Dazed and Confused

Not sure what's going on here. It's not like I haven't been sad, but I'm feeling another shift in grief. I haven't had a break down or the threat of one. I haven't cried. I feel guilty for not thinking of Brayden more often or like I had been. In fact, my guilt seems to be the predominant feeling this last week.

Like many other mothers of rainbow babies, I wondered if my current pregnancy should be mentioned in my grief blog at all. In this case, I think one has a direct relation to the other.

I heard the baby’s heartbeat and felt movement for the first time this week. For the first time this pregnancy, I feel…hope? A little excitement? The knowledge that life sometimes continues? I don’t want to fight excitement about a new baby, but now I find myself in that position. As if feeling joy right now were a betrayal to our loss. A betrayal to Brayden.

I know that sounds silly (and a little text book ) but there it is. I honestly feel like I’m betraying my son’s memory with my eagerness to embrace this new life. I’m also in the stage of picking out nursery items, making lists of what we don’t have and saving money just in case it’s a girl because we already have all the boy clothes. Exactly what I was doing this time last summer.

I’m struggling to find a balance. I don’t want to fight to hold on to my grief. I know the worst is behind me, but far from over. I don’t want sadness to always wrap the precious little memory I have of him but really, what else is there? I didn’t see him smile or hear him giggle. I didn’t smell him right after a bath. I didn’t feel his breath on my shoulder as he slept. All I have are memories of being pregnant and one day in the hospital with him. I can’t change those or make them less sad. As much as I try to inject happiness into those memories by trying to see the positive, all I see is tragedy in what might have been.

So…how to let go of sadness enough to allow myself joy without letting go of memories? Such a mess, all tangled together. This is a new feeling for me, and may take some time to sort out.

I have no doubt that I’ll get past this, as I’ve crossed other hurdles in the grief process that at the time I felt I could not. With time, I’ll figure all this out. For now, I’m still confused.

Control...the illusion?

I wanted to write a bit on a good day and today I’m feeling pretty good. I’ve been using this blog to get out whatever negative, sadness or grief/guilt I’m feeling (which was my intent) but I don’t feel that those things are all that encompass my life now.

It used to be. For months and months, grief weighed me down. My first thought (and the one I’m more apt to speak out loud) is that I have more control over my grief than I did. That’s not exactly the case, but the feeling of being in control is something that grief robs you of, so it feels right to say I have control over it now – meaning I don’t randomly break down in public or cry privately in the shower a few times a day (my family thought I’d taken a new love for cleanliness, I bet).

What’s happened is that my grief has ebbed away, not gone, but become a secondary thing to living. The “ups” and “downs” we experience slowly change to more “ups” than “downs”, so it’s easier to recognize when the “downs” are coming. I’ll wake up one morning not quite feeling like I did the day before – I just feel kind of subdued. That’s a first indication. Subdued changes to semi-lethargic, and even as I wonder where my energy might have gone, I know. A break down is coming – I feel it, but I can put it off just a little until I’m ready to deal with it.

By “ready to deal with it”, I mean I can make sure I am in the position to have the house to myself. Send my husband to work. Get my son to school, and now that it’s summer send him to a friend’s house for an afternoon. Sad music is usually in order, and yes, I have a playlist for just that on iTunes. It helps set the mood, so to speak.

I have a few grief avenues I pursue when having these days. Sometimes I catch up on loss friends blogs. Sometimes I start things off by writing in my own. Usually, though, the best thing I can do for myself is go into the nursery and shut the door. There, surrounded by things meant for my son, I can let go and be truly sad.

I usually cry for a while. That’s okay, because I allow myself that time…I give myself that time. It’s necessary. After I get it all out, I feel drained. After a few hours, I’m functioning again. After that, I’m good until the next round.

I don’t have these days every other day or, I’m happy to say, even every week. I’m not on a schedule, it happens when it happens. I don’t know if other loss moms deal with grief the same way I do, but I actually feel fortunate that I can feel these “down” days approaching and can prepare somewhat. I feel fortunate that they are getting less frequent.

I also feel fortunate to know that the lessening of grief does not mean I don’t miss and mourn my son. It doesn’t mean he didn’t happen, or that I don’t remember (how could I forget?). It hurts like hell to think that it means I’m letting go, but I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a part of it.

I’m not letting go of him…he’ll always be a part of me, and my family. He’s my little man, and always will be. What I’m letting go of is the guilt, anger and resentment attached to his death. Not all at once, and maybe not entirely. But, it’s slowly going.

