My best friend Jessica and I are blogging about our daughters and our experience through baby loss over at Team Ramona & Savannah .
There are so many amazing people writing about their children and loss that I wondered if what we have to say and share is even relevant, but I've noticed the further out people are with their grief, the less they focus entirely on it like they did in the early days. If we can reach a handful of people who are new to this crazy world of baby loss, we're doing a good thing. The best thing about blogs for me has been watching the progression of grief and life in general. It's good to know that eventually the pain will lessen. We won't ever forget, but we won't always hurt so much.
We also want to help family and friends learn how to support these moms and dads in the best way possible. We know firsthand people don't know what to say or how to react to the death of a baby. Hopefully we can help break the silence and make this experience less painful for everyone. First instinct for many people is to avoid the subject for fear of 'reminding' the grieved of their loss, but I can promise you, we are never not thinking of our babies. We want to share resources that help not only mom's and dads, but the people close to them.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Kindness of strangers
Yesterday I had an encounter with someone who didn't know what happened to Ramona. I explained, the woman was sad and shocked, but for some reason it set me off. I ended up at a Coney Island crying my eyes out.
She wasn't rude, but she didn't ask what her name was and I was left just kind of standing there while she talked nervously. She tried her best, but it was so hard to stand there and make small talk.
All I've been thinking lately is WHY? Why my daughter, why me, why my husband, why our family? While I was pregnant I knew eight other pregnant women. Two of us have lost our children, one gave birth to a healthy baby boy, and the other six are waiting. I know they must be scared by what happened to my child and my friend's child, but I also get a feeling there is an air of certainty around them. That since this happened to me, to Jessica, to Ramona and Savannah, that they should be in the clear. And I hate them for it.
These women are friends, one a best friend, and right now in this moment I hate them with every ounce of my being. I don't WANT them to go through what we're going through, but WHY? They will most likely bring their children home. Two of those children will be girls. I don't know if I will ever be able to look at them without hating them. In an irrational way, I blame them. I blame them for taking the place of my Ramona. I know it's crazy. I don't care.
I ended up at the Coney Island after the gym and all this came pouring out of me. When the waitress came to take my order instead of telling her I wanted two eggs over medium I started crying and choked out, "I'm having a really bad day, I'm sorry." This woman I've never met before in my life grabbed me and hugged me. She didn't know what I was going through, but she hugged me and showed me a smiley face on her receipt pad. "You keep thinking about this right here," she said.
I'm trying. I'm trying to move forward, I'm trying to push through the anger and the hate. I'm trying to be a good person, but it is damn hard. It is damn hard to live without your child when so many others don't have to.
She wasn't rude, but she didn't ask what her name was and I was left just kind of standing there while she talked nervously. She tried her best, but it was so hard to stand there and make small talk.
All I've been thinking lately is WHY? Why my daughter, why me, why my husband, why our family? While I was pregnant I knew eight other pregnant women. Two of us have lost our children, one gave birth to a healthy baby boy, and the other six are waiting. I know they must be scared by what happened to my child and my friend's child, but I also get a feeling there is an air of certainty around them. That since this happened to me, to Jessica, to Ramona and Savannah, that they should be in the clear. And I hate them for it.
These women are friends, one a best friend, and right now in this moment I hate them with every ounce of my being. I don't WANT them to go through what we're going through, but WHY? They will most likely bring their children home. Two of those children will be girls. I don't know if I will ever be able to look at them without hating them. In an irrational way, I blame them. I blame them for taking the place of my Ramona. I know it's crazy. I don't care.
I ended up at the Coney Island after the gym and all this came pouring out of me. When the waitress came to take my order instead of telling her I wanted two eggs over medium I started crying and choked out, "I'm having a really bad day, I'm sorry." This woman I've never met before in my life grabbed me and hugged me. She didn't know what I was going through, but she hugged me and showed me a smiley face on her receipt pad. "You keep thinking about this right here," she said.
I'm trying. I'm trying to move forward, I'm trying to push through the anger and the hate. I'm trying to be a good person, but it is damn hard. It is damn hard to live without your child when so many others don't have to.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Pre-
There's an unopened email in my inbox. It's from my mother, sent Christmas Eve morning. She didn't know we'd been in the hospital overnight. I didn't have the heart to call her after we got the news. I wanted our family to have one last night free of grief.
I haven't had the guts to open or delete it. Thanks to gmail I know what it says. She just wanted to know if I was awake and to call her if I was. As far as my mother knew we'd be over that afternoon, preparing our Christmas smorgasbord and celebrating together. Or she'd be with me in the hospital, which is what we'd been expecting the night before. Instead she would get a phone call that her first and only grandchild had died.
