Relaxing Doesn't Make Babies

Curtis

Sep 1, 2008 — 9:29 pm

Almost immediately after I lost Devin I was contacted on one of my forums by a woman who had lost her child. She stood by me… offered me advice when I asked… I asked questions on how she survived through it, how she feels now, how she was able to get through a subsequent pregnancy. Somehow talking to her reassured me that I was going to be okay, too. I saw all the things she’d done in her son’s memory, all the ways she had moved forward without ever letting go, and I knew I could do that too.

She just started a blog. Go read her story – Curtis’ story. It’s heartbreaking, just like my story is. My heart caught in my throat a couple of times in her story, the parts that I could have written. But it is different from mine.

Anticipation of Joy

Sep 1, 2008 — 11:08 pm

I sit in quiet and mull over things I want to write… things that will have to wait until another day. The thoughts are not yet fully formed, but one.

It is September. I was dreading it, to a degree. I didn’t know what to expect, but I feared the milestones hitting at once: my 26th and his 6 month. Too close together. I still feel very guarded; I do not know what this week will bring.

But, yet, when I looked at the calendar at work, newly flipped to September, I said to my coworker quietly, “Next year will be better. Next year will be different.” I realized then that I really believed that. I really meant it.

I am looking forward to December. I am looking forward to another chance. I am looking forward to going through it again. Not with the stark, burning need that I once felt, but with anticipation of something wonderful. I was given a gift those 8 months, and it will not be the only one.

I lay in waiting for my turn to come around again.

Babies and Death

Sep 2, 2008 — 11:37 pm

I most definitely made the right choice not to get a job until around the 5 month mark. I did need something to keep me busy before then, but I was unsure how I would handle being around people before then. I am glad I waited. I can handle things now that I don’t think I could have handled before.

I get to overhear a lot of kid stories at work… since the employees there are all friends they know each other and ask about the first days of school and such. Of course no one knows how painful it is for me to overhear and smile and nod. “My son died 5 months ago,” is not exactly something you volunteer your first month on the job. I do not hide it – but I’m not going to volunteer it, either.

I was especially impressed by the employee who stopped by to say hi to the tellers during a quiet time… with her newborn on her shoulder. And I mean newborn. Teeny tiny, curled up on her shoulder, head tucked under her chin. I didn’t see the baby at first, as I was trying to concentrate on my computer while they talked about babies. But the, “Oh she’s so adorable!” has me glancing up in puzzlement only to look away.

They don’t know. And it sucks.

On the way home I passed a woman walking down the sidewalk with her several kids and pushing a baby stroller. I marvelled how many people have babies everywhere… it feels like the whole world has babies and I stand alone.

As I was mulling this over the music faded out and the Radio DJs came on. “Your little boy is SO CUTE!” one said to another. “You sure make good babies!” I waited a moment, hoping they’d just switch to a different topic, but the DJ started chatting about whose baby photo they have as their computer wallpaper. I switched to my other favorite station that was on commercial. The next commercial comes on: “Are you ready to have kids [here I’m thinking ‘You are fucking kidding me, right?’] who eat healthy?”

Today, apparently, was not a good day for the childless infertile medusa.

::

I was thinking about the milestone coming up, trying to think of some small thing I can do. Nothing big, no planting of ill-fated trees this time. Just something small. In remembrance. I realized what I want to do: I want to visit his grave. It’s been nearly 6 months, and we have not once gone to see it. It’s just a marker, just a number. There is no name, no loving words – no flowers, no monument. There is nothing of us there, and there is little of him there either. Me being athiest, I have no special concerns about where his body lays or how the dirt above him is treated. But yet I feel like I should at least go and see. It feels like an appropriate time to do it.

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few months about mortality and death – not too surprizing. Also not surprizing is that my perspective has altered on a lot of things. I never knew for sure what I wanted to happen when I died, but there were times that I would think about it. Did I want to be cremated or buried? Did I want a funeral? Funerals were depressing and I didn’t like going to them… so I didn’t really want a funeral.

After Devin died I really kind of got it. The burial or cremation, the funeral… it has nothing to do with me. What I want doesn’t really matter – or shouldn’t. It’s the wrong question to ask. What needs to be asked is: what do the loved ones who are mourning want? What will help them grieve? I had it all wrong before. I’d heard people say it before, but never understood, never gave it any weight, but it is true: funerals aren’t for the dead… they’re for the living.

