With 6 days left in this pregnancy, and inspired by the blogs that I read of fellow baby loss mamas, I have been thinking about some of the ways I have gotten through this pregnancy so far. When I say "gotten through" of course that doesn't mean that it has been easy. I have been at a high anxiety level pretty much the whole time, but these are some things or thoughts that have helped.
1. First of course is this baby himself and all the love and joy that I have in him. This can be a double edged sword as the more you love the more you fear that it will be taken away, but in the first trimester I did a lot of visualizations about sending love and positive energy to this baby and telling him how I would nurture and accept him if he would only just make it out alive! I will admit that this took more the form of pleading rather than anything more confident or hopeful. This was my mantra: Be My Baby
In the second trimester I was able to hear his heart beat with my doppler and later in the pregnancy the baby has given me his own assurances with his thankfully regular movement and healthy development.
2. Denial. This may seem to contradict what I just wrote, but there were times when I just needed to forget about this pregnancy.
3. Going back to work. I was really nervous about this but I am very fortunate to work in a very supportive office and while I mostly just dove back in I knew I could take some time when I needed it. There were some days that it was tough to be there and there were some insensitive people and experiences I could have lived without but I think if I hadn't gone back I would have gotten lost in my anxiety and grief.
4. Projects. I am really terrible at it because I have zero attention to detail but I took up sewing. I had been given a sewing machine about 15 years ago and I never really learned how to use it. Before going back to work I took a beginning sewing class through the school board and I learned how to make a basic pair of pants, so then I made 3 over the course of the pregnancy. It was good to have something else to focus on in the evenings that had nothing to do with loss or with pregnancy or work.
5. Reading. This too can be helpful in many ways but can also bring up more worries as the more you know, the more you know about what can go wrong. My top books on loss have been:Finding Hope When A Child Dies An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination When a Baby Dies
But maybe even more of a lifesaver has been losing myself in silly fiction. I usually would save myself for more literary options but over this pregnancy I read a fair amount of fun crap. I easily read twice as many novels as I normally would over this time period.
6. Realizing that I can go forward without real hope. Most of my strategies have not centred on hope but on determination and survival. I am not sure how to make the distinction between hope (believing that events will turn out for the best) and what I feel (being willing to give it a shot because there is no other option) but I feel there is one. I did not get pregnant because I thought it would work out, I did it because there was no other way I continue to live after Saersha died. I now feel like it's ok to doubt that it will work out and not feel confident and hopeful as long as you can still find ways to get through.
So, those are my thoughts on this for now. I think this is something I will keep chewing on and maybe I will need to come up with even more strategies to get through the next 6 days.
Showing posts with label baby loss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baby loss. Show all posts
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Sunday, November 4, 2012
a year...
That it has been a year feels completely surreal. This year of grief feels like a blur now. It feels like Saersha was just born but then it feels impossible that any of this even happened.
I woke up at about 9 AM on November 4, 2011 thinking that my water had broken. I quickly realized that it was actually blood and thought, maybe this is bloody show. As is often my habit I went to the computer to research and found that the amount I was bleeding was way more than that. Trying to stay calm, I called my midwife and had to leave a message and then several minutes later she called me back and said she would come over.
I hadn't woken my husband up yet but with the midwife on her way over I told him what was happening.
The midwife listened to the baby's heart rate and was very concerned as it seemed extremely low and she told my husband to call 911. Things were panicked and confused as we threw a few more things in the bag we had packed.
The ambulance came and they were under the impression that this was a home birth transfer and that labour was well underway. I got on to the stretcher and into the ambulance and things felt very chaotic, I didn't know where my husband or midwife were and despite my insistence that I was not in active labour the paramedic said he had to check my cervix and feel for the baby's head. The head was still very much inside of my uterus and I think this check was embarrassing for the paramedic but I was too freaked out to really feel anything about it other than that it was unnecessary.
I assumed that since we were in an ambulance that they would try and go faster and put the siren on but they told me that it can actually slow things down as people drive more erratically when they did. It felt like the most excruciating drive but it was probably less than a 1/2 hour. When we arrived the driver took us to the wrong part of the hospital and that lost us another several minutes and added to the stress. We would have gotten there faster if we had driven ourselves.
