Bouncing Back

I found myself pondering this phrase while looking in the mirror one morning admiring the very non-bouncy non-taut skin that I call my midsection and covers what I can only assume was once abs (which I've now been informed by my OB are almost nonexistent and she first informed me this 3 pregnancies ago!).  Physically, heck yeah, I've bounced back.  I ran a 5k this past weekend just a few days prior to baby turning five months old and I ran a full minute better than this same time last year when I set a new personal best after running the 5k while eight weeks pregnant with baby.  My body is strong, I've worked it hard and I can honestly say I have new respect for my body.  The body which has given me six children, endured six c-sections and is probably now more physically fit than ever before.

Emotions are not so easy.  I've managed to resurrect some abdominal muscles from the ashes by working them pretty hard.  Even then, my husband and I joke how I've maybe got a half-pack hidden in there somewhere.  For emotions it's different, I can't isolate a particular emotion or flex it repetitiously.  Grief is not always so easy to access.  Nor is happiness for that matter.  It is a conscious effort to feel or not to feel at times.  Some days one or the other just doesn't work.  It's the emotions that bounce back really.  Nine years after Wyatt's death I can tell you they still haven't stopped.

I wonder how those close to me perceive the Mandy of now.  To them have I "bounced back" from Eli's death?  Am I different than I was before to them?  What do they call it?

More importantly, do I even want to know the answers to these questions?

Never Again

I am drawn to loss, specifically Potter's Syndrome because that loss I understand all too well.  I follow communities of Potter's Syndrome parents and hope that my words provide some help to those pregnant with and preparing to deliver their precious babies as well as those grieving their little ones.  I am also drawn to multiple losses.  You see, once you've lost a baby it seems that you feel a kinship with those who have also lost a baby.  But even more of a kinship with those who have lost a baby in the same way that you have lost yours.  The death of a baby is isolating when surrounded by a sea of healthy round bellies and beautiful breathing infants.  It's something to find a place of understanding and belonging.  Well, when I lost my second child that group, though comforting, wasn't enough anymore.  I needed to find others like myself.  Others who had lost more than one baby.  Sad though it was, I found a few other families who had not just lost more than one baby, but like myself had lost more than one to Potter's Syndrome.  I needed to find those people and needed to hear their stories of the future.  Because I knew I wasn't done.  I knew there would be more children in my future and it was so very important to hear of ones that had survived.

Now I've walked that path and begun a different one.  One that no longer involves monthly charting, pregnancy tests, heartbeat checks or ultrasounds.  I will never again be laying on an operating table waiting to see if my newborn cries.  For the most part I have moved beyond the bittersweet of that moment, propelled in part by the blissfully angry cries of our newest daughter as she took her first breaths - yes, breaths - just four and a half months ago.  My body changed that day but so did my mind and my heart.  I am no longer a vehicle for life.  I will never again give that gift.  Now my job is simply (hah, simply) to nurture life.  For that I am thankful.  It breaks my heart to read new stories of Potter's pregnancies and to know the gamut of emotions that those families are experiencing.  That will not be me anymore, not my pregnancy and not my children.  Selfishly I am relieved.  Watching one of my babies die was enough, two was almost too much.

Molding the Clay

Exhaustion, two successive pregnancies, four living children and the grief for two children living only in my memories has colored my recent days.  Some days  I wonder if my poorly managed days are because I didn't allow space in my life.  More space for anger, sadness, tears, joy to intervene before becoming pregnant again.  Some days I wonder if it is just my precious baby girl who is less demanding than our first but much more so than the other two.  Is it wrong to tell her that since she's our number four daughter she is just not allowed to be demanding?  Clearly, the natural order of things is allowing her to be queen bee at her ripe old age of four months which is displeasing most members of the household much of the time.  I don't know children without grief so I really don't have these answers.  I raised my first living child fraught with fear that she would die before the day she was born and while that fear has loosened its grip over time and through experience, it has not let me go.  Nor my children, apparently.  It was just a year ago March when they welcomed and said goodbye to the only baby brother they have known, Eli.  They were ages 6 (almost 7), 5 and 3 at the time yet that day and all that followed have stayed with them.  Our hairstylist recently had a baby boy and while eating one night we were discussing the girls' upcoming haircut with her (while she was still pregnant).  Our oldest was asking a question about her and the baby and phrased it in terms of "if her baby doesn't die".  Just.  Like.  That.  It was matter of fact to her that her baby could and very well may die.  Not the most uplifting dinner conversation.  It required an explanation again that most babies don't die.  Except in our little family where there is a great risk of babies dying.  We also informed the girls that it's best not to say things like that to other people.  Then there was yesterday when the girls inadvertently explained to me why they may be clamoring so eagerly, to the point of arguments and fights often, for the chance to hold their baby sister.  While chatting about babies they were lamenting how they barely had a chance to hold Eli after he was born and how they are glad to have our newest little girl.  The ability of children to absorb and incorporate experiences and emotions into their being should never be underestimated.  They can be so amazing.

