packing

I've packed up Colden's room, and I gave away most of the big baby things on freecycle. The basinette, the crib, the high chair, the changing table, toys and dolls, all gone. My mom offered to come and do it for me, but in the end I wanted to do it myself. I fondled the tiny baby clothes that I had pictured him wearing and tucked all the books I had bought him into a box. I think I made some expectant mothers very happy with these donations, but it's so wierd to walk by his room and see the door open when it's been closed for more than a year. Then I peer in and it's barren and empty.

Most of these items were hand me downs to me anyway and we don't have that much storage in our new place in Boston. And it seemed ridiculously hopeful and jinxing to move it all anyway. We've only rented this place through August so we'll move again before we could ever have another baby. I did keep a few items though, a few boxes that we'll be taking with us in a week and a half when we pick up and move. I wonder when and if I'll open these boxes. It's hard to picture the future and what it might be like.

Years ago I picked up the habit of jumping into the new year. We stand up on the couch or chair, hold hands, and try to jump off at just the right instant so that we're actually in the air at the stroke of midnight. Most of the time we have no idea exactly when midnight is, but I like the gesture of it, like the symbolism of jumping into the newness of a fresh year together.

I can't decide if moving and starting over is fundamentally a hopeful gesture that the future will be brighter or if it's really just about running away, avoiding the here and now. Either way, I'm happy to see the end of 2009 and be jumping into something new.

today

I feel like I must have some kind of dissociative disorder or something because I look back and I don't even recognize my former self. Part of it is that I have a really bad memory in general. I tend to think that's a good thing. It softens the past for me, the details slipping away so easily and gently that I scarcely feel their loss. Maybe it's that one loss outshines all others.

It's nearly impossible for me to remember "before" in more than still-picture mental imagery. I can see myself posing in front of the freshly decorated Christmas tree on December 16th of last year, the time I think of as the last happy day, but I can't really remember what it felt like. I can't bring myself back emotionally to the time when it was a done deal, just a matter of time, before I held my son in my arms. Back to a time when I wouldn't even have thought to qualify that statement with the extra, oh-so-important qualifier, living.

Instead it feels like it was always destined to happen. That I am just that girl, the one with the dead baby. Part of a club of so many others who've experienced the same thing in one fashion or another. Someone who functions so effectively most of the time but who also holds a deep, dark pain inside.

It's been so long. The grief has settled in, deep within my being. So much so that it feels almost like it was always there and he was always not. I look at his picture to see that he was really real. He was a beautiful baby. He looked like us, like us together. How could he have been so sick inside me and I have been so clueless? How can it have been a whole year since I held him?

This song plays a lot in my head:


I have found no wisdom. I am not a better person. Nothing good has come from him not being here with me now. That was one thing I took away from the retreat weekend. It was a wonderful experience spending time with other women who are fabulous people and who also have been through very similiar losses. But there was no collective wisdom that transcended what I had already learned. There's no grief book or therapist waiting to be discovered that can give me the answers because there are no answers, no higher meanings beyond what we make for ourselves. There's camraderie, statements of commonality and understanding, and that is a lot.

pieces of me drifting in the wind

I've been looking for a new job in a new area and the search has been a good distraction for the last two months. Now I seem to be getting closer to an offer, a decision, a move, and I wonder how I will be able to handle it all. Colden's room is still shut tight. I wonder what I'll do with all of that stuff. Move it with hope in my heart even though we haven't even decided to start trying for another baby? Get rid of it all and start fresh? I wonder how I will handle sadness amongst a new group of coworkers. My workplace may be utterly disfunctional, but I know its disfunction and it knows me. My coworkers understand me pretty well and excuse my snappish behavior on occassion. It's exhausting to even think about these issues and yet they swirl through my mind most of the time.

My friends, also know as the people I used to think were my friends, I wonder if any of them will remember Colden's anniversary. I doubt it. That will strengthen my resolve to no longer think of them as friends. Now I waver, make excuses for them, feel needy and otherwise turn inward. I fantasize about moving away without mentioning it to anyone. One day, months from now, they'll call me and I'll say, oh, I didn't realize you didn't know yet.

I went for my final pre-conception visit to the perinatologist today. I had put it off for months and months. We discussed chromosomes. No problems there on either side. Final cause is still infection. The doctor, a new one, asked me why we weren't trying again yet. I'm lucky enough to have an answer to what happened to Colden and it's unlikely (how unlikely they have no idea) to happen again. Why can't I move on, at least in this one way? I don't know. I feel mute, fake, incoherent even with those who try to understand and help me.

Unrelated tragedies have been eating at me lately. Other babylost moms who can't get pregnant again even though they'd be fabulous parents, four cops in a coffee shop shot dead on a quiet Sunday morning, a caver with a young baby and one on the way killed in an accident, my grandfather's diagnosis of agressive prostate cancer. Each one hits so hard. I imagine the pain too vividly, put myself there. I ache for them all.

As I try and write this, try to explain myself to myself, I am sobbing on the couch. It could have happened yesterday. It can't have been nearly a year. I don't want to have survived that long without him.

Babylost Mamma Retreat Weekend

My attempts at writing my own post about this retreat keep getting thwarted by my new-found inability to cut and paste, but if you don't know about it and wish to learn more go to my dear friend Angie's blog: stilllifewithcircles.blogspot.com.

We hope you can join us for what will surely be a powerful weekend.