I was wheeled into labour and delivery and set up to a monitor which showed that Saersha had a heart rate of 140. Soon after arriving, and in front of a nurse and the OBGyn resident who were working with us, I had a huge gush of blood when I sat up. It was so massive I remember hearing the spat as blood fell to the floor.
I don't know why but the Dr didn't recognize that this was a placental abruption. Her supervisor didn't come to see me himself and he thought perhaps it was cervical bleeding. They gave me the option of being induced with a monitor in the baby's scalp or of having a c-section. At BC Women's there is a pretty big campaign to have fewer c-sections and I think this is part of the reason that they didn't just get on with it but gave me this choice. I was so out of it from losing blood and from the stress and I had been so biased against c-sections in my birth class that it was a hard decision for us to make. Ultimately I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to relax enough to push this baby out and I signed the paperwork for the surgery.
We had to wait for a bit as the Dr who would perform the surgery wasn't available right away. It was about 12:30 when we went into the OR. My husband was getting into scrubs and waiting outside while they set me up with the anaesthetic. All this while Saersha was still holding on with a steady, although not dynamic heart rate. I still thought this would work out. We were in the right place, we were almost done, she was almost here.
It was as soon as they put in the spinal that they lost her heart rate. The surgeon was not yet in the room. I found out later that he was out side washing his hands with my husband and saying to him that he would have his daughter in his arms in about 10 mins.
The speed of everything changed then, they got the Dr in the room and the surgery began before they were even certain that the anaesthetic had kicked in. The anaesthesiologist said "Let me know if you feel anything and we'll put you under". Thankfully I did not feel anything.
It was probably only about 10 mins before she was out. I am not sure if it was because it was an emergency or whether c-sections are always like this but the force they had to use to get her out was surprising and uncomfortable. I was overwhelmed and weak and I tried to close my eyes and deal with what was going on. My poor husband thought I was losing consciousness and he was very worried. He had his head down next to mine and extreme fear ran through both of us.
They told me that she was out but there was no cry to give us any reassurance. Her Apgars were 0. The paediatric team worked to resuscitate Saersha for 20 mins and we could hear someone say something about "calling it" when finally she was revived. She was a strong one.
After a few moments when they probably wiped some of the blood off of her, they wheeled her over to me and I saw her limp body. She was bigger than I pictured her and she had so much hair. My first impression was that she looked both like my mother and like my husband. Saersha was a pretty big baby at 8 lbs 7 oz and while she wasn't measured she was probably about 22 inches. They only took a few seconds with us before bringing her to the NICU and my husband went with her.
The recovery room was like hell. I was shuddering from the anesthetic and very weak from all of the blood I had lost and the other women in the room had their babies with them, making little squawking newborn sounds while I was not sure if my baby was even alive. It was the first time I cried for you Saersha.
Over the next day they ran tests to see how severe the inevitable brain damage was. She was having seizures constantly despite being on several medications. She had almost no reflexes at all. She was breathing with support but really that was it. For a period of time that was enough for me. I was so desperate for her to live I didn't care about the details. Saersha was somehow alive against the odds. My husband has worked with severely disabled children though and he, along with a caring but matter of fact Dr, painted the picture for me of what her life and our lives would be like.
It was excruciating but given her prognosis we decided to take her off the machines and spend her final hours together just the three of us. We had about 6 hours together where we lay with her and tried to make her as comfortable as possible as she slowly stopped breathing. I so wanted her to feel the love I have for her in the brief time we had.
Today I was looking at the mementos we have, casts of her hands and feet, a lock of her beautiful hair. I am grateful to have them but they are not enough. It still hurts so much to see these plaster feet which look like miniatures of my own and to feel the huge chasm between what is and what should have been. How can these things, a few photos and a tiny bag of ashes be all that is left of her? In a sense I guess I have accepted this loss and in a sense I can not even wrap my head around it even a year later.
I woke up at about 9 AM on November 4, 2011 thinking that my water had broken. I quickly realized that it was actually blood and thought, maybe this is bloody show. As is often my habit I went to the computer to research and found that the amount I was bleeding was way more than that. Trying to stay calm, I called my midwife and had to leave a message and then several minutes later she called me back and said she would come over.
I hadn't woken my husband up yet but with the midwife on her way over I told him what was happening.
