Looking Back

17 months. It's been 17 months since Colden died. I try to picture having a living 17 month old child and my imagination fails me. To survive, to walk through each day, I have distanced myself from the babylost community that formed a substantial portion of my lifeline early on. I can't focus on the pain or I am engulfed in it. That's just my way. I'm not saying it's in any way a good way, even for me, much less for anyone else.

But yesterday in the shower I had a strong urge to blog again after many months. I often have my deepest thoughts in the shower as my mind drifts in a nearly dream-like state. Yesterday I was thinking about how I had made it this far, or really why I had made it this far. I thought about the statistics I get each week on the decent numbers of visits to my blog, even though it's largely inactive. I imagine the new members of this awful club reading these inadequate words looking for answers, for any kind of solace, and I wanted to reflect on what it meant to be nearly a year and a half out from loss.

Immediately after Colden died I was very close to suicidal in that I didn't want to live. I wasn't ever close to acting, frankly I didn't have the energy and if I was sad about losing my child how could I do that to my own mother? But I thought I wanted to let go. I thought about random accidents a lot and wished for something to happen to me so that it wouldn't be my doing. I thought I really meant it. I sincerely could not picture feeling better or enjoying life.

Around this time I went out with B and some friends to go climbing. Climbing was my old passion and I didn't feel like going, but there I was. I was walking across a frozen pond and it started cracking very loudly and I dropped through a 6 inch layer of ice. I hit another layer of ice below, but for a few seconds I thought I was going under. In that cheese-ball way that you see in movies, those few seconds lasted ages and I thought again about my own death. To my surprise I did not want it. I actually shouted out to B across the lake that I did not want to die. I'm sure he could hear the surprise in my voice.

That incident has stuck with me. It made me realize that I was still attached to this life so my only real option was to embrace it each day as best I could. I may not like the choices I have available, but I still have to make them as they come along. Eat or don't eat? Talk to a friend or hide? Sink or swim? So far I've managed to get out of bed each day, to go to work, to mostly keep doing thinks I enjoy, to love my husband, my cat, and my family. And what's more, one of those things dishonors Colden or the life we would have preferred to live. (That last one seems so obvious now, but it really wasn't clear to me then.)

So what the hell am I trying to say? I don't want to sound preachy here and hell if I'm saying life goes back to normal, but it does get better. There is pain, sadness and tears, but there is also light, laughter and love. Most days I seek the light.

Overwhelmed by the search for a new doctor

The OBGYN I went to in NJ is fabulous. He’s a deep listener, compassionate, and proactive. His practice sent me to an incredibly knowledgeable specialist after Colden died to be sure that I got all the answers I could. I got very good care. The last time I was there, I told him I was moving to Boston. He was a little concerned about how a big move might impact my emotional state and preparedness for another pregnancy. He suggested that I find a new doctor quickly and establish care so that I would have someone to consult with before I got pregnant again.

So that’s what I am trying to do, especially because it often takes months to get in to see a doctor when you’re a new patient. Well… just looking online at my options is reducing me to tears. Part of it is probably all the next pregnancy related fears and anxieties, but this is also the downside of moving. I have no idea where to start to find a good new doctor, no friends here to ask for recommendations. Plus I don’t know what questions to ask to determine if someone would be right for me. I'm feeling very overwhelmed right now.

Did anyone change doctors? How did you find the new one? How did you know the new practice was right for you?

On Having Fun

It’s been talked about many times on babylost blogs, but I can’t help but mention how weird it is to have a good time. My husband and I went away together last weekend, the kind of romantic, fun weekend away for just the two of us that we certainly wouldn’t be having right now if Colden were 13 months old. We went to a cozy bed and breakfast, sought out some new brew pubs and tasted beers, and went cross country skiing both days. In the moment I was able to enjoy it, a lot even. The what ifs didn’t cross my mind often, and for that I am glad because living in that world is fairly pointless.

So why do I feel guilty this week? It’s certainly not rational— it’s not as though I would have chosen this scenario on purpose. But this week I’m thinking about it, about how I can be out there having such a genuinely good time. If you’re hoping for a break through here or some truly insightful thinking, you might want to look elsewhere. I have nothing to offer in that department. In fact, that bin is regularly out of stock.

I do know that if I were my friend offering me advice I’d say to go easier on myself. Grief is unpredictable and there are some days or hours of fun and smiles and others when you just can’t force it. But it’s a strange bi-product of grief that feeling good makes me feel bad.

Holding it all in

It feels so odd to be working all day with people who don't know. Nice people. Gently curious, unassuming people.

I am ordinarily a very open person, not shy or reticent in the least. But I am holding back. Holding my history, my love, my loss inside. I've got that pressurized feeling that comes on when it's been too long since I've really cried, that tender feeling inside that feels like standing on the brink. It's deeply personal information, but it's oh so relevant to who I am and how I react to situations and conversations. How to share? When?

In many ways I do not want to open up, don't want to be the object of awkward sympathy or worse, indifference. And yet conversations about children come up all the time. I was talking about real estate with a new coworker. He asked if we had children. I said no (that no is such a loaded one), and he asked if we were planning to have any soon. I just shrugged. I felt pretty good about that shrug, much better than tears. Still, I can see people lumping me into that "not a parent, wouldn't understand" category as they talk about the love they have for their kids, their fear of babysitters, whatever.

At this point I am planning to keep it to myself until/if I get pregnant again. At that point I think I'd have to make it clear that it wasn't my first just to fend off stupid or irritating conversations.

What do you think? How have you handled this kind of situation when you've encountered new friends or coworkers? How did you decide to talk about your loss or not? How long did you wait?

On another note, Boston is great. The move went really smoothly and we're feeling fairly settled in to our new place. So far, it seems like the right decision to move here.

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.