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...