There Are Lessons All Around Us

My five year old just finished watching Disney's The Lion King.  I tuned in when an adult Simba returned to the Pridelands and faced his Uncle Scar for the first time since he left as a child because he believed he was responsible for his father Mufasa's death.  Mufasa believes he will get rid of Simba and confesses that it was he, not Simba, who killed Mufasa.

That revelation after so many years of self doubt, sadness and guilt, had to have been mind blowing for Simba.   He spent many years away from his home and away from his family and most importantly, not being his true self, because he lived in the shadow of all of those complicated emotions.  I get that he's a cartoon lion, but come on, there's a lesson in there for all of us.  Especially us.  Carrying guilt in our hearts over the loss of our little ones can only stand in the way of us being able to be our true selves.  It can separate us from family, friends and ourselves.  Guilt is a corrosive emotion which can literally change us from the inside out.

To quote the great Pumba, "[Y]ou got to put your behind in your past" er, I guess I'm looking for Timon's correction, "You gotta put your past behind you".  That doesn't mean forgetting, it doesn't mean completely letting go.  Hold on to your little ones, always keep them close.  But it does mean doing what we can to recognize any guilt we carry and to get out from under it's shadow.

Letting Go

I have a love/hate relationship with gardening.  I find it to be a very strong extension of the process of learning how to grieve, grieving and living with long term grief.   You see,  I live in a climate which has four very distinct seasons that are not always equal in length.  So each spring I wait for the soil to warm and then I get to see which of my perennials have made it through the winter.  Often, some of my favorites don't make it and others are unexpectedly prolific.  Plants die for no reason, die because of the season, some are expected to live short lives and others take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.  Sometimes there is just no rhyme or reason as to what goes on in my garden.  So I have to

Let Go.

Just like ten years and two months ago I listened as Wyatt's heart stopped beating and two years and five months ago I knew Eli's time on this earth would be very short.  Every fiber of my body wanted to hold on and never let go.  Yet I did.

Letting go was not just a matter of relaxing my grip.  It was a gradual process of relaxing my heart, relaxing my thoughts and letting the string unravel.  I still have that string but I don't need to cling to it to remember it's there.

My garden is my classroom.  It teaches me that I am not always the boss of things, even things that I feel are simple and well within my control.  No matter how many times I plant or replant, water, fertilize or pray, if that plant doesn't see fit to grow in the soil it won't grow.  Finding strawberry plants that I didn't plant in Wyatt's garden is proof that I am not the architect but merely a caregiver to nature's design.  My best efforts are just that, efforts to learn, grow and cultivate beauty.

Nature has been particularly cruel in my yard this year.  Wyatt's tree was ravaged by disease and was cut down.  The willow's absence has been a painfully sunny reminder of our loss this year.  Rabbits have ravaged our yard inside out it seems.  They have attacked my raised vegetable gardens and seem impervious to any deterrents.  But veggies are not enough for these furry fiends.  No, they have also stolen the beauty from my garden and kept entire flower species from blooming by chomping down the buds.  I can only hope the winter is long and food is sparse.

Yet even though so much is out of my hands and the unpredictability tends to drive me CRAZY, it is a daily comfort.  It still needs my help to thrive, even in ways that are unplanned.  I still have to work to let go enough to let go sometimes.  I've learned that sometimes letting go results in beauty growing in ways that I could never have imagined.

Staring My Demons In The Eye

I have always been a shy person and there are so many reasons for that.  In part because genetics have not been my friend.  I was sporting eyeglasses before I started school, got asthma in first grade, wore braces starting at age 11 for five years (yes 5 years!) and those braces were super awesome with rubber bands, then due to the congenitally missing teeth as a teenager I was missing two front teeth and had a super fun retainer with fake teeth which through a couple surgeries was then replaced by dental implants.  And I won't even go to my frizzy, coarse thick hair, bad skin, or abnormally long legs with a short torso (which equaled high water pants)....the list goes on.  Basically I never felt confident in my appearance nor was I given any reason to feel confident in my appearance.

I can now say that my appearance issues for the most part have resolved themselves  - even my hair (yay!) and I do feel confident in my appearance.  But inside, I'm still that teenage girl sometimes and I tend to regress to her emotional maturity.  Which means that I basically crawl inside myself socially.

