ripples, ripples everywhere

You know the story. Your baby dies-- a profound, ugly, messy, bloody wound. You nurse it, gradually you learn to live with it, you know, because you have to, yadda yadda. But that's not what this post is about.

And you know what happens after, too, the thousand tiny little cuts that follow. Family members who get pissed because you are not reveling in their joys or because you are not symapthetic enough to their grand tragedies, which, you know, don't seem that grand to you. Friends who somehow just can't find the time to call, or call because they just had to share the funniest thing their three year old just said. Strangers who say stupid things because they don't know, or because they just heard and react with a violent case of word vomit. And everyone who thinks they know just how you should be feeling by now (better) and what you should do to feel that way (follow their sage advice, naturally). But this too is not what this post is about.

What it is about is the unexpected ripples, the things you wouldn't have thought would have to do with your baby dying. For me, right now, it's my job. Lack thereof, actually. My last contract ran out in November, and I've been looking since. In my field, the jobs are mostly seasonal in start dates. So there was nothing for the spring semester, and now it looks like I didn't get anything for the fall either. More than a hundred people apply per position these days, and I am not looking beyond the area where we live, so it's not entirely unheard of for me to not have found anything yet. But it is unsettling, in the makes you see bleak scenarios kind of a way. There was also a crushing blow of a good interview and then not a peep for weeks, until finally a very pleasant rejection letter, all about a stellar group of candidates on the short list, which I made, and the tough decision, which they made.

I am one of the crazy people. I have what I see as a calling. And that means that I can't, still, see doing anything else. And dammit, I am good at this thing I do, at this thing I feel as my calling. Walking away, doing something else, it feels in no uncertain ways like giving up. Not just on this thing we call a career, but on myself, on what my definition, my understanding of myself is.

The ripple of this, the way it goes back to A's death, is that I was then in the middle of a one year position. I went back to work three weeks after A died, less than three after he was born. And I finished that year, somehow, cobbled through it, despite shit for attention span and a newly-acquired failure to care about a bunch of things in that job. I even put together a good piece of work by the end of it. But then I decided to take time off, to give myself breathing room. That was a wise choice. I should've stuck with it. I should've spent the time alternating between doing little and doing some of those projects around the house that sit on that looooooong term to-do list that always becomes way more long term than you mean it to. And then I should've looked for a position for next fall.

What I did instead was apply for that one position at the end of that summer, and I got it a couple of months into the fall. It seemed promising, it seemed like a great opportunity. But it didn't end up being that way. It ended up being far less challenging and interesting than it was supposed to be, and far less productive. Part of that was my fault, as I tend to get demotivated when what I am doing isn't interesting or challenging. Part of it was the hellish and medically complicated subsequent pregnancy. And none of it matters now. Because now I am looking for a job in a far worse economic climate than I would've been had I not taken this detour, and competing against a lot more people.

A week and a half ago I was in a complete funk. Now I am alternating between that and a stupidly stubborn determination to somehow get out of this hole I dug for myself, even if it means a long way around and a bunch of seasonal jobs with uncertain prospects along the way. I have a calling, and I don't know who I'd be if I gave up on it. I don't want to look over the edge of this particular cliff. I am too scared to look. But when the funk gets me, I am feeling like maybe I am already falling off that cliff, already midflight, already done for, and all that's left for me to do is to acknowledge the end.

What are some of the surprising ripples you have encountered so far? What has changed, for the better or for the worse, in places you didn't expect changes?

just time

On the anniversary of Sadie’s death I received an email from a woman I befriended through our antenatal class, whose boy would have been turning two around the same time.

I was surprised that she remembered until it occurred to me that she must on some level associate her son’s birthday with Sadie’s death, considering our children were born only a week or so apart, and that we were fairly close at the time.  She expressed her sympathy and went on to vaguely mention that she had suffered three losses over the past year herself.

Three losses over the last year. Under normal circumstances my reaction would have been instantly and deeply empathetic. Instead, all I could think of was, “Wow. They probably started trying for baby number two when he was just twelve months old.”  My mind clicked through the math, calculating the age difference between her and I. 

I’ve turned into a bit of an age-obsessed person who can’t see past her own poorly-constructed maternal guessing game.  “How old do we think she is?” (Oh yes, it is the royal we inside my head.) “How old are her kids?”  Five points if she’s older with just one. Two if she’s younger with more than one. And, “You lady, you get me twenty points for being obviously over 40 with a toddler!”

