A Birthday Party and a Facebook Event

My daughter’s birthday party was two days after her real birthday, which was also Elias’s birthday and angelversary. (Angelversary is just so much easier than saying one year since he died or death anniversary…I don’t really believe he’s literally an angel. I guess it’s metaphoric in a way.)

Her party was…exhausting. A bit robotic and “sterile” feeling, being in a community center (we didn’t have room in our home for the number of guests). I am not complaining; please know that. But oh my, it was difficult to go through the motions and not lose my mind. And I felt like people were looking at me waiting for me to freak out. Did I have fun? Of course. Do I realize how lucky I am to have been able to throw a birthday party? Of course. Yes, I’m grateful to have a living child out of my pregnancy, and I fully realize that I am blessed to have her, and that this anniversary would have been much more difficult without being a member of the “parents of living children” club. But on the other hand, it IS much more complicated to have a pregnancy end in both a loss and in a living child at the same time, and I can’t pretend that to not be the case. Celebrating their birthday was very complex, and it took me months to figure out what to do. Same day? Different day? If they were both alive, obviously I would celebrate their birthday together, but is it not so totally different to celebrate the first birthday of a living child than it is to honor the anniversary of your child’s entrance into heaven? Those are just two completely different things, and to try to blend them together did not feel very natural to me. So I was left unsure of how any of it would really turn out. I just had to move forward and start planning what I could.

I knew that I wanted to mentally step outside of the whole “babylossmama” mentality and just focus on my daughter as much as possible, and if you judge me for that, fine, whatever, but you have to understand that I did not want to rob her of any joy that day or rob myself of the celebration of finally having a living child to celebrate a birthday for. (I’ve had two losses, remember, and both traumatic in very different ways, so this has been a long road for me.) I didn’t want to stay glued to the couch and wish my life away. I didn’t want to spend the months and weeks leading up to my twins’ birthday feeling sorry for myself. I wanted to do (mostly) what I would have done had I been preparing for the first birthday party of a healthy singleton baby. Call that denial, call it a defense mechanism, call it crazy, call it whateverthehellyouwant, but I wanted to do all of those things I would have done had I NOT been a grieving mother. So I did.

I filled a scrapbook someone had given me at my baby shower, and I didn’t edit any of the pages. I remembered in the early days hating that scrapbook and thinking none of it would ever apply anymore after Elias died, but it was a gorgeous scrapbook that someone had put a lot of time and effort and care and love into, and it needed my addition of family photos. So I spent weeks putting the photos inside organized by theme: pregnancy, shower, birth stats (I included a photo of clay molds of Elias’s feet opposite of Evelyn’s photo), bringing Evy home (that part stung the most to put together), bath time, meal time, family time, etc. I also put together a weekly photo album of my daughter (I am a photo freak), which was something I had dreamed about doing even before I was ever pregnant. I had seen such a photo album at my niece’s first birthday party, and I had thought about how intensely I wanted an album like that for my own child someday. So it was very therapeutic to put that together and remember that even though my life has been filled with such pain, there were times when I wondered if I’d ever get to parent a living child, and I didn’t have to wonder or fear ever again because in my hand was an album documenting the weekly changes in my gorgeous daughter. These things I enjoyed doing, but I admit I also did them partly in defiance, resisting the urge to lay around and pity myself and get lost in my grief, thus missing out on the simple joys I would have had as a mother to a healthy singleton baby. Mostly it just felt great to put together these keepsake albums for my little girl. I was actually really proud of myself upon their completion. I haven't been proud of much of anything in a really long time. (Irrational guilt gets in the way, really.)

As for the invites to her party, I made sure her brother’s presence was incorporated into the design. A girly owl graced the invitation, and there was a blue butterfly flying on its own happy little journey. I cried when I found the invite on Etsy. It was just so incredibly perfect to represent my babies. That invite set the theme and tone for the whole party. I wanted it to be girly and chic, with coordinating decorations, and so “mod hippie owl girl” became the motif. However, many of the decorations also included butterflies. My absolute favorite part of the party in terms of remembering Elias was that I had made and ordered (online) plantable seed cards in the shape of a butterfly to hand out as a party favor in his memory. My husband agreed that as much as we wanted the party to be her special day, we also wanted to include Elias in a more obvious way, as the first anniversary of his passing was a very difficult milestone for us to approach and pass. I think in the future we will be okay with his presence being a quieter more subtle one, but for this first one we wanted it to be clear and not only honor him but also send a message to guests that we recognize him as our son. I got the impression that people were really touched by the favors. And honestly, their reaction wouldn’t have mattered to me in the end either way, because I did what I could to elbow space for my son in the world (as my friend Sarah would say), and that’s all I can do. Finally, we had Elias’s name in the sand (what you see at the top of my blog) on display, just in case people didn’t pick up on the butterfly symbolism. We also did a quick balloon release, but I don’t really want to talk about that. It was rushed, and I felt flustered, and I felt like I looked like “that crazy lady” trying to get people to participate, and I felt a little like I was going to stab someone with the pink plastic cake knives if people didn’t come outside, but whatever. I am judged in my grief, and I know that. But I have to be brave and grieve anyway and do what I feel to be right.