This is where the demons have found their ways in.  The cracks in my facade have left them plenty of room.  The insecurities are deep and profound at times.  Wyatt and Eli's lives and deaths only intensified those feelings and urges.  During each of their pregnancies and after I delivered them I felt that my forehead had some kind of neon sign announcing that my baby would or had died.  I was sure that sadness was just seeping from my pores most days.  I didn't want people to see that, I didn't feel comfortable with many people seeing that.  My answer was to huddle in where people couldn't see that.  And each time, it took a lot of time for me to venture back out into the world.  Even then, I was so fragile, so afraid of just breaking apart.  I avoided so many social situations and find myself still doing so even two years after Eli's birth.

Until last weekend.  Through fate and a long string of fortuitous circumstances I didn't just agree but volunteered to organize and create a new spring carnival for our elementary school's pto.  Did I mention that the school has almost 700 kids?  I put over two months of blood, sweat and tears into it and had many sleepless nights wondering if it would actually happen and then if it did, whether my ship would sink or float.  Friday was that night.  But to make it happen I had to stare my demons right in the eye.  I had to put a smile on my face and look people straight in the eye, over and over and over and over that night.  Not something that is easy for me to do.  Definitely sent my flight reaction into overdrive.  But I did it!  I walked around that carnival all afternoon and evening organizing volunteers, introducing myself, talking to participants and ... I enjoyed it!  For me it's just more proof that I can get through anything, even when that self doubt creeps in.

Because of my boys I can always tell myself in a difficult situation that I have been through much much worse and I know that's true.  I know that I made it to the other side not once but twice and that most anything else is small peanuts.

Take that demons.

Something Different About a First Child

Eli's second birthday is quickly approaching and I find myself this year, for the first time in two years, not pregnant in February.  The memories of the last two years haunt me during these few weeks.  My husband's birthday and our second daughter's birthdays are also rapidly approaching so it is hard not to remember our celebrations last year and how joyous (and plump) I was compared to the year before when I was just a little less plump and a whole lot less joyous.

But the pregnancy, birth and loss of Eli was different from Wyatt's.  The knowledge of what was to pass made things easier but so did my children.  For all of my worry about what Eli's death would do to them and then when he did die, having to watch my children suffer through the same emotions that I felt, it was nothing like watching our first child, Wyatt, die, and living through the aftermath.  I now know why.  Because when Wyatt died, in a way, so did my motherhood.  I had nothing but pictures, a few clothes, blankets and stuffed animals to remember him by and to identify myself as a mother.  But without the baby those things could not be so readily displayed and I found myself visibly robbed of claiming that identity.

When Eli died I suffered through many of the same emotions and difficulties.  Some of the worst for me was my milk coming in and still looking pregnant but not having that baby to make it all worth while.  But I was still a mother to everyone else.  I had three little girls at my bedside the day I gave birth to him and every day after.  They needed me and more than they'll ever understand, I needed them.  They gave my days purpose and eventually they helped me to see the little joys again.  After Wyatt died it was just my husband and I.  But he went back to work and then it was just me alone with my grief and my wounded body.  Physically and mentally I probably healed more peacefully since I was really able to go at my own pace.  But it was so lonely and overwhelming that I ended up going back to work as soon as my doctor would let me.  We tried to fill our hearts by getting a dachshund puppy but her needs and our abilities to meet them did not quite match up so we made the gut wrenching decision to find a family who could make her happier.  That didn't exactly help my grieving process.  But neither did banging my head against a brick wall over a five pound puppy!  It just wasn't the same.  My husband gives me an identity as a wife but only my child could identify me as his mother.

So with Eli even though it was physically, mentally and spiritually exhausting to care for our children while going through a pregnancy that would end in loss and then experiencing that loss and trying to heal from giving birth via c-section, it was those three girls that saved me.  They kept me afloat and for that I am so thankful.

I Heart my Heart

Wikipedia defines the heart as "a hollow muscle that pumps blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions.  Gray's anatomy goes on to say "the rhythmical action of the heart is muscular in origin." But most of us probably don't think of the heart in this way.  If we even think of it at all.  That's because the heart goes on beating around 70 beats every minute of every day without any effort from us.  Yet for something so unnoticed, it's role in our lives could not be any more important.

Yet it's still a muscle, one that can be weakened by a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy habits and strengthened through exercise and healthy living.  A healthy heart is a happy heart.  Except that the heart is more than just a blood pumper.  It is a vital organ of emotional health too.  One that just like the beating drum in our chests needs exercise and healthy habits to function optimally.  After Wyatt and Eli's deaths my heart needed a break and so I tucked it away somewhere safe for a while.  I needed to protect it and keep it from any more hurt because I just didn't know how much it could take. 

