturday, October 22, 2011
3 Thank You For Visiting

The Contender

Baby Loss

Thursday, October 20, 2011
4 Thank You For Visiting

Absence of Fear

Baby Loss

My young son went on his first overnight, scouting camp trip. My husband is with him, sharing a tent and keeping careful watch over him.

I am terrified.

Of numerous things- there are 2,000 people at this campground.

He could get lost in a crowd- he is so very small and one glance away, and my husband could lose his visual.

There are woods nearby. I imagine him shivering a cold, dark place… hungry, frightened, and lost.

At any gathering where there are a multitude of children, you run the risk of predators. Someone could lure him away from camp with a promise that his tiny little comprehension of evil finds no suspicion in.

He could become hurt, far away from the modern convenience of almost immediate emergency room care. There may not be ready access to ambulances and other emergency transport.

This is the reality of my parenting, post-loss. My expectations for safety have been shattered. Part of me doesn’t trust anyone- even my husband or children, with this smallest member of our crew. I cannot bear to have him out of my sight.

Not to be underestimated is the fear I live with for each of my older children- one of my sons, living with friends in the city. My daughter away at her freshman year of college. The other son, here in the house but traveling and growing more and more independent every day.

If I had my way, all of my children would come home. They would stay in my house, getting fat and lazy, while I braved the world to bring them food. I have no need of colleges and apartments, and steady significant others who may break their hearts, putting them in another type of danger.

This is the world that I live in each and every day.

At first, I thought that since I had faced the most fearful thing that a person could face, and lived through it, that I would be fearless. I thought that nothing could touch me. That didn’t turn out to be the case.

I don’t know if I could live through it if it happened again. I tell myself, of course I would- no one really ever dies of a broken heart! But I imagine myself falling into the breakage, and being unable to crawl out because the chasm is so large.

The fear is partly based on family history- I have an aunt who lost a baby to SIDS when I was young. A few years ago, she lost another of her children in a car accident.

Lightning does strike twice.

They died on the same day, October 25, over 20 years apart.

October doesn’t scare me because of all of the Halloween decorations everywhere- it scares me because it reminds me that it can happen again. And because I have four living children- it could conceivably happen four more times.

I have to take hold of my fear- don’t let it overwhelm me. Don’t let it swallow me.

Pray.

When that doesn’t seem to be doing anything (from my end anyways), pray harder.

But I am still frightened.

I try not to let it consume me, but sometimes it almost washes me away. That is when I hold most tightly to my children. They don’t know it- how desperately I worry for them. How I have trouble sleeping at night, knowing that they are far away from me.

I have to actively distance myself from the worry. Every time that I allow my youngest son out of the house I must will myself not to follow him out the door. But I am watching like a hawk through the window.

That’s the problem with this type of loss. The type of loss that hits you like a sucker punch- babies aren’t supposed to die.

Except when they do- and who’s in control of that?

Where does prayer work in this equation?

I prayed.

Oh how I prayed, when I was pregnant with Beatrix- prayed for so many different things. None of the praying resulted in the answer that I wanted. None of the praying is evidenced by my baby being home. She died.

While I was writing this, I looked up the antonym of the word fear. Bravery was the most common of the choices.

But I am brave each and every time I allow one of my children to leave my side. My fear is not quelled. I think bravery is not the opposite of fear, but an appendage of it. You cannot have one without the other. Fear and Bravery are Siamese twins, joined at the core.

I am plenty brave and still afraid. It seems that the bravery required is in proportion to the fear I feel.

In dwelling on thoughts of how to conquer this fear, I turn again and again to how I am supposed to pray to a God who took my child? How am I supposed to come to Him in fearlessness?

I can’t.

I am afraid of Him.

I am frightened when speaking. I am humbled. I have lost control of the situation. Or rather, I have lost the illusion of self- control.

I am reminded that “every knee shall bow.”

I don’t like being in this position. I feel that not only have I been bowed at the knees, but there is a hand on my head holding me there.

I don’t like being humbled. I don’t like my life being in HIS hands

I want it in mine.

I want to be 100% certain that every time I say goodbye to one of my children, there will be a hello to follow at some point in the future- and a hello in this world, not the next. That’s one of those tricks of faithful people who don’t know this particular sorrow. It is so easy for someone who hasn’t lost to say, “you will say hello again- someday.”

I don’t like the trust that is implied in every beat of my heart. The day after day of a life slipped from my grasp. The trust that is required without my consent.

I think that trust may be the opposite of fear. And I no longer trust that my life will turn out the way I want it to. I don’t want to trust that this God who took my child has my best interests at heart.

We talk a lot about the purpose of suffering, as Christians.

We are sometimes given, as an illustration of God’s reason for suffering, the relation between gentle punishments of a parent towards a misbehaving child. If that’s the case, I feel like at some point, social services should have been called- someone else should have been involved in the decision making process. I wasn’t gently chastised and sent away to nurse my wounds, I was ripped open.

We are alternately told that suffering allows God’s glory to shine through us. Martyrdom- and make no mistake, this was a martyrdom- is seen as an admirable trait- but those old Romans were given options. I wasn’t. Well, I was, but I still would have lost my child- so I was given an option-less option. Maybe I wouldn’t have chosen to have God’s glory shine through me, if I had known that this unceasing fear would be mine.

I don’t want platitudes. I don’t want theological resonance. I want my daughter. I want my life back.

Or at least some reasonable explanation of why she’s gone. Something that I can grasp onto with a firm hold. I want the capability to nod my head, and say “a-ha- that’s what’s going on.”

I don’t want to have my choices in relation to trust forced on me. How desperately I have tried to adjust myself to this, and I just can’t.

I know that I need to trust… but with willingness.

Right now I am clinging to trust, because there really is nothing else to hold. Sometimes I don’t know if I am holding onto an anchor or a life preserver.

I only know that I am on the verge of drowning.

Sunday, October 16, 2011
3 Thank You For Visiting

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Your Lovely Hands

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Absence of Fear

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