One of those days

There are days when I feel drawn to him - to his physical presence - to all I have of him - to his grave. I often find myself wondering what would happen if I lay down on his grave and curled myself around his little marker stone. Would I feel closer to him? Would I feel connected to him in even a fraction of the way that I connect with Joni when I lie curled around her in our family bed and she finds my breast and nurses as she pleases? No, I don't think so. The ground is hard and cold. His marker is shiny cold and black. I want him to be there – somewhere where I can feel him - but he is not.

Sometimes my fantasies have me swallowed up by the earth at his grave - skipping the messiness of death, burial and decomposition and heading straight for elemental communion with my baby boy. This fantasy finds me on the days when my grief has been the hardest to face. On those days, being sucked alive into the earth feels like a completely appropriate, merciful and long overdue escape from the relentless saturation of my body and mind in missing him - but not really "missing" - "wanting him" is more like it. Of course I am needed here too much to let myself slip away, and so I don't let myself see where the fantasy would take me. But, the grief, and missing and wanting still remain.

Today is one of those days.

What did I lose?

Glow in the Woods is my favorite babylost blog.  In the open forum called "for one and all" a post-er brought up the issue of collateral losses - the things that slip away from us when our babies die.  In this instance, the discussion centered on those things that we've lost that we wish we hadn't.  There are many things that appropriately take a back burner in the face of such grief - priorities realigned.  But those things aren't what this discussion is about.  I responded with the following post.  I have been thinking about this issue for such a long time, and I was happy for the opportunity to frame it in this way.

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I lost birth. I know that sounds trivial but birth was important to me before Noah died (stillborn at term due to a cord knot). I had trained as a doula and birthed my second baby at home. I was engaged, on the periphery at least, with the women – doulas, midwives, body workers, etc - who make up the birth community in our small city. I was (am I guess) one of those lucky women who believed in natural birth, was able to have it, and felt empowered by it. I have never had a great relationship with my over-sized body – but giving birth….it just made me so proud – so amazed at what MY body could do.

Noah’s was a planned hospital birth because our insurance would cover it 100% and would not cover a home-birth at all and we just did not have the money. However I went to great lengths to find a doctor and hospital that would support my desire to birth naturally. When we discovered at a regular appointment that Noah had died and I would need to be induced, I wanted an epidural for his delivery. In the end I didn’t need it. He left my body almost painlessly without the meds I thought I’d need.

My husband and I were blessed to receive another life just three months after Noah left us. I struggled the entire pregnancy to reconcile what I wanted to believe about birth with my new-found unwanted knowledge that babies sometimes die before they are born – that my body wasn’t the safe place for my babies that I thought it was. I didn’t want fear to win. I looked for mentors – babylost women who still trusted their bodies and birth. That is how I found “Glow”. I hoped I could find someone who could help me see a way to embrace, even revel in pregnancy and birth as I had before, but I never did.

I had every intention of having a stare down with Death in my pregnancy after Noah’s, but instead I scurried around hiding behind rocks, under beds and in closets, trying to keep the Grim Reaper from finding the daughter I carried. It didn’t help that her pregnancy was the most medically complicated of my four to make it out of the first trimester. On top of that I was 40. Forty, babylost and lots of bumps in the road to delivery day – NOT a good combination to inspire strong prenatal mental health.

In the end I delivered our daughter in the same hospital where I delivered Noah, under the care of the same family practice doctor. I was induced at 37w4d because Joni repeatedly failed her bio-physical profiles. My doula/midwife could not be there, but she sent her back-up and she was lovely. I birthed as naturally as one could while dragging around an iv pole and hooked to machines. It was an honest day’s work, but it was not the triumphant, healing experience I had hoped for. Our daughter – skinny but healthy, strong, gorgeous and simply amazing – has tempered my ache for her brother. But her birth did not heal the hole left in my heart when birth and death renewed their acquaintance in my womb.

