The Wrong Conversation

Dear Analin,

I'm being told how to feel a lot lately. Or maybe, to be more accurate, how not to feel.

Don't be mad, it's not worth it. Whomever you're mad at doesn't understand anyway. Don't waste your energy. They'll never change. It won't change, so don't be so upset about it. Don't tell anyone, you don't want to hurt their feelings, too.

And I get mad all over again.

Because you know what? My feelings are valid. Emotions are personal and sharing them with someone shows how much I trust them. It's not to be told I shouldn't feel the way I feel.

We all feel. Until we're told not to. Repress that crap. Then get emotionally and mentally crippled because of it. And then, oh my goodness, why didn't you just tell me you felt that way?

I hate it. I can't even explain how much I hate it and I want to scream - literally - at the person telling me I cannot feel that way because it isn't good for me or for someone else. Well, guess what. That's how I feel. Deal with it. And maybe I just won't share with you anymore if you can't support me in it.

Feeling is feeling. Be empathetic when you can, sympathetic when you can't. But I wish people would just let people feel.

The conversation shouldn't be about not feeling. The conversation should be about not acting on those feelings. Honestly, that's the conversation parents need to have with their children. That's how we teach your brothers. Okay, be mad, be sad, but don't hit or throw a temper tantrum or scream at me. Feel your feelings but control your actions.

I feel like I could be a heck of a lot more eloquent about this, but the fact of the matter is, I'm mad. I'm in a lot of pain and I get mad because of it. I get sad because of it. I feel helpless and out of control. Telling me not to feel how I feel, not to get upset about something out of my control, these are things I know. I know how I feel isn't necessarily logical or productive. Guess what? Knowing that doesn't stop one ounce of the feeling.

And this is why that conversation on control is so important. These letters to you help me maintain my outer control. Talking to your daddy does the same. I wish I could say the same for other people, but that's just not the case. And, if I'm to be fair, they get to feel the way they feel, too. That just means we keep that part of ourselves away from each other, or ourselves completely, depending on how bad it is.

Mine isn't bad. It just breaks my heart a little bit. I need to share how I feel now to be able to feel better later. I just wish it was understood I mean to vent, not to model my life on those feelings.

So, yeah. The beginning of year 2 without you isn't all that great. </3 I miss you so much. Your loss has changed me a lot. I was never this vocal before with my emotions. I guess I never had to be.

I love you like crazy, beautiful girl.

Mommy.


P.S. I originally wrote this with some grown up words and then edited them out. If I missed one or two, I'm sorry. <3

You Would Have Been 1 Today

Dear Analin,

Happy Birthday.

Last year, on this day, you were already born. You were born in the early hours of the morning. By the time I'm writing this, around 9am, we may have already been checking out of the hospital. I don't quite remember. I could look up your birth time, but I don't really want to. I don't even know your brother's times. That's kind of more your daddy's thing. I just cared about you and your brothers.

Today we have decided to take a family day trip to celebrate you. We pulled Joshua from school, with their permission, for it. It's supposed to rain tonight, but I'm hoping we'll catch a break and be able to light your lantern.

Your loss last year inspired many things. One, this blog, but before this I started writing a book. I gave it up because I honestly found this to be more therapeutic and the task of making our experience with you into a book was too ... cold, I guess, since as I went along I realized statistics and science needed to be part of it. This blog feels much more personal. A reaction instead of an explanation.

This is from the section called "The Day Of." I added to it today, to finish the story a bit, but mostly, this is what I wrote shy of a year ago:

By now you know how this tale ends, but this is how the day started.

It was a normal Saturday. Waking up to get the boys ready to go to swim lessons. Because it was chilly and rainy I had to convince Joshua to wear clothes on the way, rather than his swim suit as he’d been doing all Summer. Saturdays are always busy, moving from the very start. This Saturday was unique only in that it was my cousin’s wedding, so instead of jeans and a t-shirt, I put on a dress and my new boots, knowing it was going to be warmer later.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened until I was able to sit down in the observation room at swim lessons. Analin normally woke up about then, shifting around just as I was settled. She was quiet instead. I took note, but wasn’t too worried after the Braxton Hicks I’d felt the night before. After the episode in September where we’d gone to the hospital for the practice contractions, she had been quiet for a while after as well, probably as exhausted from them as I was.

Swim class started for Joshua and his cousin at 10:45 and finished at 11:15. My sister’s kids also take swim lessons and we share travel duties, then drop off the kids’ at my Mom’s house. This day she happened to have lunch for us. While everyone was moving about, I decided to try and get some movement out of Analin.

