Am I allowed to grieve? -14 wks 6 days

I had a session with my therapist yesterday, and I often reflect on what we talked about on my drive home.  As I have done for the past 6 months, I ranted again about how people don't understand, and how the death of a baby is so different from any other loved one's death.  I'm not going to get into the ways in which it is hard to deal with internally, but just how other's treat you.  When I came back to work after my mom died, some people left me alone, but many were eager to give their condolences, ask what happened, and just talk about it in general.

When I came back to work after losing Kayla, nobody wanted to talk about it.  They smiled and welcomed me back, but very few people were brave enough to actually ask me about it, or to talk about it at all.  Only one person in my huge family has ever said anything to us directly related to Kayla (not counting my immediate family of course) once the funeral and everything was over.

But I was thinking on my drive home yesterday, how parents of stillborn or late term pregnancy loss are stuck in no man's land when it comes to grieving.  We were too far along to be lumped in with early losses, where it's very very sad, but life will go on.  Don't get me wrong, I've had an early loss and it was awful.  Especially for people who experience multiple early losses, and never know if they will ever be able to get past 6 or 8 or 10 weeks with a pregnancy; it's very devestating.  I still wonder about my first baby, I still wonder if my feeling of him being a boy was right.  I still think about how old he would have been now and what he would have become. 

But I didn't hold him; I didn't look at his face, I didn't hold his tiny hand with my finger.  We didn't have a room set up for him, our friends and family didn't know and we weren't making grand plans for his arrival.  It hurt very badly to lose that pregnancy, but it was very very different than losing Kayla.  But on the other hand, I don't feel like we were far along enough to be considerd "parents who lost a child".

I completely acknowledge that they aren't quite on the same playing field.  Being a mom to a stillborn baby is not the same as being a mom to say, a 2 year old and having to go through their death.  I know this, and I cannot even imagine the pain.  So while it's not the same, we are still parents who lost a child.  I feel like I have all this pain, guilt, and heartbreak that I am not allowed to acknowledge by society because Kayla was not already here when she died.  But the fact of the matter is, she is my daughter, I am her mother and I lost her.  I'll never get to do the things with her that most pregnant women will eventually get to do with their babies. 

I read in another loss mom's blog about a time she told someone about the death of her son.  When asked how old he was, she replied that she lost him in her second trimester.  She said upon hearing that, the woman almost acted as if she had been conned into thinking her living, out of the womb child had died.  Like I said, I cannot imagine losing a child here on earth.  I have no doubt that that IS the worst loss a person can experience.  But it's not fair that because our children didn't make it that far, we're treated as though we shouldn't be grieving and we shouldn't be heartbroken, as if they weren't real children. 

But I feel myself doing it too....I cringe when I overhear someone saying that my husband and I lost our daughter, because I know most people assume she was already living on earth.  I feel guilty when talking to my dad's girlfriend about losing a child.  SHE put me in that category of being a parent who lost a child, but I still felt guilty because she lost her son when he was 29, so I don't feel like I should be able to consider myself in that same category.

Don't misunderstand me, I've yet to come across anybody who didn't think it was tragic and heartbreaking when they heard about Kayla.  My friends and family flocked to the hospital as soon as they heard, they cried their eyes out when they saw her; everyone expresses sympathy when they hear this is my third pregnancy but I have no children at home.  I'm not trying to say nobody cares, or that they think it is no big deal.  But six months later, I do feel like many of them feel this is something I should be over.  They probably don't understand still being completely shattered all this time later, especially when we are expecting a new baby.

Parents of stillborn children are stuck in grief limbo; we were too far along for our hearts to heal, but we weren't far enough along to be considered parents who lost a child.  Or maybe it's just all of my own anger, projected on what I think others must be thinking.  I'm so angry these days, I really can't tell the difference.