Capture your grief, day 5

5. THE UNSPOKEN | Normalizing grief is so important and that I why today I am calling upon those who feel brave enough to speak about the nitty gritty side of grief. Share something about your grief journey that you might feel is strange or not common. It might be something you do to remember your children by or maybe it is something you fear about the future. Often while grieving we have feelings of isolation because we fear judgement that what we are feeling isn’t normal. But it is amazing to see just how many people feel the same way. When others stand up and express how they feel through sharing their experiences, it allows us to say “Hey, I feel that way too!” and the fear of feeling like we are crazy is lifted and in some cases embraced!






I can definitely relate to this.  So many of my thoughts make me feel like such a bad person, but when I find out that not only someone else feels the same way, but it's a pretty common feeling, it makes me feel like I am not alone.

Some of the not so bad, but weird ones I had were, when I stopped bleeding after Kayla was born.  I was mad, and sad.  That made no sense to me.  Nobody likes having their period and nobody likes post partum bleeding, but nobody especially likes it when it is a reminder that you just gave birth, but you didn't bring your baby home.  So when the bleeding stopped, I thought I would feel better, but instead it made me mad.  I guess because my body was physically moving on, and healing itself, but my mind and heart was no where near being ready to do that.

Another feeling I had was seeing the beauty in some of the moments with Kayla.  You wouldn't think you could find anything beautiful about holding your dead baby....but she was still MY baby, and that moment was amazing.  It felt weird to say that her birth was one of the worst, yet best moments in my life.  But it was.  It just was.

So now onto the grittier ones.  I hate seeing pregnancy announcements.  Even now that we have Emily and we are so happy, they still hurt.  I don't want others to be struck by tragedy, I don't want others to go through what I went through.  But I wanted it to be easy for us, like it seems to be for them.  I wonder why tragedy struck us, and why we had to not only deal with IF, but also an early loss, and also a later loss.  It terrifies me that I am just cursed somehow, and that I have to forever worry about Emily, over and above the normal parent worries.  I have a hard time seeing announcements for a second baby (or more).  It's silly, because in many ways, I am very happy with just Emily, and most days I think whew, I can't imagine being pregnant while trying to keep up with Em.  Or, I can't imagine trying to deal with two temper tantrums at once.

In some ways I do wonder if I was always meant to have just one living child.  I loved my independence before we had kids, I loved quiet, I loved my life being simple.  Having just one child allows me to keep some of that independence.  When we're out in public, I only have to tend to her.  When she's quietly playing or watching Tv, I can do whatever I want to do.  I only have to shop for one new wardrobe each season, worry about one kids' toys for Christmas, save for just one kid's college savings.  But, I can't deny the fact that if we had not dealt with infertility and had been able to have kids sooner, not dealt with loss and high risk pregnancies, and not dealt with advanced maternal age, I am almost certain I would have wanted to have another child.  So I am jealous of others who weren't robbed of that desire.

I am also jealous of women whose babies were born earlier, and lived....even if they only lived for five minutes.  What I wouldn't give to have felt the weight of my live baby in my arms, to feel her squirming around, to hear her cry.  I know it may not have made a difference in my grief, at the time I was thankful Kayla was stillborn so she didn't have to suffer.  So perhaps it would have been harder to have hope if she was born alive, and then still have to say goodbye, or to know or even worry that she was in any pain.  But still, when I hear of a baby born earlier than 22 weeks 2 days, that was born alive, I think to myself, how come that baby was, but Kayla wasn't?

I often feel guilty over being thankful sometimes that Kayla didn't survive.  My step-sister was born right around the same gestation, and she has cerebral palsy.  She is relatively high functioning in that she can walk, and talk and she does enjoy things like listening to country music.....but she is legally blind, really cannot be left on her own for more than a couple of hours and cannot really be part of conversations as she often doesn't understand what we are talking about, or she gets just parts of the conversation and ad libs and of course we listen to her and let her be a part of it, but she is not high enough functioning to be able to sit and really converse with her.

I see her having difficulty getting around because she cannot see well enough, I see her being so dependent on her mom, I think about the fact that she'll never get married or have kids, or be independent.  I see my step-mom getting so frustrated sometimes, because she basically has a 7 year old for life.  When we have kids, they're supposed to gain independence from you and one day be able to fly on their own.  Even at 2.5, Emily can mostly feed herself, dress herself, she entertains herself, she can even get up on the big potty all by herself.  One day she'll go to school, and start hanging out with friends, and then one day hopefully move out on her own, find someone she loves, hopefully give us a few grand kids and live her own life.  But my step-sister will never get to do that, and my step-mom will never get her own life back.  I see her stressed all the time, as her daughter requires a lot of attention, and is very dependent on her, despite the fact that she can and does do many things on her own, she just doesn't like to do them.  My step-mom has to plan her day around when her daughter will get home from work (a day program she goes to) and cannot go out of town without her unless she has care arranged for her.

If Kayla had lived, I would have done anything in my power to save her as any loving mother would do.  I would have loved her regardless of whatever limitations she had, and whatever help she would forever need from me.  But sometimes I am grateful that she didn't have to possibly face that future.  I am grateful that I didn't have to make that decision, to continue her life because I loved her, when maybe that wasn't the best thing for her.