SILENCE
I write this
entry knowing that it might be the last time that I post here in this
space. I decided to write it because of
the potential for increased reader traffic over the next few weeks, and a
strong sense that the written account of my grief journey should somehow be
neatly wrapped up instead of just trailing off with no ‘ending.’ That said, I have contemplated taking this blog from being strictly
grief oriented to 'life in general' oriented, but I know that I don't
have the time to do so right now. I guess time will tell....
For the
first three years following the stillbirth of our daughter, this blog was one
of the only things that kept me sane. I
came here to purge my emotions and say anything I needed to say without having
to worry about fallout with those around me.
It was a way to connect with other loss mothers, to both offer support
and find support when I needed it. For the
last two and a half years this blog has been silent.
There has been no activity here for multiple reasons, but certainly not because I have had nothing to say. In fact, I sometimes walk around with a blog post or two swirling around in my head, but there simply hasn’t been time to get them down in writing. Life has been busy (and getting busier), and there have been other things more pressing that blogging, even with fully composed posts taking up valuable space in my head. Perhaps another reason for my silence is the fact that eventually, there is nothing new to say; everything becomes a reiteration of thoughts and feelings already expressed at some point in my previous 200 posts. And I think that, even though some overwhelming moments have occasionally made their way to the surface, for the most part, the acute phase of my grief has been consistently waning over the last couple of years. So even though those rouge posts and a few new feelings have been floating in my head, there hasn’t been a critically overwhelming need for me to purge those words and feelings. It would have been nice to do so, but that overwhelming need just hasn’t been there…..most days.
There has been no activity here for multiple reasons, but certainly not because I have had nothing to say. In fact, I sometimes walk around with a blog post or two swirling around in my head, but there simply hasn’t been time to get them down in writing. Life has been busy (and getting busier), and there have been other things more pressing that blogging, even with fully composed posts taking up valuable space in my head. Perhaps another reason for my silence is the fact that eventually, there is nothing new to say; everything becomes a reiteration of thoughts and feelings already expressed at some point in my previous 200 posts. And I think that, even though some overwhelming moments have occasionally made their way to the surface, for the most part, the acute phase of my grief has been consistently waning over the last couple of years. So even though those rouge posts and a few new feelings have been floating in my head, there hasn’t been a critically overwhelming need for me to purge those words and feelings. It would have been nice to do so, but that overwhelming need just hasn’t been there…..most days.
YOU CAN SURVIVE AND YOU WILL SURVIVE
In the
beginning, when your wounds are fresh and deep, everyone tells you that life
goes on, but sometimes that is the hardest part about grief. Especially baby loss grief. Going on is seemingly impossible, especially
in the early days. The path ahead seems
too long, dark and full of pit falls.
For me, the darkest moments came in realizing that my initial support
system could not (or, in some cases, did not want to) relate to or understand
the depths of my grief. Darker moments
came as my shrinking support system returned to normal life and routine,
leaving me feeling like the universe was spinning out of control around my little
world, which had completely stopped turning.
Equally dark moments came in realizing that my husband’s grief process
was nothing like my own and I had absolutely no idea what was happening in his
world, nor did he know or understand what was happening in mine.
As I have
walked this path and moved forward, I have fallen down. A lot.
Especially in the first year or two.
But over time the darkness was slowly replaced by light and I realized
that the path was not as impossible as I had initially thought. The light came in the form finding a
fantastic perinatal loss support group locally, but also in discovering online
resources and ‘meeting’ people who could relate to and understand my
grief. Brighter light came in realizing
that I was not alone. The support of the
online baby loss community has been invaluable, and I have been so fortunate to
find some amazing friends who have made walking this path so much easier than
it could have been. Knowing that these
women will be there with me for the remaining steps makes the remainder of the
journey seem entirely possible.
(Some of
these words were borrowed from my friend, Dawn, because sometimes she lives in
my brain and gets the words out before I do….)
HEALING….SOMEWHERE
OVER THE RAINBOW
My husband
and I waited way too long to get married, and consequently, we waited far
longer than we should have to have kids.