The midwife listened to the baby's heart rate and was very concerned as it seemed extremely low and she told my husband to call 911. Things were panicked and confused as we threw a few more things in the bag we had packed.
The ambulance came and they were under the impression that this was a home birth transfer and that labour was well underway. I got on to the stretcher and into the ambulance and things felt very chaotic, I didn't know where my husband or midwife were and despite my insistence that I was not in active labour the paramedic said he had to check my cervix and feel for the baby's head. The head was still very much inside of my uterus and I think this check was embarrassing for the paramedic but I was too freaked out to really feel anything about it other than that it was unnecessary.
I assumed that since we were in an ambulance that they would try and go faster and put the siren on but they told me that it can actually slow things down as people drive more erratically when they did. It felt like the most excruciating drive but it was probably less than a 1/2 hour. When we arrived the driver took us to the wrong part of the hospital and that lost us another several minutes and added to the stress. We would have gotten there faster if we had driven ourselves.
I was wheeled into labour and delivery and set up to a monitor which showed that Saersha had a heart rate of 140. Soon after arriving, and in front of a nurse and the OBGyn resident who were working with us, I had a huge gush of blood when I sat up. It was so massive I remember hearing the spat as blood fell to the floor.
I don't know why but the Dr didn't recognize that this was a placental abruption. Her supervisor didn't come to see me himself and he thought perhaps it was cervical bleeding. They gave me the option of being induced with a monitor in the baby's scalp or of having a c-section. At BC Women's there is a pretty big campaign to have fewer c-sections and I think this is part of the reason that they didn't just get on with it but gave me this choice. I was so out of it from losing blood and from the stress and I had been so biased against c-sections in my birth class that it was a hard decision for us to make. Ultimately I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to relax enough to push this baby out and I signed the paperwork for the surgery.
We had to wait for a bit as the Dr who would perform the surgery wasn't available right away. It was about 12:30 when we went into the OR. My husband was getting into scrubs and waiting outside while they set me up with the anaesthetic. All this while Saersha was still holding on with a steady, although not dynamic heart rate. I still thought this would work out. We were in the right place, we were almost done, she was almost here.
It was as soon as they put in the spinal that they lost her heart rate. The surgeon was not yet in the room. I found out later that he was out side washing his hands with my husband and saying to him that he would have his daughter in his arms in about 10 mins.
The speed of everything changed then, they got the Dr in the room and the surgery began before they were even certain that the anaesthetic had kicked in. The anaesthesiologist said "Let me know if you feel anything and we'll put you under". Thankfully I did not feel anything.
It was probably only about 10 mins before she was out. I am not sure if it was because it was an emergency or whether c-sections are always like this but the force they had to use to get her out was surprising and uncomfortable. I was overwhelmed and weak and I tried to close my eyes and deal with what was going on. My poor husband thought I was losing consciousness and he was very worried. He had his head down next to mine and extreme fear ran through both of us.
They told me that she was out but there was no cry to give us any reassurance. Her Apgars were 0. The paediatric team worked to resuscitate Saersha for 20 mins and we could hear someone say something about "calling it" when finally she was revived. She was a strong one.
After a few moments when they probably wiped some of the blood off of her, they wheeled her over to me and I saw her limp body. She was bigger than I pictured her and she had so much hair. My first impression was that she looked both like my mother and like my husband. Saersha was a pretty big baby at 8 lbs 7 oz and while she wasn't measured she was probably about 22 inches. They only took a few seconds with us before bringing her to the NICU and my husband went with her.
The recovery room was like hell. I was shuddering from the anesthetic and very weak from all of the blood I had lost and the other women in the room had their babies with them, making little squawking newborn sounds while I was not sure if my baby was even alive. It was the first time I cried for you Saersha.
Over the next day they ran tests to see how severe the inevitable brain damage was. She was having seizures constantly despite being on several medications. She had almost no reflexes at all. She was breathing with support but really that was it. For a period of time that was enough for me. I was so desperate for her to live I didn't care about the details. Saersha was somehow alive against the odds. My husband has worked with severely disabled children though and he, along with a caring but matter of fact Dr, painted the picture for me of what her life and our lives would be like.
