And here comes another post that will more than likely be "hidden" from the public to see but will surely be very healing for me to get out and express. Someday I will include the posts about this precious baby in the printout of the blog. It only seems fitting to place it here - along the other news and events of our family life! Thank you to Benjy for opening the tap of emotions that were welling up inside me with nowhere to go. His written thoughts unleashed the deadness within me and gave me the inclination to follow his leadership and sit down here and express it.
I struggle back and forth - back and forth - between wanting all of our friends to know the bitter pain I feel in my heart over the loss of our second sweet baby this weekend. I want all to pray, to feel with me, to mourn with us. To know that there was pure joy for those few weeks of anticipation of another in our family. It seems almost unfair that no one celebrated in our news - that in some small way it has stolen the validity of his or her short life. That he or she was very much alive and well in our hopes, our dreams for our family. Although way too short - still very much real! And now gone - leaving emptiness, sadness, questions, and aloneness. I want all to know how my heart is wrenching with sadness at the loss of so many things that were tied up in this new life. At the same time I don't want anyone to know. It is my pain. It is our loss. I don't want the attempts to comfort, to offer advice or compassion. I want to hide and be alone so maybe it is all the better that the world isn't writing and calling. Who knows.....my feelings are contradictory and uncontrolled - extreme and dead at the same time. Forgive me for those - they will heal, I believe that....but for the moment, I will let them out as they choose to come....
I sense the need to record the moments of the weekend - to reserve them for my heart - to reaffirm that they occured - and to assign reality to this small life that will no longer make a mark on our family than a few short weeks. Perhaps that is a huge understatement...maybe the impact of his or her being will influence us in deep and profound ways - more than I can ever anticipate today. There will be no first baby pictures, no name given and announced to the world, no milestones, no sibling bonds, but maybe I am too hurt and shortsighted right now to know how these last two lives lost are forming and shaping our lives from the heavens. I am certain I have no idea. And that's okay - I have learned this much in the past 6 months - there aren't always answers on this side!
So our Friday morning appointment was scheduled out of our desire to know that all was progressing well with this little one. I was in my 10th week of pregnancy - approaching 11 on Monday. I felt good - days of naseau - tiredness - but overall feeling well. My thankfulness for those minor pregnancy symptoms encouraged me greatly...and I felt confident entering that ultrasound room. All three boys were with us due to the plans for the day and the lack of time to do a bunch of extra transporting. We expected Reece to be aware of what was happening and naturally, he didn't disappoint. As soon as we entered the ultrasound room, he stated, "ahhhh, I know what this is - they are going to take a picture of Mommy's tummy....is there a baby in there?!" We didn't really address his question but Chase was quick to chime in..."I really hope it is another brother because Piersen needs a friend to speak english to him". When Dr. Guzman entered, he was quick to get to work and said, "well, let's see how this baby is coming along". And once again - with too eery of a similarity, he placed the wand on my tummy and I knew in an instant that the impossible had just happened - we had lost another child. There was no movement, no heartbeat - the doctor looked and searched but I didn't even voice the question to him. I knew. I motioned to Benjy "no" and my emotions shut off..... Though many tears flowed in the hours that followed. Perhaps the most impacting moment in all of this was the late night conversation shared between my incredible husband and myself. Wrapped in his tender embrace we just let it all out - our questions, our doubts, our anger, our fears. I loved that we both felt the freedom to unleash all we felt - not needing to qualify our extreme statements over and over again - just trusting each others complete lack of judgement or sense in the rawness of the moment. What a beautiful gift to have a relationship like this - thank you God for the most amazing man to share this complicated journey with me called life. That together we have experienced the most intimate moments of both extremes of the journey - the joy and the grief....
Saturday morning was the scheduled D&C. I did not want to wake up and face the reality of the day and prolonged it as long as I could. I anticipated insensitive nursing staff and was pleasantly suprised to encounter compassionate and kind people. My tears were much freer this time and I think the rawness of another experience so close in time won over my attempts to be strong. The anesthesiologist was one of the kindest men I have ever seen in such a clinical setting - he reassured me that he would work quickly and allow me to recover away from the new mom's who'd be recovering from delivering a new life into the world. He asked me about my loss, was it my first...I explained we had lost a baby in February. He asked about my children at home. In my state of mind, I inconveniently confused the words "caballeros" and "varones" to explain to him we had "3 cabrones en casa". He chuckled and I quickly realized I had stated we had three little assholes at home! Perhaps my internal anger was seeking an escape!!! I tried to smoothly redeem myself but needed my loving husband to re-state to him later what I had meant to say. The doc wittingly responded that sometimes there is no difference between a gentleman and an asshole. This language blunder provided some comic relief!
