The Facebook Post

So, I know I don't have to give any of you a reason to hate FB. You already do, right? What's there to like about logging in and reading about everyone's seemingly shiny happy perfect lives while we mourn our babies and wonder if we'll ever be "normal" or "okay" or even functional? Sounds like a blast, right?

Oh, but maybe what we can do is start posting about miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss! Then we'll be spreading awareness, right? Sounds like a plan. Except you get one or two "likes" from women who have lost babies themselves while the rest of the world posts what organic ingredients they used in their dinner that night or how excited they are about learning how to crochet a bikini so they can be "grandma-chic".

Fail.

But I will be the first to say that I don't give a crap; I've already lost enough. I'll be jiggered if I have to delete my FB account too...I know in the grand scheme of things, having a FB page means next to nothing. Because for the most part, that's true. However, my FB experience has evolved over time, and I need it now more than ever before, and it means more to me now than it ever has. Part of that is because I am involved in two baby loss forums on FB, and I find it incredibly healing and therapeutic to post and read comments and help maintain these boards. I have met some of my closest friends (Hi if you're reading this!!!) through FB group pages like SOBBS and CLIMB.

And I DO like the awareness I can spread, even if only one person notices...To me, that's making a difference. Just today I posted this along with many of my FB BLM friends, "September 6th is Stillbirth Remembrance Day. Stillbirths tragically strike 1 out of every 115 pregnancies. In the USA, 26,000 babies are stillborn every year. That's approximately 71 precious babies every single day. Remembering all the babies lost to stillbirth today and everyday." It felt good to post that, to be bold and brave and talk about something so taboo.

I also have an Elias album on FB, where I post photos of gifts people have given to me in his remembrance and images with his name. I find this album to be very comforting when I am having a really bad day, and I love getting the message across to others that I not only want but NEED for my son to be acknowledged, that I need him to be remembered, and that I welcome them to speak his name and send me little things that remind them of him. I don't mourn him alone; I don't remember him alone. Anyone who sees that album gets the message loud and clear, and in a way that in and of itself is a way of spreading awareness.

I also honor my son by "paying it forward" to others when I can by making remembrance images in honor of their precious babies. I hope the images end up in their own remembrance folders on FB and that they may be inspired to make images for others and keep it going. I keep a calendar of remembrance dates and honor them by creating or editing an image; then I upload it to my BLM folder and tag the person. When I hit "publish", I feel I am spreading awareness, because those checking their newsfeed will see a pretty image created in memory of a stillborn baby and realize that this grief needs to be spoken and that healing takes time. I don't do the images by request; rather, it's something I do when I feel the inspiration hit and feel the desire to honor our babies and the friendships built through our losses. I always say that our friendships are planted from our common experience, but they grow to be about so much more than that.

Needless to say, I love my BLM FB friends, and if any of you ever want to connect with me there, let me know.

However, FB, you're really pissing me off lately with these "This day in 2010" posts. I mean for freaking real, why don't you just take a machete and thrust it through my broken heart and then twist it? My day to day life isn't already painful enough; let's PILE ON the agony by reliving all the hope I had a year ago and thinking about how STUPID I was to think I would actually come home with two precious babies.

Just so you all can wallow with me, I will share my post from a year ago. I wrote this post at a time when I was getting really frustrated with coworkers who kept telling me, "Just relax! Everything has been going so well; you have nothing to worry about!" because at times I would open up about my anxiety, which is to be EXPECTED from someone who has had a prior loss and someone who is carrying multiples!!! Friggin' idiots. So anyway, I posted this a year ago today to get my point across to people that when they would say things like "Stop worrying, things have been going so well!" all it did was make me feel like they were discounting how difficult the pregnancy had been for me thus far. And boy, I hope God wasn't saying "I'll SHOW those people a real pregnancy complication!" (I know God doesn't work that way, but oy...I get shivers reading these posts from last year..And then I just want to curl up in a ball and die...)

THIS YEAR IN 2010: "One of my good friends recently said I was doing a "great job" with my pregnancy... And you know what? I am. I’m sitting here taking stock of it all, realizing that we are only a few weeks away from the 3rd trimester. And we have come a long way. I know some acquaintances refer to my pregnancy as “uncomplicated”, but those of you who know me better know that we’ve been through the scare of “threatened miscarriage”, two ER visits due to bleeding, an ER visit due to suspected PPROM, severe morning sickness that wouldn’t respond to the strongest medication, trouble gaining weight (extremely scary when you’re carrying multiples and at increased risk already of preterm birth), and GERD that went undiagnosed for weeks. So you may say that’s uncomplicated; I say that I am proud of every week these babies stay put, and as we are only days away from viability, I am celebrating. : ) I really have so much to be grateful for. I thank God every single day for these two little miracles."

