Songs for my baby

These songs remind me of you, sweet girl.  I wish we could have had happier songs.

"Winter Song"
...this is one from your funeral.  
...

"This is my winter song

December never felt so long

Because you're not where you belong

Inside my arms."

"A Thousand Years"

I always imagine that this will be the song playing when I see you again in Heaven, baby girl. 

...

"I have died every day waiting for you,

Darling, don't be afraid, I have loved you

For a thousand years."

*I'll add to this list as more songs come to mind.  

1

12/12/12 - Your first birthday has come and gone.  "Oh, how weird," everyone said of this repetitive date, the last of its kind until the next century.  Those comments are so trite to me.  The repetitive nature of your first birthday is nothing weird, in fact, it's strangely fitting.  It makes sense that the numbers repeat - my longing for you, for what might have been, has been the soundtrack of my mind, stuck on repeat all this long last year.  

We tried to make the most of your birthday, though we missed you terribly.  I held it together better than I suspected I would.  I'm attributing that to the fact that we stayed busy doing things to honor your memory throughout most of the day.  Your daddy had your memorial tattoo finished.  I could not bring myself to go with him.  I had planned to stay home and start to disassemble your nursery.  That room has become such a black spot on the house.  Despite my best efforts and intentions, I could not bring myself to do it.  It just didn't seem right to start to tear it down on your birthday.  I'm still trying to conjure the nerve to do it sometime over this holiday break.  We'll see if I can muster the courage to do it.  Something tells me that if I do get started, it will be a process, painful and slow, much like this past year has been without you.  

While your dad was getting his tattoo finished, I mulled about the house, feeling sorry for myself, as usual.  Maddy came over and I asked if she'd go with me to pick up a birthday cake for you and to get flowers to put on the stone at your tree. She did, and we were home within an hour.  After she left, I added the finishing touches to the grief boxes we assembled for the hospital for the parents who will inevitably lose babies in the coming year.  It felt good making those boxes, creating something in your memory.  

Your daddy got home after dark, around 6 o'clock, and we loaded the boxes into the car, drove to the park where your tree stands, so tiny, so bare.  We walked down the path to your tree in the dark, which is against the posted rules as the park closes at dusk, but I didn't care.  I like that it was dark, and I would have answered anyone questioning our being there with a full explanation of what you mean to us and how this is all we can do for you.  In fact, I want to continue the tradition of visiting your tree at nighttime each year.  It was private and peaceful - just what we needed.  We lit a candle for you and placed two purple roses at your stone beneath the tree.  Your daddy said a beautiful prayer, we hugged, cried, and left to deliver the boxes to the hospital.  That was Wednesday.  The following Sunday we went back to the park for a walk and were happy to see the roses were still there.  In fact, someone had rearranged them at the top of your stone.  They looked lovely and my heart was happy to see someone had taken the time to rearrange them, and had the decency to leave them there for you.  

After we left your tree, your daddy delivered the grief boxes to the hospital.  I stayed in the car.  I could not go up there, knowing there were living newborn babies and happy families who likely will never know the nightmare we live.  Jealousy still consumes me, and while I know I should be happy that most families don't know this pain, it still makes me angry that we were the ones made to endure it.  Erin, one of the nurses who attended me when we had you, called my cell phone as your daddy was delivering the boxes.  She was thankful and gracious and it felt good to know our efforts were so well received.  When your daddy came back to the car he was shaken.  When he arrived on the maternity floor, there was a couple with a newborn baby who exited the opposite elevator at the same time he did.   It turned out he knew the father of this baby and that he and his wife had also had a loss.  It didn't make it easier for your dad to be there, but it softened the blow a bit.  He is braver and stronger than I.  I would have crumbled simply entering that elevator.  

