Anatomy scan

My anatomy scan for baby number 3 is tomorrow. When Oliver died, I knew something was wrong. It was less than 24 hours between healthy baby confirmed by Doppler, and me waking up certain he was gone. I knew. I was sure. So why an I do afraid to trust my instincts now?

I'm terrified that we will go to this scan and get bad news, that the little peanut we saw on my dating ultrasound will be gone and that I will have missed it.

When you lose a child, support groups can help immensely. The relief of knowing someone understands, that your story isn't the most horrific thing they have heard. It's comforting and wonderful. And yet.

The hardest part of a support group is the other stories. The first group we went to, a man told us the story of him and his wife, their first loss, and then all the subsequent losses. As of that meeting they were still childless.

Mothers whose child was lost at full term. Mothers who learned at the anatomy scan. Every horror story you can imagine, if you go to enough groups, you will hear it. And once you hear it, you can't un hear.

You walk into every appointment, especially ultrasounds, carrying the weight of those stories, of surprise bad news. I knew last time, but would I know again?

Could we survive another loss? Would this be the end of my dreams for a large family? Would it be worse? Easier because of Elliot? Harder because we know it won't fade away?

So I try to push the fear away and focus on right now. If I found out tomorrow that the baby was gone, would I regret not enjoying being pregnant today? I try to dwell on the possibility that the baby is just fine in there, and that in under 24 hours we will get to see him or her again.

Due date

I never really know which hypothetical to think about. Oliver was delivered in May, at 31 weeks so we celebrate that day as his birthday, but if he had been full term his birthday would be today.

If he had been full term he would be 2. And everything would be different. There would be no Elliot. I can't think about that, but on days like today I can't stop myself from wondering; what would life be like?

Losing a baby is one of those things that defines you. It becomes part of who you are too the core, and changes you to the point where you might not recognize your old self. Back when you were safe, in the bubble.

Losing Oliver has defined me as a mother. I was loss mom first. The first baby I delivered didn't come home with me. It has overshadowed everything since. It's the reason that every morning, no matter how early he wakes up, the noise Elliot makes lets me breathe a sigh of relief. My parenting has more fear and more gratitude I think, and that's because of Oliver.

All day today, at the back of my mind will be the what ifs. The hypothetical. The impossible to think about. A full term Oliver. Would he be like his brother? More like his dad? Would I be different? Less afraid. Protected by the feeling that bad things happen to other people.

We miss you today Oliver. Your dad and I both, we think about you every day but today you will be a little sharper in our minds. We love you.

my third mothers day

Mother's day can be a difficult day for any number of people. Children who have lost a mother they miss, children of mothers who aren't a mother at all. Childless women who want a macaroni necklace and some burnt toast in bed. Mother's who lost children. It's all hard.

For me is especially hard. 2 years ago tonight I was being induced to deliver a baby I already knew was dead.

We didn't know that his name was Oliver.

If you had asked me the day before he died what his name was, I could have told you that we were about 80% sure he would be named Benjamin. I had started to picture him with that name. Thought about nicknames. Imagined if it would be stern enough to say with a disapproving tone when he flushed something important. So when he was born, and that future was gone, his name was too. We started over, going back through rejected names, family names, panicking because it was the only thing we could give him.

In middle school in my French class we learned about saint days, and how in some places a saint day was like a birthday. So we googled. Some website had the saint listed for July 12 as Oliver. As soon as I said it I knew it was his name. Sometimes it feels odd, as an atheist to use saint days to name my son. Sometimes I wonder what if we had named him Benjamin. But it feels now like he was always Oliver.  From the first kick to the last.

We chose his name on mother's day. Sitting in the private room at the hospital, that is reserved for a different kind of delivery.

When you don't need to protect the baby, labor is very different. They give you medication that they can't give to moms of living babies. There is no urgency. Less physical pain. Oliver was coaxed slowly out, breech.

I spent my first day as a mother holding my sweet baby boy. The only day I would get to hold him at all. Memorizing his face and tiny hands and perfect ears and tiny toes.