We established long ago that we wanted three kids and that the last kid
had to be born before he turned 45.
(Yeah. We’re old. We made our deadline with only 53 days to
spare!) He was 39 when Gracie was born,
so we didn’t have much time for healing before jumping back in and trying for
our rainbow babies. There was exactly 5
month between Gracie’s birth and the start of our next pregnancy, and
emotionally speaking, we were not even close to being ready for a subsequent
pregnancy. It was the most
nerve-racking 39 weeks of my life, as I was constantly waiting for the other
shoe to fall, but thanks to a fantastic midwife who actually got it and the support of other baby
loss parents who understood what we were going through, we made it to our
rainbow baby without any additional (serious) emotional damage. Since then, we have rounded out our family
with two additional healthy rainbow babies.
They are my world. They are my
light. They will never replace Gracie,
but they help to heal my heart a little more each day, even now. They
constantly make me wonder what 5 year old Gracie would look like and what her
personality would be, but I would not trade them for anything in the
world. These little girls are proof that,
even when you think you simply cannot take one more day or put one foot in
front of the other for even one more step, you can. You absolutely CAN. They are proof that there really is life on
the other side of loss, love on the other side of the rainbow, light after the
darkness, and joy after heartbreak. (A
few more words borrowed from Dawn.)
Beyond the
healing that has come simply with time and the arrival of each of our rainbow
babies, we have worked to bring some positive out of our loss. As our society
slowly starts to break the taboo and people slowly start to realize how common
pregnancy and infant loss is, my husband and I have felt a strong need to help
people understand the best ways to support friends or family who might
experience loss. More specifically, we
want to instill in people how to not be stupid in their attempts to offer
support (and if you have walked this path for any length of time, you will
understand that statement). We want them
to understand that, unless they have walked this specific path, they don’t and can’t understand…and sometimes
a simple “I’m sorry for your loss” is far better than trying to say something
profound. Additionally, we are active
supporters of the March of Dimes, and we are active in our hospital’s perinatal
loss support group. In April, I will
complete Family Loss Advisor training in hopes that it will further improve the
support that I am able to offer to families who are just setting out on this
journey.
WHAT GOES
FORWARD WITH US
I have
weathered and gotten through the worst parts of the storm, as has my husband,
but we took very different paths in getting to the other side. At times our paths couldn’t have been further
apart, and there were moments that it seemed like we were moving in opposite
directions, but we have gotten through. Together. There should be no question, however, that through does not mean over.
We have accepted that Gracie is gone from physical life, we have moved
through the critical and unpleasantly inevitable stages of grief, and we have
continued to move forward with and live our lives, but we have certainly not gotten over losing Gracie. We will
never get over the death of our first
child.
As we have
moved through the storm, certain aspects of our grief have been left behind and
abandoned, but other aspects of our grief will be carried with us
indefinitely. The pieces that we will
carry are not as crippling as they once were, but their presence is
unquestionable.
I still fall
down from time to time. I have a tough
time reading through some of my earlier blog posts because it forces me to
remember how raw that pain was. It is
difficult to watch Gracie’s videos that are posted here without crying. It is difficult for me to watch a very close
friend’s daughter, who is 3 ½ months older than Gracie, growing up and hitting
milestones (like the first day of Kindergarten) around the same time that
Gracie should have reached them. This is
something that will likely nag at me for the rest of my life as I watch her
progress through high school and college, get married and start her own family,
but I am confident in saying that it is unlikely that I will be crippled by the
pain of seeing those things happening.
While they
are generally “well managed,” other pieces of my grief linger just below the
surface and can be triggered with relative ease. Again, they are not crippling pieces of grief,
but still there nonetheless. Our
hospital and OB providers’ office still use the same hand soap in the restrooms
that they used when I was pregnant with Gracie. The scent of the soap is burned
into my brain, and even when I know it’s coming, it seems to knock me a bit off
balance. It is far worse at the
beginning of a new pregnancy, and relatively inconsequential by the end of each
pregnancy, but still a definite trigger.