It's my last, small connection to my old life. I remember about a week earlier thinking how happy and lucky I was. Pre-emptiness, pre-sorrow. My life before feels like fiction, like a sitcom that occasionally touches on a serious subject in a humorous light. I look at pictures of myself from when I was pregnant and I try conjure those feelings of joy and anticipation, because I know I'll never have them again. That part of my life is over.
I haven't had the guts to open or delete it. Thanks to gmail I know what it says. She just wanted to know if I was awake and to call her if I was. As far as my mother knew we'd be over that afternoon, preparing our Christmas smorgasbord and celebrating together. Or she'd be with me in the hospital, which is what we'd been expecting the night before. Instead she would get a phone call that her first and only grandchild had died.
It's my last, small connection to my old life. I remember about a week earlier thinking how happy and lucky I was. Pre-emptiness, pre-sorrow. My life before feels like fiction, like a sitcom that occasionally touches on a serious subject in a humorous light. I look at pictures of myself from when I was pregnant and I try conjure those feelings of joy and anticipation, because I know I'll never have them again. That part of my life is over.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Baby Bee
I wasn't surprised at all to see this post recently. The universe sends crazy things your way at crazy times.
My mom gave me the Betsy-Tacy books for Christmas one year, probably when I was seven or eight. She loved those books and when she found the newer editions back in the eighties, she knew she had to give them to me. I loved those books, too. I still do. I have all my original books, plus the new editions from a few years ago. I identified as a Betsy, so did my mom, and the minute I found out I was having a little girl I knew she would be a Betsy. She would have been a Betsy, but she turned out to be a Bee.
As soon as I got up the courage I went into Ramona's room to get my copy of The Betsy-Tacy Treasury. I had put it on her bookshelf along with her books, toys, piggy banks, and other carefully chosen gifts from family and friends. It was my contribution, my gift to her, a hopeful love of reading. I read her the first book while she was still alive, safe inside me. I skipped the Bee part, though. I read it to myself and I thought, what a terrible thing it must be to lose a child so small and young. To lose all that potential. How do live the rest of your life without that child? Reading that part as a little girl wasn't nearly as shocking to me as it is to adults reading it for the first time. I've read so many reviews of Betsy-Tacy that warn readers of the death of a baby. I wasn't traumatized by that passage. I just always felt sad for Tacy because her baby sister died. I read that passage again days after Ramona's birth and instead of feeling sad for Tacy, I grieved for Mrs. Kelly. I'd never given her feelings much thought before. The story is told from a child's point of view, the one line you get about Mrs. Kelly is something along the lines of "Mama feels awful bad."
Now I have my Bee. And I feel awful bad. Now I'm beginning to learn how to live without her. The 'new normal,' baby loss mom's call it. I don't like to look back, to think about what ifs, but I do my fair share of magical thinking. I imagine my life with her to the point where it almost feels real, like an alternate universe where she lived and she's two months old now. I dress her in tiny clothes and marvel over her perfect lips that are an exact copy of Kyle's. I smooth down her wavy brown hair and slide on the hairbows I made for her. I finish knitting the blanket that I thought I had all the time in the world to complete after she was born. My mother and I take her on a trip to Mankato, the real Deep Valley, to show her all the wonderful places from the books we've read together.
That isn't real, though. The reality is empty arms, sleepless nights, and a room full of brightly colored dresses, toys, and blankets, hoping the birds will bring my baby girl a message: I love you, I love you, I love you.
My mom gave me the Betsy-Tacy books for Christmas one year, probably when I was seven or eight. She loved those books and when she found the newer editions back in the eighties, she knew she had to give them to me. I loved those books, too. I still do. I have all my original books, plus the new editions from a few years ago. I identified as a Betsy, so did my mom, and the minute I found out I was having a little girl I knew she would be a Betsy. She would have been a Betsy, but she turned out to be a Bee.
As soon as I got up the courage I went into Ramona's room to get my copy of The Betsy-Tacy Treasury. I had put it on her bookshelf along with her books, toys, piggy banks, and other carefully chosen gifts from family and friends. It was my contribution, my gift to her, a hopeful love of reading. I read her the first book while she was still alive, safe inside me. I skipped the Bee part, though. I read it to myself and I thought, what a terrible thing it must be to lose a child so small and young. To lose all that potential. How do live the rest of your life without that child? Reading that part as a little girl wasn't nearly as shocking to me as it is to adults reading it for the first time. I've read so many reviews of Betsy-Tacy that warn readers of the death of a baby. I wasn't traumatized by that passage. I just always felt sad for Tacy because her baby sister died. I read that passage again days after Ramona's birth and instead of feeling sad for Tacy, I grieved for Mrs. Kelly. I'd never given her feelings much thought before. The story is told from a child's point of view, the one line you get about Mrs. Kelly is something along the lines of "Mama feels awful bad."