I spent my first mother's day deciding if we would do an autopsy, and choosing a funeral home. When mothers share birth stories they get uncomfortable when you mention that part. That before you started pushing you signed the papers to donate his organs to research. I never knew what happened to a stillborn baby before I had one. People never ask. So you don't tell anyone. And sometimes parts of it start to fade. It makes me afraid, that if I can't remember which nurse brought in the tiny donated hat, how will I remember him. I only had 24 hours to hold his body, how could I let one second of that day slip away. It was my first mother's day. How could I not replay it all. Second by second.

But I remember all the seconds of him.

We gave him the only thing we could give him, his name. He never even heard me say it. Mother's day for me will always be a difficult day, followed by his birthday however many days later it happens to be. For me it's the anniversary of the only day we ever spent with our firstborn son. The anniversary of the most profound day of my life.

Oliver, I miss you every day. Not just mother's day. Not just your birthday, or Christmas, or when there is an Oliver keychain for sale at the zoo. I miss you when I think of you, which is every day. You made me a mother. You changed me forever.

I love you Oliver.

nothing new

I ran out of new things to say.

About once I week I think about posting here. At night when I'm rocking Elliot to sleep and smelling his head and feeling the weight of him change as he falls asleep on my chest, I think about how I should write something.

I miss Oliver every day. This is our second Christmas without him. This year he would be a toddler. Climbing. Talking.

I can't help but picture it. The family of 4 with the two little boys. Playing together. 4 stockings. 2 heads to kiss goodnight.

Its all the same things I have written before. The grief comes on hard at first painful and on waves, but then before you know it life heals over and you just have this deep scar that stays the same every time you look at it. Same scar. Same grief. Same love. Oliver, I still miss you.

I still wonder what you would be like. What your voice would have sounded like when you called me mama. But that's not new, I started wondering that from the beginning. From the day I found out I was pregnant, I wondered who you were. And I always will.

In a lot of ways losing your baby puts you on hold. At first your whole body is on hold. Your mind, even your heart seems to have stopped. But after that, when you start to do normal things and your life resumes, that part of you is still on hold. Still waiting to know someone you will never get to know. Still feeling phantom kicks sometimes at night. I will feel those kicks forever. The kicks I wished for so hard. Lying in the hospital bed waiting to be told what I already knew, that there wouldn't be anymore kicks.

I think the holidays bring the pain of loss to the surface more than normal days because they are the days we had pictured in our minds. You get pregnant and you start doing the math. How old will my baby be at Christmas. What will his first birthday be like. First day of school. First thanksgiving. Will he be old enough to walk? Will we have to baby proof the tree?

These moments are so vivid while you are lying in bed dreaming of your future with your child. Then as your baby gets older the real moments crowd them out. The first imagined Christmas gets replaced by the first real one.

So I will write the same feelings over and over. Cement the same thoughts I had of Oliver time and time again. The Christmas we should have had last year with our baby who was 5 months old (based on due date) or maybe the  7 month old we would have had if he had been born alive.

I will hold on to my what ifs . I will look at my scar and remember the wound. Remember what I lost. Remember what could have been. And those new, wonderful memories we will make with our amazing son, will be stored along side all the plans for what could have been.

My one year old.

If everything had gone right I would have a one year old today.

I try not to think about the hypothetical, because if i had that one year old baby I wouldn't have the beautiful 3 month old who woke up all smiles this morning. And today might not have been Oliver's birthday anyway. But I woke up this morning with thoughts of what if. what if I had carried him to term. What would my life be like? Would we be thinking about a second baby? Would we be going crazy from exhaustion as our mobile baby zoomed everywhere? Would he be a good sleeper like his brother?

The only thing I know for sure is that if Oliver had lived he would have been showered with love, just like Elliot is.

Happy would-be one year birthday Oliver.

Love mama

Mother's day

Mother's day last year was the hardest day of my life.