The Rainbow Connection

This post is about what happens after my rainbow baby is born (rainbow baby for those unfamiliar is a  child born after a storm, in this case the storm which was Wyatt and Eli's birth and death) and what I have imagined would happen after my rainbow baby is born.   Mostly it will relate to our first rainbow, our first daughter, born just one year and four days after her big brother Wyatt's birth and death.

I spent nine long months pregnant with her imagining what it would be like to again hold a child of mine in my arms.  I imagined all of the late night snuggles that I had missed out on and the sweet coos that never graced my ears.  In my mind it was smiles, hugs and kisses.  It almost made the waiting unbearable.  And for the first few days it was smiles, hugs and kisses.  Then I took my baby girl home and reality set in, a reality which had not even cracked the outer edges of my imagination.  My little girl was fussy, only slept when laying on me or my husband (which may sound really awesome but it awful when you need to eat, drink, go to the bathroom or goodness forbid - shower, and then you must listen to your baby's awful screams for every second of your absence), she projectile vomited and was not a natural by any stretch of the imagination at breastfeeding.  There was a lot of physical and mental pain in those early days.

Pain which was only compounded by all those months of imagining what it would be like and then having it actually be nothing like that.  Now, in all fairness our oldest daughter was a pretty high needs baby and from what I later discovered by having other children she was not a typical baby.  Nonetheless, I know I am not alone with my imagination.  How could it be helped?  Many of our memories of our babies gone too soon are faces that are stilled, voices that are silenced.  My little boys never screamed, nursed or even wet a diaper.  My memories of them are gentle, much like falling asleep.

However, I've found that the reality of a rainbow baby is like being struck by a semi truck.  Life changes, it actually becomes about life, not death, and how to sustain and nurture that life while trying to maintain one's own delicate balance.  It's a celebration and a grieving simultaneously.  Gratitude for what has been given and a greater appreciation for what has been taken away.  No one said it would be easy but for some reason it's so easy to imagine...

Filling the Closet & the Clothes

This post will embody the bitter and the sweet.  Baby girl is growing like a forgotten weed in the garden.  She's getting big, tall and strong.  Which of course means I am spinning my wheels trying to keep her clothed.  She was 9lb 5oz at birth and at her two month checkup already over 13lbs!  She's in the 90+ percentile in both height and weight as of her two month measurements.  That was when she was in 3-6 month clothes.  Now she's three months and already filling out most 6-9 month clothes.  This is both exciting and disappointing.  Babies collect so many cute clothes and often just don't get the wear out of most of them so it's always a little sad to pack them away again when they're outgrown.

It wasn't the packing that got me this time though.  It was the unpacking.  Because I discovered hopes and dreams in that bin of 6-9 month clothes.  Three adorable little safari sleepers, boy sleepers, along with safari onesies and the cutest little blue striped sleeper adorned with hippos.  Those were bought at least two girls ago in the hopes that one day a little boy would wear them.  Now it seems that little boy will not be ours.  My second oldest was picking out baby's jammies a few nights ago and saw the striped sleeper.  She immediately selected it and said, "Mommy, these were Eli's".  You see, after we bathed Eli during my husband and my time alone with him we dressed him in a little preemie blue and white striped sleeper very similar to the one that she had selected for baby's jammies.  Over a year later and the little girl who was barely five when Eli died remembers the outfit he wore.  

So there you have it, the bitter with the sweet.  A beautiful healthy robust little girl in my home and two little boys who will never wear 6-9 month sleepers in my heart.

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.

A Son By Any Other Name

I attended a baby shower last night, the first one that I have actually ever attended since having children of my own (weird, huh?).  Anyhoo, the mom-to-be doesn't know the gender of her child which for some reason affected me more than I could have anticipated.  It's that whole boy thing again.  I realized how blessed I have been emotionally within my own family circle.  Five months after Wyatt was born my sister gave birth to a little boy.  I held him and never wanted to let go.  Then about seventeen months later she gave birth to another little boy.  Those little boys are now eight and seven years old and they don't bother me (emotionally) like they did as babies.  Because really, that's all I know of my boys, just babies.

My brother and sister-in-law have had two little girls.  My brother and his wife just had a little girl.  I can handle girls.  In fact, I have exhaled sighs of relief upon their births when their genders were given a finality and there could no longer be any little boy surprises.  But now my cousins are also embarking upon starting their own families and inevitably some of them are having little boys.  That realization grips my heart with an unexpected panic and sadness.  I have my girls, four to be exact, and with baby girl's birth I also have the knowledge and satisfaction that my family is complete on earth.  There is no question about it.  But with that knowledge I find a dull ache in my heart because before there was always a possibility.  Always a possibility that we would have another child and that child could be a boy.

I will need to find a way to soothe this ache.  Because I also know that if I don't it will eventually eat me up.