In times of crisis we must do what we feel we need to to heal our hearts. It’s the only way we will come out the other side with some semblence of acceptance, of mending. Grieving is entirely selfish – by necessity. Remembering what the person was, what they did, what they wanted out of life… it no longer matters to the person who is dead. It matters to the people who remember them. It is those left behind who carry the burden.

Never Assume

Sep 4, 2008 — 7:47 pm

Every once in a while I get these reminders that I can never just take anything for granted. With all the babies around it’s easy to feel bitter and alone, seeing how everyone has what you want so badly and how they don’t understand. Until someone says quietly, “I lost a child, too.”

Happy 6 Month Birthday, Baby

Sep 6, 2008 — 8:30 am

I guess “happy” is not the term many people would use to describe their angel’s 6-month birthday. And, true, it is a sad occassion as well – 6 months further away from my son. The memories all get less crisp with each day that passes.

But for me, it is 6 months towards healing. 6 months further down the road, a day I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to handle. It is 6 months closer to being pregnant again, to bringing Devin’s sibling into the world. And it is 6 months since I met my son.

I guess that’s what strikes me most: I met my son. I got to see him. I gave birth to him. That is why I think about it on the 6th, not on the 2nd or 3rd when he most likely passed away inside me. His passing happened quietly, without notice. But his birth brought him into our arms, into the world – and away from me. His birth is the significant moment. That ultrasound was a significant moment. March 6th was the day our world changed.

For a long time I really couldn’t imagine myself sitting here today, with a new job, IVF lined up, feeling hopeful. I couldn’t wrap my mind around ever feeling positive again. My son is gone. He will always be gone. And, yes, there is an ache inside me that will never, ever leave. There will always be so many questions – and there will always be fear.

But I have hope for the future. And to me, right now, that is enough.

Happy 6 months, little man. You’d be so big now, if you were here. You’d be babbling and sitting and starting solid foods. You’d be the center of my life. I’m sorry things didn’t turn out the way we all hoped. I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect you the way I promised to when you were conceived. I’m sorry you never got to see all the things outside my body – never got to look into my face or be held by your daddy. But I am glad you were safe within me for so long. I’m glad I got to know you, even just a little. You were a perfect little baby, and you always will be in my heart. We miss you.

Unexpected Trials

Sep 6, 2008 — 10:27 am

The past three weeks at my new job I have been in training at one location. I liked the people, I liked the place, I settled into a kind of comfort level with it.

Yesterday I stopped in to visit where I am going to be working as of next week. It was mostly good, the people do seem nice, and as a bonus the manager seems very flexible with scheduling and she even said that scheduling around doctors appointments and such (she used doctors appointments as an example) was not a problem and that she tries hard to make things work for her employees. This will be very helpful, come IVF. Plus she said they’ll certainly offer me more hours if I want them and they are available, allowing me to make a little extra and make up for any time off. This is all very good.

The bad part: babies. One is pregnant, one just had a baby, one just had a grandbaby. “All boys!” someone said with a sigh. “We need more girls!” Of course it’s all boys… I would expect nothing less. But the worst part didn’t really dawn on me until I left. They mentioned the full-timers have an assigned station. The part-timers, like me, float wherever they are needed that day. Which means I will be working all day long at stations covered in someone’s photos of a newborn baby boy. I saw them. A handful of baby photos, taped up around the work station.

I had known previously that there was going to be talk of babies, and I was preparing myself for that. But photos? All day long, plastered around the computer monitor that I am using? Oh no. No no no.

They, of course, do not yet know about my situation. I wasn’t planning to bring it up right away, but it appears I will have to mention it sooner rather than later. Maybe they will be able to take care to schedule me at stations without photos. It’s not like I want people to take down their photos. I don’t want to be that girl who walks in and everyone feels uncomfortable and needs to talk in hushed tones and put away photos – that’s not what I want. I just don’t want to be stuck staring at them all day long. That’s all. Just give me my own baby-free computer and I’m totally fine.

I just hate having to start that conversation. “I just wanted to let you know, my baby died.” Not how I really wanted to start my employment.

Show and Tell

Sep 7, 2008 — 2:13 pm

Last night I lit a candle – it burned until I fell asleep

Last night I hugged my husband, and took a photo with a sheep

This morning I cut a flower, the last one our rosebush gave

We took it to the cemetary and placed it on Devin’s grave

I dusted off the other markers, many babies’ names to find

Then we turned and walked away, and left our son behind.

Bones

Sep 7, 2008 — 11:17 pm

I am having a rough time today. I have been doing really quite well, even this week… but today after visiting the cemetary I’ve just been overwhelmed with anger.