I learned this last week that the human heart can take an awful lot.  It can be poked and prodded, shocked and even endure having tiny pieces of it literally killed off and still keep beating.  So too can the metaphorical heart.  I have endured hearing that two of my children, while each in utero, would most certainly die before, during or shortly after their births.  I have carried those little boys to term and watched each one die in my arms within hours of their birth.  I have stood at a tiny bare grave site to bury my first child and then eight years later at my oldest son's grave site by my very own headstone to bury my second son at his feet.  

I have also learned of the heart's incredible capacity for healing.  Both physically and emotionally.  At the age of 25, approximately one percent of the heart's muscle cells are replaced yearly, falling to one half of a percent by age 75 according to Dr. Jonas Frisen of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.  What I can take away from this is that the heart really heals, inside and out.  The heart that I had ten years ago is not the heart that I have today, neither one of them.

Walking in Someone Else's Shoes

It's taken me a long time (likely far too long) to have acquired the ability to silence my thoughts.  I was raised very vocally and to embrace negativity.  My priest referred to this as "awfulizing" yesterday in church.  So I know that some of you who have read my last post, "The Heart Wants What the Heart Wants" may have finished it with a bad taste in your mouth.  Nine years ago I would have too.  Nine years ago I had lost my firstborn and was expecting my first rainbow.  Health, not gender, is all that mattered.  But more than that, had I read my own words I would have felt anger at the author's lack of appreciation and gratitude for what she had been given.  Her complaints about gender would have incensed my grief over the son I had just buried months before when she had so much and I had so little.

Fast forward a few years and a few healthy rainbows and even after having two healthy girls I still would have not been able to swallow those words without tasting the bitterness.  I still would have thought that she just should appreciate what she has and not let what she doesn't eat away at her.  I probably still would have reacted with some anger.  So I understand if my feelings don't punch you in the gut like they do to me.

I get it.  It's hard for me to wrestle with these feelings knowing how very blessed I am to have these four daughters.  I just can't help wondering if these feelings are stringing behind Eli's death, if they've been buried and set aside since Wyatt's death, if they're a culmination of feelings after both boys' deaths or if it's something brought about by the end of my childbearing years?  Probably a little bit of everything.  But will they dim or go away and if so, when?  Will my heart ever put this to rest?  Add another unanswered question to the pile that has accumulated in my last ten years.

I don't know what has brought you to my blog.  Even if I have read every single detail of your loss(es) I could never possibly understand.  Likewise, no one can truly understand mine or these feelings that well beneath the surface.  Words of judgment and comparison come easy, what's hard is letting those words pass unspoken and without action.  

No Bull About It

"Bull"ying that is.  October is National Bullying Prevention Month and October 15th is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.  

You may be asking yourself what these two things have to do with each other.  On their faces, nothing.  But on the inside, everything.  The loss of a child, or any loved one for that matter, comes along with a bunch of emotions.  A bunch.  Some of which won't even be experienced for weeks, months and even years.  Death may occur in one moment during one day of our lives but the repercussions are felt for the rest of that lifetime.  A lifetime which continues without our loved one.  

This is where the bullying comes in.  Emotional bullying.  It is not the ugly kind of bullying which has recently captured national attention.  It is quiet and even often well-intended.  It can be perpetrated by strangers, family and friends alike.  The bullying us into getting over our loss, moving on.  Sometimes it's bullying to swallow our emotions like a burned casserole with a smile on our faces.  It is cruel, painful and so often not even realized by the perpetrators.  

So this month in particular I want everyone to think about the connection between these two profound awarenesses that occur in the month of October.  To remember that we are more than others think about us and that at the end of the day we are the ones who live with our own regrets.  With that said, I'm going to put a cautionary statement out there.  Spring of 2011 I was still in the darkness left after Eli's death and struggled against it each and every day.  Sadness was a constant companion despite the smiles and laughter wafting frequently through my own home.  My husband called me out, he acknowledged my grief but also told me in no uncertain terms the effects he was seeing my grief having on our three wonderful children and himself.  It was a bitter pill to swallow.  On one hand I thought, "My baby just died, cut me some slack, of COURSE I'm sad."  On the other I thought, "My goodness, I didn't know."  I was alive for them and being dead for him was doing none of us any good.  What I did is chronicled here.  My husband bullied me back to life and helped me to see what the darkness had hidden from me.  