And it's true. I prayed my ASS off. Not because I necessarily expected God to "listen" and answer my very specific prayers that my babies would be born happy and healthy but because I truly was just so overwhelmed with love and gratitude to have them in my womb. I was so overcome with emotions - love and joy - at times that I would just sob, and my husband would say, "What's wrong?!" and I would say, "I just love them SO MUCH, and I want them to both be okay SO BAD, and I'm just SO LUCKY to have them, and I don't know what I've done to deserve such amazing blessings in my life!"

I hadn't yet learned that "blessings" aren't about deserving or not deserving, and that tragedies aren't about deserving or not deserving, either.

*sigh*

Just to add insult to injury, I read people's responses, mostly saying how PROUD they were of me (so apparently now I'm just a big disappointment), but this one killed me: Someone had the nerve to comment “You are doing wonderful, but remember having them is the easy part, feeding clothing and educating thru college at a State supported University in today’s $ is north of 250 k each. Xoxo.”

I couldn't MAKE this sh*t up if I tried.

My response? “There has been little that has been easy about this. I know we will have challenges and the expenses are going to be huge, but I will be so grateful to have them and that we made it through a rough pregnancy that I will not take them for granted! Even through all the future hurdles. It’s just changed my perspective on everything.”

I didn't need another LOSS to change my perspective or learn to not take things for granted; my lesson has already been clearly communicated, LOUD AND FREAKING CLEAR!

Again with the love hate...FB has served to remind me that I DID appreciate things, that I DIDN'T take a damn thing for granted, and I need to be kinder to myself for that...I was a good pregnant mama...And yet FB has reminded me that I was SO DUMB in thinking that I had already been through the worst of it, that nothing could possibly go wrong once we were past viability and better yet that 28 week mark.

I am not deleting my account. But oh, is it tempting.

I am not sad 24/7. For realz.

I feel a responsibility of sorts to push all the other blogposts I have floating around my head to the backburner for awhile and just say something.

So here it goes:

I am not sad 24/7.

For realz.

No joke, no fingers crossed, no bull.

I remember in the early days a coworker came to visit (yes, the same one I mentioned in a previous post about over-sharing). She brought a gift for Evelyn (cute girly outfits), and she also brought a gift in memory of Elias (a children’s book. I cried.).

I was still so early out that I was in complete and utter shock over what happened (this was maybe a month post-loss, if that). I said, “I think my life is going to be ruined by this.” When she asked me to elaborate on how I came to this conclusion, I simply said, “Look at the babyloss blogs. They are full of misery.”

Now, this woman had no idea what I was even talking about. So I had to kind of explain what the BLM community is and how many blogs there are floating around in cyberspace written by women whose losses completely destroyed their lives. Jobs lost, marriages ruined, no future children, multiple losses, no hope for the future, etc.

I had such fear in my heart and in my expression when I looked at her and said, “Will that be me?! Is this it? The best of my life is OVER, and I’m not even thirty years old? It’s just all downhill from here on out?!”

She simply responded, “Everybody grieves differently.”

I sighed, and let that comfort me as best it could. I moped for days thinking about how further down the road, once the shock of it all had worn off, I may be ruined by my loss like so many other BLM seemed to be ruined by theirs.

One day I logged into Facebook to find this message from her: “You said that you read a lot of the blogs and women never recover from the loss of a baby. But women do recover...or at least learn to move on. The blogs you are reading are from the women who have a difficult time moving on. The women who have managed to forge ahead with their lives are busy with their families, friends, careers, etc. and probably don't visit the sites as much as the women who are having a difficult time. I am not writing this to upset you...not even a little. I'm hoping that this will make some sense and help you in some way. You can tell me to shut up if you'd like. But just know that I'm thinking of you and wish you nothing but peace and happiness.”

Now, I know what some of you bloggers are thinking. And I agree, some of her words could cause offense (especially to those of us who are very raw in our pain). I don’t equate blogging with “having no life”, which is what she seemed to imply, and I recognize that part of what she wanted to communicate to me was that I need to enjoy my daughter and not spend all my time reading loss blogs. (Come on, that’s a good point, people.) But that wasn’t even the main point. She was trying to help me see that the loss blogs are only snippets and not necessarily representative of the entire loss community.

