Every Night

Every night I ask Elias to visit me in a dream and let me know that he's okay, that he loves me, that he isn't angry, that he's at peace. Every night I fail to dream of him, and when I wake up my heart is broken all over again.

Hating. Sobbing. Stagnating.

Super depressed. Rehashing and rehashing and reliving everything all over again. Hating that I can't go back. Hating not knowing if I even could have saved him, if the doctors even could have saved him, hating that we never even got a chance to try, hating that we didn't just do a csection at 36 weeks, hating that we didn't KNOW he needed to be out, hating that I tried so hard, prayed every day, and believed I would bring him home...only to lose him. I hate this. I know that of all the tests they run and all the things they look for he only missed a couple of points. But it haunts me every day to not know if that was an indication of something wrong or not. Was he really okay or already compromised?! Were they justified sending me home or should they have known to take him out?!?! I will never know for sure the timeline of events the last week of his life. I will never know WHY he bled out. My placenta did not abrupt. I did not have pre-eclampsia. This is just infuriating. A year out, I'm still infuriated. Devastated. I don't know how to "move forward". Not move on, but move forward. I feel stuck because of all of the unanswered questions in my heart and mind. I feel like I don't even know my own son's story. What kind of closure will I ever get when I don't even understand what happened???

The empty spot on the couch next to her.

When people see my daughter, they often immediately oooh and ahhhh over how blue her eyes are. Lately, instead of just being happy at this compliment, I find myself angry that I don't know what color Elias's eyes were. I find myself angry that Elias isn't here, because HE should be oooh'ed and ahhh'ed over. I see photos of my daughter with her two girl cousins, and I just think, there should be a baby boy in this photo. My baby boy. I look at the spot next to my girl and see where he should be sitting, and I wonder why the hell he couldn't stay with us. And I wonder if my daughter will always feel like somebody's missing. For a while I was doing pretty good with keeping everything separate / compartmentalized, but lately everything just runs together. I'm having a lot of trouble finding any joy in compliments or nice photos, because I am so fixated on how things should be instead of enjoying what is. I guess this is just a low point, but right now it feels like this is my life, like the rest of my life is just going to feel like torture. It is agonizing to have to go on without someone you love so f*cking much. My heart is just so heavy. I still find myself taking in a deep breath and thinking, oh my God, I can't believe this happened to us. It's been 8 months, and I still just can't freaking believe it. I spent my entire pregnancy taking it easy, drinking gallons of water, eating the best I could, following doctors' orders, getting extra ultrasounds, taking prenatals religiously, resting up, and trying to stay positive during a time that for me was pretty terrifying. I literally put everything on hold and focused on being a twin mama. (I can't stand women who say pregnancy for them is so easy they forget they're pregnant - there's NO forgetting when you are pregnant after a loss, and with twins no less!). How the hell does this happen? I still don't understand how I could have so much monitoring and take so many precautions only to lose my son. It's like the cruelest joke in the world was played on me. Does anyone else feel that way? I also feel like I ruined my marriage (we are very distant) and my parents' happiness with my simple desire for children. I broke everybody's hearts. How can I ever forgive myself for bringing so much pain to everybody I love? I feel like my life is just ruined and this world would be better if I'd never been born. The day my son died, he took my heart with him, and there's just this gaping void left. It hurts so bad it has this vacuum effect that makes it hard to breathe.

Is there such a thing...

...as grief-induced bipolar disorder? Not.even.kidding. This is a real question.

Just an FYI.

I've hit a low point. The bottom of a pit. I can't see my way out. There's barely even a glimmer of light at the top when I look up. I see darkness, darkness, and more darkness. I need help. I'm falling apart at the seams. I am barely even functioning anymore. Everything that happens has some connection to my loss, even when others have no idea that I'm making that connection. My entire life just feels like one massive mistake, like I should have never been born in the first place. I'm just cursed to do all wrong and no right. Why else would I have a traumatic miscarriage in public? Why else would my son die six days before his induction date? Why else would I feel like obviously somewhere I made a horrible turn for the worse and my entire life just fell apart? I am ruined. I am gone. I am nobody. I am nothing but pain and empty and broken. All I have brought into this world is death, pain, and destruction. I may have a daughter, but she doesn't have a mother, and how will she ever be happy knowing her twin died? This is what nearing 6 months out looks like. If this gets any worse, I don't think I will survive this.

Questions.