After that we had birthday cake at your Aunt Lisa's house and spent a little time there then we came home and went to bed.  It was nice to honor you on your birthday, but it would have been nicer to have you here.  To see you with your first birthday cake, all clumsily feeding yourself with sugary elation.  So many things I'll never get with you, sweet girl.  Such eternal heartache.  

Today is Christmas Eve, only by technicality.  There will be no Christmas for us this year.  We have made absolutely no preparations and will be doing absolutely nothing special.  It will be just another day.  I had a silent hope that, even though we aren't celebrating Christmas this year, we might get a Christmas miracle.  I started using an ovulation predictor in the past month or so and detected an LH surge on December 10th, which meant I was fertile for a span of two days, which serendipitously fell on your first birthday.  How wonderful, I thought, for us to conceive on your first birthday.  I held onto hope that I might be pregnant come Christmas; my next cycle was set to start on Christmas Day.  What a story to tell our next child, of how he/she was conceived on the day of his/her sister's first birthday and how we happily found out on Christmas.  I held onto hope, but in the depth of my being some voice kept whispering, "You're not pregnant."  It was a chiding, know-it-all voice.  I tried to ignore it and remain positive, but it continued to nag.  

Today I woke up praying my period would not come.  I showered and felt the faintest ache in my stomach.  "It could be the embryo implanting," I tried to convince myself, as though I'd actually be able to feel something so infinitesimal occurring within me when I didn't even realize a year ago that you had died inside me.  More dull aches as I dried and dressed.  I went outside and had that familiar monthly feeling of needing to use the bathroom, then a moist sensation.  "It's just moisture from the shower," I told myself.  "You mustn't've dried off completely."  Before I had gone outside I had turned on Pandora on the iHome.  As I was rationalizing the cramps and moisture, while fully knowing what they meant, I heard a single note and knew exactly what song was playing - a song we played at your funeral, by one of my favorite artists, Imogen Heap, called "Wait it Out."  Haunting and beautiful and so fitting at the time we lost you, and still.  Then, that voice again: "I told you.  You're not pregnant.  You got your period and how appropriate that it came at just the moment this song started playing."  I walked inside and to the bathroom to the soundtrack of that song where I found what that voice had been telling me all along.

I am not pregnant, and how completely stupid of me to think we'd have the opportunity to have any type of cute, sweet story about a serendipitous December conception to tell our future children.    Those type of stories are reserved for other couples, not for us.  

So, we will continue to live in this hollow in-between until we make you a brother or sister.  I miss you terribly, Norah.  Every single moment of every day I think of you and I miss you.  Forever is too long, sweet girl.   I long for the day we can be together again.  

All my love, forever and ever, 

Mommy

"Wait it Out" - Imogen Heap

December

December.
The blackness settles in.
The nightmares which haunt my soul,
They circle,
Threatening to swallow me whole.
Too much.
Too hard.
Too sad.
Let me go.
This place holds nothing more for me.
What I need can never be.
The blackness looms
My heart is laid open
Gutted.
Shuttered.
I sputter.
The effort to keep going,
Impossible.
This life - implausible.
Why me?
Where is the lesson?
What meaning lies in this?
December, so cruel.
I'm a carcass.
You've had your way with me.
Now leave me be.
This yearly curse,
Are you my destiny?
Eternal massacre.
What's next?
Why not take me?
But no, there'd be no fun in that.
You leave me to suffer.
Pummeling me flat.
The massacre of my heart
Never ending.
I hate you, December.
Just leave me be.

I love this woman's blog, "Born Still but Still Born."  Today I found the video she and her husband made which chronicles their pregnancy and the loss of their first born, Curtis.  As I watched this video, I could not believe how similar our stories are.  Nearly everything she describes is what happened to us.  Aside from the manner in which we delivered our babies, the similarities between our stories is uncannily similar.  Everything they experienced and felt was felt by us as well.  I hope that some day we too can create something like this for our future children so they know their older sister, Norah.  If you'd like a glimpse into what we experienced, watch the video Chantel and Craig created for their children in memory of Curtis.  It is beautiful and candid.