The Good and yet the Bad

I'm awake early. On the couch reading blogs and listening to the new U2 album for the first time. It's my husband's birthday, his 30th. He's four years younger than me. I threw him an elaborate party Friday night, and most of his family came from across the country. I gave him an expensive gift yesterday, trying to forcefeed him happiness. I have wished him a happy birthday. And yet in the back of my mind I know that any happiness is also tinged with a heavy dose of sadness. I think about how young he is and why he has to walk this path of grief. Why so much sadness amid so much that is wonderful?

I often think about the strange mix of good and bad things that each individual experiences in life, seemingly at random in many cases. Sure, we make choices that direct aspects of cause and effect. And yet. Sometimes an instant of poor timing, bad luck so to speak, can wreck a life. Cause the death of a loved one, a permanent injury, heartache.

When I created this blog I was obsessed with the feeling of unluckiness. With the statistics. I thought of myself as unlucky, deeply so. Colden's death was the only thing I could see. I was looking at my life as a single event, an n of 1.

It's harder now. I can see both good and bad things in life, shades of gray, pink and orange. I know that as absolutely awful, gutwrenching, and life changing as his death was, is, and always will be, that it could be worse. Much worse. And yet there is so much that is good. We are in love, financially secure, reasonably healthy, and with loving family and friends. We live largely without the fear of physical danger.

I don't know how to navigate this juxtopisition of amazingly good things and terrible sadness. I don't want to feel sorry for myself or forget the depths of pain. I don't want to wallow at home and yet the rest of life feels like moving on, moving past. It feels like living. I often don't want to. And yet.

Not Okay

"It's okay."

Somehow I ended up uttering these words seconds after telling someone, a stranger really, that my baby died. It's the kind of thing that makes me believe that next my head is going to pop off my neck with a clean sucking plop and roll off my shoulder onto the floor.

I tutor high school students from time to time and I recently started working with a new girl, a friend of a kid I worked with last year. I expected the question about my baby, expected that they would have heard from A and her mom that I was expecting last year. But the question didn't come during our first appointment so there in the last minutes of our second appointment I was caught off guard. And there was no way this poor mother could have ever guessed she was about to stumble into a morass that would leave her babbling like a crazy woman.

I handled it pretty well. She asked about my baby and without tears in my eyes I managed to get out the awful words that he died. She panicked. A look of horror and embarrassment crossed her face, she mumbled something that might have been an "I'm sorry," and I said without thinking, "It's okay." Then she launched into a subject change so abrupt and rambling that I stood there listening for 3 or 4 minutes before I could jump in and make my escape.

Of course it's not okay. I was just trying to soothe the situation. They were just careless words intended to make her feel less embarrassed and panicked, but I still sat in my car shaking. I felt like I must sound like a horrible person. A person who could coldly discuss the death of her baby and brush him off with statements that imply that it's not a big deal, not a horrible, gut-wrenching, utterly devastating loss.

Today it's been 8 months since I held him in my arms the only time, and while I am here at work, functioning at least well enough to fool people, it is not okay.

Trying Again

I'm paralyzed by the thought of another pregnancy.

While in the hospital after giving birth to Colden, I said to my husband that we should try again immediately. A month or so later, when my mom said gently that she could understand my OBGYN's recommendation to wait 6 months, I got very upset and told her that she just didn't understand. At 3 months, when I went to the perinatalogist, I asked pointed questions about why we needed to wait 6 months to a year and what benefits that wait would provide. I was so impatient. I wanted to pretend like none of it ever happened. I wanted to replace him. I wanted him.

Something changed. Now it's been 8 months since I delivered Colden, and I am in limbo. I'm unable to seriously think about having another baby, especially unable to imagine either me or the baby surviving it. And yet I can't stop thinking about it either. I am thinking about it all non-stop. I relive the day of his birth in my day dreams over and over again. I imagine another pregnancy. I wonder what we'll do with his room when we eventually move. I look into foster care or adoption. I think all the time that it may be better just to never have living children. It all just spins around and around in my head.

But the thought of actually moving forward with planning a new pregnancy stops me cold. We're still actively preventing, and my husband the non-planner will never be the one to change that. I keep thinking that I'm 34, and I should try again, if that's what I/we want, and yet I feel utterly unable to move foward. How can I even think about what I want now when what I really want is gone so completely and inescapably?

Today I ordered a couple of books about pregnancy after stillbirth. That's the only step forward I can manage at the moment.

For those who are trying again, are pregnant again or have had another baby, how'd you get that far? What has helped you cope with the panic and fear of trying to get pregnant again?

Death Barged In

Today I heard a poem that I just have to share with all of you. This was written by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno. I heard her read it on NPR during an interview. She recently published a book of poems about the murder of her daughter 6 years ago. Read more about her book here. I think I'll go out and buy it.

Death Barged In

In his Russian greatcoat
slamming open the door
with an unpardonable bang,
and he has been here ever since.
He changes everything,
rearranges the furniture,
his hand hovers
by the phone;
he will answer now, he says;
he will be the answer.
Tonight he sits down to dinner
at the head of the table
as we eat, mute;
later, he climbs into bed
between us.

Even as I sit here,
he stands behind me
clamping two
colossal hands on my shoulders
and bends down
and whispers to my neck,
From now on,
you write about me.

For me this poem spoke to me in the same way that An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination did. All I can think afterwards is yes.

What does a dead baby mama look like?