It was excruciating but given her prognosis we decided to take her off the machines and spend her final hours together just the three of us. We had about 6 hours together where we lay with her and tried to make her as comfortable as possible as she slowly stopped breathing. I so wanted her to feel the love I have for her in the brief time we had.
Today I was looking at the mementos we have, casts of her hands and feet, a lock of her beautiful hair. I am grateful to have them but they are not enough. It still hurts so much to see these plaster feet which look like miniatures of my own and to feel the huge chasm between what is and what should have been. How can these things, a few photos and a tiny bag of ashes be all that is left of her? In a sense I guess I have accepted this loss and in a sense I can not even wrap my head around it even a year later.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Capture Your Grief: Jewellery
I had this necklace made on Etsy very soon after Saersha's death. I know many people have necklaces like this for their living children but I don't think that I would have had it made if I didn't yearn for any kind of physical connection to Saersha possible. I love seeing her name written anywhere or hearing it said. This necklace also can offer a rare entry point for people in my life who want to say something about what has happened. It puts it out there in the world a bit, which also feels like a brave act to me. Sometimes I just don't want to have to tell people but this necklace can make me do it.
I also like this necklace because it reminds me of a dog tag and often I feel like I am a veteran. I am not sure who I have been at war with, death, the universe, myself, but I feel like I have seen a kind of darkness that people don't often see and come back to try and live amoungst the civilians.
Friday, October 5, 2012
October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month and Capture Your Grief is an initiative where babylost parents are sharing photos with a theme for each day.
It's already the 5th so I am behind a bit, but I do want to participate in some way. I'll catch up with the themes that speak to me the most so far.
Before Loss Self Portrait
Of course, who doesn't say this, but our wedding day was one of the happiest of my life. I felt sure that our next step would be to have a baby within a year or so. I choose this photo rather than one of my pregnancy with Saersha because even though that was an extremely happy time, Saersha was already a rainbow baby after 3 early losses. When I think back to our wedding, that is when I was last naive about loss.
After Loss Self Portrait
After Saersha died I felt washed out like this. I wasn't recognizable to myself. I was in shock and I didn't know what to do with my feelings. I am someone who needs to feel purposeful and my whole purpose was supposed to be to care for Saersha. I was ready to dedicate my life to her. I was so sure it would work out this time and things would finally get back onto a positive track again. My body was so ready and needing to nurture and feed her but she was gone.
Most Treasured Item
Saersha took half of this pendant with her and I have the other half. I wore it everyday and felt it connected me to her. About a month after she died I dropped my half and it broke. I was so distraught and panicked. How could I break this talisman of my child!!! Would she ever forgive me? Where we not connected now? What did it mean? In an attempt at denial I glued it back together immediately. If it wasn't broken for long then I could pretend I never broke it. After fixing it, time passing and calming down a bit I realized that it was even more symbolic. My heart really was/is broken forever but I still have to carry it around and carry on.
Memorial
We didn't have a memorial service for Saersha. We didn't think we could grieve the way we needed to with people around. It was just the two of us saying goodbye to her for the last time. The crematorium staff were very kind to us and gave us enough time and space to do this. I can't bring myself to post a photo of that, but this is the cedar box that we made (with a lot of help since our grief-addled minds could not handle anything but the most basic functions). Many First Nations believe that cedar is sacred and when burned it drives out negative forces. This box was so fragrant with cleansing cedar and it meant so much more to us than the options offered by the funeral home. We sent her off wrapped in the blanket her Nana had knit for her and I filled a small wooden container with breast milk for her. My body was making it for her even though she couldn't use it but I wanted to give it to her in some small way regardless.
Monday, August 6, 2012
I feel like the next most logical thing to do is write the story of Saersha's birth and death but I am not ready to do that yet. In the thick of grief I did write the story in a journal as far as I could, as far as the point where we had to decide to turn off the machines.
I have not written about holding her and having our only moments together as a family, or about the time we spent with her body after she died or her cremation. I have not written about being given the tiny handful of ashes and bone, with their little metal ID tag. I will write about these things, but not today.
Saersha's time is when the leaves change colour and when there is a crispness in the air, then when it's dark and wet. Right now it's warm and sunny and life is focussed outwards, not in. But part of me is not engaged in all of that. Part of me is always in winter. Losing her has changed the meaning of time. I am drawn to do this writing but the season is wrong.
