The following post was written two days ago and was saved as a draft... where it was going to stay. However, I watched Jess' video blog last night and she gave me the courage to publish this and add my video to round-up. It was more emotional, reading it, than I thought it would be. I recorded it sitting in the glider, in what should've been a fully decorated nursery, by now. However, I didn't have the energy or courage to read it again. So here goes... jumbled words, tears and all.
Over the last week or so, I've been following the Spoken Word Blog Round Up, which was created by Angie over at Still Life with Circles. It has been a healing and eye-opening experience for me. It has allowed me to look at my own experience and really dive into my feelings... something I'm not very good at. It has helped give me the words that I want to say... and just never knew how. So for that, Angie... I thank you and this community.
This has been such an emotional two weeks. Perhaps it's the stories I've heard, perhaps it's the fact that I just passed the 3 month mark of Nathan's birth/death, perhaps it's the Facebook pregnancy and birth announcements I've read (5 so far this month), perhaps it's the realization that I should be less than 8 weeks from my due date. I don't know whether I'm coming or going. I just know that this sucks. It hurts and I don't want it anymore: this "new normal". What is that anyway? I mean... there is nothing "normal" about grieving for a child you never got to know.
When I originally started watching the round up, I wasn't going to participate. I just felt like most everyone else seemed to have such a history with their child and with their grief. They recalled painful but cherished moments before, during and after the delivery. What could I possibly add to that? I had none of those moments with my son. Then I thought... surely there must someone on this Earth who has been where I am. Someone must know what I'm going through. Please, I'm begging... someone, anyone... I don't want to be alone in this. Perhaps, this is my chance to connect and feel less alone.
I'm a new blogger... if that's even what you want to call it. My writing isn't "elegant" or beautiful. There is nothing poetic or brave about what I write. In all honestly, I tend to scatter my thoughts and repeat myself. ;-) I looked back over my posts and I just didn't see anything that stood out. (Hence the reason that I'm reading this.) My story is the same as everyone's, yet so very different. I had my bi-weekly session with my therapist yesterday and talked with her about the round up and my feelings... and this is the conclusion that I've come to. I'm in a gray area. I'm in a weird spot. When a person loses a child before or during birth, there are two names for it: miscarriage or stillbirth. I somehow managed to get stuck in the very middle of those two terms. I am the mother to a child who was lost during the second trimester of pregnancy. Legally, I had a miscarriage. In my heart, I had a stillbirth.
Below is a chart that I found, on Wikipedia, that describes the terminology and timeframes of pregnancy outcomes. The only thing I see when I look at the chart, are the different ways that the public perceives how a person ends up with empty arms.
In this gray area, I sometimes don't feel worthy of this grief. At what gestation are we allowed to properly and publicly mourn for our child? At what point is it okay to mourn without someone telling us "it wasn't really a baby" or "Be glad you lost it when you did. Can you imagine if you'd had to carry it longer and go through that"?
In this gray area... I no longer fit in with the "non-baby loss" group. Yet, at times, I don't feel like I fit into the "baby loss" group either. I feel confused and lost. I feel angry and hurt. I feel lonely and excluded. I feel so many things. I wonder, sometimes, why I feel the way that I feel. How is it possible to love and miss someone so much, that you never had a chance to know? Why do I have such a fierce, protective love for this tiny 6 1/2" long baby boy who flutter out of my world faster than he flutter in? Why do I feel so much like I'm the only person who misses him... like I'm the only one who's life has changed?
Nathan's story isn't filled with family and cherished memories and that makes me sad. I hate that he wasn't given the same things that my first son received. He wasn't welcomed into the world surrounded by his family. There was nobody at the hospital when he was born, except my mom. (She came, so that I wouldn't be alone.) I am the only person who held him, other than the nurse who delivered him and the funeral home staff. My husband made the decision, for himself, that he didn't want to see him... even if he were at the hospital when I delivered. A decision that I'm trying so hard to respect and not be angry about. A little after 3am, after 12 hours of labor, on July 21, 2011, (after they had taken Nathan away) I called him at home. As he laid in our bed, snuggled next to our first born child, Cameron... I told him, "It's a boy. We have another son. I think he would've looked so much like Cameron. He has my nose, your long legs and Chris' square-shaped chin. (Chris is my brother.) His cord was wrapped twice around his neck." That is about the extent of what my husband knows about his second child. Nathan has become an elephant (yet another aspect of my gray area). He is in the room with us always but rarely talked about or mentioned. It seems to make my husband uncomfortable so I don't talk about him very often.