Now I have my Bee. And I feel awful bad. Now I'm beginning to learn how to live without her. The 'new normal,' baby loss mom's call it. I don't like to look back, to think about what ifs, but I do my fair share of magical thinking. I imagine my life with her to the point where it almost feels real, like an alternate universe where she lived and she's two months old now. I dress her in tiny clothes and marvel over her perfect lips that are an exact copy of Kyle's. I smooth down her wavy brown hair and slide on the hairbows I made for her. I finish knitting the blanket that I thought I had all the time in the world to complete after she was born. My mother and I take her on a trip to Mankato, the real Deep Valley, to show her all the wonderful places from the books we've read together.
That isn't real, though. The reality is empty arms, sleepless nights, and a room full of brightly colored dresses, toys, and blankets, hoping the birds will bring my baby girl a message: I love you, I love you, I love you.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Our old life
I'm a reader, so when we got home from the hospital the first thing I needed to do was read about other people's experience with stillbirths. I found message boards, blogs, books. I read and read and read, but no matter what I still feel so alone sometimes. The crazy thing is my best friend lost her newborn daughter on the same day.
Yes, my best friend's daughter died. The same day. On Christmas Eve.
Two completely different circumstances, but we both experienced the worst day of our lives on the same day. And we both feel very alone.
The thing is I know the stats. I look them up every day. I know that about 30,000 babies are stillborn every year in the United States. Stillbirths occurs ten times more than SIDS. I know there are more of me out there. I read the stories. I still feel alone.
I read An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken. My experience is almost identical to hers. When she first found out what had happened, she had the feeling that everyone would be mad at her. I lay in bed that night in the hospital, doped up on my first of many doses of xanax thinking, "Everyone is going to blame me for this. Everyone is going to think this is my fault." Obviously no one (that I know of) blamed me or thought that I did something wrong, but I had myself convinced that I must have done something. I'd never heard of this happening outside of stories about my grandmother's stillborn babies in the thirties and forties and the old-fashioned books I'd read as a girl. This did not happen in 2013.
Of course I know better now. The pathology reports came back with nothing. My whole pregnancy was uneventful. I was completely prepared to bring Ramona home, but instead her carseat is hidden away at the in-laws and her nursery door is shut and I'm back at work early because I have no baby to take care of. I have a baby I think about every minute of the day and a baby I cry over daily, but I don't have a baby in my arms.
“For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We'd been waiting
to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old life.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination
We've been to a support group, I know the stats, my best friend is walking this road with me, but I everywhere I go I see women with children and all I can think about is how their child didn't die. That no matter how many people I meet and know, I still feel like a pariah, a freak, the woman no one wants near them while they're pregnant. Even in this space I feel isolated and strange, my words going out digitally into the void.
Everything and nothing changed, everything and nothing is the same.
Yes, my best friend's daughter died. The same day. On Christmas Eve.
Two completely different circumstances, but we both experienced the worst day of our lives on the same day. And we both feel very alone.
The thing is I know the stats. I look them up every day. I know that about 30,000 babies are stillborn every year in the United States. Stillbirths occurs ten times more than SIDS. I know there are more of me out there. I read the stories. I still feel alone.
I read An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken. My experience is almost identical to hers. When she first found out what had happened, she had the feeling that everyone would be mad at her. I lay in bed that night in the hospital, doped up on my first of many doses of xanax thinking, "Everyone is going to blame me for this. Everyone is going to think this is my fault." Obviously no one (that I know of) blamed me or thought that I did something wrong, but I had myself convinced that I must have done something. I'd never heard of this happening outside of stories about my grandmother's stillborn babies in the thirties and forties and the old-fashioned books I'd read as a girl. This did not happen in 2013.
Of course I know better now. The pathology reports came back with nothing. My whole pregnancy was uneventful. I was completely prepared to bring Ramona home, but instead her carseat is hidden away at the in-laws and her nursery door is shut and I'm back at work early because I have no baby to take care of. I have a baby I think about every minute of the day and a baby I cry over daily, but I don't have a baby in my arms.
