Friday, March 28, 2014

Stupid irrationality

Something stupid happened this week.

Shea was sick and missed a few days of school. No big deal, he bounced right back.

Except it ended up being a big deal, because the consequence of this is he missed the narrow window of enrollment for his karate class. Shut out. For stupid, bureaucratic reasons.

On one hand, whatever. I can intellectualize it. Tell myself he's 4, he's adaptable, this is such a first world problem, it's not really that big of a deal. It's not like he's training for the Olympics, for god's sakes.

But if I have learned nothing else over the course of the past year, it's that emotions are totally irrational.

And my irrational emotions tell me that I have totally failed. Again. I blew it. Not only was I completely helpless to save my daughter, but I have to tell my son something that I know is going to upset him greatly, even for a short period of time, because of something I didn't do.

Worlds apart in terms of magnitude, but in my mourning, pregnancy-hormone-addled heart, they kind of feel the same.

The thought of that, the thought of failing another one of my children, even in this small, stupid, meaningless way, is crushing me. If I was not so busy weeping, I'd have to laugh at myself. Crying over a karate form. Good grief.

Another example of never knowing where grief will sneak up on you.

The idea of explaining this situation to Shea - probably over and over again, because that's the way it works with 4 year olds, makes me feel like the old train in one of his favorite books:

I cannot, I cannot, I cannot...

In truth, he'll probably be totally understanding, because that's the type of kid he is. "That's OK, Mommy," he'll often tell me, when I apologize for a slip up on my part or disappointing situation.

He's a great boy. And that makes me feel worse.

The angry part of me is pissed at the bureaucracy of it. It's a bad system, and we got screwed because of it. We were responsible enough to follow the communicable disease policy of the school, and Shea is paying the price now. Angry, carefully worded emails, expressing our displeasure, have been dispatched.

But the raw part of me tells me I should have done more. I should have dropped off the form the one day he was in school that week. I should have dropped off the form, even in his absence. I should have done something. 

Surely there must be something I can do to fix this?

As with Harper, the answer appears to be "no." Nothing to be done. It is what it is.

And the irrational part of me cries and cries, even as I recognize this whole thing is just all so very stupid. So not me, or who I want to be. But irrational stupidity is enough to keep you up at night. As if I needed another incentive for insomnia.

Meanwhile, on the SLOS board, there is an effort to collect all the names and dates and addresses of babies lost to this disease. A sad list that has been getting longer throughout the day. I've not yet added Harper's name. I'm not sure why.

I wish I could sleep.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Are we there yet?

Time has slowed to an agonizingly slow pace even as I am overwhelmed with how quickly everything is flying at me.

The wee hours of the morning are here, and again, I find myself typing instead of sleeping.

The heartburn, the random weeping, the lack of comfortable sleeping positions, the occasional sharp contraction. All normal pregnancy discomforts, all aiding and abetting the anxiety in keeping me awake.

I broke down recently, crying, to Lou. I missed Harper, I told him. It was both so hard and so easy to love her. What if I can't recapture that for this next baby?

I've begun to wonder a lot more about Harper's experiences in this world. Did she feel pain? Was she sad, scared, did she know when she was alone? Did we really make her happy, did we soothe her with our touch?

(Of course, she did, Lou reminded me. She wasn't shy about making it known when she didn't like something.)

Did it hurt, those last moments of dying? Did it help that we were there?

These are the thoughts that hit me when I least expect it, and leave me wide-eyed and thinking, deep into the night, when all I really crave is sleep.

Then there are the daily small minefields.

It happened again today - speaking before a group of Chinese women scientists about career issues and work life balance, I was barraged with kindly meant questions after the talk, "Is this your first?", "This is number 2?", "Another boy? Do you also want a daughter?"

Each question stung.

I answer these now reflexively, inwardly wincing because there's no good choice between answers that are not quite right and answers that are more than a casual interaction deserves.

It reminds me of the weeks after Harper was born and died when I would reflexively answer the question, "How are you?", which I discovered is asked dozens of times in the course of a normal day.

"Fine," I would say, "OK. Hanging in there."

Even when I was as far from fine as possible.