I’ve been working flat out for the past six months, pulling hours that looking back, I’m not entirely sure how I pulled off. All toward an end goal that I’m now on the cusp of; a career opportunity I didn’t even know I had enough drive to want, let alone get.  Every week that passes seems to include blowing off the gym, missing a deadline here at Glow, or bailing on a night out with the girls.  And of course, procreating. Instead of re-jigging my priorities or adding “Try Again” to my strategic objectives list, I cower, digging my head into the sands of avoidance even deeper.

I’m 33 next month. There’s nothing dire about that.  Women have long been fed the notion that 35 should be considered our Best Before date. Yet everywhere around me I watch as others are laughing in the face of that idea as they start their families in their late thirties and early forties. So why have I been punishing myself all this time, calling myself weak (and much worse) when no one else could hear it?

Does time tick by in the same way for the babylost as it does for the rest of the world? After wreaking so much internal havoc on myself, pressure where perhaps pressure wasn’t due, I can’t help but wonder if I haven’t taken exactly the right path in my healing. Lately I feel myself paying attention to things that I haven’t in the past. Realising strengths exist in me that I wouldn’t ever have believed a year ago. Perhaps this indirect route back to Me will be the best one in the end, I still don’t know.

.::.

What personal checks do you go through when you know you’re putting too much pressure on yourself to grieve in the right way, or in the right timeframe?

What part did time and your age play in making the decision (if you have) to try again?

not the enemy

Tash's post reminded me of how easy it is to get caught up in the bullshit of everyday life and how difficult it is for couples in our situations to communicate well.  Taxes, taxing situations, too many to-dos and no desire to do them can turn a simple afternoon sour.  Suddenly we're sniping and sneering.

Slamming doors.  Seething rage.  Eventually I realize that I'm not mad at her at all.  Well, maybe a little, but the quiver and clench, they are not her doing.

That tension and anger, it's a force that fills me when I realize how impotent I am to change the past I hate, or alter the immovable fact I cannot stand.

All I can control is my perspective and my response.

 

I attempt to embrace calmness despite adrenaline and energy.  Over and over, every day of my life now, it is an exercise in calmness.  There are too many triggers that click and spark the gunpowder in my soul.  There are too many holes that should be filled with moments with my son.  I fall into those voids suddenly so I've tried to learn how to fly.

Most of the time I fall.

That's the pit in my stomach.  It is the sensation of endlessly falling into another day that is filled with the absence of what I want most.

I fill those voids with anything I can think of and I try to stay calm even when I'm falling and all I can do is yell for help.  Luckily Lu is strong enough to pull me back when I start to shout because she knows all I'm really doing is looking for Silas.  Even when I'm yelling at her.

Inside I'm panicking because I can't find him and then I remember that I have to try and stay calm.  Lu helps me like I help her when it's the other way around because quietly, silently, and straight out loud shouting we both know that Death is the enemy.

Worst of all:  it is nothing we can fight or do anything about.  This immovable fact.  This hole that is a wall that is our son that is impossible.

That impenetrable barrier silences me when I get too pissed off about the daily bullshit that's easy to fight about.  We'll argue about some dumb thing, some mis-communication and then that spirals deeper, past our petty disagreement to the true source of our sadness and anger.

Suddenly I see that we are sharing that space and my anger is gone.  I'm not mad at her.  She's my rock and my partner.  Lu is my biggest fan and best friend.  Whatever fight we're having it has nothing to do with what is really going on.

The problem is that what is really going on is nothing we can fight, not even together.  There is us, here.  There is Silas beyond reach.  And there is his death between us all.

I fight against that every day, even without realizing it.  By getting up and going out.  By facing the day and whatever it brings.  By attempting to excel at whatever is before me, in each action and step I am battling the enemy that could all too easily consume me.  The Void, his absence.  Death.  I feel it in my stomach, in my heart, in my skin.  But I brush it off, again and again, determined to live bright and true.

Still, sometimes I have to shout.  I need to shout to get it out of my throat and still it sticks there, his death lodged in my soul like a vein coal.  I trace it like a labyrinth, round and round, all the way down, calmer by the moment as I see that it spells his name and that I will never be without him, even though I will always be without him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What calms you?  Are you able to pull back from the anger and sadness of your loss when you turn that on the people around you?  What do you do to fight against Death, against the absence of your lost child?

As if losing a baby wasn't loss enough

Well, it's official.

According to today's "Motherlode" blog at the NYT titled "Breaking Up After Miscarriage" (sign-in may be required), a Michigan Study (discussed here and) published in Pediatrics  (Abstract) claims that couples who experience a miscarriage are 22% more likely to break up.

More pertinent to those who read here: Those who experience stillbirth (they say nothing of neonatal death or late-term termination as causalities, but I imagine the same applies) "had a 40 percent higher risk of their relationship ending."