In most cases, giving birth on mother's day to your first baby would be cool. You could celebrate becoming a mother. We celebrate mother's day to honor that day, and every day that a mom spends parenting her baby.

But it didn't work like that for me. Mother's day will forever be the day that I met my baby, who never met me. The day I didn't hear him cry. The day I didn't get to feed him. That was the day I spent looking at his perfect, still face and wishing my life could be different.

And now the whole world celebrates. Kids make pictures of flowers out of handprints. Breakfast in bed. Brunch. Everyone takes this day to celebrate. TV. The internet. Stores. It's mother's day everywhere. Elliot will grow up to make me cards. Do projects at school. He won't understand that the picture he drew for me, and the breakfast he helped make and the flowers are all for a day that marks the hardest day of my life.

I also have something to celebrate now. Having Elliot here, literally in my arms as I write this brings me joy. And I'm glad to have a day to celebrate him. Two years ago on mother's day I was just someone child. Last year I was a grieving mother. This year it's more complicated. I never knew joy and grief could coexist so seamlessly, or that I could feel both with the intensity that I do.

So I will focus on the joy. I'm going to celebrate the one day I had to hold Oliver. The 31 weeks that he existed. The fact that I got to feel him kick. The way that he changed my life. Made me a mother. This mother's day I'm going to celebrate having both of my sons. This mother's day I'm going to celebrate the two beautiful boys I gave birth to, even though only one of them is alive. I plan to celebrate the tiny hands pulling my hair and the tiny hands that never got to feel my touch. The tiny eyes that look up at my face and the tiny eyes I never got to look at. Because I am a mother to both of them.

Elliot and Oliver

Dear Oliver,
You have a brother now. I want to say little brother, but it doesn't quite fit in my mind that way, because he will grow up and you won't. You will always be my baby and Elliot will age.

He is aging already. the bottom drawer of the dresser is full of newborn clothes that he has grown out of. They are mostly clothes I bought for you. But I bought them for him too. We know we want a big family, so they were always going to be hand me downs, we just didn't know they would be new.

He doesn't look like you. You had your daddy's nose and my chin, and he has it backwards. He was skinny at birth, not as skinny as you but skinny. He is getting fatter now though. And you were both born tall. He was 21 inches, to your 18.

Oliver

Elliot

The biggest difference between you both was not the birth, or even the recovery days, but leaving the hospital. When you walk out of the hospital clinging to a memory box, it is the exact opposite of leaving the hospital with a tiny baby strapped into a car seat. When we left the hospital with you, it was the end. I knew I would never get to hold you or sing to you or touch your perfect little nose, ever again. We said goodbye to you and I walked out of there empty, with nothing in front of me except missing you, and days of pain.

When we left the hospital with Elliot, it was the beginning. It was his first time being in a world that he will get to know and explore. But he won't do it alone. As he grows up, I promise you he will learn about his brother. You will always be there with us. Playing in the snow, going on a walk, snuggling and reading stories.

Elliot isn't you. Lots of people want him to be. They want it to be over. Want things to be happy again. That is what I wanted too. The reason I got pregnant so fast was that I was desperate for a baby, to cry and feed and care for. I wanted him to be you, and to take your place. But it doesn't work like that. I could have 10 babies and  would still miss you the same amount. Probably more, because each baby would remind me exactly of what I am missing.

I miss you every day and I love you always.

Love mama

I love you forever

When Oliver died we didn’t just lose a baby. We lost his first day of kindergarten. His first tooth. We lost his high school, college (and maybe more) graduations. We lost the family he might have someday had and the adult he would become. And for a few months, sitting in the dark in my bedroom, I mourned all of it. Not just the diapers I wouldn’t change and the milk that piled up in the freezer, but his entire future.

 

This morning I read a blogpost about the book “I Love You Forever” by Robert Munch. The article described how the book was written for his stillborn children and it suddenly made sense.

