mute

Today we welcome a guest writer who is familiar to most of us in this community. If there is such a thing as an champion commenter and support person, Australian writer Sally from Tuesday's Hope would win the gold. She is often the first other babylost mama women meet when they begin blogging, and she offers equal support to people years out from their loss. Sally's first child, Hope Angel, was stillborn in August of 2008 after 41 weeks of pregnancy. In the almost three years since Hope's death, Sally has gone on to birth Angus, her twenty-one month old son, and is about to give birth to her third child. We are so honored to have Sally share her words and insight here at Glow in the Woods. -Angie

What to say, what to say? What on earth to say? What, in fact, is left to say?

Each time I’ve gone to put fingers to laptop, I’ve drawn blank. Mute. The loss of my baby, the safe arrival of my next one 15 months later and the pending arrival of number three has left me in a stunned silence. I feel I’m simply all out of words.

photo by garrettc.

When life chewed me up and spat me out one chilly August day three years ago, on the other side of the equator, where August equals cold, the first place I found myself in the land of dead babies was here, at Glow. A dear friend sent me a link about how to dry up your milk and I read the post, then every single other post on the site, given Glow was still relatively new then.

I didn’t have a space of my own to write. For the time being, all I wanted to do was listen, and observe. So that’s what I did. And this was the first place I found solace, the first place I felt less alone.

A few weeks later, finally realising there was no way out of this heinous club, I found the courage to comment. Then start a blog of my own. And the words spilled forth, each and every day for months on end. They would keep me up at night, whirring around in my head like a washing machine on spin cycle, and the only way I felt better about things the next day was if I got them out, coherently or otherwise, on to my blog. And the love and support I got back in those early days via comments, literally saved me. They kept me going.

Through the first six months of my grief, and the next nine months of my next pregnancy, I was a slave to the laptop. But since that pregnancy ended happily in November 2009, then raising my son and now growing the baby I carry within on this very day, I’ve struggled to know what to say or how to say it.

So it may come as a surprise to some that I’m a journalist by trade. I studied journalism at university and got a job in the field where I worked for the next 10 years or so before trying my hand at the baby making game. Initially, that was pretty unsuccessful, which is why I ended up here. Stillbirth, you bitch.

During my journalism training, my shorthand told me I was perfect for the profession because I was a “compulsive communicator”. I loved to talk, write, meet people, learn things and expand myself. I was a people person, through and through and making connections was what I did best.

But throughout my career, I never felt fully satisfied with anything I was doing. Or writing about. My journalism job ended due to the limited opportunity and abysmal financial reward and I moved in to the world of corporate communications, writing crap for big companies I cared little about. It sapped me of my drive and left me feeling empty about the career I had built and hoped to fall back on once baby making and child rearing was complete. I wanted to be able to write but about something I was passionate about, and make money at the same time. A pipedream, perhaps, but that’s ultimately what I was striving for. I just hadn’t quite figured out how to make it happen.

Enter the stillbirth of my first child at 40 weeks and five days after a perfectly boring pregnancy and bam, I finally had something I was passionate about and wanted to write about. And write I did.

My Hope was born on August 19, 2008 and I hadn’t yet turned the calendar over to September when I realised I’d spewed out, like hot lava, nearly 40,000 words of her story.

My house was buzzing with family, flowers kept arriving on my door step, but I sat on my couch, laptop at the ready and just poured it all out. People would bring me food and drinks and I just kept on typing.

I also began connecting. Commenting more. Reading more. Writing on my own blog more. Participating in this community more. And my inbox was full because of it. I made friends. Real life friends I’d never met, but we shared a common pain, and we bonded none the less.

The words, both written, spoken and read were what kept me afloat. I also purchased every single babyloss/stillbirth book I could get my hands on to sooth my soul with the more tangible style of words and filled journal after journal with the darker thoughts not really suitable for blog or email fodder. I threw myself in to the language of babyloss wholeheartedly. I was living and breathing it. Your words in, my words out, like a calming yoga breath. And that’s the main way I survived. I honestly don’t know how the women of generations before ours did it.

