Signs

I have a good friend that believes in signs, as in "signs from the universe."  I wish I believed in signs, but underlying it seems to be that there is a master plan behind one's life.  I generally to think life is just a sh*t storm and whatever happens is simply because of random chance and personal decisions rather than some master plan for the universe.

But, right now, I so desperately want a sign.  I've been looking into seeing a psychic or getting a life coach or randomly asking really old people about their personal life decisions to desperately try and decide what to do with my life.

Do I quit my job and take some time off to be with Baby Girl while she is so deliciously wonderful? 

Do I start up IVF again to try for another child again?

Do I stay in my job because it has IVF coverage? I have 3 cycles of IVF under my current insurance.  I could switch insurance in January to K@iser and have 3 more cycles of IVF covered there.  That's 6 more cycles.  Could I do 6 more cycles?

Do I sign up for cobra insurance coverage for 18 months and give myself just 3 more cycles of IVF coverage? 

Do I cut back my hours at work even more so that I have more time with Baby Girl and still have the IVF coverage and just push off the making a decision about my career for another year?

Do I learn to be satisfied with the two beautiful, healthy children we have been blessed to have?

I know this is crazy, but I feel so vulnerable with only two children.  I want to be like the Duggars with dozens of children.  Plenty of "back-up."  It's not even that I want "back-up" for one gender...I want "extras" of both genders.  Because how would I survive if my only son died?  How would I survive if my only daughter died?  The truth is that I would survive.  I would live if my children died, but my life wouldn't be as full and my heart would forever ache.

Plenty of people in this world think that two children of each gender is the "King's Family" (a son to leave your kingdom to and a daughter to marry).  The perfect family.  Why have more?

But, did those people ever lose a child?  Did those people ever struggle to have children?  Do those people understand how fragile and precious and amazing children are?

Is it natural to desperately want more children when one dies?

Elizabeth Edwards had twins after her 17 year old son Wade died.
John Travolta and Kelly Preston had another child after their son Jett died.

I know you aren't trading a soul for a soul, but maybe there is a primal desire to procreate and to make life after losing a child.  I wonder if having another baby is the only salve to recover from losing a child.  God, I hope not.  Because we may never be able to have another child. 

I just need a sign.

Is my longing a sign?  Will that just wane with time? 

I just can't figure out how to make sense of the pieces of my life anymore.

Every Moment of Every Day

I am trying to make mental shifts and reframing my view of life.

I wrote my friend who is due around the same time and told her:

Thanks so much for dinner last night.  It was so sweet of you and [your husband].  It was, as I imagine it will continue to be, difficult to see you and think about where I should have been in my pregnancy.  I can only hope with time I will accept this loss into the arc of my life and that seeing you and your sweet baby will not be some painful.  It's odd, but I did have a weird thought when we told each other that night that we were pregnant, that I hoped that nothing happened to either of our babies because it would be a terrible reminder.  Perhaps my intuition knew then that things would not go well with the pregnancy.  Please understand that it may be difficult for me to see you and your baby (boy or girl?  still waiting?), but that I will get over it and love your baby as we love [your older son].  I hope that some day I can be thankful for your baby because it will be a reminder of our sweet Mackenzie as life moves on and he becomes less of a part of every moment of every day in our lives.

 

Love you guys,

 

RunningMama

Well that sucked

Tonight my friend that was due three days after me dropped off dinner.  Her stomach was round and swollen and my baby is born and dead.  It fucking sucked.

And now it begins....

My new life without my baby.  Without the crutch of family and friends and support.  Everyone else's lives are heading back to normal and my life is anything but.  Today was the first time since the Friday before Mackenzie's birth (i.e., the Friday before Easter) that we have not had houseguests.  It's been great in that I haven't once had to worry about dinner or had to deal with Nugget's evening temper tantrums alone.

But, I also haven't had the space and time to reflect on Mackenzie's death and I fear my memory of him is fading fast.  My pregnancy with him was a mere nightmare, somewhere lost in the cobwebs of my mind. 

Few reminders of his life exist.  The remaining plants and flowers that were sent after his death.  The cards accompanying these flowers and notes sent in the mail.  The fact that I am still unable to fit into any of my clothes.  The small remaining strip of sticky stuff on my inner thigh from where they taped the catheter during delivery; I refuse to scrub it off.  If I look closely, at the top of my belly I can see the small scab from where the prick of the amnio needle went it.