I go about my life... working, hanging out with friends, and generally doing what I feel has to be done. And it seems to be convincing. Everyone seems to think I'm fine. No one asks how I'm really doing any more and when I bring up Colden or sadness or pain, the subject gets changed pretty darn quick. The list of people who I've decided to remain silent around, at least about the main thoughts that course through my mind, grows steadily.

Do they really think I'm over it? Or, has it gotten that uncomfortable to talk with me? I don't feel like a huge downer. I can carry on conversations about every day subjects and laugh plenty these days. I work hard. I socialize. I'm not looking for someone to talk with all day about my dead baby or future hoped-for pregnancies filled with anxiety and fear, but I resent the total silence from most of my friends and family.

I sometimes think about it when I am out and about. I'm walking down the boardwalk at the Jersey shore dressed in work out clothes, and I'm passing many people who look very similar to me and some with obviously different lives. I wonder if they think about how I got there and what's going on with me. I certainly think about them and what their stories might be. Which person has lost someone they love? Which one is unemployed? Has a sick family member? Lost their baby? They don't really look like it either.

Ugliness

Yesterday I went rock climbing. I used to love to go climbing but recently I haven't felt like I had enough energy to get my pack together, get all the way out there and actually climb something. I think it's generally life apathy combined with the sense that I'm not supposed to be out climbing since I intended to be climbing a lot less after Colden was born.

So anyway, back to yesterday. We get out of the car, grab our packs and head down the trail. It's about a mile to the climb we were heading for. Another party of two is right behind us and talking fairly loudly. They're relating great news: his wife is pregnant. The friend is ecstatic for the happy couple and proceeds to offer advice and congratulations at great length. I try speeding up but can't outpace them. I drop back a bit but don't lose them. They continue on and on, nonstop for the 15 or 20 minutes they're close to us. At one point, the friend says, "the first month will be the worst of your life, but..." I didn't even hear what came after that because the blood was boiling in my ears by then. I wanted to turn around and shout that she had no idea how the worst month of someone's life could turn out.

Don't worry. I didn't say anything at all. This is all about internal angst, not public displays of frustration and anger by an overwrought, thwarted-mother.

I wish that I wasn't made sad by other people's happy news. I don't want their baby, and their happiness doesn't make Colden any more lost to me. And yet I really struggle to be around their happy, confident surety. I desperately miss the days when I blithely assumed that pregnancy = baby. I long for the days when my knowledge of potential negative outcomes consisted of c-sections and mild jaundice.

And some babies are even harder for me to manage. A few nights ago I dreamt that every female in my family was pregnant. Tonight my much younger brother called. His wife is pregnant. Why do people feel that the phone is the best way to convey this kind of news to a babylost mother? I picture the two of them sitting home wondering what to say and how to say it. That must be a painful interuption to their joy and yet trying to make happy noises at them is stinking hard too. I lasted about two minutes and hung up and cried. Email would be easier.

I hate this ugliness that's coming out in me. I hate that I feel that Colden will be replaced in our family by this new grandchild. I hate that I have the urge to rain unhappiness down in strangers. I hate thinking constantly about how chaotic and unfair the world is. I hate that he's not here, growing up, learning new things, smiling at me.

Luck

Father's Day was almost as bad as Mother's Day. Before I won the unlucky lottery, I was very, very lucky in finding a wonderful guy. Brendan is all that I could ever want in a husband plus some. He is funny, sweet, smart, attractive, and easy to be around. He is, to be totally cliche, my best friend, the person I most want to spend time with on any given day. I could go on and on about what makes him such a wonderful partner, but I think you get my point.

I was so looking forward to seeing him as a dad. He doesn't have much experience with babies so he is a bit timid around them, but I know he would have been amazing with Colden had he gotten the chance. It is awful to see him hurting instead of seeing him bonding with his son. He works so hard to take care of me that sometimes he doesn't show his own feelings, but losing Colden has broken his heart too.

:: :: ::

We're going on vacation to Yellowstone National Park tomorrow. I am looking forward to it, mostly because I am so looking forward to being away from work for almost two weeks. And it will certainly be beautiful as well. But I tired quickly of hearing people tell us we're "lucky" to get to get away like that. Um, no. Not so much. I would rather be home with my baby in my arms, thank you very much.

But anyway... Colden is coming with us in spirit at least. I sewed a patch on my backpack with the name and picture of his mountain, and we're bringing his national park book. Did you ever have one as a kid? I didn't because there weren't a whole lot of big parks on the east coast, but Brendan lived in Washington so his slightly hippy parents got him one. You take it with you to every national park and get a stamp as a record of where you've been. We bought one for Colden last year when we went to Zion in Utah. I was 5 months pregnant and filled with the glow of certainty that he'd be here in my arms, safe and happy in another few months. I was just giggly and silly and laughing about how this was his first trip with us and his book would have ever park he ever visited, even in the womb.

I never even considered that it'd become a memorial book, but so much has changed. What's one more crappy thing in the scheme of things? No, I think it's good to make rituals and personify our grief in some way, and bringing his book on our trip lets me do that. I am reminded of my babylost friend Laura. She took a trip to Mexico a few months after losing her son and got a sombrero for her grief. She even fed it a chip one night. That made me laugh and yet it also made sense to me. I am just hoping to be able to get a stamp for Colden's book without bursting into tears. Wish me luck...

