Christmas Letter 2014

Dear Analin,

I wonder how many people have been waiting for my letter to you today. To be honest, I just thought to write it. I wish it could be filled with the hope I'd put into Xavier's letter this year, but unfortunately, something happened.

Today the man you would have known as Pawpaw passed away. He has been sick for a while but it was a strange accident that sent him to the hospital where they helped ease him on. He had a big smile and rarely spoke without a joke, even if it wasn't quite the time for it. He will be missed by many.

His death has brought me back around to this time last year when we were struggling through the season. It brought me back to a great uncle's death just this past month. And others again, over the past year or so.

I wish I could be little again, young when death did not exist outside of fairy tales and could be healed with true love's kiss. I do not look forward to a time when bodies age and people who have known me longer than I've known them find their time to move on. Even when death does happen, it's distant to us and easily absorbed.

It is so sad when someone dies on Christmas. Everyone celebrates and your heart breaks into the glitter.

Death is natural. Some people claim to be okay with it. But I don't want to forget myself and those I love. I don't want to be forgotten by those who go before and after.* Whether it's an entrance to Heaven or a reincarnation that causes the loss of memory, I love what I have now. I love life and feel blessed to have such love around me. I suppose I won't care past the forgetting. I care now. A lot.

So, death as natural as it may be, sucks. To put it plainly. Even when it's time.

I love you to pieces, Analin. You and your brothers and our family. If there is a way to remember, I swear I will do it when it's my turn.

This is not the letter I wanted to write today. I'd rather tell you how proud I am of your brothers and their love for family in the spirit of giving. In the way they played together this morning rather than rush down to find what Santa left. Yet, here we are.

I will love you forever, my sweet.

Mommy.


*This thought follows something that has really bothered me today. The Pope recently announced all of God's creatures are welcome into Heaven and we will find our beloved pets there. In response, one poster quoted verses from the Bible stating that when we pass into Heaven, we forget ourselves and all whom we've known. I can't stand the thought, if you can't tell. It breaks my heart to think about and I pray this is one of those interpretations someone along the way got wrong. <3

Thanksgiving Wishes

Dear Analin,

I thought I had learned a long time ago to keep my wishes simple and attainable. Now, to me, attainable is still pretty high. For example, it was always okay to wish to marry a prince as they exist in the world, but wishing for a telepathic unicorn was probably beyond a wish's scope.

Yet, there I was last night, the clasp of your necklace hanging in front. As I moved it to the back, I wished for you.

11:11 on the clock. I wish for you.

Twinkle, twinkle little star.

I always alter my wish to the more sensible side. I wish you are happy where you are and your brothers are happy here. That they grow healthy and live long and that I get to see it.

It always starts with you.

Now here we are at Thanksgiving, the day to be thankful for those wishes that have come true, and for the possibility that more will. I am, and I do, but I miss you so much. Today a bit of that hurt is leaking out.

The funny part is, just yesterday I marveled at how well we were doing. We have our moments, but we are still living life and enjoying each stage. Joshua is doing amazing in school. Sebastian is basically potty training himself. You would be toddling around, but you aren't and that has to be okay. Sometimes it is. Sometimes, a bit of the hurt leaks out.

Just a little bit. The pain is bigger than a lifetime, after all. But we need that release, that gradual leak when it gets too big to handle. Like on birthdays and holidays and random, slap in the face, I-wish-you-were-here days.

I was slapped in the face today. I'm not sure why I'm surprised. Holidays are pinpointed moments, time where family comes together. Of course it's more obvious on these days who is missing. Yet, I was surprised. Because yesterday, I was a super woman and happy and excited for the holiday and thrilled our house is already decorated and sparkling with lights and glitter.

Today I'm just a girl with a broken heart.

One day. One day, my sweet, I'll sit down and write to you about excitement and what we would have done with your future in a bittersweet glow. Maybe. I hope so.

Today I am thankful I got to know you. I am thankful your big brothers talk about and love you. I am thankful your daddy knows when to sit beside me and when to let me sit by myself in the quiet. I am thankful for the joy of the holidays and the excitement I'm sure will return.

And I will wish. It doesn't matter that this wish is impossible. Sometimes, wishes should be out of reach so we learn to reach higher. I am thankful for that, as well.

I love you, beautiful girl.

Mommy.

Post-Loss Infertility

Dear Analin,

Your biggest brother wants another baby he can take care of. Sebastian is almost 3 and is getting self-sufficient and it's causing a bit of a power struggle between the two of them.

To be honest, Daddy and I have been ready to try for another baby for a few months. We are healthier than we've ever been in our lives - a gift from you. Since we lost you we've been eating better and exercising more, if not regularly.

After losing you I started reading a lot of books on female health in particular. I've learned a lot - enough that I'm upset and frustrated I didn't know this information before now. Because, as it turns out, losing you has resulted in a side effect that is relatively common to women after they lost a pregnancy.

I have post-loss infertility. There is a surprising lack of information on this type of infertility when you look at how often different support groups talk about it. Then again, it's probably not all that surprising for many reasons, such as it's women's health, it's a 'secret' affliction, there's no pill to fix it, so there's no reason to pay attention to it. In fact, the information I've been able to gather about it has been more from personal anecdotes than any medical sources.

What I found suggests post-loss infertility appears differently in different women for reasons no one really knows, though I'm sure emotional health has something to do with it. For me, my luteal phase is not long enough or strong enough. That is to say, I may release an egg, it may be fertilized, but I'm not making enough of the hormone to allow said egg to implant for long, if at all. So right now there can be no baby, no matter how hard we try or wish for one.

Before, with you and your brothers, getting pregnant was so easy. Yet another change we were not prepared for. One that fills each month with a roller coaster we never thought we would be on.

I'm working on fixing it through my diet and herbs and other supplements. We aren't to the point of seeking infertility help yet. One of the things I've learned in the last year is how to chart my cycles, and the charts tell me my luteal phase is improving. There's no way to tell how long that will take. There's no reason to go to the doctor if my body is fixing itself in it's own way.

There will be fear and worry, more than we probably expect. But boy, your daddy and I are ready to give you a little sibling, to teach them about you as they grow, to fill our family with more love than loss. To hopefully find a physical healing apart from the emotional one, another step on our grief journey.

No one will ever replace you. You are our first daughter, our third baby, the fantastic girl we barely got to meet. Maybe, one day, more letters will fill this blog - letters from big brothers and little siblings yet to come.

One can hope.

I love you so much, sweetheart.

Mommy.

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