All in all, the day of Evelyn’s party was nothing in comparison to her actual birthday. (Their actual birthday.) I will have to save that for my next post. But I will say that I put together a Facebook event in the weeks prior called “Remembering Elias”, and I can’t tell you how good that felt to do. To have something “out there” just for him, just as her party was (at least mostly) focusing on her. That balance is so difficult to strike, and I like to think I’ve managed to do it pretty well. It was very healing for me to also “explain” to people what caused his loss, as we had never been able to do that. I know they aren’t owed an explanation; it was more for me than anything else (that part of it). It was my way of saying I wasn’t going to hide in shame anymore, that I was going to talk about it, that this was something completely rare and unexpected and quick, and I’m not going to succumb to pressures to keep it hushed. The Facebook event went really well. It was amazing how many people sent their support from all over the globe. Countless people made remembrance pictures in honor of Elias (which was a suggestion I had made on the event page, because I wanted to be able to add to his album on FB). I love having an album on FB just for Elias, one that I can add to, just as I add to my other albums regularly. I know this probably sounds silly, and I know it’s just FB, but for me that helps me “elbow space” for him. As I’m uploading “one year old!” photos of Evy, I can upload remembrance photos of him, and the sting lessens a tiny bit.

I received heartfelt notes all week long in honor of Elias. I received dozens and dozens of photos from people for his album. Every single one made me tear up – grateful tears that my son was being recognized, that he mattered, that he matters still, and that he will always matter. I received flowers – gorgeous flowers with butterflies sticking out of them – in honor of my twins from a woman I’ve never met in person but feel so connected to. She also lost her son from a boy girl twin pregnancy very close to term. I cried when I got those flowers, and I brought them to my daughter’s party. It’s not every day you get flowers sent to you from someone who lives in another country – that was so incredibly special to me. Another friend of mine in the U.K. attended a candlelight vigil and remembered Elias. Candles were lit globally for him. I received ornaments in the mail - five – in honor of Elias for our Christmas tree. How lovely to have these and to know that we will be hanging them every single year. The outpouring of artistic expression, of love, of grief, and of remembrance for Elias moved me and changed me in ways that I can’t quite articulate. It’s taken me over a month to even write about it here. More to come in Part Two…where I share their actual birthday with you.

"Friends"

So even though I'm kind of in a place of nonsharing, I must share this. Staying busy HELPS me with my grief. It DISTRACTS me. It gets me OUT OF MY HEAD, out of my nasty thoughts and emotions, out of my pity party. You know what I've come to notice over the past year? If I want to do something with friends, 90% it is up to ME to get things going, invite people to do something, etc. I have always been THAT person - one who likes to get people together for parties big and little, one who likes to catch up with a friend over lunch. After our loss, I just want to say, WHERE THE HELL ARE ALL OF MY FRIENDS? I feel comfortable saying that here because by and large my "friends" do not know about this blog. But seriously, WTF. Do I have "dead baby plague"?

Further, I want to say, on behalf of myself and everyone else who is facing isolation from friends who put little to no effort into the relationship, do people REALLY expect grieving parents to be the ones to put effort into maintaining relationships?!?!? I am not saying that losing a child means you get to just throw your hands up and let everyone else do the work in maintaining a friendship, but seriously, you can NOT expect much from people who are facing the most horrible thing imaginable in their lives. I, us, ALL of us out here, deserve to have friends who step up to the plate and make things happen. We shouldn't have to lose our friends on top of our babies, unless we are being complete jerks and ignoring everyone's calls for months on end and unable to emerge from our hermit-like state.

Today I had a coffee date with a friend, one who actually puts effort into seeing me and having a real conversation with me, which was nice. I have a few friends like this, thankfully. But seriously. People know I teach, and they know I am on break for two weeks, and yet I can count on one hand how many people have actually contacted me to make concrete plans to get together. Two coffee dates, one lunch date, and one NYE party invitation.