Being out of a regular schedule for the past 3.5 weeks has been taking its toll on me.  I realized this weekend that I go crazy without a schedule of my choosing. I need to exercise every day and have everything organized and be constantly working down my to-do list or I start to get irritable and angry.  Couple a complete lack of control over my schedule, constant houseguests, and my now desperate need to process and understand my grief and I am a wreck.  I find myself wants to eschew the whole mourning process and move on to focusing on my new future.  I want to lose the baby weight and get in shape and get everything accomplished on my to-do list and start researching new jobs.  I don't have time for grief.  I don't have time to dwell on the life that I no longer get to have with a beautiful baby and the end of IVF treatments and moving forward with a new career.

If I push just a little beneath the surface, an angry, bitter screaming person emerges.  She demands her old life back.  She yells at random strangers.  She's constantly irritated with her husband.  She grabs the fat around her hips and curses the mass.  She throws away maternity clothes and baby toys without regret.  She hates her life.  She hates pictures of who she used to be: happy and hopeful and confident and excited about life. 

My birthday is coming up: 35.  I am fucking pissed about it.  My friends want to have a party and celebrate, but I don't.  I am a failure.  My life is a failure.  When I turned 30, I was 12 weeks pregnant with Nugget and so excited.  I thought that by the time I was 35 I would have all my children (i.e., all 3 of them) and I would have moved on to a new job and we would be living in a bigger, better house and everything would be wonderful.  I did not expect to be mourning the loss of my little baby boy, stuck in a job I hate, and so far adrift from where I thought I'd be that I don't even recognize myself.  I don't want to celebrate this birthday.  I can't see why I'd bother.  I certainly don't want my friends to gather around and acknowledge my failure.  I'm sure they don't see it that way, but I do.  I want to be alone, licking my wounds, and hating what I've become.  Healthy attitude, right?

I miss my baby.  I ache for him.  How did I lose you, baby boy?  I'm so sorry I failed you, too.

Don't Read if You Aren't in the Mood to Deal with One Angry B*tch

We've had constant guests since the weekend of Easter.  My mother-in-law and sister-in-law were standard fixtures that whole week.  Then, my sister and mother came to town.  Loving friends have brought meals, sat with me, talked to me on the phone for hours, emailed, left messages, texted, sent flowers, brownies, care packages with magazines and chocolate and lounge wear.  The outpouring of love we have received from our family and friends and coworkers has buoyed me up. 

But, I am finding it to be a false sense of security or optimism.  In the early hours of the morning when the night sweats wake me up or when things quiet down in the evenings, I revisit every decision we made during this pregnancy.  I think about whether we should have transferred two embryos.  I think about whether we should have allowed ourselves the space to mourn the loss of the first baby.  I wonder whether we should have been more aggressive about the care I received after the car accident.  I wonder whether we should have done the CVS or the amnio.  I wonder whether I should have gotten more second opinions on the heart condition diagnosis (cardiomyopathy).  I wonder whether we should have sought out a support group for people who had received diagnosis similar to baby Mackenzie.  I wonder whether we should have asked about the low amniotic fluid more or insisted that I be put on bedrest or have more regular monitoring.  I wonder whether I should have gone into the hospital on Easter Sunday when I felt those weird pains.  I wonder whether I should have cut back from work more when I started getting sick all the time.  I wonder whether I shouldn't have exercised.  I wonder if this loss is some sort of retribution for our mistakes in life.  I wonder whether it is a sign from a higher being that we are failures as parents and shouldn't have procreated (rationally, I don't believe this one, but it does creep in).  I wonder if I could have eaten more protein and that would have helped.  I wonder if I could have been a better advocate for my baby if I had done more research about worst case scenarios or the diagnosis. 

There are no answers to these questions and my doctors refuse to even entertain a discussion of the "what ifs" as none of them matter.  But, I think this is bullshit.  The doctors don't want to entertain "what if" because they don't want a malpractice suit on their hands.  The doctors aren't rewarded for helping us to understand this situation.

We got some autopsy results today.  They are still studying Mackenzie's heart and thyroid to understand what role, if any, they played in his death.  The only definitive results from the autopsy were that Mackenzie was genetically normal, that the placenta was degenerative, and that they don't know why the placenta was degenerative.  So, basically, everything that we already knew.  It's maddening.