But now, three years on and just weeks (days?) away from the birth of my third child, my second pregnancy post loss, and I feel I’ve run out. My milk quickly dried up after my daughter died and my words have dried up now.

I’m sad. I miss her. I want her back. I still get angry. I still sometimes play the why me game, when I know I shouldn’t. I get jealous, but not as much. I feel tired. I hate that this is my life, but I do make the best of the life I have now. I still can’t believe this happened to me and I think part of me will always be in shock. But that’s really it. Round and round. Rinse and repeat. What really is there left to say?

Is it simply healing? Time? The birth of a subsequent live child, reinstating my role as an active parent? The due date of another, just 10 days after the third birthday of the big sister he or she will never meet? A combination of all of those things, or something else?

Even when talking about her to those in my real life, I struggle to get her name out. I get so choked up just thinking about her, thinking about what we went through that I worry if I let those tears out again, I might simply never stop crying. I have been referring to her birthday this week as “Friday” and not as “Hope’s birthday”, which is the more accurate description of what the day actually is. On “Friday” I don’t know what I’m doing. On “Friday” I think we’ll visit the cemetery. On “Friday” I’m not sure I’ll feel like catching up with you. It is no wonder people don’t know what to say or how to act around me anymore, when I struggle to get those simple words out myself, even to my nearest and dearest who know how much I still hurt from the inside out and who wouldn’t care if I cried an ocean of tears at their feet.

I update my own blog when I can, but I feel it is mostly out of obligation now, to let my readers know where I’m at. But the words don’t flow as freely now, and none of the thoughts seem as organic and pure as they once did.

I still read and comment every day but that’s about it. I’ve posted just six times this year. Yet I still have that desire to write and write about what I’m most passionate about. And that still is my daughter. But really, what else is there to say? She died and at least for now, my words might just have died with her.

Do you sometimes feel mute when it comes to talking or writing about the death of your baby? Did you reach a point where you felt there was simply nothing left to say? If you have a blog, how often do you post and how long do you think you’ll be able to keep it up for? Do you find it easier to talk than write, or vice versa?

Making Room

I have never been to the cemetery in the early morning or the late afternoon when the shadows are longest.  The shadows cast by Zoey and Gus were always long enough. Especially when it came to trying again and—finally—this subsequent pregnancy.  The premature loss of Zoey and Gus made our later infertility that much crueler.  It promised a greater chance of future premature losses, so we were not supposed to hope for twins again.  Discovering M. was carrying twins again (another boy and girl, no less) made this such a close parallel to a year ago, we could not let this pregnancy become its own entity.  Not until 22 weeks, 4 days—an arbitrary milestone to most, but one day longer than Zoey and Gus were with us.

With this pregnancy, I was less afraid that something would go wrong, but more certain.  From blogs and our support group, we derived much healing, but also something darker: the knowledge of what is out there.  Cord accidents and stillbirths and premature labor and even the killing space between the bed and the wall.  It could be harder to take in than it would have been a year earlier.  Having suffered does not immunize you from later suffering.  Indeed, judging from some of the stories we heard unfold, it just might make you a gravity well for it.

But it was larger than that.  Losing Gus and Zoey reoriented my sense of how nature operates.  It left me knowing what everyone else does not: that the sun rises in the west, that rivers run the other way, and that the young are not born to bury the old, but to be buried by them.  Call it the Natural Reorder of Things. 

Of course, I know this is not how it works intellectually—but what difference does that make?  One day, listening to Bill Bryson’s scientific survey A Short History of Nearly Everything, it strikes me: imagine witnessing the impact of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and nearly seventy percent of life on Earth.  Now imagine a survivor, one of those scurrying little mammals, peeking out from its burrow to behold the lava flows and the earthquakes, the wildfires and the ash, and the gone-ness of the sun.  Ask yourself if this little creature believes you when you say, “Don’t worry.  The world isn’t usually like this.”