In Memory of Curtis

A note on thanks and giving...

Hi, baby girl.  It's been a long time since I've written you here.  I often want to sit down and write, but it feels so overwhelming.  Sometimes it's just easier to sit with my sadness, rather than put energy toward something.  Today, though, I have the energy to write, so I will.  

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  This holiday season seems as though it will play out as I expected it would back on December 12, 2011 when we learned we lost you.  Last Christmas we suffered through the motions with disastrous results.  Daddy wanted to be present for the festivities, but festive they were not.  I was in a haze, opening presents I loathed.  Everything seemed like such junk, so meaningless, when the only thing I wanted, I could not have...you.  

We discussed this holiday season and came to the agreement that we would not participate.  While I'll be cooking a turkey tomorrow and your aunt and uncle will come for dinner, we will not be going anywhere.  We will not be celebrating with daddy's family because, truth be told, it infuriates me to be around the kids that will be there.  Why were they all allowed to thrive when you were snatched so cruelly from us?  For me, it is best to remain in the safety of our home.  This has proven to be the case in so many instances this year, sweetie.  Sometimes it is just so traumatic for me to leave the house and be bombarded by the endless babies and little kids that seem to swarm wherever we go.  

I think of you incessantly.  From the moment I wake up, to the moment I fall asleep, you fill my thoughts.  I remember the first few months after you were born, how I'd wake up and realize what my life had become.  Such a cloak of darkness and sadness would envelop me that I'd have difficulty even getting out of bed.  When I finally did get up, I'd neglect to brush my teeth, comb my hair, or even change out of my wrinkled, stinking pajamas.  I'd begrudgingly let out the dogs then I'd eat a little of whatever leftovers were in the fridge from the many, many gracious people who brought us meals.  I'd climb the stairs to lie in bed the rest of the day, searching the Internet for some answers, some support, some glimmer of hope as to when we'd be able to try for another baby, but it would always lead to bitter tears of hear-wrentching sadness that this is what my life had become.  I would forever be a mother whose baby is dead.  How does a person get past that?  How does a person find light and hope and happiness after losing their darling child in such a way?  I still don't know.  Maybe I never will. 

As the weather turns colder and we near your one-year birthday, I have flashbacks of those first days, weeks, and months after losing you.  I sit on the toilet and am instantly transported to the moment my water broke in that same spot, in that same position.  I walk down the hall toward our bedroom and remember grasping the banister, my incision aching, my heart breaking.  I walk outside and the crisp chill in the air reminds me of the day of your funeral.  The first flurries this year sent me to tears, as I was transported back to the parking lot after your funeral.  Your daddy escorted me to the car, my incision throbbing, my breasts hard and sore (the day of your funeral was the first day my milk let down), as the first flurries of the season fell sadly from the sky.  A few weeks ago, one particularly difficult evening, your daddy was so worried as I sobbed and sobbed, having flashbacks from the hospital, where I begged him not to look at the ultrasound screen, "Don't look at it...don't look at it!" convincing myself that if we just didn't look, it wouldn't be true.  Being hooked to the IV, having the epidural administered, violent shaking from the anesthesia, seeing you, so beautiful and still, for the very first time.  Bathing you, dressing you, combing your hair, the sadness in everyone's faces, the complete helplessness of my sister, my friends, our family...  Finally telling the nurses to take you...knowing the next time we'd see you would be at your funeral, and after that never, ever again. 