 

 

 

In the past, reading it, I always thought it was creepy that the mother broke into her adult son’s home. I’m fairly certain that is restraining order territory for most adults. I always thought it was written for children, just like his other books, which take things to an area of hyperbole that doesn’t make sense for adults.

 

Now I read that book as a loss parent, and I see it in a whole new way. The mother rocking a baby who she can’t hold. Who won’t ever try to flush a watch, or be a teenager, or have a family. Her rocking him like a baby makes perfect sense, because that is all he will ever be.

 

I love that for most families, that isn’t the message of the book at all. Most parents I think just respond to the poem.

 

“I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
as long as I’m living
my baby you’ll be.”

 

It isn’t exclusive to babies who are lost. Any parent can identify with this love, and this feeling. I’m grateful today for this book, because it articulates something so hard to explain.

 

Dear Oliver:

“I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
as long as I’m living
my baby you’ll be.”

Love Mama

Dear Oliver

Dear Oliver,

It has been 288 days since we lost you. It isn't a particularly significant chunk of time. In fact, I had to look it up to find out the exact number. Somehow the number doesn't seem very important anymore. the difference between yesterday and 50 years doesn't seem to matter. What does matter is what we have missed together, but there is no point in adding it up. I don't need the subtotal of what I have missed so far, because I know the sum at the end. A lifetime. All. Everything.

Somedays it feels like it was stolen from me. Like you were stolen from me. I find myself wondering about the what ifs. Would you be 9 and a half months old today? That is how long it has been since I delivered you. Or would you have stayed put until your due date. Would you be 7 and a half months old today? How big would you be? Would you have hair yet? What songs would you like? I can't even miss those things because I will never know, so it feels like I lost them all. Every baby you could look like. Every life you could have had.

The only thing I know for certain is how much I love you, because fat or skinny, bald or hairy, no matter what I would love you. Alive or dead. It doesn't change, not after 288 days, not after all the days.

All my love,
Mama

You don't have to tell me.

BabyCenter, you don't have to tell me.
I don't need to look at your description of what a baby looks like at 31 weeks. I know he has a perfect beautiful face. I know he is so big compared to that little speck, or poppy seed we saw on the first ultrasound, but still so small. I know he is long, and not very fat. That he has perfect little fingernails. Perfect tiny hands. Perfect tiny feet.

This week I don't need a description.
 I know what it feels like to hold a baby that size. I know that his skin is soft, and delicate. That there is just enough fat in his cheeks to make them perfect. That his little bum is so tiny. That his chin, and nose, and legs, and ears have already decided which side to take after.

You don't have to tell me about the kicks. That there will be more, and that I should be feeling them all the time. I'm aware of every second that the baby isnt kicking. The poor thing probably just wants to sleep, and here is me, drinking cold water and poking my belly, just so I can be sure.

From here out it is all new. I won't know next week, what to expect at 32 weeks. But anything is better than numb. And empty.

All the back pain and round ligament pain, and heartburn. The possible insulin shots, and stretch marks, and running (waddling) for the bathroom, all of it is so much infinitly better than chosing a funeral home. Choosing an urn. Saying goodbye.

Next week you can tell me. About how fat he is getting. and how he will continue to change. But this week, I don't need to read it. This week I know.

I stopped posting.

I stopped posting on this blog. The reason I stopped at first was that I found out I was pregnant again. I wasn't ready to tell people, so I decided to take a break from blogging until I new what to say, and somehow I just stopped.

baby Speck

This pregnancy is terrifying.

There is no way to write about Oliver without writing about the baby who is 27 weeks along, who I fear dying daily. Every twinge, every pain, makes me afraid something is going to be wrong, and that before I know it I will be grieving another son I will never get to know.

And when he kicks, and lets me know he is still alive in there, I feel guilty. I feel guilty for loving him as much as I love Oliver. I feel guilty knowing that this particular baby would not exist if his brother had survived. I feel guilty that we plan to give him all of his brother's unused things. All those gifts that were made with love.. for another baby. If Oliver had lived, his younger siblings would have used those things. I watched my sister learn to ride my first bike. I watched her sell my old stuffed animals at garage sales, and get to keep the money because they were "hers" now. I know the people who gave us beautiful gifts, did so picturing a baby using them. Being snuggled. Being loved. The blanket that was knit with love was meant to be wrapped around a baby, and it will be. But I can't help but feel guilty, that the baby wont be Oliver.

