7. MYTHS | Have you discovered any myths about this grief experience?
Time heals all wounds. This is a crock of shit. Grief is not linear. It doesn't happen in a nice orderly fashion. Sometimes I go through my day perfectly normal, always thinking of my girl, but not in tears or even feeling very sad. But then other days, for seemingly no reason, I am a mess, and the pain feels just as raw as the day we lost her. Time helps with the shock factor, and time helps us to accept it, and get used to our new reality. But no amount of time will ever make me not miss my daughter, or not be sad that she is gone.
Subsequent children make your loss easier. That's a big fat no. Kayla was a person, she had a personality, she was her own self. Having Emily does not make up for having lost Kayla. All of my grief was not just wiped away when Emily was born, and having been through one loss also robs you of the joy and innocence of expecting another baby. For anyone that thinks having your rainbow baby takes away the sadness of your lost child, think of your own living children. Would losing one of them be ok since you still have others?
God only gives you what you can handle. This one never made any sense to me at all. God is supposed to be loving, merciful, and kind. He is supposed to be our Father, and sacrificed His own son for our sins because He loves us so much. A loving God does not punish us, or make us go through hell just because we can take it. So that's my reward for being a strong, independent, empathetic person, is getting more bad shit happen to me than others? Sometimes bad things just happen, but God does not cause them.
An earlier loss is easier. False. In my case, because I experienced both, yes, the earlier loss was easier for me, physically and mentally. But when I was going through my first miscarriage, it's not like I thought to myself, well I am not sad over this, because it would have been harder later on. It was still devastating in its own right. I feel like child loss is one of the few situations where people put that stipulation on someone's grief. If someone's four year old dies, nobody says, well at least it happened now and not when he was ten. Or if someone's spouse dies, they don't say well at least he died instead of divorced you. If someone dies from cancer, nobody says well at least they didn't burn alive in a fire. Because society as a whole doesn't tend to recognize the life, love, and impact that an unborn child has on the world, it does not allow parents to grieve for their loss. My losses were horrible and devastating, because they were and should not be made less than because other people experience something different. By that argument, nothing is substantial, because there can always be something worse to compare it to. A broken arm is no big deal because a severed arm would be worse. Being raped is not a big deal, because she could have been raped by multiple people, and tortured. Just because every event can be trumped by something worse, doesn't make that event any less horrible to the person going through it.
At least she didn't suffer. First of all, no one can know that she didn't. Birth is a very traumatic event, and there is a reason it isn't supposed to happen until the baby is big enough and strong enough and their organs are developed enough to live outside the womb. At only 1 lb 1.6 ounces, she was only a fraction of the size of what a full term baby should weigh. She was also breach, so whose to say she wasn't suffocated by my cervix as it tried to close once her lower half passed through? Whose to say her lungs did not collapse as they were not developed enough to work on their own? I don't know at what point she died, but I know she was still alive up till 30 minutes before she was born, and she showed no signs of life once born. So she died at some point after entering the birth canal but before she came out. I didn't give birth to her because she had died and my body was cleansing itself, I gave birth because my body failed her and couldn't keep her in. So her official cause of death was being born...either from the trauma and force on her tiny body, or because her body wasn't ready to function without the life sustaining effects of the womb. That sure doesn't sound like a peaceful way to go to me. And even if she had just somehow passed away peacefully before she entered the birth canal, that doesn't make my grief any less.
Everything happens for a reason. In the literal dissection of this sentence, yes that is true I suppose. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there was a good reason for it, nor does it take away one's grief. Yes, there was a reason why Kayla was born early, and that is because my cervix dilated and my body gave birth. Does that mean I should be ok with it? Does that help my grief at all? If Kayla had lived, I would not have Emily. True, and that pains me to think because I DO have Emily and I cannot imagine giving her up. But if Kayla had lived, I would not have sat there thinking, it's too bad Kayla was born, because I could have a completely different daughter whom I do not know, and would like better. What?? That's ludicrous. Some people think maybe her passing was for the best, to avoid an even greater tragedy down the road. Well that goes back to the idea that a loss now is better than a loss later. Why? Thinking that we could have lost her later in life did not make her loss then any less painful, and it doesn't even make sense. Why make someone endure pain now, to save them pain later? Pain is pain. And if that is true, then why do other people suffer? Why does one child not live past their birth to avoid pain, but another one is allowed to be born, and live for a few years before a horrible illness takes them. Why weren't they taken earlier to avoid that pain later on? Why wasn't JonBenet stillborn so she wouldn't have to endure being murdered at age six? Why wasn't Hitler killed at birth so he could not go on to kill thousands of people?
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