How does a person move on from this?  When does the blackness dissipate?  How do I stop yearning for what should have been and start to accept it?  Time marches on, and because I have no other choice, I am ushered forward with it, but I feel myself kicking and screaming the entire way.  This journey of life is not one to which I look forward.  It is such a long, long time before I will see you again, sweet girl.  I know you are in Heaven being loved and adored by the Heavenly Father.  I do not worry about your spirit, as I know you are in Heaven.  I have heard it said that this time we spend on earth is fleeting, a microsecond in the vastness of space and time.  I am in the throes of grief for you and fear I will always be, which causes the time I am forced to spend on this earth to be magnified so greatly.  I remember how excruciatingly long the days were when we first returned home from the hospital.  Daddy and I would sit on the couch all day long, barely talking, consumed by sadness, just holding each other...crying.  We'd check the time and be so upset that only an hour or so had passed when it felt like four or five.  It took so much energy to make it through a full day.  I always thought of the line from Shakespeare's "Macbeth" about time creeping by at a petty pace.  That was certainly how it felt for us in those first weeks without you.

We are trying to give you a brother or sister.  It's proven to be more difficult than we imagined.  In August we learned were pregnant and were excited for three short days, before I miscarried.  I know that baby is being loved by the Father and that you are all together in Heaven.  I can't wait to be with you all.  Those few days were the first days of hope and light for us.  It was the first time we didn't feel completely STUCK.  The feeling of floundering and imprisonment that surrounds us is exhausting.  We want so desperately to move forward, but each month that is something that is denied us.  So many of my friends are pregnant or have new babies.  It cuts so deeply each time I learn of each new pregnancy.  Why them?  Why not us?  Haven't we suffered enough?  What have we done to deserve this?  What are we not doing that we should be doing?  The seething jealousy I feel for all those people makes me hate myself.  I hate not being able to be a good friend...not being able to be happy for the ones I love.  I hate the thoughts that run through my mind each time I learn that another person has had a living baby.  "Oh, it didn't die, " I think, while feeling hugely let down.  What have I become?!  How can a person be upset about the survival of her own friends' babies?!  This is what this grief does to a person.  It is so lonely, so isolating, that while I don't want anyone else to suffer as we have, the part of me that longs for companionship and a person who really understands just wants someone to be in the same boat as me.  I am so sick of doing this alone.  I am so sick of being so isolated.  I just want someone with whom I can commiserate, with whom I can cry and bitch and moan... someone who understands it all and doesn't judge me for any of it...who doesn't long for the time when I feel better...who doesn't worry about me because they know everything I'm feeling and they know that it's all normal.  Will it ever stop? 

I can't even put into words how much we miss you, how much everyone does, but especially your daddy and me.  Losing you has put a hole in my soul, Norah.  It won't be filled until I'm with you again.  I'll never be the same, but I don't want to be.  I can't go back to the way I used to be because I am your mommy now.  Everyone who has children says that they are forever changed.  I am forever changed because of you.  People expect that I'll get back to my old self some day, and that's frustrating. I'll never be who I used to be, because I was never a mom before you.  It is just unfortunate that, for me, being a mom means heartache, not joy.  

So, tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  It seems as though your daddy and I have little for which to be thankful this year besides ourselves, your brother and sister, Shadow and Lady, and the few friends and family who have been understanding enough to struggle with us through this grief and to support us in whatever way we need.  For them I am thankful.  Most of all, though, I am thankful for you, Norah, because you have shown me what true love is.  You have made me realize that I can be something I never thought I could be or wanted to be...a mother.  You have shown me that my heart can love beyond measure...that I can care more about another little person than for myself.  You will forever be my first born, my first love, and my last hope.  Thank you, sweet girl, for showing me a side of myself I never knew could exist.  Thank you for the privilege of being Norah's mommy.  I hope I can make you proud and that you know how infinitely I will always love you.  

Missing you always, my dear baby girl.  

Love forever, 

Mommy

Another Month, Another Breakdown

It's May 1st.  On April 1st I was feeling especially low.  I just couldn't believe another month was starting without you, baby girl.  Another month has passed and I'm still feeling the same.  I didn't even realize it this morning when I hurriedly got out of bed and got ready for work, but now that I'm home and realizing the actual date, it's no surprise that I had a breakdown at work and had to come home...again.