Missing Colden

I haven't been writing, haven't known what to say or how to say it. Time just passes by so quickly. I heard a quote on the radio the other day that was attributed to Woody Allen, "Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon. "

A few weeks after Colden died my mom said something to me that I didn't really understand and yet hurt my feelings. She said something that indicated that she thought I would process this grief faster than other people do. I think she was clumsily trying to say that she thinks I'm a strong person, but it still stung. Does she think I'm not a feeling, loving person? That I will just get over Colden? How can this being saying something even remotely positive about me?

So now here I am 6 impossible months later, 6 months that I am still stunned I have survived, and I am better and yet not. Not better in the sense that other people might assume, that they in fact seem to crave. That better would mean moving on. It would mean living, loving, laughing the way I had before. That better would mean that my smile was fully real or that I didn't cringe still every time someone asks casually how I'm doing. But I am better in the sense of coping, going to work and even being successful in that crazy, meaningless corporate environment, being a friend, a sister, a partner. I am social, mostly. I am still the same bossy, decisive, driven person that I have been. I am down to crying once a week or so rather than every day or hour.

Sometimes I wonder what it says about me that I am as functional as I am. I mean, I fake it a lot, and faking being okay seems to directly help me be more functional. But I don't know if that's a good thing. Was my mom right? Even if she was, I don't know why or what it says about me as a person. Do people believe that I have just moved on? I still miss him with all that I am, still long for the family life we could have had together and the chance to see him grow up. But life just keeps going on. I am aparently not inclined to just hole up at home so I keep on going with it. Also, I feel more distant for him. The life I imagined for us seems hazy, like a dream I was silly enough to conjure up.

But today the events of Wednesday, December 17th weigh heavily on me. It is even the same day of the week. I think about how exhausted I was that morning and yet still happy, blissfully ignorant that he was already dead inside me. I know that if he had not died, I would likely have not gone into labor, so tomorrow would not be his 6 month birthday. And yet I cannot help play an endless loop of what ifs and should have beens in my mind. What would he look like? What would he be doing? What would like be like if I were actually okay rather than just pretending, even to myself.

What Would Happen If I Told the Truth on Facebook?

Spreading Colden's Ashes

All the initial decisions we made were based on instinct rather than thoughtful determinition. Did we want to hold him? Yes. Did we want an autopsy? Yes. What did we want to do with his body? Cremation. We also immediately decided not to hold a service, not because we didn't want to honor him but due to my instinctual knowledge that I just couldn't handle it. Instead we agreed very early on that we would spread his ashes on his mountain--the mountain we named him after, just the two of us. I wanted to do it on Mother's Day because I found out I was pregnant last year on Mother's Day.

Despite our initial decision to do this, I was dreading this weekend coming. But once we actually started hiking, it almost felt okay, purposeful. On Friday we hiked in 3 miles with our backpacks on, carrying all of our stuff. We stopped at a lean-to for the night. Since it was early in the season we saw only a few people, mostly Canadians, and had the lean-to to ourselves. We got there pretty early and didn't have a lot to do. We should have brought scrabble or a book. I was restless, not wanting to do think about what we were going to do the next day. We had dinner, drank a couple of adult juice boxes, as Brendan calls the small boxes of wine we brought, and went to sleep early.

The next day we started hiking at about 8:30am. It was immediately tougher. We had left the big backpacks at the lean-to since the 7.5 mile loop we were about to do would bring us back to the morning's starting point, but the terrain was pretty steep. It gave me something to focus on. We walked for about an hour or so when we got to Lake Arnold where we got more water. Then it started raining on us and we hit the first patches of snow. At first the snow was really neat--snow in May, pretty cool. But there just kept being more and more snow. You had to walk right in the center to avoid breaking through and there was running water underneath so every once in a while you'd break through anyway. I fell in up to my upper thigh quite a few times. It was exausting going uphill so steeply on tricky terrain. Around 1pm we got to the top of Colden Mountain. The peak was all socked in, with no view at all

All of a sudden Brendan and I didn't really know what to do. This was what were here for, but how to do it? At least it had stopped raining.

I had carried him. It was really important to me to do it myself, to carry him as I had once carried him within me. So I took that awful little white box from the funeral home, and I opened it. Inside was a tragic little plastic bag of ashes wrapped with a twist tie. I opened that too. It was more material than I expected but how could this represent the sum total of his beautiful little body? We stood there together holding each other up for a few minutes. We said goodbye outloud between sobs and Brendan let the contents of the bag loose in the wind. Afterwards he landed in my arms so hard I almost fell over. We just held on to each other for several moments.

We had also carried three small rocks with us, one for each of us. We left them together on the top of a cairn.

We only had a few more minutes at the summit to ourselves before a family of three showed up. I thought about how we'd never get to do a hike with Colden alive and us a family together. Did they know how lucky they are?

We had a quick bite to eat and then started down. For just a few moments as we left the summit the sky cleared and we could see beautiful vistas in all directions. Directly below us was Lake Colden and we were heading that way. This side is much, much steeper. There were so many steep slabs of rock, running with water. Our progress really slowed and it took a ton of concentration to negotiate them. Hurting yourself out there could really cause trouble, especially since we didn't have a sleeping bag with us to ward off hypothermia. We really had to keep moving. As we continued downwards a thunderstorm blew in on top of us. Rain started pouring down. Thunder. Lightening. And so much rain.

We reached Lake Colden a little after 3pm. I thought the terrain would be much easier once we made it that far because we'd lost most of the elevation already even though we still had 3 miles left to get back where we started that morning. But the trail was still really rough, slinking over and under boulders, through mud pits and across streams. Some time during this section it hailed on us, wasabi bean-sized chunks that came down for about 10 minutes. My mood was at a major low point. I was so tired physically and emotionally but too wet to sit anywhere and rest. My boots were squishy around my achy feet. We just had to keep going.