Her words seemed genuine enough, and I knew they came from the right place, so I started to think it over. And while I don’t completely agree with everything she said (I think you can blog but still have a life, or I at least like to tell myself that), I have my own version of the point she was trying to make: Most BLMs go to their blogs when they are having a horrible day. It’s cheap therapy. Get online, type type type, and not feel so “about to throw someone out a window”-ish. The blogposts created from such sob-sessions are clearly not indicative of the whole person behind them. They are a sliver of that person, a snapshot in time, a moment of pain so heavy that it requires sharing to lighten, a fear so sharp it needs expression to cut a little less. I am “guilty” of this myself, in that I don’t want this blog to become where I only go to vent, cry, rage, and whine. That hardly represents my grief journey in its entirety.

Yes, I mainly use this as a therapeutic tool, but I feel a sort of responsibility to say…to any future babylostmama that may come across this blog after losing her baby someday…I know I am over seven months out from my loss, but given that right now I would consider I am having a “low” point, I want to be honest about what that actually looks like. Aside from my moments where tears are falling.

-I still function.

-Most days, I even shower, brush my teeth, and do my makeup (still working on the whole flossing thing).

-I make an attempt to find clothes that fit and convey some aspect of my personality (challenging with the weight grief, not carrying twins, has added to my body).

- I do not live off of junk food and donuts, like The Secret Life of an American Teenager would have you believe. (One of the main characters just suffered stillbirth and frequents Dunkin' a bit much.) I sometimes eat breakfast. I always eat lunch. Not only do I eat dinner, but I have gotten into finding recipes to try, and we have fresh organic produce delivered every week to my husband’s workplace in an effort to learn how to be “grown-ups”. I have enjoyed cooking lately when I never cared to before, so I’d say I am developing new interests, which is not common for someone “depressed”.

-I regularly go grocery-shopping and run other errands and enjoy doing so.

-I recently went to a movie in a theater (haven’t done that since I was pregnant and saw Eat, Pray, Love) and saw a comedy. And I laughed, real laughs, not fake canned ones. More than once. (It was Bridesmaids.)

- I have listened to people complaining about trivial things, like the weather, without screaming, "Did your baby die?! No?! Well then shutthehellup!!!"

-I love Pandora radio and am a huge dork about it. I'm a big fan of trip-hop and post-punk and a variety of genres, and I sit there with Pandora open, and whenever it plays a song I love, I add it to my playlist on playlist.com. (I’m usually cleaning or something while I have it on.) I love showing off my awesome playlist when people come to visit.

-I attempt to work out and do yoga, although some efforts are more successful than others.

-I have composed mindless Facebook status updates (which for many months I wouldn't have cared to even try to do).

- I am sometimes able to make small talk with neighbors and acquaintances (not even kidding).

- I love to go shopping (which may possibly be retail therapy, I realize), and I love to kind of splurge and pamper myself after all the bedrest and…well, trauma I’ve endured.

-I have held a male infant without totally losing my sh*t, and if I’m being honest here…I didn’t even think about my son when I held him. He absolutely positively was not a trigger. I had a great day that day and didn’t shed a single tear, actually. (Although if I had held my daughter at the same time, I think that would have been a trigger.)

-I spend time preparing myself for novels I will be teaching this upcoming school year and am excited about the challenges that lie ahead with my career.

-I am still very much in love with my husband, although we both have a lot of work to do individually and in our marriage.

-Not to brag, but I am not exactly lacking in the friends / social engagements department. I am not some recluse who sits at home all day. I connect with others easily – loss and non-loss people. It's true; some friendships do not survive tragedy, but it doesn’t matter at the end of the day. If I can learn to live without my son somehow, then I can learn to live without fake friends.

-I have this new ability to throw things out that before I would have become overly emotionally attached to. (goes along with my last statement above!)

- 99% of people I interact with do not treat me like I have the plague. (Some might say, the dead baby plague.)

-I find joy in focusing on myself as a whole person, not as just the woman who lost a baby (or the woman who just had a living baby!).

-I revel in the blessing that is motherhood; I don’t take my daughter for granted; I don’t allow my daughter to be a constant trigger for my sadness at the loss of her brother.

-I have learned the complicated but useful psychological art of compartmentalization, and it has helped to save my life.

-I have moments where, in thinking about Elias, my heart fills with so much love for him – pure love unscathed by his death.