And, before I leave the wrong impression about compartmentalizing my grief into those “down” days, I can still cry pretty easily if I let myself think about it. Those “down” days aren’t just brought on by a build up of grief – sometimes it’s meeting someone with a new baby, seeing a pregnant woman or – worse – seeing a baby exactly the age my son should have been. Where, months ago, I would barely make it to the car before the tears were flowing, now I think, “Oh, man. I might be taking a looooong shower when I get home.”

Maybe that’s where the control thought comes in. I have just enough of that control over grief to say, “Not here, not right now” and it listens. Not gone, just put off for enough time until I have privacy. Some don’t feel the need to hide their grief, but I don’t really feel that’s what I’m doing. For me, grief is private (LOL as I blog about it…I know).

I acknowledge that my husband doesn’t feel grief the same way I do and even when he has sad days, they are nothing compared to mine. We grieved together, but at this time and stage in the grief process, I prefer to have my break down’s alone. I don’t want to talk it out, I don’t want comfort. I just want to be sad, cry for a while and know in the back of my mind that I’m not worrying my husband. I don’t need more guilt. As painful as it can be sometimes, I feel like it’s MY time to grieve…I don’t have to share it. It’s my pain and I’m dealing with it the way I want to, the way that works best for me and no one else. It’s also a little time that I feel I get to spend with Brayden. Just the two of us, and my grief that he isn’t here. Does that make sense?

Self Torture

I’m doing it again. Torturing myself. I’m not sure why I’m compelled to do this, but I know I’m not the only one. It’s probably just one more fun side affect of losing a child.

I researched cord compression, the most plausible explanation for my son’s death. It fits with all the facts we have surrounding his death, and my current doctor believes it’s the most likely explanation.

Cord compression is where some part of the baby is pressing the umbilical cord to the side of the uterine wall. The first sign of cord compression is a drop in the baby’s heart rate. Second is decrease of fetal movement. Third…there is no third. After the second sign, if undetected, the result is death.

I remember becoming aware of his movements decreasing. It was the Friday before we lost him. I told myself not to panic, this happens towards the end of pregnancy due to lack of room. He’s still moving that’s all that matters. I didn’t want to call my doctor’s office (an hour and a half away) because my doctor was on vacation and I had already had a very unpleasant encounter with his substitute that left me in tears. I would wait it out and just be aware. No need to go through a false alarm this late in the game. We only had a week and a half to go, everything will be fine.

I woke up Tuesday morning realizing he hadn’t moved all night.

I’m not sure why blame is so important here. Maybe it’s not blame as much as misplaced anger over such senselessness. There is really no one to be angry at, when you think about it. Currently, however, I’m angry at my old OB for not thinking weekly appointments were necessary before my c-section. Partly, I’m sure, because he was going on vacation and other patients were being squeezed in until he left.

In fact, the last time I saw him he said, “Well, I guess I’ll see you folks in three weeks!”

When my son was born he was on vacation...again.

Had we had our weekly appointments, would he have been able to detect fetal distress? Had I not been such a fucking coward and gone to the doctor, false alarm and bitch replacement be damned, would my son be here today?

I’ll never have answers. Somehow, it doesn’t stop me from searching for them.

The doctor attending that night at the hospital (coincidentally my OB’s partner in his practice) told me her best hypothesis was that I had undetected gestational diabetes and that’s what killed my son. My OB (shockingly) concurred. (This information came five months after my son’s death via phone call). This conflicted with what the hospital told me was a cord accident.

This put me into a setback, to put it mildly. After coming to terms with losing our child and trying to live again, I get this new information to digest.

After that, I lived for months with the understanding that I was responsible for my son’s death. Months of hating myself, blaming myself and wishing that I could just die too so the guilt would finally leave and justice would be done – how could I ever forgive myself for this? Amazingly, that didn’t happen. I still got up every day, went about my life and managed to function again.

My new doctor has reviewed everything and thinks the information I was given from my old OB was careless. I had no sugar or protein in my urine and Brayden wasn't overly large (born at 8.5 lbs)...two obvious signs of uncontrolled GD. Also, because my son turned breech so late in the pregnancy, there were no abnormalities in lab work and he was perfect in every way, he’s confident saying he believes it was a cord compression accident. It would have been all too easy for it to happen.