― Elizabeth McCracken, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination
We've been to a support group, I know the stats, my best friend is walking this road with me, but I everywhere I go I see women with children and all I can think about is how their child didn't die. That no matter how many people I meet and know, I still feel like a pariah, a freak, the woman no one wants near them while they're pregnant. Even in this space I feel isolated and strange, my words going out digitally into the void.
Everything and nothing changed, everything and nothing is the same.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Sunday
If I facebooked and instagrammed my life right now it would be the saddest display of social media of all times.
New necklaces! With my dead daughter's name and initials on them.
What I'm reading... An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.
Feeling: fucking miserable. Grief stricken. Are there fucking emojis for that?
Valentine's day! I don't even remember, I was just thankful Kyle and I have been able to make it through the past two months and become closer than ever. I love him so much.
I want the hopeless days to even out with the hopeful days. Right now our life is leaning heavier on the hopeless, but we do have hope. We're scared and sad and the waves of grief knock us over hard some days, but we have hope.
New necklaces! With my dead daughter's name and initials on them.
What I'm reading... An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.
Feeling: fucking miserable. Grief stricken. Are there fucking emojis for that?
Valentine's day! I don't even remember, I was just thankful Kyle and I have been able to make it through the past two months and become closer than ever. I love him so much.
I want the hopeless days to even out with the hopeful days. Right now our life is leaning heavier on the hopeless, but we do have hope. We're scared and sad and the waves of grief knock us over hard some days, but we have hope.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Yesterday
Yesterday was a hard day. I almost typed 'bad' day, but I don't want
to refer to days where my grief for our daughter overwhelming as
'bad.' Hard, yes, but grief is not bad. It's hard, but it's not bad.
Last year we also lost our beautiful cat Precious. She was amazing and we had looked forward to Precious and Ramona becoming friends but Precious was a senior cat and we had to make the hard decision in September to say good-bye. We planned on adopting another cat when Ramona turned about 6 months old. I wanted her to grow up with an animal companion and I believe pets teach compassion. None of that was meant to be, so Friday we visited the local animal shelter and adopted a one year old cat we named Chet Lemon.
Chet is wonderful. He is just what we need to help heal, he is affectionate and smart and it's wonderful having more life in our home. The only problem is I looked at him yesterday and felt such extreme anguish because he should not be here.
I should be cuddling on the couch with Ramona, not Chet. I should be feeding Ramona, not Chet. I should be playing with Ramona, not Chet. I should be waking in the middle of the night checking on Ramona, not Chet. I love him already, but yesterday all my shock and grief and pain collided and I lost it.
I played some sad bastard music and cried and screamed. Chet just watched and when I was done he jumped back on the couch with me. He sat in the bathroom with me while I showered. He laid on the bed while I got dressed. This cat we'd only known for two days comforted me and watched over me.
I don't really believe things happen for a reason. I don't believe our daughter died so we could make room for a cat who needed a home, but after I released that pain I felt grateful for Chet and happy we made room for him in our home and hearts. Some days I imagine Ramona and Precious somewhere together, playing and cuddling, two destined friends. I'm slowly starting to imagine Chet and another child, a similar scene but different players. It gives me hope.
Last year we also lost our beautiful cat Precious. She was amazing and we had looked forward to Precious and Ramona becoming friends but Precious was a senior cat and we had to make the hard decision in September to say good-bye. We planned on adopting another cat when Ramona turned about 6 months old. I wanted her to grow up with an animal companion and I believe pets teach compassion. None of that was meant to be, so Friday we visited the local animal shelter and adopted a one year old cat we named Chet Lemon.
Chet is wonderful. He is just what we need to help heal, he is affectionate and smart and it's wonderful having more life in our home. The only problem is I looked at him yesterday and felt such extreme anguish because he should not be here.
I should be cuddling on the couch with Ramona, not Chet. I should be feeding Ramona, not Chet. I should be playing with Ramona, not Chet. I should be waking in the middle of the night checking on Ramona, not Chet. I love him already, but yesterday all my shock and grief and pain collided and I lost it.
I played some sad bastard music and cried and screamed. Chet just watched and when I was done he jumped back on the couch with me. He sat in the bathroom with me while I showered. He laid on the bed while I got dressed. This cat we'd only known for two days comforted me and watched over me.
I don't really believe things happen for a reason. I don't believe our daughter died so we could make room for a cat who needed a home, but after I released that pain I felt grateful for Chet and happy we made room for him in our home and hearts. Some days I imagine Ramona and Precious somewhere together, playing and cuddling, two destined friends. I'm slowly starting to imagine Chet and another child, a similar scene but different players. It gives me hope.
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