I'm trying to figure out how to deal with my desire to publicly mourn baby Mackenzie.  I emailed my close friends the day that we found out he died.  I'm generally opposed to substantive announcements of any sort on Facebook, but I did decide to post about our loss.  I felt that it was necessary to be forthcoming for a number of reasons.  My husband isn't on Facebook and, in his stead, I am friends with many of his work colleagues, former mentees, and friends.  It broke my heart  to think about him having to answer questions one-by-one the next time he saw these friends about the baby. I think part of the reason that I posted it as well was to remind people blithely bobbing along in their lives that people struggle and people they know struggle.  I posted to remind those fuckers that post their positive pee stick before they're even out of their first trimester or who complain about how "hard" their life is dealing with 2 under 2 or 3 under 3 or blah blah blah to not be so oblivious to the luck they have received in life.

I find myself wanting to scream every time I am out in public that my baby died and I want to die and I hate each and every person I talk to.  I find myself telling casual acquaintances or random customer service people that my baby is dead.  I find myself considering mourning practices previously considered to be too garish and exposed:

• getting tattoos memorializing lost children or loved ones;
• wearing t-shirts acknowledging lost loved ones outside of a race context (i.e., "running in memory of Joe Schmoe who died of cancer");
• having memorial car decals; etc., etc.

I even found a shop on Etsy where a wood carver will make you a baby doll at the exact stage of fetal development at which your baby died.  And I wanted one.  They're only $100.  I want to carry my 22 week 1 day old baby around until he smells and rots.  I want to get a custom t-shirt made with a picture of my dead baby.  I want to carve a large, cherubic angel baby on my arm with his birth and death date.  I want to punch pregnant women in their bellies.  I want to both immediately lose all this fucking baby weight and carry it around forever because it is the last tangible, physical evidence I have of his existence on this earth.  I want to wear black every day until I die.  I refuse to wear make-up or put on anything other than slouchy sweats or curl my hair or look anything remotely like a well-adjusted healthy human being.  I want every single person that looks at me to think that something is wrong with that woman. 

I want my baby.  I want to hold him and smell his hair and have him suckle on my breast.

In the Pain Olympics, I have always weighed my competitors and acknowledged defeat to few: women who have done 4 or more unsuccessful IVF cycles; women who have had multiple miscarriages and taken years and years to conceive; women who were told that they have premature ovarian failure at a young age and were never able to conceive; women who have had to birth a dead baby after years and years of trying to have a baby; women who have had to birth a dead baby and then never get pregnant again. 

It's a crass and rude way to think about suffering.  I will tell you that I never really knew how multiple IVF failure would compare to infant loss.  I always assumed that infant loss would be worse. With both, your future is uncertain.  You don't know if you will ever get to have a child, what that child would look like, when your suffering will end, if you will ever feel like a whole person again.  Your body is not your own.

It's the exact fucking same.  It hurts.  You are mourning.  You wonder what your baby would look like.  What his or her life would be like.  You want to die.  You want the world to suffer.  You hate living.  It's the exact fucking same. 

Remembering Our Sweet Boy

There are moments in the day where I can feel so normal and happy...watching my husband and the kids play chase around the house, laughing at the irony of being slightly thankful for my milk-engorged breasts because it makes my jelly belly look smaller, enjoying a sweet gesture from my son to my daughter, feeling so appreciated and loved by the outpouring of support that we have received from friends and family.

Then there are other moments with the horror of the past few days hits me.  The grief of this new life we are living.  Deep sadness that we are packing up the Easter decorations and life is moving forward without our baby boy, without our new future.

Small events from the day I delivered Baby Mackenzie strike me.