Maybe I should just print a card I could hand to people and walk away. It might say, "This is my third child - we have a four year old boy and a daughter we lost as a newborn. We would love to have a daughter but 1) have no desire for a third child, 2) are unwilling to go through the agony again of conceiving as carriers of a fatal genetic illness; and 3) are too busy being excited by our healthy and happy new baby boy on the way."

Sigh. I shouldn't gripe. The questioner always means well, it's not their fault they're causing unintentional pain.

And as impatient as I am to meet spawn, I'm not ready yet. Too much to do. Too many anniversaries lurking on the horizon.

While feeling the baby kick, a few days ago, Shea remarked, apropos of nothing, "I think baby Harper will be sad because she didn't get to meet the new baby."

Cue immediate tears in maternal eyes.

I stumbled on the answer. "I like to believe she'll still be with us in spirit," I told Shea, "We'll still remember her, she'll still be part of our family, even if she can't really meet the new baby in person."

Although I don't think he really understood what I was trying to say, Shea is looking forward to spring largely because he wants very badly to plant the seed-embedded paper heart sent to us by hospice in memory of Harper. "We need to plant Harper's seed," he tells me, at least once a week, fretting over whether the snow will melt and pondering where best to locate them. He is keeping her spirit alive in his own way.

That's my boy.

Good night, Harper bean. I'll be thinking of you on the day your brother is born and every day in between. Maybe that's spirit enough.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Fear

You want the truth?

I'm very scared.

It's not something I like to admit, even to myself, except in the deepest, darkest hours of the night. These are thoughts I lock away, in a tiny black box, at the back of my mind. Otherwise, I would go crazy.

Once your innocence is lost, it is gone forever. This should be an easy pregnancy. Everything is perfect. All indications are that spawn is completely healthy, right on track. If this was my 2nd pregnancy, right after my perfectly easy, textbook experience with Shea, I would be relaxed, unworried.

Instead I worry all the time.

When something is seen, it cannot be unseen. I've been introduced to the world of support groups, in which perinatal loss includes not only people like me, who have lost newborns, but also those who have suffered stillbirth or other third trimester loss. I have heard heartbreaking stories, so many, many stories, of little ones lost at birth or at 30+ weeks of pregnancy.

And the thing is, most of the time, they thought everything was fine, until it wasn't. One day the baby's fine, the next the movement stops.

So, I worry. I never feel like it's safe. I feel like I can't become complacent, lest I jinx myself.

Anecdotes aren't data. I know the odds are on my side. I've done this before, I have a beautiful little boy to prove that there is such a thing as an easy, stress-free pregnancy. Happy endings do happen. Heck, happy endings happen most of the time.

I don't want to rush anything. I want spawn to cook as long as possible. May 2nd sounds like a great day to be born, and that's what I want the plan to be.

But 6 weeks is suddenly feeling interminable.

"In the home stretch!", people say. "Almost there! It's coming up fast!"

All true, but the closer we get to the finish line, the more anxious I feel. I just want to curl up on my bed and gestate. Just lie there and focus on my baby boy kicking and growing until I can actually hold him.

I'm so frustrated, I feel like this should be getting easier, but it's getting harder. I'm distracted and manic and lethargic and overly sensitive, all at the same time.

So I force myself not to worry. I ignore the anxiety. It is too paralyzing, and I have no time for it. I put one foot in front of the other, I get through every day, I do what I need to do.

Still... it's what I think about when I wake up in the middle of the night.

I miss normal anxiety, the reasonable worry of "how do I do this?" or "will I be able to handle two kids?" or "do I have everything I need?"

For the first time, tonight, I read through the notes that people wrote for us after Harper's memorial service. I needed that. It made me cry. Quite a lot, actually. It is making me cry now. But it also reminded me that along with the fear and the changed world view and the anxiety and the sadness came a lot of love, a lot of positive emotions. A lot of lives touched.

Like, Shea, who is terribly sick today, reminded me that the worry doesn't end when they enter the world. It never really stops. All you can do is muddle your way through, do the best you can, and hope your love is enough.

Just 6 more weeks.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Happy 11 months, bean

The funny thing about having a blog is it allows you remember what was going on exactly a year ago.

