I Wore "That Shirt"

Fate took care of me the day Eli was born.  For a reason I cannot explain, I packed a really pretty and drapey non-maternity shirt in my hospital bag and unknowing to the nurses, they suggested later in the day (when my husband and I were enjoying our alone time with Eli and the NILMDTS photographer came in) that I put on that shirt for pictures with Eli.  I did and that shirt gave my pictures a look of normalcy that my pictures with Wyatt do not have.  They are beautiful and cherished.

The shirt however became "that shirt" and I couldn't wear it for a very long time after Eli was born.  I have worn it but recently me and the shirt made a big statement together.  My husband and I were married just before Christmas almost eleven years ago and since I am a stay at home and he is not, each year I pack up the girls and head to the photographer's to have a photograph made for a special frame in his office so he can show off his girls.  It's a semi-cheesy but completely sentimental annual anniversary gift.  This year I will be wearing "that shirt".

It almost feels like I've forcibly shed a layer of skin to be able to don that shirt again.  It didn't feel heavy or scratchy or any way uncomfortable.  Another words, it wasn't laden with the heavy memories of that day and what an important role it played.  The other day it was just a beautifully draped shirt that matched my daughters' outfits and subconsciously reminded me of one of the happiest days of my life.

To Infinity and Beyond

Infinity is defined as "endless time, space or quantity".  To me, it's forever.  It also happens to be the number of years between my boys, on it's side.  You see, my boys - Wyatt & Eli - were born eight years apart.  8.
Turn 8 on its side and voila! you have .

Infinity.  What it feels like without my boys.  Infinity.  The space between me and them.  Infinity.  The time we will be together one day.  Infinity.  The number that's not really a number that I've found to give me some comfort while I wait for infinity.

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.

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...