I drank some milk and rested on my left side. No luck. I tried again after eating a bit, still, nothing. I didn’t feel strange, or have any other symptoms to be wary of. I was nervous, though. Kris asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital, but I said no.

I lied. Of course I wanted to. I also didn’t want to be an alarmist. Then there was that part of me, still confident nothing was wrong, whispering away that if something was wrong - so wrong that she wasn’t moving - going to the hospital now or later wouldn’t change a thing.

I couldn’t stop either inner voice, so I made a deal with Kris and my Mom. We would go to the wedding. The ceremony started at 2:00 with the reception following. If I didn’t feel anything by the end of the ceremony, we would go to the hospital then.

Everyone closest to me was at the wedding. My best friend made it with her husband, planning to leave after the ceremony to visit her baby girl in the NICU. My family, of course, was also there. We chatted before the ceremony, talking babies and weddings and other plans, waiting to see if the rain would allow for the outdoor ceremony the bride and groom had planned.

It was a beautiful ceremony. The bride and groom did get their outdoor event, standing together with their wedding party on a small dock out on the lake, surrounded by trees that had just started shifting their colors for Autumn. We watched them exchange their vows as I prodded at my stomach, worried at how soft it had become, wondering where my very active and vibrant little girl was hiding in there, terrified to think of something different.

The ceremony ended and I quietly announced we were going to the hospital. Kris spread the word to a few others. My mom had previously agreed to watch the boys. My cousin, whose girlfriend was also pregnant and high risk, offered us the use of his hospital-provided heartbeat monitor he had in his car. I told him the heartbeat wasn’t what I worried about, but the umbilical cord, particularly after the September hospital visit.

I can’t tell you how glad I am we didn’t try to find the heartbeat then and there. I can’t imagine what type of car ride it would have been on the hour ride to the hospital. Of course, we wouldn’t have gone to our hospital then, but the closest one, perhaps the one my best friend was off to to sit with her girl in the NICU. I don’t know, but for many, many reason I am glad we didn’t.

For one, we were able to laugh and enjoy some quiet time together on the way to the hospital. At  this point, we were both incredibly worried, but also finding some comfort in the knowledge that nothing I experienced felt overtly wrong, or that there were no other signs of trouble.

Except there were. Secretly, I kept pressing on my stomach. It got softer, not harder. This was not labor. I knew, but I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t get Kris because he was driving, and what if I was wrong? Why all the worry just to find out I was wrong?

We checked in through the ER and made our way up to Maternity. They were able to get us in pretty quickly. I was happy to see a familiar face in our nurse - she had helped deliver Sebastian just 20 months before. She recognized us by face, then remembered us through stories as she prepped the machines and got my belly ready for the heartbeat monitor.

It was silent.

Kris grabbed my hand and gave me a tight smile before squeezing his eyes shut. I looked up to the ceiling and listened, feeling her gentle prodding and the cold gel move over my belly without success.

The nurse informed us it was time to get the doctor, but not to worry just yet. Sometimes the baby was just too low in the pelvis for her to get any reading. I held my breath, hoping, hoping, knowing without wanting to know what that ultrasound would find.

The process was a bit of a farce. It was five minutes to four and the ultrasound tech was off at four. She had been able to slip off early, though they hoped to catch her in the parking lot. In the mean time, the nurses had found an old ultrasound machine - a grainy black and white, single unit machine that wasn’t nearly as reliable as the newer versions.

At first the doctor wasn’t going to use the machine for us, but wait for the tech instead. After thinking for a few minutes about his own wife, however, he decided to come in and give it a try.

There really isn’t much I know about ultrasounds. I do know there’s supposed to be movement on them that goes against the motions of the ultrasound wand itself. My eyes were glued to the screen, looking for anything that would move - an arm, a hand, the ‘holes’ representing the chambers of the heart.

After a few minutes, I looked away, knowing my answer, feeling as though I had known my answer all day. Kris was still holding my hand, I think. I couldn’t look at him, just look off.

Then the doctor said it. “This is the worst part of my job. I’m sorry to say this is not a good day.”

No clear cut words of ‘she’s gone,’ or ‘there’s no heartbeat.’ Without those words, I held my breath, praying he was going to tell me I needed an emergency C-section - praying that’s the worse it would get. I didn’t get those words, either. Just an explanation of how old the machine was, but these results were pretty clear. When the ultrasound tech came back, she would verify with the blood flow observing capabilities of the newer machine.

He was very kind, quiet and compassionate, but he never said the words. Hell, who could, I guess.