I was living through an emotional rollercoaster, terribly worried about you, Harper. I was getting steroid injections, in anticipation of your early arrival, and switching to the high risk practice at Georgetown. I remember lying awake for hours at night, desperate to feel every little movement to help reassure me you were OK. Such a contrast to the nonstop kicking of spawn, which keeps me up at all hours in a completely different manner.

But even in those darkest hours, I don't think I ever really believed you wouldn't be here. Even at my most scared, I don't think I ever really believed you would die. Dying babies were not a part of my vocabulary then. If I did think of it, it was quickly dismissed as too worse a worse case scenario to happen.

But here it is, 11 months after you were born. And you're not here, because you did die. To this day, thinking that or typing that makes me flinch inside. I prefer hiding behind the softer euphemisms for death - we lost you, you passed.

Your father and I have begun talking about whether to have some sort of unveiling ceremony on your one year birthday. We will most likely be in the hospital, with spawn, on the one year anniversary of your death.

I strangely find myself jealous sometimes of those who have undergone stillbirth; they have only one date each month haunting their calendars.

(Lou and I recently sat down with a lawyer to talk about estate planning. In a rhetorical question, he said, "Most places a death certificate looks just like a birth certificate, do you know what the two differences are?" "Yes," I told him, "date and cause of death." I know this because of you, Harper - I was so struck with how nearly identical your birth certificate and death certificate looked.)

And my calendar does feel haunted right now. A bizarre mix of practical and emotional considerations.

April 18th, you would have been one, May 5th, the year anniversary of your death. In between? The birth of spawn on May 2nd, Shea's birthday on April 25th, your joint due date on April 26th.

Spawn's bris would be May 9th, and we've thought about shifting the celebration - bagels! lox! baby passing! - until the next day, Saturday, so we could celebrate with more friends. But May 10th is the one year anniversary of your memorial service, and I can't decide if holding a celebration that day would be fitting or dishonorable.

May 11th? Mother's Day. The day spent planting the azaleas from your memorial service in our yard. Azaleas that I'm afraid have not survived the winter.

I had a whole vision for this year - our 10th wedding anniversary, Lou's 40th birthday. We'd go on a big celebratory trip with Shea and with you, Harper, who would have been about the same age as Shea the first time we took him overseas.

Now we'll have a newborn.

Last week, I had my final ultrasound appointment. Spawn is still measuring perfectly. It's funny, bean, to think he weighs almost as much now, at 32+ weeks, as you did when you were born. He still has 3 or so pounds to gain. You never managed to do that.

Hello, spawn


But because of you, I feel like I know what he looks like. I remember what almost 5 pounds looks like, what it feels like. I can picture spawn because of you, Harper.

At this very hour, 11 months ago, I was figuratively climbing the walls of the recovery room, trying to figure out why I couldn't see my baby, waiting for news, any news, that you were OK.

It wasn't OK, of course. And here we are.

I wish I could clear my calendar of emotional landmines. I wish it was as easy as deleting an appointment in Outlook.

Will the pictures around the house be enough, bean? Will this blog be sufficient? Will your brothers grow up thinking of the sister who's not there as part of our family, or will you be too easy to shrug off, an artifact of their parent's distant path? Shea, at least, still remembers you, still talks about you, recognizes you in pictures. How long will that last? When there's another baby's pictures gracing our walls, will he be able to tell the difference? What will spawn think, through the years, of the sister he never met? Without whom he would not exist?

You will always be our second child, Harper bean. And, if nothing else, I will do my best to make sure we never forget you were, however briefly, a bittersweet beloved part of this family.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

The road not taken

As the day of spawn's arrival approaches, I find myself thinking a lot about what life would be like if everything had gone according to plan. What if I'd just had a baby? A normal, healthy baby?

He or she would be close to a year old now. Would she already have taken first steps? Would we be planning a joint 4 year old and 1 year old birthday party? Would I be exhausted from running around after two kids instead of exhausted from running around after one while hugely pregnant? Would I be able to say we'd taken a family trip to Australia, or would that be a plan for the future?