I am grateful for those four people and the effort they put forth. I really am. But there is WAY too much down time around here. (It doesn't help that my husband could care less about having a social life and puts NO effort into inviting people over or getting out of the house.) What really burns my butt is that I have had friends completely disregard my twins' birthday and subsequent party. And I mean, completely. As in they didn't RSVP no (it was regrets only) so we expected them, then they didn't show up, and then they never told me why after the fact. (Please tell me if you think I'm over-reacting!) I find that a really hard pill to swallow, considering anyone who knows me knows how difficult and complicated their birthday would be for me and how much I NEED the support of my friends and family. I know that the world doesn't revolve around me (clearly, and thankfully), and that everyone has their own personal struggles and even tragedies, but that is just ONE TIME the entire year that I think really defines for me who is a friend and who isn't. Even people who weren't included in their birthday party gave me cards, little gifts in memory of Elias, or just a kind word or hug letting me know they're thinking of me during this complicated time of joy and sorrow. I am left feeling a little abandoned and much confused about those who didn't.

You know what's messed up? I'm kinda happy about this post, because it's the first time since my son dying that I've been able to get kinda fired up about something like this. That's progress in a way, right? I mean this is progress compared to, "I don't care what anyone does ever. Nothing matters. My son is dead, end of story." I am actually capable of getting fired up about people being assbags. I know people have their own lives, and I'm happy for that, but if they made little to no effort to be of any support to me this year or ever get me out of this house or out of my head for a while??? Well, let's just say I'm hearing what they are saying loud and clear without their having said a word. Which is pretty much the whole point. Silence speaks volumes, doesn't it?

A place of non-sharing, one year out.

I don’t know why but right now it’s just becoming more and more difficult to share anything here. I know that not many people “in real life” even know about my blog, but it IS public. I don’t want to go private at this point. But some days it just hits me that this is where I share some extremely personal thoughts, and I just don’t know if that’s okay or not. Grief is a private thing, right? So why did I even create this blog? I’m asking myself these questions and not coming up with answers.

I feel selfish in that I write more here about myself than I write here about my son. It makes me sad that I don’t know more about him. It leaves me feeling so heartbroken and empty that I don’t know what he would have been like or who he would have turned out to be. (And while I'm thinking of it, if you'll allow this tangent, let me just say this. I can’t stand it when people say, “Oh it must be SO difficult to look at your daughter and think about how your son would be doing the exact same thing had he lived.”…and yes, this is actually something I have heard literally and several variations of it…How freaking idiotic can people be? I don’t think there’s a set of twins out there who do the exact same thing 24/7; in fact, I’m pretty sure that would be impossible…And just because they were born on the same day doesn’t mean they would have hit the same milestones at the same time…They were over a pound apart weight-wise at birth, just as one example…OH and they were also different genders! And we can’t forget the tiny little fact that they were two completely separate individual human beings, different DNA and all that, can we? Apparently, some people DO forget. Two.separate.eggs.two.separate.sperm. I think I should start busting out diagrams for people when they piss me off.)

So back to my question, which is by writing here am I really honoring my son’s memory? It sure doesn’t feel like it. I don’t feel like I am ever doing right by him, just as I rarely ever feel I am doing right by my daughter. A friend and coworker the other day described me as living life with “an impossible situation”. It’s an understatement, sure, but Truth. Nothing I ever do feels right. Grieving while I have a beautiful daughter snoozing in her crib upstairs seems horrible. Enjoying life while I have a son who never got to breathe a breath seems horrible.

Maybe I should just try to be numb all the time and not feel anything so I can stop feeling so freaking guilty about whatever I’m feeling. But that would require drugs, and I’m not all about those.

So that’s it. I’m in a place of nonsharing, and it really sucks. I feel I am betraying Elias by not writing here enough. More guilt. *sigh* I'm also dealing with not knowing where I stand with almost everyone in my life. I see why the statistics are not in favor of couples staying married after a loss. I see why Those Who Have Lost Before speak of losing friends and family after a loss. Early out, I thought NO way, that won't happen to me. Well, a year out, it's happening, some of it at least. I just don't know who I can trust or lean on anymore. I feel VERY judged to still be so sad and be over a year out, like there's an expiration date on my grief, and we're past the point where it's acceptable. Like at some point you are seen as "the crazy lady with the dead baby" instead of a human being with a right to grieve, a person who has been thrust into an impossible situation every minute of every day for the rest of her life.

Soon

Soon I will update you on what ONE YEAR post-loss feels like. That was yesterday for us. Today we are preparing for our daughter's birthday bash for tomorrow. I will say this - I'm feeling pulled apart by the seams - grieving my son who I wish had turned one year old yesterday while celebrating my daughter who DID turn a year old. I put together a Facebook event and was overwhelmed by the support of both people in AND out of the loss community. It helps, in my opinion, to allow them to have their own separate days (as much as possible). Grieving and partying at the same time don't really jive, do they? *sigh* I will write a "one year" post soon.