M. put it more directly.  “We can’t go back to being those naïve, happy pregnant people.”  I would laugh when she said this.  I belong to a line of award-winning worriers (Best Free-Floating Anxiety, Best Worst-Case Scenario, Best Achievement in Hand-Wringing), so even though my attitude toward pregnancy had become more apocalyptic, I was never that naïve person to begin with.

Before Zoey and Gus died, I worried.  After M. became pregnant again, I waited.  This was both a subtle difference and a seismic shift.  Whatever would take these children away was an inevitability, and I could be only as passionate about it as I am about the fact of the sun setting.  After all, they belong to the same natural order.

---

When we reached 22 weeks and 4 days, and then 24 weeks, and as we passed 28 and then 30, M. allowed this pregnancy to become its own pregnancy, and not only an extension of our loss.  Then so did I.   Soon, I was thinking less about how Zoey and Gus were affecting my experience of this pregnancy.  Instead, I was thinking more about how this pregnancy was affecting my experience of Zoey and Gus. 

There were many details and decisions to consider—some we never got to make for Gus and Zoey, others that we had, and for that very reason, had delayed for too long.  With my attention so insisted upon, Gus and Zoey seemed to be getting further away.  Background and foreground had moved toward each other, through each other, and were now switching places. 

This may have been the only real inevitability.  Because, as I discovered, you cannot keep all things equally close at all times.

Sometimes, this feels right.  Other times, it feels—not quite wrong, but regrettable.  Late one morning in the last weeks, hungry and sleep-deprived, I see the names we have picked out as blocks of the colors that, for some reason, I associate with them: a midnight-blue and a translucent silver.  Then, for the first time, I see Gus and Zoes’s names in sienna and lavender, and sense that I am being severed from whole parts of the color spectrum.   

But there is also a way in which this pregnancy has helped me keep Gus and Zoey closer by.  Historically, I have never been one for change.  When I was twelve, my mother replaced the silverware without telling me.  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded. 

“Because I knew how you’d react,” she said. 

“You’re right,” I said. 

So, change.  Never my thing.

One night, around Week 24, I am alone in the house, in the room that is our once and future nursery.  I am thinking of the twins to come, and remembering the babyhoods of my nephew and niece.  Knowing how quickly and constantly infants change, I am already a little sad for how momentary all of the twins’ phases will be.  For how each advance, each step forward, however wonderful, also makes their previous selves irretrievable.  I know that we are really talking about newness, about life, but I see it as farewells, one after another, a constant stream.

Then I think of Zoey and Gus.  First comes a stab of guilt, but then the balm of suddenly knowing how I will make room for all four of my children, how I will give each set of twins its privileged place.  The children M. is carrying, should we be blessed with their arrival, will always be people in flux.  They will not be like their siblings, Gus and Zoey, who will always be what they are now.  This, I decide, is to be my compensation for the strangeness of having a son and daughter who live and change, and a son and daughter who are gone. 

This is to be my unique comfort.

Zoey and Gus: my children who never change.

How have subsequent changes in your life been colored by your loss?  How has your grief changed to accommodate new circumstances?



Well, How Did I Get Here?

I know for many (most?) of you, the decision to have another baby after the death of the same is as innate and natural and "Well, DUH" as drinking a glass of water or breathing. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that for many it's hardly a "decision" at all, but a compelling force or internal drive. Or something.

And not that it's easy for anyone to go back down that road, but for some, like me and a few others in my shoes who have more than just "Well, that was just a fluke of (really fucking abysmal) luck, really" it's not quite so easy to jump back into the saddle. It is, in fact, a decision. Maybe you have some grim odds to contend with on the next go-round, or a few more rounds of reproductive nonsense ahead of you, or perhaps you're just scared out of your mind. Or maybe some ugly combination of those circumstances. In any case, rather unlike, say, Elizabeth McCracken who averred from her hospital bed -- freshly blown apart by the death of her son -- that she would (!) indeed have another baby, I loudly proclaimed from the NICU: "Hell to the No."

So it's rather sheepishly that I stand here before you, three years later, 23+ weeks pregnant. What happened?!

