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.

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.

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.

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.

Hormones + mourning = mess

I am a blubbering mess.

I've decided to blame pregnancy hormones. Because it's the only reasonable explanation for why I've been bursting into tears at the drop of the hat. I am a blubbering mess. With heartburn.

With the tears has come full blown nesting. Which has unintentionally led to more tears. In rearranging a corner of our bedroom to make way for a new chair (for baby nursing), I discovered an innocent looking bag lurking in the corner. A bag, it turns out, used to throw stuff in hastily, rather than putting it away.

From the time of Harper.

There were receiving blankets from the hospital. Extra pumping supplies. Hospital socks. And a letter.

A letter to Shea. Written, by me, for his third birthday. This is my tradition: letters to my son on his birthday, and sometimes in between, so one day he can read and know what he was like growing up. How much his mother loved him.

This letter was written the night before Harper was born.

I specifically remember writing it. Purposefully writing it before the baby was born, because I wanted to capture that last moment of his being an only child. I had come home early from the TEDMED conference, skipped the party, so I could have those last hours with only Shea, and I wrote that letter late at night, after tucking him in.

I was a blubbering mess then, too.

The letter is mostly a love letter to Shea. But I do mention that I'm worried the new baby might have serious health issues, and that I'm worried how that might affect him, our family.

With everything that happened in the weeks after, I guess I never tucked it into his baby book.

It's hard to read now, because I can barely imagine that time, worried, but not knowing what was to come. Having no idea that I was writing to my son about a sibling who would no longer exist three weeks after that letter was written.

As Shea's fourth birthday approaches, I've been thinking of that annual letter again. As impossible as it is to capture in words everything he means to me and every way in which he's evolved this past year, it is more impossible still to express how much in particular he meant to me this year, this year when so very much has changed. How much he has kept me alive through the sadness, how kind and sweet and empathetic he has been, even though he doesn't fully understand why I'm mourning, what makes me cry. He is still there with a hug, with a smile, with an offer to help me feel better.

And I feel nervous, writing to him at the dawn on another baby's birth, worried I might jinx it all again.

The tears fall.

Other things that have brought me to tears in the past 48 hours? A note, unearthed from who knows where, that appeared on our dining room floor, which was once attached to a bouquet of flowers sent for Harper's memorial. A small miscommunication with Lou over when to meet up this afternoon. The happy thought of feeling my new son on my chest for the first time, and the joy and relief that will bring after all the fear of Harper's birth. Not being able to open a can with a slightly bent can opener. Estate planning, because it's the grown up thing to do, but no longer with the naive belief that bad things don't happen to good people. Frustration at the yard work needing to be done. Watching Shea fumble in his attempts to invite friends to play at the playground or the ice rink, and the sudden worry that time and society will change my kind, sweet boy into something less guilelessly friendly, less innocent.

The overwhelming urge to protect my children from anything and everything that might hurt them. Even after having been made painfully, horrifically aware that sometimes that's impossible to do. Knowing that no matter how much you do, children get hurt, children can suffer, children can die.

It makes me want to run upstairs and hug Shea and never let him go. But I resist, because he's had a busy weekend, a happy weekend, and needs his sleep.

And so I cry. Typing this, I am angrily wiping away tears, because I'm sick of this irrational crying.

I feel like I can't possible sleep until I purge these stupid tears. The combination of out of whack hormones and mourning is a powerful and unpleasant combination.

Ugh.

Almost ten months

Dear Harper bean,

It is almost time to celebrate (to mourn?) another month's birthday that you'll miss. Double digits. Ten months since the day you were born.

I had some quiet time today, and it is during those quiet times that my thoughts often turn to you. Not that there aren't still noisier, more obvious reminders. A former colleague asking how the baby was doing. Shea asking whether we would plant "Harper's heart" in the spring - a paper heart filled with seeds sent by hospice. Thoughts about avoiding May 5th, the date of your death, when scheduling my c-section.

But it is during the quiet times that I think of YOU. As your new brother cheerfully kicks and wiggles, I remember those long, worried hours, lying on my side, begging you to make those faint reassuring movements. The days spent combing the internet, reassuring myself it would all be OK, talking to you, reassuring you it would be OK, too. The painful uphill journey of falling in love with you and the painful end-of-the-world feeling of letting you go.

There are still days when I wonder how life could possibly have moved on.

Sometimes I slip, and I think of the new baby as "bean". Such a natural name for a little one growing inside of you. But that's not something I want to take away from you, Harper bean. So much a part of your identify, in my memories.

I don't even know what I miss any more. You. Or the idea of you. All I know is that I still cry when I think about you. A lot of things still make me sad. A lot of emotions still feel out of control. Maybe it'll always be that way.

Ten months. We're coming up on the time period in which you've been gone longer than I knew you. Pregnancy plus two and a half weeks of life. Yet there are still days I can't believe it all happened.

Oh, Harper bean, as time goes on, I'm finding it harder and harder to sort through the jumble of feelings thinking about you triggers. Time is softening the edges, not always blunting the pain, but blurring the focus. So I have to squint to feel clearly.

But I can still remember what it felt like to hold you. I think I will always remember that.

9 months and still counting

I wonder if the question, "How many kids do you have?" will get better or worse after the spawn is born?

I was faced with that very question recently, when I ran into a former co-worker in the grocery store, someone I once worked with on a daily basis but hadn't seen in a couple of years. "I notice you're expecting," she said, "what number is this for you?"

I totally blew it. Stumbled. Stammered. Finally blurted out, "I have a three and a half year old son, Shea." She probably wondered what sort of idiot didn't know how many kids she has. Maybe she chalked it up to pregnancy brain.

"I just don't being it up," Lou noted. "I don't feel like people have to know, like I have to explain it to them."

True for me, too, more or less, more and more over time. I don't raise Harper's loss with strangers or acquaintances. It's not a topic I raise unsolicited. I'm able to answer most of the inevitable pregnancy-related questions without batting an eyelash.

But it is the people I know well, or used to know well, who somehow are just not in the loop of bad news that throw me for a different sort of loop. When is it too much catching up? It feels dishonest to me either way: either I'm forcing it by inserting the "oh, by the way, 2013 was the worst year of my life because my daughter died unexpectedly" into a casual conversation; or I'm ignoring a major, life-altering event in speaking with someone who I know or knew well. Thus the stammer. And the obsessive re-analysis of the conversation.

Ironically, I spent the anniversary of Harper's death back on Georgetown's campus, teaching my class. At about the same time Lou and I were desperately driving to Georgetown in response to the doctor's call, I was driving away, to return home. Today reminded me of the power of keeping busy. It was a tremendously busy day, culminating with a three hour class, and I had very little time to feel sad, even as the date was the first thought on my mind when I awoke.

My only break for a few tears occurred, oddly enough, through a viral Facebook gimmick, which automatically generated a movie of your history on FB. My two most popular posts? "Two pregnancies. Exact same due date. Why yes, I DO have a Ph.D. in reproduction!" and "thanks to Montgomery County hospice, we're going to bringing our little Harper home on Monday!" That last one hit especially hard. I am still sad that we never had the chance to bring our baby home, although I wonder if that would leave my house haunted by ghostly memories?

Another grieving mother, who recently lost her beautiful baby girl, posted on the SLOS board about her daughter's death, ending with the plaintive question, "What do you do when you lose a child?"

I hate that I can answer that question.