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.)
