Spoken Word Blog Round-Up (Year Two)

Angie, over at Still Life with Circles, is starting up the 2nd Spoken Word Blog Round-Up. I participated in this last year and it was an amazing experience. I was still very early into my loss but I somehow found the courage to post and was welcomed into the community with love, acceptance and support. I believe it was a big turning point in my healing... just getting the words and thoughts out into the open and having someone tell me that I wasn't alone. If you are interested in participating or just want to follow along, here's the link: http://stilllifewithcircles.blogspot.com/2012/10/spoken-word-blog-round-up-two.html (Here is the link from last year: http://stilllifewithcircles.blogspot.com/2011/10/spoken-word-blog-round-up.html)

Random Baby Thoughts

I've never been the mom who "wishes" for a girl or boy during pregnancy. Honestly, during my pregnancy with Cameron... I knew he was a boy. I just knew it somewhere inside me. When the ultrasound tech asked if we wanted to know, we said yes. Almost immediately, he closed his legs and tucked them up against his tummy and raised his feet against his butt. It took some poking and prodding but he finally opened his legs back up. When she announced that it was a boy... I said, "I knew it."

Cameron's Anatomy/Gender Ultrasound

During my pregnancy with Nathan, I never had that feeling of knowing. I honestly had no clue! I kept saying that it was probably a boy because that seems to be what runs in Allen's gene pool. LOL. Nathan is the 12th grandchild. There are 11 boys and only 1 girl. I figured our chances were slim for a girl and I didn't want to end up being disappointed. I have to admit though, I did get slightly nudged towards wondering if it was girl because of how sick I was. I never got morning sickness with Cameron... no nausea or anything. With Nathan, it hit full force at 6 weeks and continued until he was born a couple days shy of 17 weeks. Everyone kept saying that it had to be a girl and that my hormones were reacting to her. Needless to say, I was a little surprised when the nurse announced that Nathan was a boy when he was born. Not disappointed, just surprised. Not that it mattered because, regardless of the gender, I knew my baby wasn't coming home with me.

That said... I can kinda see why some people decide not to find out the gender during pregnancy. If Nathan had been alive and at term to survive, I can only imagine the joy and excitement of finding out what he was. To have worked that hard at labor and delivery and finally had that sweet ending and announcement... it would have been wonderful.

I've been on the fence with trying again. I'm just so darn scared to put my heart out there again and chance the pain. My OB is really trying not to push but I can tell he wants me to try again. He has mentioned a couple times about referring me back to Dr. Y (our RE/fertility specialist) at Wake Forest or trying a round of Clomid. He knows my history and he has been there through all of our fertility struggles and he knows how my body has let me down time and time again. I honestly think he was as surprised as I was when I lost Nathan. I think we both figured getting pregnant would be the hardest thing I've ever face.

Pregnancy hasn't been prevented since we decided almost 10 years ago to start a family (wow, I didn't realize until just now that it had been that long). However, I haven't charted since I had Cameron. I know when I ovulate because I can feel it but I haven't done the whole temp. and track thing. It got really stressful there at the end before I got pregnant with Cameron. It was killing our sex life. Truth be told, between the infertility and loss of Nathan, it's still suffering sometimes.

I'm sure you're wondering where the heck this "conversation" is going... as I've steered completely to Japan and back. I got an email from a party website that I'm subscribed to about an adorable little princess party and it just made me a little dreamy for a moment. (I can't believe I'm saying this!) I love my boys... don't get me wrong but I can't help but wonder what life would be like with a daughter. I got to thinking about all the things I might miss... the little girl wanting to dress up and wear makeup like mama, the "boy" talks, holding her through her first heartbreak, watching her fall in love, seeing her daddy walk her down the aisle and give her away, sharing a bond with another woman (who I birthed), offering her support when she has her first born, etc. I think there is just something about the color pink, tea parties, dress up and all things girl... that makes me smile. Of course, songs like this don't help. ;-)

I know that even if we try again and get pregnant that there is no guarantee that we'll have a girl and I'm okay with that. I know that having a girl doesn't mean eternal bliss. There would be the hormones and rebellion... just as I'm sure we'll experience with Cameron. ;-) I guess I just needed a moment of allowing myself to wonder and give in to random thoughts about it all...

Gray Area

I'm a little (okay... a lot) freaked out that I have actually published this. I've only shared this blog once, during Small Bird Studios blog hop last month. Now knowing that people can actually SEE me, not just read my words... okay... where's the delete button? I'm freaking myself out even more. The more I share this page... the scarier it is. I have a fear that someone I actually know will stumble across it. For some reason, I feel more comfortable with a perfect stranger knowing these emotional, intimate details of my life vs. my own family and friends. This has been my safe spot... to vent, share and not care what anyone thinks. (This post was written on October 30th and the video was recorded on November 2, 2011. It's being published/uploaded late due to technical issues.)

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.)