I was given the chance to go home, or start the induction right away. We chose to induce. Kris called his family, I called mine. Because all mine were still at a remote wedding, people in Denmark knew before people here. I did get ahold of my best friend’s husband, but they were in the NICU at another hospital with their premature baby girl.

Finally, my mom called me back on my uncle’s phone. She took charge in a lost kind of way, yelling at the kids to get ready, they’re leaving. I don’t know how it happened because we lost contact, but they ended up trading a car for the kids so my mom and step dad could come by themselves. My sister came later, after she got off work and we were able to call her.

I lay there all night with my family. I was allowed to eat, so I snacked whenever I could. We watched the Detroit Tigers lose their game. A woman from Tiny Purpose came and talked to me about my options preserving Analin’s memory. Then she was born.

I tried my best to separate myself from it. The drugs helped. People holding my hand helped. Analin slid right out without an issue, but I could still feel it. I still feel it, even a year later, on some nights. We got to meet her and hold her. I couldn’t hold her for long. My nose was still pregnancy sensitive, but to be honest, I was okay with that. Holding her felt wrong somehow. Something I needed to do, to feel her and know her, but it was wrong. It was not how this story should have gone.

Time passed. It didn’t pass. But somehow it was time to leave the hospital and go home to the boys. It was the hardest trip I’ve ever had to take, leaving that hospital without her in the backseat.

And that, my love, is how you were born. I love you so very much. Today isn't what it should be, but none of them have been. And just like those, today will be what it needs to be.

Forever in my heart, birthday girl.

Love, Mommy.

Marianas Trench - Beside You LIVE @ Knitting Factory Brooklyn

Not for the Faint of Heart

October needs to be done.

I'm tired of these firsts. Part of me thinks the seconds are going to be harder, despite what 'they' all say, because I was ready for the firsts. Well, not all of them.

I wasn't ready for my family to tell my niece she could only talk about Analin in certain situations, even though it wouldn't have been a problem had Analin lived. My niece hasn't talked about her much, since.

I wasn't ready for when someone offered me photos of the sky lanterns we let off at the Memorial, but they weren't sure I wanted them because it had been so long. I could only reply that two days prior would have been her eight month birthday as I stared at their few months old son.

I wasn't ready for the world to be so willing and able to keep my baby a secret, despite the fact that so many women have lost.

I wasn't ready for not knowing what to say to my best friend about her loss, even though our losses were just a few weeks apart.

I wasn't ready for the anger I felt at my best friends' daughter's birthday party when I was the only one who wrote the lost baby a card, who (besides the parents) seemed to remember there were supposed to be two.

All birthday parties were hard, regardless of the birthday person's age. My daughter would never have one of those.

I'm so angry the doctors have 'decided' what happened to my baby despite the fact there was no proof, but the 'decision' is to protect any future pregnancies I might have, so it seems so foolish to feel that way.

I can't stand when someone says they wish babies would just stay little. I have that, and wish with all my being she would have grown up instead.

I'm fed up with not writing on this blog just because I don't want to hurt someone's feelings because of how they inadvertently hurt me.

I have an entire future ahead of me, one child short.

My life is not hard. I am not debilitated by Analin's loss. I understand and accept there was nothing I could do about it, and there is nothing I can do about it but carry the pain with me day after day after day. People 'help' with words barbed in ways they simply can't understand.

This is not for the faint of heart. October just has to end. Then I can let you know about the rest.



Dear Analin,

I'm really tired, baby. Maybe I'll be better in a month or so. I love you so very, very much.


Your Mommy.
<3

Bubba Misses You, Too

Dear Analin,

My mom asked me the other day if it was too late to send a sympathy card a week after a colleague of hers had lost her father. I told her absolutely not. Sometimes those delayed sympathies can mean more than the ones that come right away. They're a reminder to us that we're not the only ones who remember, and it reminds us we're not alone even though our grief goes on beyond that week of 'bereavement leave.'

At the beginning of the month I received a sympathy package from my beautiful blogging buddies, +Tena Carr, +Leanne Sype and +Nicole Pyles. It was full of different keepsakes, but the one that has been used the most is a beautiful throw. Joshua got it out with a big smile and I told him about the box it came in. The blanket had come with it's own note - when you wrap this around your shoulders, we hope you feel yourself wrapped in a hug. Joshua immediately covered himself neck to toes and announced, 'I feel Analin hugging me, Mommy!'

Sympathies and condolences can be too heavy right after a loss. Honestly, at that time, silent presence and support may be more the answer. Later, when the pain still hurts but isn't quite as raw, when sympathies can be heard with less of a bitter ear, that may be when they are needed most, yet not given because they'd been spent too early.