Does this make me feel better? Not really. I still hold myself responsible for not going in when some inner voice told me that something was wrong. It’s so easy to mistake paranoia for genuine trouble, but I should have taken that chance. Who knows what may have happened?

Why do we torture ourselves like this? It’s not like it takes a lot to keep the pain alive for us – delving deeper into the how’s and why’s of it only rub salt in the wounds…especially when, deep down, we know we’ll never know why. Not really. We may have a physical answer, something that satisfies the science end of death, but we’ll never have the why us? answered.

Life is so unfair. Trying to see the beauty in it now feels pointless. I just see it how it is – sometimes good, sometimes shitty. But, none of it seems fair.

Another step back

I’ve spent part of this evening reading blogs of friends…older blogs that were written long before I came along to this world. I have to admit, their stories are painful to read but bring comfort at the same time. Other loss moms feel as I do and think as I do. I’m not as crazy as I think sometimes.

I’ve found myself “backsliding” (as I’ve come to think of it). Reliving the grief process, yet again. This is not the first time in the last months I’ve been here, but each time is different. The sadness has shifted, the pain less sharp but deeper.

I spoke with my new doctor this last week. He was shocked at the lack of information we weren’t provided was able to shed new light on the loss of our son. At the time, the news didn’t mean much to me…gone is gone. Now, days later, I feel a little differently. Not better or worse, just different. Knowing he’s gone from a freak twist of fate, an ugly turn of nature, a fluke…call it what you will…makes me angry all over again. The unfairness of it all is startling.

I was able to go into his room the other day and sit for a while. Surrounded by things that were meant to be his, I sat on the floor and pulled out his pictures. I ran my fingers over his photos, held the blanket the hospital wrapped him in and cried. I opened a few boxes of the baby clothes that were packed and pulled a few things out.

Here’s where the crazy part comes in. I sat looking at his swing and wondered if I should get his box of ashes and put him in the swing. I could put his blanket in there, give it a push and rock him for a bit. I sat and fantasized about that for a while – and even though the thought was, at the time, appealing – I then realized I was one step away from wrapping a doll up and putting it in a stroller and going for a walk, introducing my neighbors to my “son”.

I can’t explain where that thought or impulse came from – but I’ll be the first to admit that it was a little off the charts. I don’t even want to guess what my husband would have said had he come home at that moment.

I’m not quite sure where this leaves me. I’m really aching for him right now. Sometimes, I catch myself forgetting that this is my reality. I read stories of losses and think, “Wow, that would be awful” and then remember…it is awful. It happened to us, I know this.

Some of this was brought on by my doctor’s appointment. I lost count of how many people I had to explain our loss to…how many times I had to relive it in one day. I didn’t cry (I’m proud of myself) but I was close. I bit the side of my tongue more than once to hold the tears back. I just wanted to get through my appointment…crying could wait for home.

The best intentions sometimes aren't

I’ve had my first experience with…well, I’m not sure what to call it.

We all grieve differently. Some are internal, some reach out for help. Some grieve longer, while others are functioning sooner. All of us learn to incorporate our loss into our lives, reborn as the parents of lost babies to cope as best we can with our new world.

Sometimes I equate this with the loss of an appendage…an arm, a leg or sight. We are alive, but not whole and learning to live as such. The internally handicapped, with shards of our hearts and souls ripped and shredded, masquerading as normal human beings with no one being the wiser to our tremendous grief.

I understand my reality. I live it and some days it’s painful to breathe.

I remember leaving the hospital. It was so loud…horns in traffic, birds chirping, people in the parking lot on their cell phones. I was even painfully aware of the wind rustling through the trees. I hated all of it. Didn’t the world know I had just lost my son? How could the world go on when one tiny soul was missing? Why didn’t it just stop for a moment in recognition of our grief and pain? Just for a second to acknowledge a precious life gone and that we survived to experience unbelievable pain?

But, the world doesn’t stop, not for a moment, no matter how much we want it to.

And we cope; we all do, as best we can.

Today is International Baby lost Mother’s Day. I received a flower on Face Book from a fellow baby lost mother for this occasion, and I was touched. Nobody can truly understand a loss like this with no direct experience with it. When baby loss mothers gather together to lend support to each other, its truly a beautiful thing and comforting in a situation with very little to offer in the way of solace.