I think sometimes it's important to listen to the words and try to see the reality within and around them. It is important to grieve and to own that grieve.  It is also important not to lose our hearts to our grief.

Living With Death

When I look in the mirror sometimes all I can see is death.  Death and sadness reflected in my eyes.  Living with death - it's more of an oxymoron but it's also something I am quite adept at.  I've carried two precious boys in my body for about eight months of my life between the two pregnancies knowing that at any second there was a very real chance of my babies dying.  Wondering if that day would be the day, or the day after, or the one after that.  It has now been one year and four months since the last day I have had to wonder and I will never have to wonder again because my childbearing years have finally come to a close.  Now I'm left wondering about many other things.  What the long term impact of those months is for myself, my husband, my marriage and my children.  I don't believe our children will have a long term impact resulting from our decision to carry Eli to term, his death and absence have made a far bigger impact.  My husband is a rock and like most rocks, he doesn't talk much.  So I honestly don't know what emotional effect watching his wife carry two babies that we knew would not survive has had on him.  I don't know what seeing the sadness on my face or the tears in my eyes did to him.  I imagine the impact is probably more than I could guess.  Our marriage has been strengthened in a way that most couples will never experience.  A great amount of stress on such a bond can do that, either it'll break under the pressure or find a way to stay together.  We have done the latter.  Yet I still wonder if the experiences will produce side effects in the future when we least expect it.  Myself, who knows?  Most of the time I am fine.  As fine as any one woman who has given birth to six children yet watched two die in her arms hours or minutes after their birth can be.  I doubt that anyone who doesn't know this little gem about me would ever be able to guess.  There are no visible scars.  So I go on living with death.  I am blessed to have given birth to both of my sons alive and to not know what it is like to truly carry death.  I just carry the fear and realization of death and those did not leave my body nine years ago nor one year ago.  I just go on living.

Comparisons and Guilt

I am now in my 36th week of pregnancy with a healthy little girl who will be our fourth daughter.  And it's getting pretty hard to be pregnant.  Even though I have stayed in pretty good shape through running, then jogging, then walking combined with aerobics and pilates - and I actually feel better than I ever have during a pregnancy, I'm tired.  Emotionally, physically, and every other way imaginable this pregnancy is taking a toll on me.  By the end of the day I am one giant fluid filled ball with an aching feet and back.  My stomach, which has not fit into my short midsection for some time now, is completely filled to the brim with this little girl.  I expect a large one but would be happily surprised with a peanut as well.  Our first daughter was 8 1/2 lb at 39 weeks, the second 7lb on the dot and the third was a whopping 8lb 14oz at 39 weeks and with that little girl I weighed 25lb less than I had with either of her sisters, so who knows what'll pop out this time.

With every desperate thought of birthing this baby now rather than later the comparisons and guilt creep in.  I know there are others out there who think "suck it up, at least your baby is healthy" and I know this because I've been there, I've had those thoughts.  I also compare myself to people I know who have had much more difficult and painful pregnancies than I have and whose babies were also healthy.  I sit in a much much better place than so many other women but those realities do not squelch the comparisons or guilt.  I feel like my body can take no more, yet I know it can and probably has before.  More importantly, I know all too well how worth it this will be in the end.  I will appreciate this little girl's birth more than I would have were it not for our son Eli's birth and death last year.  The birth of three beautifully healthy little girls had lulled me into a false sense of security and dulled the overwhelming fears that surround a subsequent pregnancy.

Yet even though I "get it", the sheer exhaustion is getting to me.  Jokingly I have told this little one that I'm sure I will fall head over heels in love with her once she's born but right now I don't like her very much.  I had hoped to pass this last trial of pregnancy with a little more grace than that.

Forgiveness

I teach kindergarten faith classes Sunday mornings at my church.  This is my third year doing so and for the second time I am blessed to be teaching one of my own daughters.  Yesterday we talked about forgiveness.  The lesson was accompanied by two worksheets.  One, a small banner which read "I'm sorry" for the children to trace and to take home to use to help heal a friendship or relationship hurt by a wrongdoing.  Two, a hidden picture coloring sheet which contained the words "I forgive".  Each class presents new challenges and this week's was noise.  The classroom next to us was impossibly loud and we had a guest child along with one of the children who was far too chatty with her friend.  This challenge necessitated a choice for me to make, we only had time for one project:  trace and color the "I'm sorry" banner sheet or color the "I forgive" worksheet.

