A bonfire would not suffice
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Today, October 15th, is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Around the world, families will light candles at 7pm in remembrance of the children they cannot hug and kiss each day, but who live on in their hearts. I initially thought I would try to post the story of my first pregnancy today, but it is not ready and I am not ready, and as you know, my mom is in town, so I am short on blogging time.
My heart goes out to everyone whose babies are no longer with them. Losing my pregnancy was by far the hardest thing I have experienced, and I cannot even imagine multiplying it by more months of hope, more moments of dread, more unbearable surprise as so many have felt.
Some babies are lost before we've hardly begun to recognize them. Some are born still. Some are completely healthy and give us no reason to fear, but are taken by surprise, betrayed by birth. Some fight for all they're worth, and never make it home. Each one is real and alive inside their families' hearts. Each one is a genuine heart wrenching loss.
Parents of lost babies are not uncommon, but hidden away by the taboo of loss, taught by our culture to keep the pain from showing and causing discomfort in others. Parents are expected to cut their grieving short, under the pretense that the child never lived, or that they barely knew him, (and can try for another one). But parents deserve a chance to share and validate each of their children, not be shamed into hiding the ones you can't see or be avoided for the awkward silence of misunderstanding that floats along in their wake. Child loss is a painful reality. The grief is unimaginable and the lingering love, with so little direction now, is overwhelming.
Every child is a gift. The ones that find their way to this world are amazing miracles. No matter how hard parenting can be at times, if your children are here, take a step back and breathe in the miracle that they are. Talk to the ones you've lost, share them, love them, and if you are lucky enough to have all your children in this world, offer your ear to parents who don't. Have the courage to listen as they share with you their love for all of their children. Give them a chance to remember their children to you and in that moment they will live again.
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My heart cries out, He would have been one this month. Your cousin's baby turns one this October, and yours doesn't. Reason viciously chimes in, But you are lucky. You have a daughter in your arms who is six months in a few days. You love her and she could not be here if you had him. You cannot have them both. You don't have the right to mourn a child you barely knew when you have a healthy, living child wriggling about this very moment in your arms.
It is not painful like it used to be. I have Bella to soften the blow, overlapping the bad milestones with good ones. But still, like all mamas of lost babies, every so often I dream of what could have been, and the result is tears. Babylost Mamas come in all shapes and sizes, every story the unimaginable. This guilt of overlapping dates is the sole terrain of miscarriages. The impossibility of having both, one life exclusive of the other, but dreaming of them all the same.
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Society has trained me well. I tell myself that I have no right to grieve, that the feelings of loss should have faded. It was just a pregnancy and others have lost more. But my heart knows better, and I try every day to let my heart lead the way. Another soul lived inside me, for eight short weeks we were one. The pain is not just in the loss of a child, but the lost potential and the unbearable unknowing. Whose fingers would he have had? Would his voice have sounded like mine? What could we have been together? And it is for those questions and more that my heart is justified to always miss him, forever yearning to mother a child I will never know. It is for those questions and more that I will light him a candle and promise him that he will never be forgotten.
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3 comments:
thank you for sharing your story with us. it takes courage.
Thanks for pointing me to this post. My first pregnancy was an early miscarriage, and I had no idea how painful that could be. What you said about overlapping dates is just poetic...I was very lucky to be six months pregnant with E (my second pregnancy) on the due date of my first baby. How can you love them both when their very existence exludes eachother? But somehow you do, don't you?
In our backyard, we put a stone in the garden that says, "Our hearts still ache with sadness, and secret tears still flow. What it meant to lose you, no one can ever know." For me, that says it all...it tells me that I'm not silly for crying sometimes over a baby that so many people say "was just not meant to be." And it tells me that moms all over the world feel just the same, indescribable pain for the child they will never meet.
Shawna,
two of our friends lost their baby girl after she was born from an emergency C section on week 24. She lived for two days.
The mama told me once that she feels strange because no one talks about her little girl, avoiding the subject, or just not naming her at all. She told me, with tears in her eyes (I don't want to put her name, so I will just write MY BABY GIRL, "MY BABY GIRL existed". She was crying because she held this truth inside of her that couldn't be contrasted with the outside world, the outside reality. She even told me that sometimes she felt like crazy while thinking of her, but not because she was feeling crazy, but because people saw her that way, or made her feel that way by making this a taboo or a hidden thing.
I told her that she could talk to me about her little girl whenever she wanted, for as long as she wanted, and told me whatever she felt. I told her that I won't be scared by anything she told me or by the fact that she wanted to talk about her dead baby girl.
She is not the closest friend of mine. But I feel her grief, and I care about her.
I could relate to her feelings (just to that, because I can't imagine her own pain from this particular situation) because I felt the same way after my best friend died. No one, ever, talked to me again about him. And as I write this down now, I feel my throat as a knot and tears come to my eyes. I needed him to be existing beyond his death too... But no one wants that. And no one would do it for me either. It's just too scary.
So... I guess what I am trying to say is that I admire you for bringing your story to help others and yourself, and that I hope you always find the moment and place that you need to talk about your lost baby.
Thank you.
My heart is with you.
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