I see casual mentions of people I barely know being pregnant and it angers me. People whom I know well it is not so hard, but people I know only peripherally are the hardest. Because I don’t know them. I don’t know if they “deserve” it. And all I can do is picture how freaking naive they must be, how easy it was to get pregnant on a whim and how easily they are going to have a healthy baby. And here I am, someone who has struggled and fought and revelled in every single moment of my pregnancy and I have no baby. It just makes me snarl and shake I am so furious. “It’s not fair” is a common refrain, one that has absolutely no meaning when you’re looking at life being without reason in the first place, but I can’t help it from reverberating endlessly in my head. It’s not fucking fair. All the jerks and assholes have babies; the people addicted to crack, the ones who don’t give a flying fig about their children. And yet me, I have a baby buried in a cemetary. The thought makes me furious.

I don’t know how to get past this. I don’t know, at this point, if I ever will. I struggled with a degree of anger through our initial infertility, though it wasn’t this potent. It did abate during pregnancy, though. I was too happy to be angry. The baby had healed some of those wounds – made them less raw, less hurtful. I can only hope that the next one will work the same magic on my fragile heart.

We, the parents, are supposed to be the protectors. We’re supposed to keep our children safe. But this future child, it saves me.

::

Our ride home from the cemetary was very quiet. Denis reached over the center console and gripped my hand. Today was the first time we had visited his grave and it hurt. It was a little startling to walk up to this tiny patch of earth, to see how closely the graves were placed together. They take up so little room, these little babies. We had searched quickly through the wooden stakes, handwritten with a number and a name, until we found number 88. Baby St Jean.

We had expected more, I guess. I pictured a carefully tended, golfcourse-quality lawn with perfectly aligned number-engraved stones placed in rows. Not this haphazard patch of wooden stakes. It hurt. They deserved better. All of them.

We never really intended to do anything at the cemetary. We were content with a nicely engraved numbered marker, content to use our yard – his tree – as “his” spot. But today as we stood there we knew without speaking that we couldn’t leave it like that. He needed more.

After we had been on our way home for a good 15 minutes in silence I said aloud, “I wish he were in a cemetary closer to home.”

“We should have known better,” Den replied. “We should have known our minds would change.”

But how could we. The easiest option at the time, sitting in the hospital in labor with a dead baby, was to let the hospital take care of it. We entrusted him to them and I was relieved by it. We didn’t have to contact funeral homes or cemetaries, we didn’t have to worry about paying for anything. It was too much for my brain to handle. It hadn’t mattered enough at the time. We had never dealt with anything like this – I had only ever been in a cemetary once before, and that was for one of Den’s extended relative’s funeral. What did we know about cemetaries and burials? What did we know about what we would need down the road? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

He’s not that far away, but it seems far. I wish he was just down the road, in a local cemetary in our town. Maybe we’d visit him, maybe we wouldn’t, but I wish it was closer. And I can’t do anything about it now. That’s probably a good reason I am struggling with so much anger today – there is so much I can’t change. There is nothing I can do.

I never thought I’d care about where he was buried. What did it matter, he wasn’t there. But I think the tree nearly dying nearly did me in. It is no longer my place of peace. Even when we do put a stone there, until that tree comes back next year I am not going to be able to feel safe about it… I feel like I am still just waiting for it to die. It was his replacement, in a way – a replacement for a grave – and emotionally it got yanked away from me. So what did I have left? The grave itself. The thing we had never thought much about.

And I have to say, I think I kind of like the idea of burial. The show I have been watching a lot of lately is Bones; perhaps that seems like an odd choice, but it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as I thought it would. In fact, I find comfort in it. It reminds me that even when the person is gone, the bones remain. They tell a story. They tell the world that this person lived. Devin’s grave, and the memorial stone that will stand above it, that is what they do: they tell the world that he lived. When people walk by they will read “Devin St. Jean, March 6, 2008.” They probably won’t know who that is, but they will know that he is there and when he lived… and that someone cared enough to put a stone there. For a moment they may even feel sad, thinking about this little baby who never got a chance, whose parents weep for what they cannot hold. No matter how brief, Devin will live on in those passing thoughts. He has a footprint in this world, on this earth… a tiny, baby-grave sized footprint.

I’m all a-jumbled tonight. This is all too much to deal with at 26 years old. My body is so young, but my soul feels old and weary. 26 is supposed to be the start of your life… starting a family, buying a home, settling down from your crazy young days. Instead I have nearly three years of infertility under my belt and worries over a grave.