And I feel guilty for the new baby. The day I found out I was pregnant with Oliver was the best day. Every moment of being pregnant- even the ones that sucked- was amazing. I made special announcements to tell the world he was coming. We told our parents with special Christmas gifts, so that Christmas mornign we got to see them unwrap the news that they were going to be grandparents for the first time.

And now it's bittersweet. I told my mom I was pregnant again with a phone call. A terrified phone call. I don't lay awake at night picturing taking the baby on walks by the river, I lay awake wondering if I could survive losing him. If I could plan another funeral for another child. His whole life he will have the shadow of not being Oliver.

I am terrified that he will be overshadowed by his dead brother. And terrified that he won't. Im afraid that the living breathing son reaching milestones will become more real, and his brother who would have been, will fade away. And when he does, part of me will too.

And more than anything, I want baby Speck to live. I want him to be born, and cry, and poop on all our stuff, and keep us awake for endless hours and get gum on the cat, and take my car and get married and be happy. And the hardest part is knowing that there is no guarantee.

Do you have any kids?

Do I have any kids?

It is the most loaded question anyone can ask these days. It seems harmless. People ask me places like work. I'm new. Do I want to bring up my son on the way into a meeting? No. So I say no.

And then a little part of me feels like I am betraying him. I want to say yes. His name was Oliver. He was 31 weeks when he died and I miss him every day.

I have told a few coworkers that I have gotten to know. He isn't a secret. Given the opportunity I would talk about him constantly, but I can tell that it makes people uncomfortable, and I don't want that for Oliver. I don't want people to think I'm talking about him so that people will feel sorry for me. I hear myself when I mention him, and I don't think people realize that I'm a mother. I want to talk about my son. How much he looked like my husband. He was so tall. We had so many hopes for him.

I would love to say to my coworkers yes I had a son. Let me tell you all about him. Like you I am a mom who loves to tell you about her child. But for now I will say no. And reach up and touch my locket and know that I will never forget him.

Belief

This is a hard post to write, because we have received a lot of support from friends and family who are religious, and I want to start off by saying I have appreciated all of it. The people who have told us they are praying for us to me have the exact same message as the people who say they are keeping us in their thoughts. I hear that as a message of love, it doesn't matter who is listening. In my opinion, the fact that our friends and family continue to send love is what matters and I appreciate every thought, good vibe and prayer.  I thought it was important to say that, before I write what I need to say here.

I don't believe in God. Not in the traditional sense of thinking there is some being controlling my life and causing things to happen. I think god is an idea created by people, to make reality a little less scary. And I totally get the appeal, if I could believe that this was all part of some master plan, that there would be some reason for everything it would make me feel less vulnerable. Less like tragedy could strike at any time.

But I can't believe in God.

I can't believe that everything happens for a reason. It is not possible to convince me that Oliver being dead is part of any sort of plan. Like in the grand scheme of things it is ok. It is not ok and it will never be ok.

I wish I could believe in God, or heaven. If I could believe that someday I would be able to see my baby, and hold him and know him, I would. I would give almost anything to believe that. I am grateful to the people who do believe in heaven. I want them to be right.

I think if I could believe that he was in heaven somewhere safe and warm, being taken care of, and that I could go there, it would make things easier. Or maybe it would make things harder, because I would want to go there right now.

I do believe in science, and matter. I also believe in what I will call a soul, for lack of a better word. I think there is an energy component to people that makes up who they are. As you age, your cells die and new cells are formed. Your soul is what makes you "you" during your whole life. it is why you are the same person you were as an infant even though every cell in your body is not the same.