Impressively, the study ran for 15 years, and contains information for 7,700 couples. It concludes that "for a miscarriage, the risk persists up to three years after the loss. For stillbirths, it persists up to nine years after the loss, according to research data."

Yikes.

:::

My husband and I are one of those crazy couples that met the first week of college. We dated (at times long distance) for eight years until we moved in together, and another five until we got married. This summer we'll celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, and our 23rd year as a couple.

Our miscarriage way back in '02 didn't threaten our marriage. At least not in the immediate "holy shit" sense. The almost two years of infertility that encompassed the miscarriage was a bit . . . well, let's say it wasn't all rosepetals. We remained quite candid with each other about what was going on, and I guess we always thought "If we can pregnant once, certainly . . . " That is to say: there was hope. Even when the timed sex and timed vacations and the constant onslaught of pregnancy announcements filling our mailbox got old, we felt we were in it together and eventually, with enough time or money or pharmacology, it would happen.

And it did.

So even though Maddy's pregnancy rather sucked, as a couple I felt at the time of her birth that we were fine. Sure, he had been overworked for months, and I was at the end of my rope with exhaustion and longed for him to be home for a few hours, but that would come now with the baby, right?

We went through Maddy's week on earth with the same simpatico used to renovate our kitchen or purchase art together: an occasional opinion might sail slightly adrift, but eventually the other person followed. There were no raised voices, no conflicts, no epithets -- at least at each other. More often than not, we were exactly on the same page, if not the same sentence. In fact, when the doctors said they wanted to take a tissue sample of Maddy while she was alive, I wanted to ask a question and couldn't get a word out of my mouth I was choking so hard on vomit/tears. My husband simply turned to the doctor and asked, "Is there a risk she could die while she's under?" which is exactly what I was going to ask. I have no idea to this day how he knew what I was going to say. Deciding whether and when to take her off life support was less a decision than a shared feeling. Not just the same sentence, the same words. It was time.

I thought we were strong going into this, we had never had problems, and I wouldn't have described our marriage as anything other than strong and happy. And yet about ten days after Maddy's death, I made a phone call to a therapist for the both of us. I could no longer speak. I could no longer get off the couch. And given everything I had ever read in popular literature or seen in a movie or a bad Lifetime tv special, we were doomed to fail. Hell if I was going to lose my husband along with my baby.

In retrospect I don't think therapy saved our marriage. Was it good for our marriage? Absolutely -- it's always good to have an hour set aside to discuss what's eating you with a neutral sounding board in the room so you don't end up throwing the piles of poo at each other. I think we're just one of those couples that came in with fairly good communication skills and a rather solid marriage and needed some reminding and nudging and support. Not to mention four walls, an uninterrupted hour, and a sense of safety and security discussing the worst thing that had ever happened to either of us, as individuals let alone as a couple.

I guess I'm one of those people that looks at this study and on the one hand, I'm thinking I should probably not be so naive as to not check my husband's email or text messaging some time; and on the other I'm not wholly surprised nor am I afraid. I think I feel that your mutual experience of a trauma as a couple is only as stable as what you bring into it. That is, I'd like to see if these stats are much different for couples who experience financial ruin, for example. And that if you're not communicating horribly well, it probably takes far less than a miscarriage to start to fray at the edges.

Sadly though, according to this study, there's still time. Six more years, in fact, of an increased risk for hubby and I. So I can either wring my hands, or fling myself into it. We can continue to talk -- or not. We often find ourselves -- humorously -- asking each other how we "feel" about certain things, in our best therapist voices. But even though it's brought up with a smile, we are asking the question, aren't we? I feel as though we've been tried by fire, and made it through.

At least, so far.

How would you describe your marriage before and after the death of your child(ren)? Are you a couple that's finding it difficult to work through this particular tragedy, or is it one of those things that you feel will make you stronger? Did you do anything as a couple after babyloss that you feel helped you (or in retrospect, do you wish you had done something)? How far out are you, and does the above study's extended timeline of risk worry you? Please reply anonymously if you need to.

Hey...

As weeks go, this one is a whopper. Easter advertisements everywhere, even in my junk mail. All pastel colors and adorably grown up kid outfits. On, you know, actual kids. Kid models, sure, but still kids. Smiling, making like they get along, all of them, but most especially brothers and sisters.

This week, of course, is also Passover. Which is all about saving a people, or forging one. It is a holiday about family, both in the sense of the story at its core and in terms of who one traditionally spends it with. But it's also about dead firstborns. A minor detail, that.

And this weekend will be a lot about, you know, resurection. And lovely pastel outfits.

So I thought it's time for one of these again, a how are you thread. So...

Hey... How are you? How is this new season treating you? How are you treating yourself?