At the same time this new life is squirming inside of me and if it is indeed possible that he will live (which I am starting to believe) then I need to make the most of the time I have now to think of Saersha and write. Again I am thinking of the time until vs the time since.
So baby girl, know that I am thinking of you now and always, even though I haven't carved all of the memories into words yet.
At the same time this new life is squirming inside of me and if it is indeed possible that he will live (which I am starting to believe) then I need to make the most of the time I have now to think of Saersha and write. Again I am thinking of the time until vs the time since.
So baby girl, know that I am thinking of you now and always, even though I haven't carved all of the memories into words yet.
Monday, July 30, 2012
To Begin
It's been almost 9 months since my daughter was born and died, why start blogging now?
Other baby loss bloggers have noted the significance of 9 months growing their babies and then 9 months grieving them. It's a very painful symmetry of time.
The babies that were conceived around the time that she was born are now coming into the world. Anyone who has experienced the interminableness of pregnancy can appreciate that span of months.
Really now I am just starting to feel like I can possibly write about what happened. It's taken 9 months to gestate my grief enough to put it out into the world a bit.
I wish that this blog could be beautiful enough to represent her, to be worthy of her, but I don't think I will be capable of that. Saersha deserves graceful and poetic writing, amazing you with wisdom. This will certainly fall short.
She was our so desired and loved daughter. It took us almost two years and 3 early losses before we were blessed with her. Finally things were right with the universe again. We were being reconciled after all the struggles and rewarded with a perfect healthy girl, until the morning that she was born and it all fell away.
I will write about what happened in more detail later, but in the simplest terms, the placenta detached too early and left her without oxygen when labour started. How could things have gone so wrong just on the day she was finally arriving? The pregnancy had really been textbook until that day and its blood and panic. Injustice doesn't begin to describe it.
In the insanity that is immediate loss all I wanted was to be pregnant again. It wasn't something that can be easily described. It was like a primal force. It was my fingernails digging into the cliff. It was the only thing that would help even a little bit.
On the fourth month it happened. Now I am blessed again with a healthy pregnancy and a normal baby so far. This will be Saersha's brother, who will be born almost exactly a year later and who I can sometimes convince myself will actually arrive screaming with life, get to sleep in the crib his sister never saw and share her things and our love.
This is also what has inspired me to write now. For all of the counting down I do to this baby's arrival, I am aware that it is also counting away from her. I yearn to go backwards and forwards at the same time. Only one way is possible of course and that will take its creeping pace, so I need to be present and to remember. Thinking forward and backward for my babies.
Other baby loss bloggers have noted the significance of 9 months growing their babies and then 9 months grieving them. It's a very painful symmetry of time.
The babies that were conceived around the time that she was born are now coming into the world. Anyone who has experienced the interminableness of pregnancy can appreciate that span of months.
I wish that this blog could be beautiful enough to represent her, to be worthy of her, but I don't think I will be capable of that. Saersha deserves graceful and poetic writing, amazing you with wisdom. This will certainly fall short.
She was our so desired and loved daughter. It took us almost two years and 3 early losses before we were blessed with her. Finally things were right with the universe again. We were being reconciled after all the struggles and rewarded with a perfect healthy girl, until the morning that she was born and it all fell away.
I will write about what happened in more detail later, but in the simplest terms, the placenta detached too early and left her without oxygen when labour started. How could things have gone so wrong just on the day she was finally arriving? The pregnancy had really been textbook until that day and its blood and panic. Injustice doesn't begin to describe it.
In the insanity that is immediate loss all I wanted was to be pregnant again. It wasn't something that can be easily described. It was like a primal force. It was my fingernails digging into the cliff. It was the only thing that would help even a little bit.
On the fourth month it happened. Now I am blessed again with a healthy pregnancy and a normal baby so far. This will be Saersha's brother, who will be born almost exactly a year later and who I can sometimes convince myself will actually arrive screaming with life, get to sleep in the crib his sister never saw and share her things and our love.
This is also what has inspired me to write now. For all of the counting down I do to this baby's arrival, I am aware that it is also counting away from her. I yearn to go backwards and forwards at the same time. Only one way is possible of course and that will take its creeping pace, so I need to be present and to remember. Thinking forward and backward for my babies.
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