Finally we got back to the starting point for the morning. Originally we had planned to stay at the lean-to another night but many forces combined to convince us to grab the heavier packs and hike the remaining 3 miles to the trail head right then. I could barely hold myself up the last mile or two. Momentum and my trekking poles were pretty much all that kept me upright. We got to the car at 8pm, having travelled only 10.5 miles in 10 or 11 hours of hiking, but it was a really tough hike in ways that I can't even begin to describe here.

The one on the left is Colden Mountain in the Adirondacks of NY. It's a good place for him to be given that he can't be with us. Soon I'll try to write about Mother's Day itself.

Probably Crazy

I used to commute an hour each way to work. Then I got pregnant and really started thinking about how life was going to work, what daycare we could use, how we'd manage our time. So we really worked on getting my husband a job closer to mine and we moved farther south to be near to my office and his new work place. We also got a bigger apartment. We wanted a second bedroom for the baby and a washer/dryer so we could give up on the laundry mat. We started really saving for a house.

Now here we are with this apartment that costs $500 more in rent than our last place (but at least it's much closer to work and is cute) with a second bedroom. That bedroom door always stays shut. All of the baby things are in there pretty much undisturbed. The day I got home from the hospital my mom got there first and gathered all the baby things that were casually laying about from around the apartment so we didn't have to face it all around us. I appreciated that. It must have been so hard for her. My sister said she stayed outside while my mom did it and heard mom wailing with grief.

Aside from some borrowed things that I packed up and gave back, it all still sits in his room unused. Expensive breast pump, stroller, clothes, crib, all of it things I wonder if I'll ever be able to use even if I can get up the courage to try again. I think about donating it all, getting rid of it all in one fell swoop, but the practical side of me doesn't want to have to buy it all again. I'll certainly never have another shower again.

Okay so here's the crazy part: I still feel a strong urge to fix up his room. It wasn't finished. I never found the right curtain for his window, never got the wall hanging that I wanted hung up. I've learned to sew since then and I keep thinking about making a curtain since I couldn't find one I really liked. So now I am the nut who keeps thinking about decorating her dead baby's room who may one day just freak out and give away all of his stuff instead. Probably crazy may not be a strong enough phrase.

Too much for one post

I did the March for Babies walk this past Sunday. We got a ton of support--over 30 walkers and about $16,000 raised. People seem to think I should feel good about this, but I don't. Raising money for healthy babies isn't a good thing, it's a duty. I just want Colden back alive. And since I can't have that, I feel compelled to contribute to the reduction of babyloss to the fullest extent that I can.

I don't feel bad that I took advantage of the fact that people want to be able to write a check to make us feel better, but it does bug me that I have to find a response for all of their exhuberant exclamations about how great our efforts are.

:: :: ::

Lately I have been feeling so down on the possibility of having another baby. It feels inevitable to face another tragedy. Will that feeling subside at some point?

:: :: ::

My dear friend (we met in 8th grade spanish class) has been trying to be supportive and I feel like an ass. I criticize my friends who don't try but now I can't seem to open up to her either, even though she's trying hard. She wants to know how I'm really feeling? I don't know that I can get the words out. I don't even know where to begin. She asked how I was doing at the walk and I had to wave her off.

Masks

I wear the "I'm okay" mask to work every day and sometimes I even fool myself. But work is a country filled with landmines. In this corner is the poster of the bulging pregnant woman, hand on her belly and smile on her face. Down that hallway sits the proud mom whose cubicle is overflowing with baby pictures. I walk by trying not glance in and answer three variations on "hey, how are you?" by well-meaning co-workers as I make my way towards the bathroom. Have I mentioned that I hate that question? Everyone asks it, but no one expects a real answer. I think maybe they believe my acting.

My boss adopted a newborn baby about a month after Colden died. He complains about being kept up at night by his son and casually says his kid doesn't have many skills. He breaths so shut the hell up, I think to myself while nodding and smiling.

The mask gets me through most days, but it's hard to get it off once I get home, hard to feel authentic feelings and not keep pretending. It's especially hard for me to talk (outloud) about how I really feel. What is there really to say? I am sad. I hurt. I long for what could and should have been. I am afraid. But most of that I keep to myself except for within this space. I don't say those things because I don't want to hear my friends inane comments that seem so lacking in understanding or feeling. I especially don't want to see their blank stares when they have nothing to say.

I honestly don't know if pretending to be okay and not opening up about Colden, about the hole in my life and the weight of grief in my body will ultimately be a good or bad thing. Am I protecting myself from insensitivity or failing to process my grief? Doing what needs to get done or failing to let people know the true me? I wonder if I will ever feel understood by the non-babylost ever again.

Grief Aches

I don't cry a whole lot anymore. Once every day or two I'll get teary eyed for some reason or another. Yesterday it was walking around Lambertville seeing so many happy families and wondering about what could have been. Finally a tiny infant passed by me in the arms of a smiling dad and I actually gasped outloud. Longing. Or sometimes at work when I'm on a conference call with my boss and I can hear his young son cooing in the background, I get teary eyed. There are some good things about being alone in my office for these calls. Beyond damp eyes, though, I haven't lost it much lately, haven't wailed.