Someone here asked me recently how I did it, how I made this decision, what my thought process was, or how I otherwise found my way from A to B, and I thought it would be useful to dissect my route in case anyone else out there had to face similar circumstances. And yet I sit here with my hands levitating above the keyboard and burping up the trail of breadcrumbs I've unfortunately consumed instead of leaving for the next traveller, because quite frankly, I honestly don't know how I got here. I'll set my water glass down, now.

I can in fact point to a few issues that -- when refocused through my new sporty Grief Goggles -- altered a bit and allowed me to sit somewhat comfortably where I am now as opposed to where I was almost three years ago now.

The primary contributor to this shift, you'll probably be sorry to hear, is simply the passage of Time. I remember when I first stumbled out my door to walk the dog in a haze of tears and blackness, one of my neighbors said something stupid like "It will feel better with time," and I wanted to punch her. (And oh my god, is she ever one of the sweetest women who said and did some simply lovely things for me a few days later.) But it turns out, it's one of those trite little sayings that I now agree with, I just think I should have the power to say and not a bystander.

Time does help. For starts, Time gave the doctors opportunity to fully and completely research what on earth happened, the results being: They have no fucking clue. But. They ran (and I found out last May continue to run) Maddy's samples through the Genome project multiple times, and presented her case at conferences, and with each day (month, year) that passes without a genetic hit, it looks more and more like the Ockham's Razor death rationale: undetected placental abruption and/or infection. Because the odds of a never-been-seen before autosomal recessive fuck up between two people from different ethnic backgrounds are apparently outstanding. And not to say our luck isn't piss poor, and those recurrent odds for the abruption/infection aren't daunting, but sure beats the hell out of 1:4.

But you know, the geneticist could still be right. And again, here's where Time has helped to an amazing degree: I have transformed from a pre-Maddy cautious optimist, to a post-Maddy pessimist, to a neo-post-Maddy realist. I no longer think in terms of odds, nor do I "hope" or "wish" or envision things. I now rely on the basic premise of probability, stripped of statistical odds: Either something will happen, or it won't. Either the baby will live, or it will die. I will get in a fatal accident on my way to buy groceries, or I won't. The chicken will catch fire under the broiler, or it won't. And I know for many such an oversimplification probably reeks of negativity and a 50/50 coin flip, but for me, in my circumstances, it has been remarkably freeing to simply let statistics go and deal with the end game. I used to mull over things like genetic testing risks for example, and now I simply throw my hands up: Either it will be fine, or it won't. (I did decide on genetic testing because I don't want any surprises this time around except for the big one at the end, but I certainly didn't sweat the odds of problems arising from said testing.)  And you know, if it isn't, I've been there. I've hence liberated myself from months of stress over minutia, and will simply wait until the end to find out what's going on. Thankfully, I'm a patient person.

Which leads me to Time and the fear factor: I was so completely afraid after Maddy died that I couldn't have sex let alone think about eventually bearing another child. And there was a time after I climbed online and realized all the other ways in which babies die when I wondered how we exist as a species, and how I could ever be talked into that again. I completely understand people who almost grow more fearful rather than comforted after reading other blogs -- just think, you could escape problem A and fall head first into problem B. There are those here who have lost babies more than once. Support groups can be sobering reminders that lightning indeed strikes twice.

But enough Time has passed that frankly I feel as if I now know all the ways in which babies can die (or at least the big group headings -- sometimes the subgroup can be a surprise). As I wrote to someone recently, I recognize all the bogeymen now. It's not that I feel immune to them, or don't think they won't pop up, it's that I no longer fear them, and they won't surprise me. I see them, lurking there around the corner, and in that way they've totally lost their power. Should one jump out, I'll say, "Oh, it's you," and know exactly who to contact for support. I've mentally walked my way to the end of almost every bad dream, and I'm strangely very comforted by that.