I have been around here long enough to know that this particular brand of crazy talk really irritates some. I hope I’ve conveyed the distinction that I make in my mind between the baby and the birth. I would have done ANYTHING to get my babies here alive. I believed pregnancy and birth with minimal medical interventions was the best way to do it. Beyond that, the acts of growing a life inside of me and delivering her safely into the world are about my relationship with my body and my own sense of power – a perk separate from the real prize, but important to me none the less.

Now, almost 19 months since Noah was born, and 8 months since Joni arrived, I have little contact with my birth community acquaintances. I went to a natural birth and baby expo last night, under the pretext of buying a new sling, but really so I could show off Joni. I saw many people I hadn’t seen since Noah’s funeral. There were smiles, congratulations, warm hugs. It wasn’t the place to touch on hidden grief, but I could tell just by looking in eyes who realized it was still there and avoided it, and who assumed it had been replaced by the babe in my arms. If they only knew how I grieve still - for my son and for the shared faith that used to make me part of their sisterhood.

Missing Noah

All my posts are really about missing Noah I guess. Joninah is moving around more. The last couple of mornings I've felt her kicking even before her breakfast-banana boost. It reinforces my relationship with her to feel evidence of her life inside of me. It also reinforces what I lost with Noah.

Who would he have become? How can it be that I will never know? How can it be that he was alive inside of me and I can know nothing more about him than that? How can it be that most babies live, but Noah didn't? I think Joninah will live - that I will get to watch her become who she is. I think in a way her life may make Noah's loss more searing for me. She is so completely not her brother - this miraculously unexpected girl-baby. I won't be able to fool myself for a second that she is who I lost when Noah died. He is gone - permanently, irrevocably gone. Joninah is so wanted and cherished, but so is Noah.

Defining a purpose

So I'm not sure what I want to do with this blog. I started it as an extension of this idea I had that has, perhaps, evolved into a compulsion.

Things were pretty crazy for our family when I was pregnant with Noah. I did everything I was suppose to for him while I was pregnant, but I'm not sure he was the center of my universe. Survival was. Not his - ours. I think I sort of figured the "pregnancy" would take care of itself. Then he died. Almost the minute we got things straightened out and I was ready for him, he died.

And so as I went through papers getting us settled into our new home, I collected little forgotten scraps to remind me of out time with him. Appointment cards, test result letters, a picture of me pregnant with him before I even knew it (the only picture of me during his pregnancy). I gathered and keep gathering these little bits as I come across them, and tuck them in a drawer. They help me feel like a mother to him.

So I didn't want to be caught rummaging through stuff one step away from the recycling bin if something happened to this baby. The pregnancy tests were carefully dated and tucked safely away. This unlike Noah's, which were tossed in a bag mingled with completed tests from six other pregnancies - too "precious"to be thrown away, but indistinguishable from each other now. Every appointment card was tucked in that same special drawer, along with dated ultrasound pictures and notes from family. Everything about this baby has been meticulously saved in the same drawer where I have collected my mementos of Noah.

As I joined online support groups I started collecting hard copies of my posts. I'm not a journal-er, although I do like to write. I thought the posts would be a good way remember what I was thinking about while pregnant with our girl without journal-ing. That quickly evolved into wanting Joninah to know what I was thinking about. Someday. I'm thinking of the whole collection as a gift to her after she delivers her first baby. Before might be a little too much.

Support groups are about supporting others as much as they are about being supported. That means biting your tongue (crossing your fingers, making a fist, sitting on your hands....) when you might otherwise want to say what is really on your mind. Still, having a theoretical audience to consider keeps me honest.

The other thing is, I think about things beyond what is going on inside my uterus - or those who once occupied it. Some days it feels like not many other things. But mostly there is quite a bit going on in this head. I haven't found a great place to let it all out. I guess I decided to create one.

I admit I am not a huge blog reader. I will shocked if anyone reads mine. To a large extent I am only imagining a blog will do for me what I want it to do. We shall see I suppose - we shall see.