Instead of tears I mostly feel grief as a second resident of my body. Grief has chosen to come and live with me, and apparently the guest room wasn't good enough. It got so carried away with the desire for closeness that it's come inside my body, and I have no choice but to carry it around with me. It's lodged in the middle of my chest. It aches. I feel it underneath my breasts and down to my stomach. It aches. It feels like it's settled in for the long haul. It aches. I wonder if I'll wake up some morning and find that I have my body to myself again. Maybe grief will go away on vacation for a while and return only for visits. Until then it just aches.

It's much like having a cold. I'm sick, but not so sick that I can't get up and go about my day. People who ask how I'm doing seem surprised if I don't immediately express pure health and contentedness. Perhaps to them it doesn't seem like I feel all that bad. Or they just don't want to talk about it since it might be contagious. Maybe they think I'm a whiner if I mention that grief is crowding me out of my own body. But I'm sick enough that the joy of life is missing, and I'm just trying to make it through every day. There are some good times but mostly it just aches.

Colden

I have just one actual picture of Colden, of his body. We didn't think to take any ourselves so I'll never have one of me holding him or of Brendan cradling him in his arms. Instead, I have a single image that the hospital took after he'd been taken from our room. He looks really dead in it and while I am so grateful to have it, I haven't wanted to share it with anyone. If I had an electronic copy, I would post it here because I know you guys understand, but among the non babylost, I'm much too afraid that someone would say the wrong thing. I doubt that I would ever forgive them and I might literally rip their heads off. Because he was beautiful. And he's mine. So all I can do is protect him in this tiny but ferocious way. So I'm really glad to have this beautiful picture of the beach all the way around the world as a way to remember him connected with something so beautiful and peaceful. I think I'm going to frame a copy for our apartment. Thank you, Carly, for giving me something beautiful related to Colden.

Hope

Today I feel a little hope. Perhaps it's the sun shining in the window or the romantic weekend at the beach that we just got back from. I don't know. But I feel a tiny flickering light of it, and I want to find a way to feed it. I want to ignore the possibility that it might instead be self-delusion, and hang on to it anyway. So if you hear a crazy neighbor outside calling for her hope rather than her kitty, don't mind me.

I never wanted a phd in sadness and loss studies.

My talents have generally been academic in nature. No one wants to be around me if I'm in the mood to sing--tone deaf doesn't even begin to describe it, but school came really easily to me. So easily that I slacked off a lot. 100s on the tests, 0s on homework generally averaged to Bs and Cs through most of HS. It wasn't until college that I got it together and "lived up to my potential" as my parents were constantly pestering me to do. There I still didn't really study much. I could easily look at the syllabus, skim the book, cram some for the test, and just quickly get what it takes to get the A.

I guess I never realized how much that drive to find the quick way has influenced my life philosophy even beyond my school days until last night, when Brendan and I went to our second SHARE support group meeting. It was a much smaller group this time. They're all sweet, comforting, and real, but I felt a little uncomfortable. Brendan was the only guy and all of the women were much farther out from their losses, from two to eighteen years ago. It scares me to see how actively and deeply they are still grieving. I love Colden beyond words, but I can't have him back so I don't want to spend the rest of my life sad. It's too damn exhausting.

When I'm around these women I feel like I'm staring at my future and it looks grim. I guess I'm looking for the shortcut, the quick A. Why can't I ace grief and be done with it? Maybe that's why I've so quickly read multiple books, gone to so many blogs, looked ahead to see what I might have to deal with at 6 months, 1 year, 5 years out. But this is one class where being ahead with the material doesn't to seem help at all. All of the issues that we talked about at the group last night, I've already read about and considered, but it doesn't seem to help. I still have to feel it. This is one class where being ahead with the material doesn't seem to help at all.

GITW 7x7 response: my relationship with my body

Here are my thoughts on the questions up at http://glowinthewoods.squarespace.com/6-by-6/2009/4/1/7-by-7-april-2009.html. If I answered tomorrow, I'd probably go off in a different direction but it's a good topic.

1 Give us a few words you would have used to describe your body, your health or your sense of physical vitality before the experience of babyloss—and a few that you’d use to describe it now.

Before: strong, sustaining, not exactly content but certainly competent, at times frustrating but at least I can work with it.
Now: flabby, apathetic, downtrodden, likely to disappoint me.

I know that if I had a live baby, my body would feel reasonable for someone who recently gave birth. But because he’s not here with us and because I have to think about another pregnancy much sooner than I would have wanted to otherwise, my body just feels like a disappointment. I’m too overweight, too weak, too flabby. Ugh…

2 What do you do to take care of yourself? Has this changed?

I’ve always been up and down with my motivation level for weight loss and physical fitness. I get going for a while and then backslide. That seems to still be the case. In the past I was very into outdoorsy pursuits, especially rock and ice climbing. Climbing was good for both my physical and emotional well-being. Now it seems draining to even drag myself out to the cliffs. And because I am so weak and overweight it is frustrating once I get there. It’s hard to produce a sustainable level of motivation.

3 Give us one or two words to describe sex or physical intimacy before, and then after the loss of your baby.

Before: fun and carefree
Now: necessary, deeply connected, difficult to escape into

4 Has loss and/or grief left a physical mark on you (a scar, a chronic condition, insomnia, a tattoo)?

I have a flabby belly that I never had before pregnancy and a desire for a tattoo that still hasn’t materialized yet. I never wanted a tattoo before, never had anything that I wanted permanently marked on my body before. Heck, I don’t even have my ears pierced. But I feel the need to have something about Colden be with me permanently. Oh and I can’t sleep without medicating myself.