Every morning at school, as you know, we watch the "WEMS Morning Announcements."  They usually start the announcements with a tidbit from some random song.  This morning the song they played was one I used to sing to you and one I had hoped we'd be able to dance around to and be silly with.  To anyone else this song would seem funny and ridiculous - to most other people it is.  But to me, it is one of our songs - one of our many songs - and this morning it was just too much for me to take.  I thought I could take it, but halfway through the clip I jumped up from my chair, holding back my tears as best as possible, and dashed out of the room.  Luckily, a colleague was in the hall and I asked her to watch my homeroom, as she doesn't have a homeroom to cover.  Thank God for her.  She's been there for me more times than I can count.  I ran into the library, grabbed some paper towels, ran to the back room, shut the door, and just started bawling.  I was shaking and crying so hard.  I'm half angry at myself that such a seemingly insignificant thing could send me crashing so low so quickly.  People at work must think I'm insane.  Another colleague was outside the door and I know he could hear my sobs.  When I composed myself and came out, he asked if he could do anything.  Really?  Can anyone do anything?  No.  I know he meant well by it, but sometimes when people ask me if there is anything they can do for me, it just makes me even more sad because there is nothing anyone can do.  I am in this alone.  It's a terribly isolating grief, losing a child the way we did.  Not many people can understand it, and most people wish they could help, but no one really can.  There's nothing anyone can do and it's so frustrating.

I went back to my room to let my colleague know what happened and she suggested that I go home.  I gladly accepted that alternative to struggling through the day.  I walked to the office, trying to avoid as many students as possible.  I was no longer crying at this point, but didn't want anyone to see my bloodshot eyes and have any more cause to think I'm an emotional wreck.  I went into my principal's office and asked for the secretary to find me a substitute; she was able to, fairly quickly - thank God.  While I was in his office my principal sat down and talked to me for a while.  He suggested taking a medical sabbatical for the remainder of the year, but I really don't think that's an option, as that will be four and a half more unpaid weeks.  We're just not able to afford that.  I'm working with my union president to get some unpaid days from now until the end of the year - probably just one day a week, as suggested by my therapist.  I think that would make it easier for me to get through until the end of the year.  I sincerely hope the administration is willing to extend this to me.  I'll have to wait and see.  As I sat in his office, my principal spoke to me as a friend, and expressed his concern about us wanting to try for another child this summer.  He said he doesn't think I'm in the right frame of mind to jump into another pregnancy.  Maybe I'm not.  Sometimes I think I am, sometimes I wonder if it's the right thing, and sometimes I wonder how I can stand seeing all the babies and kids everywhere I go without the hope or prospect of soon being pregnant again.  I just think that being pregnant again and having something to hope for will help us to move forward.  I'll never replace you, Norah.  I know that.  But we were so excited for you.  We were excited to be parents.  We want that more than ever before and we got used to the idea of being a mom and dad.  Your dad and I both say that we feel stagnant.  It's a terrible thing, to be a parent and not have your child.  It's a terrible thing to come home every day, thinking about how it should be, being stuck in the way it's always been.  It's not supposed to happen, but it does, all too often.  My principal voiced his concern about something happening in our next pregnancy that might cause me to become even more grief stricken.  I know that's a possibility, but isn't it always?  Won't I always have that fear now?  It's not as though I can wait one, two, three, or more years and that fear will somehow go away.  I'll never be able to go through another pregnancy with naivety, thinking that everything will go smoothly.  That is a luxury that has been ripped from me now.  It's not as though I'll ever really feel at ease with carrying a child.  So, why would waiting longer make that any easier?