When I came out of sedation, I was really tired but back in my room, with Benjy at my side. He told me that he had some of the remains of the baby right there in the room (we are deciding if we want to do testing to find out what went wrong, and they unexpectedly asked Benjy to carry it to the lab). He waited until I was fully back and showed me our little one. I held that clear container - and looked and looked for any resemblence of anything. I knew there would not be - but I hoped if I looked long enough I would see something. It was a strange yet sacred moment - holding the physical remains of our sweet baby and feeling incredibly thankful that his or her Daddy had the opportunity to be the last to hold his little one. In some ways, maybe too psychotic - but yet us humans are very attached to the physical - and this symbolic moment provided some closure in my heart and mind. I had desired it when we lost the first baby but it was not given to me. I was thankful for the chance this time around, even knowing that the soul of our child had long disappeared to be with Jesus.
We stopped at the gift shop to buy a small teddy bear - as we have done to welcome each new child into our family. With our last loss and this one, a teddy bear and a small ultrasound photo of a very small baby are the only physical things left to hold on to. We had bought a bonzai tree for the last baby - symbolizing life and new hope - but my horrible green thumb has not allowed that pretty little tree to survive.... needless to say, we didn't spend money on another one :( I chose a small white bear with pink trimmings. It is smallest of all the bears, I think because it seems like it was only a breath of time that this baby was even with us. Although my sense was not super strong, I wonder if this would have been our first little girl. I think so. Our little Emersyn Grace (although we had not completely decided if that would be her name) But now we will have to await eternity to find out who both of these babies are....
And today, the day after, I feel numb. It doesn't seem real. I finally let out some tears this afternoon when Benjy shared his thoughts with me. I feel trapped between so many feelings. I want to rest in the moment and not worry about the future or how our family will proceed or whether we will just be us 5. It doesn't need to be all figured out right now - maybe because I feel so many questions, I want to answer something....yet I know it is not the time to answer anything. I struggle deep within with feelings of incompleteness to end our family growth with 2 losses. How could we end like this? But how can I try again? The decision feels much huger now than it did when Piersen was little and I would think ahead to our family. There is so much more to it now than there was after 3 simple and joy filled experiences. I was good at having babies - great pregnancies, great deliveries, great recoveries. "That girl was born to have babies" - well maybe that season in my life is over. Maybe not. Perhaps I will just have to accept that time will tell.
I need peace to rest in the goodness of my life now and to fully feel the whole range of emotions. I want the freedom to laugh with my boys and also cry in an instant. I want to give myself that permission to feel, to heal...even when there is little I understand. I do not know if I should call it anger - but I want this obstacle I feel in my view of God to disappear. I want to trust that He feels my pain and wants to listen to me...even though I find it so hard to talk to Him today. I trust it is a process and that time will change me and my heart. I want to guard against guilt, against over analyzing, against dwelling too much on what we should have or could have done different. I want to remind myself over and over again that we did and will continue to do all that we really can - and that is to place our children in God's hands and trust. I tried to do that with this little one, with the last one - just like I did with the three before. For some reason, that same trust didn't deliver the same results. But my faith tells me, even though today my heart doesn't, that that is not the fault of the Father. He is still trustworthy. Although that is so hard...that is reality. I will choose today to continue to trust. I will trust Reece Samuel, Chase Lambert, and Piersen Benjamin into those same loving hands....as I will my two unborn souls to my Father's care.
Telling It Over Again
In each re-telling
there comes a little bit of healing,
a little more acceptance
of the reality of our loss.
In each re-telling
there comes another acknowledgement,
of the uniqueness of the personhood
of our precious missing child.
In each re-telling
there comes a little less uncertainty,
a little more internal peace
of the finality of their death.
In each re-telling
there comes a greater recognition,
an important affirmation
of the memories we hold dear.
In each re-telling
we seek a patient audience,
who'll graciously accept our need
to tell them one more time.
(c) Miriam Blake 1997