Would we have already given away or sold the bassinet, the bouncer, the baby swing? Would all those tiny newborn clothes be on someone else's baby by now? What would be on those shelves in the guest room that currently serve as an alter to our Harper bean, filled with mementos and memories of her too short life? What would our family photo wall be like if Harper's picture wasn't nestled among those of Shea and Lou and I? If instead of a baby frozen in time, there were photos of a baby transforming during that first year of life? Pictures of Shea and a sibling, growing side by side?

How would I be different?

What would I be like if I hadn't had my soul ripped out and slowly recovered? If I hadn't truly experienced mourning and grief? If I remained oblivious to the friends and colleagues and strangers around me with similar experiences? If I hadn't learned to witness joy through the unflinching filter of pain? If I had never learned that sharing pain, and exposing every emotion, every moment of unending grief, could be the most freeing pathway of all? If the hours and hours I've spent crying were instead spent living or maybe taking for granted all of the blessing around me?

Would Shea still be the empathetic, sweet boy he's become, if he hadn't witnesses firsthand his mother losing a child?

Spawn is kicking me, as if to say, don't forget me. I am here, mommy, and I would not exist if not for Harper bean. If things had gone as planned, there would be no spawn to love and raise and sing to.

And that is no small thing.



Wednesday, March 5, 2014

No time for contemplation

Dear Harper bean,

There is no time for quiet contemplation on this, the 10 month anniversary of your death. Life is busy, almost crazily so, with commitments, professional and personal. I read the sad stories of other SLO parents struggling with their little ones and feel guilty as I realize that I could not be doing half of what I'm doing now had you lived. The sense of relief and feelings of grief are in constant battle in my soul, and I sometimes wish their was a guidebook to navigating this complicated path.

Your daddy and I went away for a weekend, without Shea, and were truly happy to spend some time together, relaxing. I felt like it was our first getaway alone since you were born, but I realized we'd had another, last June, for a wedding. Comparing the two made me realize how horribly, horrifically sad I was then. I remember having to escape from the wedding crowd, to run off crying alone behind some bushes, terrible, wrenching sobs. It wasn't relaxing, I was too pent up with nervous energy, with grief, with too many tears to count.

Your mama's come a long way, baby.

These new sparks of happiness have awoken in me a need to celebrate the spawn. It has begun to bug me that we had such lovely baby showers and a bris for Shea, and such an amazing memorial service for you, I want to celebrate the life of this new baby, too. We've begun to talk about a bris - likely to be on a workday, so a little complicated. Then I catch myself comparing your memorial service to a celebration for spawn, and it gives me pause, it confuses me. On one hand, I feel odd having an event for you, my child who didn't live, while not having an equally grand event for the spawn, our new healthy boy. On the other hand, as Lou put it, we'll have more than one opportunity to celebrate spawn's life, something we did not get with you.

That thought was enough to set the fear in, because if you've taught me nothing, bean, is that you can't take a fragile life for granted. It makes me want to celebrate every day in the life of Shea and spawn, because every day I get with them is worth ceremonializing.

This is the picture that hangs on the wall of our bedroom, Harper girl, and it reminds me every day how lucky I was to hold your hand, even for a short time. Between the chaotic moments of a busy life, I am thinking of you today, my love.


Monday, March 3, 2014

Magic fingers...

Shea has been very into counting lately; they've been working their way up to 100 in preschool.

As I prepared to clip his nails the other day, he stopped me and said, "Wait, Mommy, I have to count them first. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten! Ten fingers!"

I complimented him on his counting and began to clip his nails.

"Everyone has ten fingers," he informed me.

I paused. "Harper bean didn't," I reminded him. "She had an extra finger, so she had eleven fingers."

He thought about that for a moment, "But did she have a pinky and a thumb?"

"She sort of had two pinkies," I told him. "That's where her extra finger was."

"When she growed up, would she have ten fingers?"

I brushed past the truth of Harper never growing up and instead said, "No. She was born with eleven fingers. That's just how many she had, so she would have had that many growing up. Some people just have extra fingers."

He thought some more as I finished clipping his nails. "Mommy," he told me, leaning closer, "I think Harper bean's extra finger was magic!!"

I thought about Harper's quirky little extra finger and smiled. Magic indeed.