I have a childhood friend who lost her son in February. She was told at 21 weeks he would not survive – a physical impossibility for him, and having to carry him with that knowledge was devastating for her. Our personalities are not the same, but being loss mothers, I felt comfortable passing this flower to her in recognition of Mother’s Day and her loss.

Her reaction was unexpected and hurtful. Like I said, I understand nobody grieves the same way or at the same timeline. I also understand that grief and pain can come out in unexpected ways. Her e-mail to me demanding I erase it from her page was cuttingly direct and personal at the same time.

She said that she didn’t feel the need to “advertise” her grief like “some people” (I would assume that would be me), and because of that “some people” (I would assume me again) treated hers as less real. She also said I wasn’t respecting her process, as I grieved differently than she is.

She said more, but I’m only touching on this part for now.

This is a slap in the face to me in a huge way. Weeks after we lost our son she got her diagnosis and I was the first call she made. We grieved together at that time, talked from four in the morning until five thirty. We talked every couple of days for weeks after…usually about her grief and her situation, which didn’t bother me as it took my mind off of my own.

She had hinted before that what she was going through was worse than what I went through – saying things like “you just wouldn’t understand” (oh, really). I let this go. Knowing her nature and mine, it was best not to touch on it. I told myself I was her grief talking – sometimes, we truly feel like no one else on earth really could understand, even those who have been through it. I don’t think either one of us came out on top, and it’s just stupid to compare the two situations. There are no winners.

Now, however, I’m angry and hurt and all of the conversations we had these last months are coming to mind. After her son passed, she didn’t want to talk about it. At all. I respected that. So, we talked about the future – her plans to try again immediately and mine to wait. How long to wait. What we felt was best for each of us – normal stuff.

Now I receive a scathing e-mail full of talking-downs intended to put me in my place. I’ve moved from hurt to pissed in the span of one morning. I’ve wondered if I was out of line, if she was, if we both were.

My conclusion: a well-meant gesture was taken and blown out of proportion, resulting in harsh words that can’t be taken back. Was it her grief talking? Possibly. Can it be forgiven? I don’t know. By explaining so bluntly her opinion of my grieving process that I inadvertently imposed on her, I feel she went too far.

I’m still grieving, too.

And this member of the “some people” club is choosing to “advertise” their hurt and frustration on their blog ;-)

At this point, I’m disappointed, hurt and feel like I’ve lost a friend when, ironically, through my loss I’ve found tremendous support through online friends and groups.

I suppose there are people out there who do not need those things. I just hadn’t encountered one until today.

Backsliding

As I sit here with tears streaming down my face, I can’t help but go over the grieving process…as I live the revival of the grieving process.

Yesterday was seven months to the day marking our loss. I’ve tried to let the day go – it’s not fair, to me or the memory of my son if I relive his passing each month.

Easier said than done.

That is the rational side of me. The side that says it’s normal to miss him and still grieve, but not to watch each month slowly tick by with each passing of the 22nd. The side that tells me I have a family that needs me to be okay, that I have a living son that needs his mother.

The mother side of me is slipping back to those first few months. The pain is intense again, and I have thoughts I wouldn’t dare murmur out loud. I’m angry and devastated all over again. And I miss our son so much that I just want to lay down, pull the covers over my head, close my eyes and cry until there’s nothing left.

I knew the grief would come in waves. I thought it would be shorter waves. I didn’t think I would be kicked back to the beginning at this point, but that’s where I find myself.

I hate this life and this reality. I hate the way I feel. I miss my son. I miss him so much. We feel him gone every day…I feel him gone every second of every day.

It’s like my heart is breaking all over again.

Today, I wish...

Today I just miss my little man...so much that I hurt all over, centering in my heart.

Today, I just wish I had held him...just once, for just one memory.

Today, I wish I had run my finger over the soft skin of his face, so I could have the memory of him imbedded in my skin.

Today, I wish I had just once put my face to his tiny head and breathed in his scent, so at night when I lay down I can imagine, for just a moment, that I have a piece of him with me…if only a memory.

Today, I wish I had nuzzled his hair, memorized each strand as it touched my cheek, so I could remember how it felt when I feel like I have nothing left.

Today, for the first time, I wish I had been stronger in the moment I needed to be.

Today, not for the first time, I hate myself for being weak and not wanting to look reality in the face.

Today, I just wish I could have that moment back. The only moment I had. The only moment I would ever have. The moment I can’t ever have again.

Today, I live and breathe regret with everything that is in me.