Remember sobbing in agony while trying to push his little body out...not because it hurt physically...I had them drug me up so much that I could only feel pressure...I felt enough pain emotionally...I didn't think that I deserved any more physical pain.  Unlike my other childrens' births where I just wanted the pushing to be over, I didn't want the pushing to end because when it did it would signify the end of my time with my baby boy.  I would have to truly acknowledge that he was dead and it wasn't some horrible mistake.  The entire time I was in labor I swore that I could feel him moving.  The nurses kept telling me that he wasn't moving, that it was a sensation similar to a phantom limb.  Will my son always be my phantom limb?  When he finally came out, I felt him sort of plop between my legs, his body cold, wet, and lifeless.  I remember screaming "not my baby, not my baby, I want my baby back."  The nurses took him away to clean him up and I was so afraid to look at him.  Afraid that he would look like some misshapen alien.  I made the nurses cover his face in case I wasn't strong enough to see him.  My husband held him first, tenderly touching his body and kissing his forehead, instinctively rocking him the whole time.  I remember him sobbing, saying that he knew the nurses would say that he looked weird, but thought that Mackenzie looked beautiful.  We cried together for a long time and told him that we loved him and how sorry we were.  We sang him the two lullabies that we sing our children, "Lavender Cowboy," and "My Sunshine."  We told him the story of how we met and why we fell in love with each other.  We told him about his older brother and how excited he was to have a little brother.  We told him about his big sister Josie and how much fun we all would have had.  We told him that we would never forget him, that we loved him, and that we were so sorry that this happened because regardless of what anyone ever told us we would always feel responsible for his death.  I didn't want to let him go.  I remember holding his light weight in my arms, looking at his tiny little hands and feet, and never wanting to let him go.  But, you can't keep a dead baby forever.  The wonderful nurses that had been with us all day were signing off at 7:30 and, as irrational as it may seem, I didn't want anyone he didn't know to take care of him.  At 7:10, we let him go.  It was one of the hardest moments of my life.  I was so so tired, though.  I had barely slept the past few nights and the drugs were taking their toll on me.  I slept for about an hour and woke to the sounds of a woman moaning and screaming in labor.  It was agony...hearing other women having healthy babies screaming. 

I couldn't move my legs until around midnight and they let us check out of the hospital.  It was a relief to check out in the dead of night and slip away without the openness of daylight and a bustling hospital.  I asked the nurses to not take me out through the maternity ward so I didn't have to hear the cries of newborn babies.  We left through the side entrance, not the front entrance like we had with the birth of our two other children.  When we got home, we both had a big glass of wine and tried to watch mindless television.  I snuck into baby girl's room and pulled her out of bed, rocking her nestled against my cheek.  She's so heavy now.  Clearly not a baby anymore.

The loss of this baby is not just the loss of our sweet boy.  It is the loss of closure for our infertility journey.  The haunting likelihood that I will have to go through all this IVF shit again.  If I do get pregnant again, I'll spend that pregnancy in sheer terror just waiting to have to deliver another dead baby.  The inability to leave my job and my infertility insurance coverage.  $30,000 more down the drain in our attempt to build a family.  Nearly 1 more year of my life wasted on the infertility journey.  The loss of a glorious 6-9 months off work to enjoy my beautiful family over the summer.  My future is a complete blank.  OR at least more of the same drudgery at work that I have been living for the past 7 years as I keep a job that I don't enjoy for the stability and benefits it offers.  I miss the life I was supposed to be having in only three short months.  I miss not getting to see the joy of Nathan proudly announcing his new baby brother to everyone he meets.

My friends and family have been wonderful.  My friends have been calling and texting and emailing constantly.  My local friends have meals planned for us for the next three weeks.  Two of my best friends are flying into town over the next two weeks to be with me.  I've received care packages in the mail, letters, flowers, etc.  Several friends have offered to help with a remembrance for the baby and have offered to buy a rose bush or tree in our son's honor.  Some neighbor friends are going to have Nathan over for play dates to help keep him occupied and allow us some time to grieve alone. We are so lucky to have so many wonderful people in our life to support us.

The visits and the meals will help me through the next few weeks, but I am not sure how to make it through the months and milestones that will follow....his due date, the day we conceived him, the anniversary of his death.  I'm not really an "in the moment" kind of gal, but have been told that is the only way I will survive this.  I wish I believed in a god with some master plan that would make all of our suffering worthwhile, but I don't.  I simply believe that some people have shitty luck and, unfortunately, we've been having that in spades.  And, I know I am melodramatic in saying that as I am sure there are many people in the ALI community that would love to have two healthy children.  But, I fucking want the easy people's lives.  The ones that say they want to have three kids each 18 months to two years apart and then they do.  I want that.  I want to have had the family building process be seamless and not something that sucks the innocence and hope out of us.  I want to be the person I was before all this started: hopeful and ambitious and excited.  Mostly, I just want my baby back.

Dead Baby

Sometime in the past day, my sweet baby boy died.  Today I have to do what no one should ever have to do: I have to deliver my dead baby.  He was 22 weeks 1 day.  My heart is breaking into a million pieces.  I fucking hate my life.