I believe when you die, that energy, just like the matter that makes up your body, dissipates back into the universe. There is no second chance, no reunion in heaven, no afterlife. You get one chance to live, once chance to do things, interact with people, to be. I think the idea that life is all we get makes it mean more. If you only live once, you shouldn't waste time. Oliver taught me that bad things can happen, at any moment, for no reason with no warning.

Our time on this earth is so short. I think of how unfair that it is that Oliver never got any, but even if you live to be 100 it is still relatively so so short. I think you have to live like you are going to live. A lot of people think saying Carpe Diem (or the painfully trendy YOLO) is just an excuse to do dumb things, and not think of the consequences for the future. I think it is a little more long term tan that. Thinking of the fragility of life isn't going to make me cash out my savings to go on a trip today, but it does make me want to treasure every second that I have with the people I love, because I don't believe I will see them in a magical afterlife. This is it, we get one life so make it count.

In trying to console myself about Oliver, I try not to think of the fact that I will never see him again, or never hold him in my arms, or know him. I try to think of all the endorphins that flooded both of our brains when I was happy, and all the kicks we shared, listening to his daddy sing or eating ice cream or drinking tea. I think of the joy of seeing his little flutter of a heartbeat for the first time on that monitor, and the excitement we felt planning for our lives as parents.

There doesn't seem to be a lot out there to console bereaved parents that is secular, and doesn't offer the promise of a reunion someday, so I needed to write this. Just in case. Just in case someone else needs to be reminded that life is just a series of brief interactions, of people enriching each others lives and enjoying the time we have. We have to honor the babies who are dead by continuing on, and enjoying the gift that we have of getting old, and of living. And knowing that however briefly they were here, we are better for loving them.

The beautiful walk we took last night. The world can still be a beautiful place. 

One month

One month ago today Oliver was stillborn.

I can't stop thinking about a one month old baby. What he would be doing. All the things he would be learning.

And at the same time I should still be pregnant. He wasn't due until July. I should be hugely uncomfortable, spending my days getting ready for him, re washing the cloth diapers to make them soft, preparing freezer meals, putting the finishing touches on his room.

And instead my days are just empty. I am empty. They say I need to heal, and work on myself but I don't even know what that means. How do you heal when all you can think about is your baby, and how you would give anything in the world to just hold him for a moment.

It is true that every day gets a little better. But better just means I am more able to distract myself. It means fewer hours crying in bed, but not none. I can walk into his perfect finished bedroom without crying sometimes, but then out of nowhere it hits me, that he will never wear all the clothes, or hear the stories or sleep in the crib.

And it isn't fair. Sometimes it feels like the more I want something the harder it is to get, and the more I see it everywhere.

It doesn't help that I live on a pedestrian route 2 blocks away from an ice cream store. So many moms with strollers, and happy families walk past my house every day. It doesn't help that I'm 28 and at my age so many of my friends have kids. It's so hard to see all the babies and pregnant ladies.

We tried for 2 years to get pregnant. For 2 years I would look at friends and strangers with babies and feel like it was a club I was not part of. Feeling like you are supposed to be a mommy is horrible. Listening to moms at work complain about their kids, and you just want to tell them you would give anything to have their problem.

And then I got pregnant. I felt like things were finally going right. Finally I would get to shop for diapers, and read stories and check under the bed for monsters. I would fall asleep at night imaging feeding my baby, and trying to imagine how much I would miss sleep, but knowing that I didn't care.

And then all of a sudden it was over. All of a sudden my future and my plans and dreams were just over. With no warning or reason. Now the nursery that I walk past every day is just waiting for a baby who will never come. The pregnant friends whose babies were going to be friends with Oliver just make me think of how much I lost. The pregnant strangers who still feel the baby kicking, who give me strange looks when I stare, probably just think I am some crazy lady.

The last month has been a string of impossible days, interrupted by some wonderful distractions. I thought reaching a milestone would feel like I had accomplished something. I survived a month in the world without Oliver. But instead it just feels empty, just like any other day.