In the early days, I did not believe I would ever find joy again. I did not believe I would ever have a regular conversation again without my mind wandering to my son. I did not believe anybody would ever want to spend time with me. I thought I was cursed and would only bring pain to everybody around me. I did not believe I would be anybody other than "that poor woman who carried twins and lost one".

I realize that my loss is different than the loss of a singleton, just like the loss of one triplet is different than the loss of one twin, just like stillbirth is different from SIDS, and the list goes on. Every loss is different and yet the same. Losing one baby but still bringing another home from the hospital is different than coming home with empty arms.

It’s not easier, it’s not more difficult, it’s just different.

But differences aside, grief is grief, loss is loss, and I feel a sense of responsibility to say this today:

I am not destroyed.

Delicate Parenting

Two days ago, May 1st, was International Babylost Mothers Day. At first I will admit that I didn’t understand this holiday, not one bit, when I first read about it online. I fully understand that many women who have lost a baby and have no living children often go unrecognized on Mothers Day. I also realize that many women who have a surviving child or children will be celebrated on Mothers Day but without having their lost child acknowledged, which I imagine to be painful as well. But why not just honor ALL mothers on Mothers Day, whether they’ve lost a child or not?

I have not experienced my first Mothers Day after the birth of my twins, not yet. I don’t know what to expect from it, but as every breath of my life has been thus far since my csection, I’m assuming it will be bittersweet. And right now, the bitter seems to always outweigh the sweet.

Approaching five months out from my loss is HARD. (Oh, but let’s all be honest, I said the same thing about previous months: “It must just be the whole three month thing; I’ve heard that three months out is just the WORST”, and “Oh yeah, the four month mark is JUST BRUTAL.”)

Apparently every month is brutal. Apparently life is brutal. When will I stop counting the months and pondering what makes that particular month so agonizing without my son? After it turns into a year? Two years? Two decades? I have my daughter as a living breathing marker of how old he'd be. Will the counting of days, weeks, months, years, decades be nonstop?

I don’t know if I want any of you to answer that. Let’s call that a “rhetorical question” and leave it alone.

My gut reaction to International Babylost Mothers Day was to think, “Wow, that’s sad. Sad that we have to have a SEPARATE day, because we’re DIFFERENT than other mothers. We’re the FREAKS that can’t simply be acknowledged on the EXISTING holiday with all the other mothers of solely LIVING children.”

I was offended. Plain and simple.

I think it was Angie from Still Life with Circles who called this type of parenting “delicate”. And that adjective is the most accurate one to describe the experience of parenting a child who has died, and that adjective solidified in my mind the need for a separate day acknowledging the babylost.

Reflecting on the parenting of a child who no longer lives brought me back to the days during my maternity leave in which I was stuck in such a state of utter SHOCK. I had two new roles that in my mind I would never fill. I would never be a bereaved parent, right? Who ever dreams of that?! But the funny thing is, that even the things I DID dream, I thought I’d never be.
After my miscarriage I just kind of resigned myself to the fact that I would likely never have anything turn out well for me. (Is that bad?) Defense mechanism, which I mentioned before, I believe. So when I found out I was pregnant with twins, I distanced myself from the pregnancy a great deal (I hate this fact but must be honest), because I was too afraid to get really attached. (Turns out, I got attached anyway.)

It wasn’t that I necessarily expected my babies to DIE; I would have been FREAKING out if I truly expected such an outcome. Rather, I was kind of in denial mentally about everything. I took my prenatals, I prayed for the health and safety of my twins, I ate as well as I could, I did the bedrest, but I always tried to distract myself and didn’t think of the reality of being MOM. I never really thought about after the babies would be BORN and brought home.
I can’t relate to the women who say they had all these dreams of their twins dressing up like Thing One and Thing Two for Halloween, and how it’s all ruined. I just never went there, mentally. I wanted them with every fiber of my being, don’t get me wrong - I just didn’t want to Go There.
All I knew was that I loved them so incredibly much, and that was as much as I could handle for the time being. I couldn’t dream past the point of bringing two living healthy babies home from the hospital. That in and of itself was just an incredible dream that I think it filled my head and heart sufficiently at that time. I haven’t yet decided if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it just is My Truth. And no, I’m not saying this was prophetic in any way shape or form.

So. I can say I was almost as shocked to mother a living child as I was to mother a child who had died before birth. Both of those things were just so foreign to me, so unfathomable, so hugely life-altering. Becoming a mother was something I had dreamed of since my early childhood, and it was finally coming true, in the most wonderful and most horrible way, all at the same time.