Why couldn't I bring home my twins?
Am I not worthy of them?
Am I a horrible person?
Did I do something terrible in a prior life?
Am I being punished?
Is this a sign that my husband and I are wrong for one another?
Am I not a good enough mother to have two babies at once?
Do we not make enough money?
Is our house not big enough?
Is our neighborhood not nice enough?
Are my parents not deserving of twin grand babies?
Was I too fearful and insecure about my abilities at parenthood?
Did God think I took my babies for granted even though I prayed every single night, sometimes two or three times a night, for my babies to be born safely?
Did this happen because I was depressed during my pregnancy?
Did this happen because I had a miscarriage beforehand?
Was I lulled into a false sense of security after hearing countless times, “Your babies are going to be fine! Stop worrying!”?
Did I not eat enough of the right foods?
Did I not gain enough weight?
Did I puke so much that it hurt my baby?
Did I not drink enough water?
Did I not read some ingredient on a label of a food or drink I was consuming that was dangerous?
Did I use a face lotion or shower gel or makeup that absorbed into my skin and killed my son?
Was my shower water too hot?
Did I inhale some fumes unknowingly that weakened his placenta somehow?
Did I bump my tummy on a wall or counter and kill my son without realizing it?
Did I drink a couple of beers before realizing I was pregnant and cause this to happen?
Did I sleep funny and cause something horrible to happen?
If I had taken prescription prenatal vitamins instead of over-the-counter, could I have saved him?
If I saw a nutritionist and a high risk doctor to begin with, would my son be here?
Did my premature labor at 30 weeks cause my loss 7 weeks later?
Did my bedrest kill my son?
If I had ignored all the doctor’s instructions like some women so blatantly do, would he be here?
If I had taken up residence in a hospital and had 24/7 monitoring, would my son be here?
Should I have insisted on an emergency c-section at 36 weeks, even though I didn’t realize my son would be in danger?
Would they have taken my babies then without having a medical reason to do so?
When would they have scheduled the csection if I insisted on an earlier one, and would it have been before or after the bleed?
Would it have made a difference?
Would he have been born alive?
Would he even have any quality of life after having suffered a massive bleed?
Why didn’t I know that my son would need saving?!?!
Why didn’t the doctors know?!?!
Why didn’t fourteen ultrasounds detect or predict a problem?!?!
Did I need to be “knocked down a peg” as being pregnant with twins made me feel special, and clearly I am not?
Did I not look forward to having my children with excitement and eager anticipation?
Did I not tell God countless times that this was my ultimate dream come true, to parent boy girl twins?
Did I not love both of my babies with every fiber of my being and do every possible thing I could to keep them safe?!?!?!
How will I ever have faith in anything ever again?
How will I ever make sense of this world again?
How will I survive this feeling of ultimate failure?
How will I survive this guilt?
How will I survive this shame?
How will I survive this heartache?
How will I survive this self-loathing?

How will I survive?

Will I survive?

Will I?

Spring break. Yay?

I just wanted to tell those babylostmamas who may stumble across this blog that I am sorry, but I am not ready to share my story here yet. At least not with the same detail I've read in others' blogs. I can't share my son's "birth story". Maybe someday. I don't really know.
What I will say is that I have suffered a missed miscarriage in July 2009, followed by three very dark months of depression. The next three months I felt I was starting to "heal" somewhat, although I felt completely defective and questioned whether I would ever actually carry my own child to term. I literally had panic attacks over it, although at the time I didn't know what was causing them. When we started TTC again for our "rainbow baby" (will post definition later for those unfamiliar with the term), it took us six months. That doesn't sound long, and I know in the big scheme of things it's really not, but to me it felt like a lifetime. I had already put off starting a family in order to focus on my career and education, and to wait any longer for something I wanted so badly was just agonizing. I was about to pick up the phone and talk to my doctor about fertility testing, etc. when suddenly my home pregnancy test that cycle came out positive. I had convinced myself this one would be a missed miscarriage as well (defense mechanism, I guess), and I refused to get too excited or "count my chickens". So imagine my surprise during my first ultrasound, when I refused to look at the screen, and my doctor says, "Well there's the heartbeat. And there's the other one! You've got two in there!"

The fact that it was twins was a COMPLETE and total surprise. I was thrilled beyond belief. Terrified, yes, but incredibly excited. I felt like God was smiling down on me from the heavens and saying, "I love you. It's your time now for happiness and blessings from above. Enough pain for you." No, I didn't actually hear the voice of God. I didn't see his image in my grilled cheese sandwich or any other such nonsense people sometimes claim. Rather, it was just a *vibe* I felt from Him. I never felt closer to God in all my life. I was blessed with boy girl twins (I came to find out at my 19 week anatomy scan). Both babies grew wonderfully and were healthy and thriving. I couldn't have asked for anything more.

Well, except for both of them to actually live past birth.

So when I found out my son had suddenly passed away at a routine 37 week ultrasound in December 2010, after maybe 14 or so ultrasounds where both babies had strong heartbeats and had grown beautifully, I was just completely gutted. Just three days prior to that horrible day, he was deemed healthy after a biophysical profile and contraction stress test.

My heart was torn into a million pieces. I had mistakenly believed that God was watching out for my family.

So here I am, four months later, feeling utterly abandoned, betrayed, and brokenhearted. I also feel stupid, naive, and ashamed. I don't know where all these feelings come from exactly, but I have a myriad of emotions - so many that they keep tripping over each other, and I don't know what to do with them. Perhaps spilling them here will help calm them down a notch, even just for a moment in time.

So it's spring break this week, and I am home for the week full time with my precious daughter who is now four months old. I have been excited about spending time with her just the two of us and thought it would be relaxing compared to being at work full-time. But now that I'm home in this house with just her, I realize again how naive I was being about this. I am thrust back in time to those early weeks after our loss, when maternity leave officially started. What I now realize is that work has provided a distraction, a level of busy-ness, a welcome respite from the sheer exhaustion of grief. Let's face it, GRIEF is WORK.

Being home means I am again faced with that horrible reality that I am supposed to be raising TWINS. There are supposed to be TWO BABIES here, NOT ONE. Every moment of silence is deafening, because I sit and think about how much busier I should be, how much louder the house should be, how many more toys there should be, how we should still have the second crib set up instead of sitting in a closet, dismantled and useless. How I shouldn't have had to return the double stroller to Babies R Us, my tail between my legs, utterly defeated. How I should have been able to bring my long-awaited, much loved, much anticipated son home from the hospital sleeping soundly in his carrier.

How instead, I brought home a blue gift bag, full of pamphlets and other momentos that I couldn't even bear to look at.

As we approach Easter Sunday, I just don't know how to feel. I know I don't want to sing hymns about Jesus rising from the dead. I don't think I can handle it.

I know I feel broken, and depressed, and angry, and guilty, and I don't feel at all celebratory this season. I know I feel like a part of some big cosmic joke, a pawn in some sick twisted game, and I worry my Faith has been forever broken along with my shattered heart.