I chose forgiveness.  Want to know why?  Because just like love, forgiveness is something entirely within my control.  It is not dependent on an apology or even an acknowledgement of wrongdoing.  Because let's face it, some people will likely never apologize, some because of pride or vanity, others because they refuse to admit to doing anything wrong and some frankly probably never even realize that what they have done was hurtful.  But forgiveness, forgiveness is mine.  I can forgive in any and all of those situations.  I can forgive anyone for anything.  I alone can lift the burden of hurt that rests in my heart and in doing so release the bonds that tie me to that pain.    While hearing "I'm sorry" is a wonderful thing and I highly encourage any hurt to be accompanied by an apology, I choose forgiveness.

Something to Snack On

Words of wisdom on my refrigerator taken from a most sinfully delicious
piece of dark chocolate's foil wrapper.
Chocolate is my sanity.

It's Okay to Say Crap

When someone asks how you're doing. For so so long "okay" or "good" was just a reflexive response. No thought to the question and no thought to the answer. Any response that deviates from this norm gets attention. I actually go out of my way to avoid the standard responses now. If I'm having a good day, I say more than "good" or "great". If I'm having a not so good day, I use brief but clear words to describe it. It may just be saying that I'm struggling or I'm tired or busy or whatever is weighing me down. It feels good be honest and let go of that fraud that I spoke about yesterday. Whoever has asked me the question won't know how I'm actually doing if I don't give them an honest answer which won't allow us to interact very personally. And if whoever asked the question didn't really want to know the answer perhaps they will rethink asking that question in the future which again will affect on a deeper level the interaction that they have with me.

So. Here is my challenge to everyone. Answer this question as honestly as you can. I don't believe it's necessary to unload all of your troubles in one answer or to deliver that answer in a dramatic "woe is me" fashion. I think a simple but short description of how you are doing is suffice, even if that answer is just saying "I feel like crap". The reaction you get may be surprising and it may be rewarding. You may find someone to listen and maybe even an offer of help to carry you through. With that said, you may end up feeling worse, BUT I no longer expect myself to have great days all of the time and I don't see those not-so-great days as failures anymore either. They are what they are and I can always believe that tomorrow will be better.

Coming Unhinged

I am having a very rough week physically and emotionally. The baby, and I, are getting bigger. Or at least just I am. Potter's babies are usually small but Wyatt defied those statistics weighing it at a whopping 6lb 8oz at 37 weeks so I am hopefully this baby will be a good size and I really feel like he or she is getting plumper! However, with that weight comes discomfort of course and it is getting harder and harder to get things done. I also fear the baby is stuck in a transverse position like Wyatt was. When I was pregnant with Wyatt I could literally see him stretching my stomach horizontally and it was an extremely unpleasant feeling. I believe this little one's head is on the right side of my stomach and the body curls down my pelvis though I think the feet may be more down than to the side. So when baby decides to do a full body stretch it is quite uncomfortable, especially considering that there is little to no amniotic fluid to cushion either of us.

Emotional pain is amplifying the physical pain, the pelvic discomfort, the backaches and the general exhaustion from lack of sleep. Tears flow easy and hard. I told my husband that I am on my last hinge, thank goodness it is almost the weekend. He picks up alot of slack in the mornings before work and when he gets home, but the weekends are my salvation, two whole days where I am not the sun and the moon for our children. They have been at each other's throats and consequently trampling my nerves all week long. We are all hurting so badly right now.

Riding the Rollercoaster

Funny how sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down.  Today, I'm up.  Yesterday and most of last week, I was down, way down, not just hanging upside down but desperately grabbing onto the bar of the rollercoaster after falling out of my seat while upside down down.  I even had to talk with my OB's nurse about making a birth plan today and it didn't so much as jar me in my seat.  I'm at the peak of the climb, just waiting for the next breathless fall into oblivion.  Today I am enjoying the view, near the clouds, near where heaven is just out of reach.  I look outside onto a landscape blanketed in vivid white snow set against a dull grey skyline.   Just hours ago the sun brightly illuminated my dining table where I sat playing with play foam and my two youngest daughters.  We made ducks, cakes and princess castles and sadly my four-year old's designs were superior to my own.  It is nice to have a day like today.