Even today, my daughter is almost five months old, and while I have many days where I think, “I should be feeding TWINS right now”, or “I should be bathing TWO babies right now”, or “I should be trying to decide WHICH screaming baby to comfort right now”, there are just as many days where I think, “What? I have a DAUGHTER? I’m a MOM?! When did THAT happen?!” It feels like my life is flying by now that she is here, yet my pregnancy felt like the gestational period of an African elephant (about two years).

A coworker came to visit me during my maternity leave, and I was still trying to sort out all these sudden changes that had occurred in my life. And I said something like, “People don’t get it. I can’t just delight in Evelyn. I also have to parent Elias. He still needs me.” It was a moment of total vulnerability and honesty and a classic instance of just plain simple oversharing. I was desperate for someone to WANT to listen to me when so many others clearly wanted to avoid the topic of my loss altogether. My coworker seemed concerned, so I spilled. And immediately she became MORE concerned, as if she thought my statement indicated I was PRETENDING my son was still ALIVE. As if I had a baby doll that I called Elias that I changed, fed, bathed, and put to bed.
I could tell by the look on her face that she had no idea what I meant. The look on her face said without saying a word, “Wait, did she just say PARENTING? A child who has DIED? How do you do THAT? She’s not only lost her baby; she's lost her marbles!!! I’m going to have to drive her to the loony bin, stat!”

She just had no idea. Thank God she had no idea. The cost for understanding this type of pain and delicate parenting is the highest price in the world, the price of losing your child.

I said, “I still parent him, but it’s a different kind of parenting, obviously…” She sighed and looked a smidge relieved, yet still thoroughly confused. I went on, “I parent him in the way I make sure that his memory lives on. I parent him in the way I try to help other women through their losses. And I parent him in the way I try to live my life to make him proud, to honor him. I parent him by loving him unconditionally.” Her body seemed to relax a little, so I continued, “A parent’s love truly is unconditional, and it isn’t dependent upon the child being alive. That love you feel is in your heart forever and yearns for expression.”

I felt such a need to justify my love for my son, to explain this psychologically and emotionally as clearly as I could, as this woman like so many other well-intentioned friends and family members made me feel like I needed to just move on and focus on my surviving twin. Which, if you've lost a child, you realize is impossible.

I still don’t know if she “got it”. But at least I tried to explain instead of hiding like I so often do from “outsiders”.

When I read that term, “delicate parenting”, I said YES. That is exactly what this is. It isn’t as deliberate as selecting the perfect bed time story to lull your baby to sleep for the night, or having to rush over to your coughing baby to make sure they aren’t choking, or massaging the lotion onto their chubby cheeks so they won’t get flaky skin on their blushing face.

It’s a quieter type of parenting. A softer, more subtle variety. Yet so true, so genuine, so necessary. A type of parenting that is needed just as fiercely as that needed by a living child, yet most people won’t understand that need unless they have lost a child. That love doesn’t just go away. We must honor it by “parenting” our babies, whether they are here with us physically or not.

Upon much reflection, I deemed this separate holiday appropriate, even necessary. The type of parenting women do after losing a child goes unrecognized and when acknowledged is often misunderstood as “dwelling on things”, “being negative”, “fixating on their dead baby”, “taking the good in their life for granted”, and “throwing a pity party”. How painful these misunderstandings are for women who want their babies and their motherhood recognized.

This delicate parenting simply deserves its own day.

This day to me was also a chance for me to reflect on the wonderful women I have met so far along my grief journey. I’m only about five months out; I can’t imagine in a few years what amazing people I will get to know. I can't say it's "nice" to meet others who have suffered baby or child loss, because I wish no one ever had to feel such heartache. But I do think it's important to share our stories with one another and just be there for each other.

It is difficult to be exposed to countless loss stories, because you kind of carry the grief of everyone you’ve met in your journey. But when you help each other carry something so heavy, the burden somehow does seem to lighten.

And now, a poem written by the lovely Angie M. Yingst in honor of International Babylost Mothers Day, a holiday I'm so grateful to Carly Marie for creating:

Though I lose my petals
I am still a flower.
We grow together,
in a garden bed
of ash and tears,
heartbreak and love.
Whispered support blows
towards our delicate beauty,
crying nourishes our shared roots,
and the warmth of our compassion
heals the winter of our grief.
Though we have lost a petal,
we are still flowers,
lush and full together
in a garden of hope.