5 Do you medicate or control your emotions with food, wine, altered states, prescriptions? Without judgment, what have you gravitated towards in an effort to heal, and how do you feel about it?

I read a book on grief that said not to rely on alcohol or sleeping pills and all I could do was laugh. You mean there are other coping mechanisms? It’s a rare day that goes by that I don’t have at least one drink, but I’ve been much too afraid of losing the very tenuous control I have over my emotions to actually let myself get drunk.

I haven’t slept through the night unaided by sleeping pills since the 3rd week or so after I delivered Colden. Without them I wake up for hours in the middle of the night. Part of this is the stress of my job as well.

6 Was physical healing important for you in the first year after your loss? What did/does physical healing entail and how did/do you work towards it? If physicality hasn't been a priority for you, what do you do that makes you feel stronger or more able to cope?

I’m approaching the 4-month mark this month so I can’t yet say what the whole year will bring. Within two weeks of delivering I started going to the gym, but I am so on and off with that. I long for the mindless time that comes to me with intense exercise, but I lack the consistency to stick with it. Beyond that, I am ever cognizant that I should be planning for another pregnancy. Feeling ready physically for that would be a good start on physical healing, I suppose.

7 If you could change anything about your body and/or health, what would it be? What would it feel like to be either at peace with your body, or at peace with this babylost state?

I’d go back in time and take better care of my teeth. As far as peace with a babylost state, I hope that comes to me eventually. It seems impossible at the moment, like saying I hope to discover the secret to long-lasting world peace.

Our World Changed in an Instant

I was looking through pictures on my computer looking for one of me and my cat, Toby, when I stumbled on pictures of me heavily pregnant. Man I was huge. They were pictures from my shower with my family that were taken just after Thanksgiving. I hadn't seen these pictures. Brendan must have loaded them on without mentioning them to me. The one was even named Toby and Colden. They hit me so hard. I just sobbed. Just when I think I'm not having that many days when I cry, something like that happens. I never know what it'll be or when it'll hit.

I look at these pictures and almost don't recognize myself. The "before" time feels so distant. I can clearly remember the day our world changed so drastically, but it's somewhat hard to remember my emotional state, the innocence I had before that day. I have always considered myself a pessimist, but I don't think I had ever seriously imagined something really bad happening. Now I can't really imagine a positive outcome from a subsequent pregnancy. And I am more afraid in general. The other day we went for a hike and Brendan was so close to the cliff edge. I had to look away because I felt so sick to my stomach. I hate the way our world has changed, the way I have changed.

Motherhood Limbo

In January I went through a period where I tried to plan all sorts of outings to do and classes to take. I kept thinking “well no baby so I’ll…” Thus I’ve been taking a Spanish class on Tuesdays and a sewing class on Thursdays. Of course I signed up for the courses while I was out of work and by the time they started, I was back working again. So every afternoon I have to wrench myself away from a job that’s utterly overwhelming me most of the time and cart myself off to class. I’m in the final session of sewing class tonight and working away at my apron when the subject of children comes up among my classmates. They’re all a bit older than me and have either grown children or pre-teens. Their jobs, their potential to drive cars, their friends and their temptations, these are the subjects of conversation. I wasn’t actually asked if I had children. I dodged that bullet, probably by having talked about making this or that for my nieces.

These women in sewing class don’t really know me, don’t know my history. And although inside I stew over saying something about Colden, about my sadness, I don’t. This much is clear to everyone though: I’m not part of the club. The mom clique. Mothering (at least in my distant understanding of it) is an intensely physical activity, the actual act of diapering, feeding, soothing, cuddling, loving. It’s something you know over a long period of time, through many stages. I did the first bit of it but never got a chance to do all the later parts. And so I feel like I’m looking in the window, staring in at all the other moms casually talking about their children, their fears for them and their accomplishments. I am their worst dread come true so I don’t tell them how bad it can get.

What does it mean to have carried him but never really known him, never really mothered him? It’s motherhood limbo. Half in, half out.

Colden's Story

I wrote this just a couple of weeks after we lost him. I'm going to post it here as I wrote it then even though some new information has been discovered and new ways of thinking have been introduced.

This is Colden's story as I felt it at the time:

I found out that I was pregnant on mother’s day. We had been trying for several months and very much wanted a baby, but I was immediately overwhelmed with fear in addition to the excitement. My husband was actually in China on a business trip so there was no one to share it with just yet. I got through a mostly sleepless night intending to wait to tell him until he got home but then blurted out the big news over the phone first thing in the morning. His immediate reaction: a playful disappointment that we didn’t get to keep trying longer. I don’t think it really hit him until he got back home. We were going to be parents.

My fear was no premonition of the horror to come. It was far more mundane than that: Would I be a good mom? How would we adjust to our new life? What would childbirth be like? How would we ever be able to afford daycare?

I just knew it was going to be a boy and at the 13 week ultrasound the technician asked if we wanted to know the gender, that she thought she could tell. I realized immediately that if she thought she could tell, it must be a boy. At 16 weeks it was confirmed, yes, he’s a boy and not even a tiny bit shy about it. Let the name dilemma begin.