In our case, it was another reminder for your now 5-year-old brother, and a way for us to help keep you alive in our family through memory. Another memory we could make with you, even though you're not here. And that is what's so special about other people remembering you. That is why I love talking about you. Because the more people know and remember you, the more memories that can come from it.

Here's to a million more memories and then some.

Love,

Mommy.

Re-Introductions

Dear Analin,

I've been reminded lately about a blogging challenge somewhere out there where we're meant to re-introduce ourselves. It's in part for new followers of the blog and in part to help reconnect us to those we've known for a while.

I'm beginning to feel like I need to re-introduce myself to the people in my every day life. I've written before how losing you has made me really look at myself. I've become more opinionated - not because I never had opinions, but because I was more content to keep them to myself before. I've become bolder - reaching out to people where I usually keep to myself.

For example, we were at Cedar Point this past weekend and I saw a man with a baby footprint tattoo and a name on his forearm. I asked him if he'd lost a baby, and he said no, it was his little girl's footprint. He has his other daughter's on the other arm. I told him it was beautiful and apologized. We'd lost a baby recently, so that's why I'd gone there. There was no conversation after that. I kept waiting for the embarrassed feeling I usually get for chatting with a stranger and feeling like I overstepped, but I didn't. I wasn't embarrassed for reaching out, or even for talking briefly about our loss. It was just something I needed to do in that moment, and it was fine.

I've been a bit more aggressive with people these days, too. I'm not willing to put up with as much as I used to, such as when I feel taken advantage of, or more specifically, when I feel others I care about are being taken advantage of.

Heck, forget re-introducing myself to others. Sometimes when I look in the mirror and think about these changes, I don't really recognize myself.

Self empowerment, maybe. Maybe a touch of desperation. In ways, I'm proud of myself and I like it. In others, some of these tendencies are so outside my comfort zone I feel the need to stop myself and ask what it is I'm really doing, and what am I doing it for?

So far, no harm has come from it. I hope these changes settle down and settle in without taking me too far away from myself. Or rather, help me become a stronger and more steady form of myself. That would be nice. Being able to say no and mean it, being able to stand up for myself even when doing so might 'rock the boat' unnecessarily, these are things I think I could do more with. Perhaps your loss has given me the key to being able to find it.

Life happens, of course, and changes do as well. I guess your loss was just so big and these changes are so sudden ... it's all a shock. Some days I think I'm still in shock. Others, I know I am. I am sure it will all settle in. When and how are the questions.

Oh, but I miss you. <3 All these silly and not-so silly thoughts and it comes down to missing you. I know that won't change even with everything else going crazy.

Forever, Love.

Mommy.

Hiding

Dear Analin,

I know it's been a long time. I've been writing letters in my head, but they haven't made it to here for many reasons. One, and perhaps the most important, has been that I've just wanted to withdraw from the outer world. We've also been super busy, so there have been a lot of excuses to stay away.

Oh, the year has been tough. Sebastian's second birthday. Mother's day. Daddy got me two handmade owl notebooks from you with metal owls decorating the front. A wedding too similar to the one we'd been at the day we lost you, the day before you were born. My cousin's baby shower for her little girl - I only managed five minutes and yelled at Mimi because she asked me why I had to leave. Joshua's fifth birthday. Father's day. Family visits. Each broke my heart because you weren't there. Then there were the baby girls born to very deserving parents, but I can't escape the feeling it isn't fair.

I've been hiding, I admit. I haven't been online. I haven't blogged or checked my email often. I've stayed off social networking - some completely, others just a little less often. I don't want to hear sad news, or happy news. I like things being pretty even emotionally right now. But I know I can't hide forever, that I need to come out at some point and figure out the world again. I've forced myself out to some social events, but I'm terrified, always terrified, of the something that never comes, or rarely does, that makes it impossible for me to stay.

I'm thinking of ways to step out again without falling into the traps I'd walked into before. I'm starting to get a firm grasp on my priorities and I don't want to muddle them up again. I'm starting to be a little bit stronger in defending my choices when it comes to my priorities. All good things, things that came from losing you. That silver lining doesn't always shine, though, does it?

It will be nice when this year of firsts is over. Nice and shattering all on it's own. Bittersweet doesn't even start to cover it. But that heartbreak is for a different day. I have plenty enough that come with today to start borrowing from tomorrow.

I hope to start writing more now. I was asked by someone not to stop. I never really intended to stop. The letters just got lost in the shuffle. Here's to a new start, then, one that carries on for quite a bit longer.

Not so long now, then, and I'll be writing you again. All my love, sweet girl.

Mommy.