I struggle with my anger and regrets because it's unfair that Nathan got gipped out of so many things. Looking back, I realize that, as his mother, I should have done more... because nobody else was going to. I hate that my mind and body were in shock and that I didn't have more time and forethought to process what was happening. I go to sleep every night and in my dreams, I pray that I will see my son, so that I can tell him how very sorry I am that I didn't fight harder to make his birth more important.
When I look at my older son, it hurts to think of all that he will miss out on by not having his brother here. Even if we have more children in the future, his first little brother will always be missing from that picture. It's so unfair. I don't know why I think I'm special enough to think that I should've somehow been spared this heartache. We all should've been spared. No parent should have to hold their dead child in their arms and say goodbye. No parent should have to leave a hospital with empty arms. To go home with nothing to say their child was real... and not just a figment of their imagination.
Unfortunately, this is now my life. My life is no longer colorful and vibrant. Yet it isn't black and white... it's simply gray.
(Here is the link, if you are interested in linking up with the Spoken Word Blog Round-Up.)
I believe that Nathan knows you love him and would have done anything you could to save him. This is something I've struggled with as well, and it doesn't help when I hear those words, but I really do believe them.
ReplyDeleteThat gray area is a hard place to be. You know you're baby was real, but a lot of people don't see it that way. No matter how they see it, many people don't want to hear about it. I try to remind myself that it doesn't matter what anything else thinks because they're my babies and I know they were real.
As far as things with your husband, guys process their grief in such a different way that sometimes it seems they aren't even sad. They were brought up with the mentality that guys don't show emotions, they just suck it up and stay strong for their family. They don't realize that it is okay for them to grieve, that it's healthier for them to grieve. It might not do much good, but try to point him in the direction of Kelly Farley's Grieving Dads Project. He may not want to open up to you, but if he's open to reading the stories on there, he may eventually open up to someone, which is all that really matters.
Sending you lots of hugs and prayers.
You fit in, your grief is real, your son Nathan matters. I'm so sorry for all of you hurt. It seeps through to me on the screen.
ReplyDeleteI'm just so sorry for all of it.
Thank you you for the immense bravery it took to share this video.
xo
Oh Crystal. My heart is breaking for you and your little Nathan. Thank you for being brave enough to record this, I wish I could just reach through the screen and give you a hug. It's all so recent and painful and I'm so desperately sorry that you lost your little boy. I can see that fierce, protective love in every word that you have spoken here.
ReplyDeleteI've also wished that I had planned more, that I had known what to do. But, as you say, we would have been in deep shock and it is so hard to process anything the immediate aftermath of losing your baby. You loved Nathan and you would not have wished this for him, you did everything you could done to protect him.
I've often also felt that I am in some kind of gray area as my twin daughters were born in the second trimester. I know I found it quite isolating as a loss in the second trimester is (relatively) rare. Many people I knew didn't seem to understand that my daughter who died was a baby, tiny but still a baby, and still perfect in the eyes of her mother.
I'm sorry that your husband finds it difficult to talk about Nathan. I think that sometimes couples just grieve in different ways and this can lead to a lot of pain and misunderstanding. I hope you find a way to reach one another at this sad time.
Remembering your precious Nathan Allen x
I found my way here from Angie's blog round up.
ReplyDeleteYou may feel alone, but you aren't. We are all trapped in our own grey area and even though everyone's experience is different we share the grief of a huge loss that other's don't really understand. What happened to you is traumatic and horrendous and beyond sad. and what happened to me is too. You are not alone.
Its been three months since I lost my son as well. He was born on Aug 1st, lived three days and died on August 4th.
I connected very much with everything that you spoke.
You are a beautiful mother and I a can see the love that you have for your son pouring from your soul. Be kind to yourself darling.
xo
Hi Crystal...your words are so honest and real...and I can feel the ache of your mama heart for your sweet Nathan. I am so sorry. Please know that even though it feels like you are in this gray area, the life of your Nathan was real and acknowledged. You are a mother to this sweet boy in heaven, and to your son on this earth. Please know that you are not alone. Praying that God will continue to comfort and carry you as you grieve the loss of your son.
ReplyDeleteOh mama - my heart broke for you as you shared this. Your love for your sons, your pain and your grief over Nathan's death all shone out from this blog post. I am sorry that you feel as though you are in a gray area. We, in this corner of the internet, know that our losses happened at various times and in hundreds of different ways but we are united by the fact that we all miss our beautiful babies.
ReplyDeleteCrystal you did an amazing job with this post. Thank you so very much for sharing it with us. I am thinking of you and Nathan...
ReplyDelete