I wasn’t one of those women who loved being pregnant. As it progressed I mostly thought of it as a transitional phase, a time to get ready mentally for this huge change to come, interspersed with some pretty annoying physical symptoms. I had quite a bit of discomfort and resented the restrictions and physical inactivity. I did get one really great piece of advice during that time that I’ve since become so grateful for. A woman at work told me to be sure to treasure having him with me because later (when he was in daycare and so forth) it would never be as simple or continuous as when I carried him inside me everywhere I went. Wow, does that advice take on a whole new context now.

Medically things moved along just fine. I had extra monitoring because of a short cervix and later due to a slight kidney issue with the baby. The doctors assured me that these were not major problems to be worried about and that I just needed extra ultrasounds to keep tabs on things. So I had an ultrasound every two weeks from sixteen weeks on.

At my last ultrasound, at 34 weeks, he was 5 lbs 10 ounces. I remember being scared because if he went to term he was going to be so big because he’d grown over half a pound a week since 30 weeks. At that pace he was going to be quite a big baby.

That weekend I started having an incredibly annoying and embarrassing problem. I couldn’t control my bladder. I had an appointment that Tuesday so I told the nurse practitioner that I saw at that appointment about it then. I said I thought that I had a UTI, but I was also really blunt about what was happening. She said it was very common in late pregnancy and gave me a script for antibiotics. She’d call on Thursday if the culture showed no infection. She never mentioned the possibility that it could be amniotic fluid leaking and didn’t test the fluid. I heard his heartbeat then for the last time. It was a strong 130.

That night we decorated the Christmas tree, drank hot chocolate, and listened to Christmas music streaming over the internet—the last happy day.

I got so little sleep that night because I was in the bathroom seemingly every half hour. My favorite moments of pregnancy had been at night. When we would snuggle before falling asleep, my husband, Brendan, could feel the kicks in his lower back and it would often keep him awake even after I feel asleep. We both loved that so much. I always thought it was so funny because I experienced all the minor annoyances of pregnancy and Brendan got away mostly free of those except for those little kicks.

He was actually the one who first noticed that Colden wasn't moving much that Wednesday morning. I poked my belly several times but felt nothing in response. Oh well, he must just be sleeping so I didn't really think much of it. I just had no idea that something like this could happen. I went off to work exhausted but blissfully unaware of what the day would bring. Then at eleven I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any more so I left work early and came home to nap.

Around 4pm I started realizing that I was having contractions. I didn’t really think they were “real.” They were 7-10 minutes apart, though, so I called the doctor and she told me to come in to the hospital. It was just 5 weeks early and my sister had both of her girls at 35 weeks so I wasn't really worried.
By the time Brendan made it home and we got to the hospital it was about 6:30. My contractions were really hard and fast by then, maybe every 3 minutes apart. They got me in a gown, and I had meconium all over my underwear. That was the first indication that anything was wrong. It meant that my water had broken some time earlier and I didn’t know it. The leaking fluid must have been masked by the UTI symptoms. Then they got out the ultrasound. First a technician tried to find his heartbeat, then a doctor, and another doctor. Three or four of them were huddled around the machine clearly upset, but still I didn’t believe it. I’d had ultrasounds every two weeks since 16 weeks. I was at the doctors just the day before and everything was fine. No one had ever said something like this could happen. I never worried about it. It just couldn’t be real.

The doctor told us that he was gone. I was just confused. What happens now? I asked. She said that I was already dilated about 6 cm and I would have to deliver him vaginally. I remember Brendan pacing the room wanting to throw things and coming back to hold me and cry. I was in so much physical pain that I focused on that and screamed for pain relief. They gave me some Demerol by IV and then an epidural. After that I fluctuated between a dream-like state of calm and denial and a sense of dreadful loss, confusion and sadness. Denial mostly won out.

I was fully dilated pretty quickly but then had to push for hours and hours. They had to turn down the epidural so I could push productively. Right at the end I freaked out and started yelling that I couldn’t do it, but the wonderful nurse hung in there with me and Brendan was the epitome of strength and comfort. Later we talked about how rock climbing together had taught him how to be there for me through the fear and pain.

I finally delivered at 4:18 in the morning on December 18, 2008. He was 6 lbs, 3 ounces. We held him for a while which was surprisingly comforting. My mom and sister had driven through the night to get to us after they heard the news. They came in and held him for a while and then I held him again. He looked so perfect and beautiful, such red lips and these tiny but long fingers.

So far we only have preliminary results about what happened but there is evidence of an infection. We’ll probably never know when my water broke and whether that was the cause or the effect of the infection. I, of course, replay that last doctor’s visit over and over again in my head and just wish I could turn back time and insist that they check my fluid levels, test the fluid, do anything to keep him safe.

We named him Colden. Colden is a mountain in the Adirondacks in upstate NY where we’ve spent a lot of time. We had such a hard time agreeing on a name and had only decided the week before. But now I am so glad about what we chose. It seems so right and we can go there to help remember and be with him. I’ll be there this mother’s day to spread his ashes.

Colden, my sweet baby boy, I’ll miss you and love you forever.

Liar

I think I'll start this blog with the acknowledgement that I am a liar. Every day people ask "how are you?" and I say I'm fine. That's a lie. I acquiesce to social expectations and keep going through the motions. I go to work, to parties, wherever. And each step is a lie. Each day a game of let's play pretend. What else am I supposed to do? I write inane comments on Facebook because the truth can't fit into a status bar. The truth is too overwhelming, too real, too sad. And yet if you're here reading this, I guess you're out there looking for truth. But I lie to myself. It's the only way to get myself out of bed every day.