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???

Are you seeing (or have you seen) a therapist after babyloss?

If so, if you could so kindly leave a comment answering the following questions, that would be awesome. (A fellow BLM of mine offered to do a training for the Postpartum Health Alliance in San Diego for therapists on Perinatal Loss.) She would like to know 1. What did you find most helpful from your therapist?, and 2. What did you find least helpful from your therapist? My own therapist experiences I will gladly share with you (and her) soon, but I am exhausted and, well, it's not a post I can just throw together. I have had some wonderful experiences with therapists (well, one of the three I've seen), and I've had some pretty bad experiences as well. So if you are willing to share to help my friend gain some insight for her training, share away. (For the record, my friend is also a loss mom. She lost one of her twins the day before her induction date at 38 weeks. So don't be shy - she "gets it"!)

Missing Him.

What would he have been dressed as? I really don't know for certain. What I do know is that I would have loved to have had two baby pumpkins to lug around on Halloween. I look at her and wonder what he'd be like, who he'd look like, and how they'd interact with one another. My heart is so full of love for both of them yet so broken and full of missing him. I didn't expect this holiday to hit me so freaking hard, but it did. It's not like I had the twins' costumes all planned out and coordinated with one another; I wasn't that kind of twin mama. I wanted to celebrate them as separate individuals as much as possible and maybe would have done some cutesy stuff like that once or twice, but not much beyond.

But then, obviously, it isn't about the costumes. Or loss of being able to dress up both of my babies together, coordinating costumes or not. It's about the loss of a HUMAN BEING. The loss of my son. His first Halloween - what a stupid silly trivial loss in the big scheme of things. But the whole of the loss of him, the entirety of it, is just too much to process at once. So I focus on one thing at a time, and I mourn that thing. And this Halloween, I mourned the loss of purchasing his costume, dressing him up, and taking him door to door. My husband and I should have both had a baby in our arms instead of taking turns with one. We should have had people oooohing and ahhhhhing over our twins.

A good friend of mine brought her husband and daughter over (she was born three days after our twins), and at each house we trick or treated at, I kept worrying that the people would think they were both mine. Or that we would see confused expressions. But since there were clearly four adults and two babies, it didn't cause any confusion. I was relieved but also a little sad to think there couldn't possibly be anybody who may have thought they were both mine, remembering I had been pregnant with two. I wondered if people forget so quickly. But then, anyone who knew were were having two also knew he had died. So I don't know why that was even on my radar.

Once back at home, we turned the porch light on to let kids outside know we had candy to give out. After all, we couldn't keep our girls out long. It was chilly and nearing bed time. I thought about how lucky we were to know this couple. I thought about how at LEAST Evelyn would have a same-aged friend to play with at times. I thought about how much more difficult it would have been to trick or treat without this couple and their little girl and how without them there I would have felt the holiday anti-climactic and perhaps even lonely.

Suddenly, a little boy stumbled up the stoop, peered inside our screen door, saw the girls crawling around, and said, "Wow! Two babies!"

I felt my heart stop.

"You have TWO babies? You have a LOT of children!"

He was maybe six years old. He had no idea he was tearing the heart out of my chest and ripping it in half. I couldn't say anything. I just threw a piece of candy in his bag and didn't even look at him. I gave him an extra piece even, as if that would make him go away faster.

If the word "twins" had come out of his mouth, I would have lost it right that second. I waited for it, having a mini panic attack of sorts. If he had said that word, I would have been a blubbering mess, crying all over innocent children's candy. Somehow, it didn't.

When I went to bed that night, I just couldn't stop crying. Sobbing. My husband was already fast asleep, and there I was, shaking the bed with my sobs. (He's a very heavy sleeper.) I finally just got out of bed and took a shower. Somehow, that had a calming effect, and I was able to fall asleep after. But oh, the longing was so strong. I felt like I was going to die, and I don't mean that as an exaggeration.

In those intense moments of grief, it feels like it will never get better, the pain will never subside, the air will never be easy to breathe, your heart will never feel light and free, and joy will never return. Suddenly, it seems so reasonable that people die of a broken heart, and I just wait for mine to stop working, but for some reason it keeps beating.

"Help, I'm alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer." ~Metric

Happy 1st Halloween, baby boy. Oh, how I miss you. I carved this pumpkin just for you. I wanted to carve one for you, because this would have been your first Halloween, and you are still a part of our family. You will always be a part of our family. A butterfly pumpkin for my precious son Elias. It's not enough, and that breaks my heart, too. Nothing is never enough. Nothing can ever be enough for me to feel I am honoring you properly. I want to go back and save you. Anything short of that just isn't good enough.

I love you, to the moon and back, my forever baby, my son.