My principal went on to say that you weren't meant to stay with us.  He said it just wasn't meant to be.  He's the second person this week who has said this to us.  It's quite infuriating to hear those words.  You WERE meant to be.  You were conceived, you lived inside me for 38 weeks and 4 days.  You WERE MEANT TO BE, because you WERE HERE.  YOU EXISTED.  I think people fail to realize this.  It's not as though we tried to get pregnant and were unsuccessful.  I could understand someone saying it wasn't meant to be, if it didn't happen.  But you DID happen.  YOU LIVED.  You were here with me and what WASN'T supposed to happen, did.  You WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO DIE.  There is no reason why you did!  No doctor or anyone can explain it, so I know what happened is not the way it was supposed to be.  I will never know why you aren't here with us.  People can say that in the greater Plan, you were only meant to be with us for the short time we had you.  People can say that God knows what He is doing, and I believe that He does, but that does not help to convince me that what happened was the way things are "supposed" to be.  God loves us and does not want us to suffer.  He does not cause the pain and sorrow we endure in this life.  It does not sit well with me to hear that God caused this, because God wouldn't do something so awful to us.  He loves us and wants us to be happy.  Something else causes terrible things to happen in this world, but it isn't God who does these things, and I believe He is sad with us and sad for us, but that he is pulling for us.  As long as I'm on this Earth, I'll never understand the Why of what happened.  Only God knows the why and I don't feel He is at peace with it, but I do feel He wants me to learn from it and grow with Him.  I'm trying so hard to do that.  I'm trying so hard to trust in Him and know that He will guide me through this.  Some days it is easier than others to believe that He's always with me, guiding me.  Some days I'm not able to cling to him in the lighting fast moments that cut deep into my soul.  This morning was one of those moments.  Just as quickly as that song began to play, I felt my soul being ripped open.  It was too fast for me to grasp and hold on to God.  I think he understands that, though.  I'm trying to do that now, and I feel as though He's helping.   But, to say that you weren't supposed be is so wrong.  You WERE here and you existed and you will keep living in my heart.  You will always be mine and I'll never believe that you weren't meant to be.

I love you so much, baby girl.  Now and forever.

Love,

Mommy

Seasons change, yet it stays the same.

Spring is here, officially, yet I am still in the same space.  Nothing has changed.  I am still lost.  I am still alone in a sea of strangers who were once my comrades.  I am no longer like them and never will be again.  A wall of sorrow, loss, and despair now separates us.  These now-foreigners smile, say, "How are you?" and other niceties.  They ask, yet do not wish to know.  If I were to reply truthfully, if I told them I die inside every day I live, they'd not know what to say or do.  They'd surely think plenty of me, but (hopefully) those thoughts would not be shared.   If I relate my deepest feelings of despair, I am an interloper.   I am told to get some rest, go home, reflect - as though any of these would ever change my reality.  People do not know what to do with me.  I am now a source of anxiety for them.  If they stay too long in my presence, if they learn too much about what it is to endure my reality, they may also become swallowed by the blackness.  So, they tell me to go, as though this will help.  Nothing will help me.  I will forever be a shadow-mother - my baby will remain dead.  My reality will never deviate from this.  I may have other children, I may go on exotic trips, I may complete my career and grow to be old, but I will always be the one about whom they whisper, "Her baby died.  We don't know what to do with her." And it is true that they do not.  And I cannot fault them for this.  They do not know the oppression of grief and sorrow as I have known it.  They should not know; no one should know; but I do.  I know.  And it is because I know that I no longer belong with the others.  I am no longer one of them.  I am a shadow-mother.  I will always be this, in Winter, in Spring, in Summer, in Fall.  In seemingly lighthearted moments my heart will remain black as pitch.  My smiling eyes will cloak the river of tears that rages daily through my soul.  My laughter will stifle the screams which curdle the blood in my veins.  I want to escape myself.  I want to escape this constant torment of a reality.   Tragically, this is not possible.  This is my "life" now - an immutable death.  So, today while the others celebrate the permutation of the season, I lament the brackish absolute my life has assumed.  I am a shadow-mother.  They are the others - our seasons forever in discord.