It’s not surprizing to me that my life took such a different, harder path than the girls I knew back in highschool. I never fit in, even back then. I think my soul knew my life wasn’t going to be an easy one. But, unlike back then, I no longer long to be different. I don’t want to stand out any more. There is the good kind of special, and then there is the kind you’d give back in a heartbeat. Somehow it turned out all wrong.

Candles

Sep 8, 2008 — 11:27 pm

Last month, when I was having a really rough time, Julia and Serenity sent me a care package with some teas and candles. (The generousity of you people is just amazing.)

Sadly, the post office was not kind to the package and most of the encased-in-glass candles were quite broken. After letting them sit in the box for a couple of days, broken bits rattling whenever I touched it, I decided to at least inspect them to see if any of them survived. I pulled each one out carefully, glass chunks falling from the wax. Definitely broken. What the hell had the post office done, played football with the damn package?

But one was okay. It had a small crack, but was still intact. Mostly I was relieved that the gift wasn’t entirely to waste – I always feel so much worse for the gift-giver than myself, almost guilty that someone went out of their way for me only to end up like that. I set the candle aside.

Saturday, September 6th. I was home from work, it was getting late, and I suddenly felt like I needed to do something. I couldn’t let the date passed unnoticed. I knew then what that candle was for. And then I took photos… freezing time, marking that day in visual form, creating memories to place lovingly in Devin’s scrapbook.

Then Sunday night, and Monday too, I lit the candle again when I moved to the bedroom on my laptop. It burns down slowly, flickering soft light in the bedroom. I let it burn until I go to sleep, then I blow it out.

I’ve been thinking about this candle, this single cracked candle, wondering why. This is a theme lately. Look at the tree: a gorgeous healthy, full-bodied tree. It died back, it struggled… we lost more than half of the tree. But it remained. Broken and bruised and no longer perfect, no longer whole… but enough of it remained. And now this candle, too… the last one of the batch, one survived when the rest did not.

There is meaning there. Sometimes I just can’t see it. Though oftentimes I think I am just grasping at straws… trying to find meaning where is none, trying to find something to make this all make a little bit of sense.

Work

Sep 10, 2008 — 9:41 pm

It was my “first day” of work today – at least, my first day at the office where I will be permanently. It was… rough. The work wasn’t rough. It was more of what I know how to do, just a little different because I’m working with new people who have a bit of a different way of doing things. No, what was rough was listening to the chatter going on around me. Baby showers. Registries. Labor rooms. Chit chat, chit chat. The baby chatter probably didn’t take up nearly as big a chunk as it felt like, but to me it seemed to go on forever. My brain spun in slow motion.

Once upon a time, in the “before,” I would have loved a job like this. It is relaxed, friendly, flexible. It was what I wanted.

But now? Now I find myself wishing we could be busier. I liked the professional bustle at the office where I trained. And I found that in that circumstance they chatted less… they knew each other not quite so well. There were too many people, and it was too busy, to get to know everyone. And I found myself today longing for that anonymity of just blending in with the crowd. I find myself wishing just for a strictly professional relationship, not the rest.

By the end of the day I had a headache, presumably from clenching my jaw all day.

I worried that I was coming across as a snob, though my wise husband said later, “So what if they do? When they find out why then they’ll understand.” I did mention to one coworker that I have a son who would be six months old, as those photos of her kid? He was born in late February. I asked about her cat instead.

My heart hurts. I’m just so disappointed. It was really looking like this job was going to be such a good thing for me, it was going so well, and then I get there and it hurts so much. I have to say, if it weren’t for the health insurance I don’t know if I’d stay. But I do have the health insurance – and this position has enough flexibility to get me through IVF without too much trouble. So I stay. And I hope this gets easier.

Maybe it will. I’m sure feeling like an outside was from other factors – like being the newbie – than just the deadbabymama thing. I can’t change being a deadbabymama, but I won’t always be the new person. Hopefully I’ll get to know these people. And hopefully the pregnant lady will go into labor really soon (though she’s not due for over a month – bugger).

It’s not that I don’t like these people. It’s not that I am angry at all pregnant women or women with babies. I don’t burst into tears at the sight of them. But it’s distracting – frequently found myself drifting off in thought, frozen. Remembering. And I just really need, for myself, to distract myself. I really hoped this job would do that. And I’m just so sad that it doesn’t appear to be that way.

But the good side is that I can still see myself staying and moving up in the company. I have inside me a motivation that I never had before. I am no longer content to just stay at home and do nothing but daydream and mope. I am going to do something with my life and accomplish something. I feel good about that. But then I think about what it took to get me to this place and it just makes me sad.

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