And while we are on the topic of the hospital, there is one room on the
L&D floor without windows. Room
#3. We were in that room 2 or 3 times
for pre-natal monitoring with Gracie, and we were in that room for every minute
of Gracie’s labor and birth. I have
nothing but negative association with that room. When we arrived in very active labor with
baby girl #4 a few weeks ago, the only open room on the L&D floor was Room
#3. A bit of panic and anxiety set in
immediately, as I refused to go in and demanded a new room. Unfortunately, they really had no other rooms
and I walked in at 9 cm. and 100% effaced, so I had no choice. I was happy to find that the room had been
renovated a bit; it had a slightly different setup on the wall where windows
are obviously absent, and it had been painted a very different color. But there was still an elephant in the
room. A big, fat, orange elephant with
blue stripes and pink polka dots who was surrounded by an aura of anxiety and
‘the other shoe.’ And then, with the
first sounds from my daughter, the elephant was gone. Hours later, I realized that being in that
room was probably the best thing for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I would still never pick that room again when given
a choice, but I think that experiencing a successful birth in that room was
part of my healing process. Instead of
associating that room only with a dead baby, I can now associate it with a
short and successful labor that produced a healthy baby with an APGAR of
10.
I still get very nervous when people around me
approach the final month of their pregnancies.
I know that loss can happen at any point, for any reason, but my own
experience drives me to nervousness as their 36 week mark approaches. Sadly, a small handful of couples that we
know in real life have suffered losses since we lost Gracie. We know from experience that we need to offer
support to anyone around us who is starting out on this journey, but it quickly
wakes many of the emotions lingering just below the surface. We were ‘fortunate’ enough to have a real
life friend who was able to offer us some guidance and support when we lost
Gracie; a few years later she told me that, while she was glad that she was
able to help and support us, it had reopened her wounds and brought many
feelings back for her. I know that she
would have supported us no matter what, but I didn’t appreciate exactly how
hard it must have been for her to do until we were in a position to offer real
life support for others. Ideally, I hope
that we never have occasion to offer this type of support to anyone again. I know that it is more likely that we will
have occasion to offer it again, so I can really only hope that it gets a
little easier the further out we get from losing Gracie.
My
nervousness also carries over into pregnancy preservation. We did very little to preserve my pregnancy
with Gracie, primarily because we didn’t realize that there was a reason to
preserve anything. No maternity photos,
no belly cast, nothing. All we have left
are a few belly photos taken in our living room (simply for belly size) and 13
photos taken after Gracie was born. Consequently,
I tend to encourage pregnant women, especially first timers, to do everything
they reasonably can to preserve their pregnancy…photos, belly cast, pregnancy
journal, ultrasound photos, etc.
And last,
but not least, there are the very ‘little’ things that remain. The fact that I have 4 girls, not 3. The fact that, no matter how much joy the
Bean, the Bug, and our Littlest Lady bring to our lives, one of our girls will
always be missing. She has already
missed the first day of pre-school, pre-K and Kindergarten. She will always be missing from birthday and
holiday celebrations. She will never be
part of the giggles and shrieks of silliness that come from the dogpile of
little girls on the floor with my husband.
She will never walk in a graduation ceremony. She will never walk down the aisle. She will never get to spoil her nieces or
nephews. She will never know the joy of
raising her own babies.
Although I have
gone from the despair of losing this little girl
to the joy of
raising these little girls,
these are probably the most important
pieces of my remaining grief, and these are the pieces of grief that will
likely be with me until the day I die.
THE
REQUISITE ENDING
For those of
you who are early in your journeys of loss and grief, it is my sincere hope
that reading the thoughts and feelings of those who have walked this path ahead
of you can be a source of comfort and emotional validation as your journey
continues. Things may seem bleak and impossible
now, but I promise that, with time, patience and love for yourself, you CAN do
this. Although it unlikely that I will
continue writing here with any regularity, my door is open to anyone who needs
support; I can be contacted by email or by comment here on my blog.
To those
with whom I have walked for the last 5 ½ years, I offer sincere thanks,
gratitude and love. I think that it is quite safe to say that I made it. It is also safe to say that my journey would
have been much different without all of you.
There really are no other words….