I want to put in an aside here that is too important for parenthesis: Some people here are dealing with the odds and the fear that not only will future babies be at risk, but their own lives as well. There are women reading here who (sometimes barely) averted death due to preeclampsia (and other complications), and the odds of recurrence of that particular problem go up steeply. I consider myself thankful that when I ponder my outcomes, I am alive at the end of each -- in fact, it was a huge factor in my ability to move forward. My worst case scenario has already been lived through, and I feel confident that I can and will make it through intact again should I have to. Others do not have this luxury of (at the very least) being able to envision themselves at the end of a process that goes horribly awry for the second time. And that is a whole other debate and discussion and risk taking endeavor that Time probably does nothing to ease. If you've had to make a subsequent decision that involves your life, I -- and I'm sure others -- welcome hearing from you in the comments.

Back to my final breakthrough: Enough Time passed that considering another child became it's own debate, not one necessarily connected anymore to the discussions we had about having another prior to Maddy. This was both a blessing and a curse as it turned out. We had moved since the last decision was made, we have new social lives, Bella is older and our parenting has changed dramatically along with her needs.  Thus, it was easier (and sometimes actually fun) for three of us to move as a unit, and yet it was also easier to imagine going through a (probably) stressful/problematic pregnancy.  We had come to the place in our hellish aftermath where we felt like doing things again: traveling, eating out, relishing time for the three of us, for the two of us, for me. My grandmother died last summer, and I saw my mother and my aunt work and grieve together and realized I wanted to at least try to give that to Bella -- no one should have to to deal with a senile me by themselves. And in that way, in this jumbled mish-mash of plusses and negatives, I feel as though this child within me now -- should he live -- will be his own person, with his own identity. He was discussed and planned and brought at least this far for a separate set of reasons, through different rationales. He will always be connected to his older sister -- it's hard to say if I would have had a third, and yet it's hard to say I would have ever had another.

I am not kidding myself here -- this will work, or it won't. I cannot claim to be learning anything about myself five months in, nor am I undergoing emotional shifts in my missing because I am pregnant, but frankly that's not why I decided to try and get pregnant again. I did this simply because I wanted another child of our own genetic make-up, and we'll know if it was a good idea -- or not -- come mid-May.

Did you decide to have another child after your babyloss, or was it more of an instinctual feeling that really didn't warrant discussion or debate? If you did have a decision to make, what went into your decision? How much time passed? What were the mitigating factors? What if anything shifted inside of you (or happened externally) to make a subsequent pregnancy possible? Did any of you decide "Hell no," and remain in that place?

Of Birds and Bees

We all bring a set of issues to the table of grief, whether it be a side-dish of marital problems, a salad of anxiety, or an appetizer laced with previous tragedies which this seems to compound. There's the bottle of money woes, the dash of low-esteem, and perhaps even (hidden under the napkin) the telltale odor of previous bouts with depression. All of these shade and color our experience, and shift our individual abilities to cope with babyloss. I'm not here to rate which are at least edible, and which could stand to be thrown into the compost, but I am going to discuss one particular problem many bring to the table and set down with a thunk, with the grace of an overcooked, 25 pound stuffed turkey.

That would be infertility.

Babyloss after -- during -- infertility is it's own peculiar injustice. For starts, infertility in and of itself can create it's own side excursions into mental trauma. As one avid reader here said to me in person recently, infertility is its own kind of grief.  For starts, what comes naturally in the pickle commercials and to your friends who seem to just look at each other naked and procreate, for you is not meant to be.  Frankly, that alone deserves some mourning.  There's the monthly reminder of failure, which you try hard not to internalize, but it's hard to go through more than a year without getting a bit mopey about overall body image and capabilities. Add to this the strain on marriage, which you try and avoid by making sex fun! And unto itself! But seriously, you're both eyeballing the calendar and know and wonder when it will be fun again, and secretly debate who exactly is letting whom down. Meanwhile all of your friends are pregnant and having babies and wondering what in hell you're waiting for? Time's a ticking! You go to your thousandth baby shower with a stiff upper lip and cry on the way home.

You finally go to an RE (that's Reproductive Endocrinologist) who runs you through a pantheon of testing. If you're lucky, you've climbed online and read up on this stuff so you're prepared for the discomfort of mulitple blood draws on various days of the month, watching radioactive dye run through your fallopian tubes, or having your uterus filled with liquid and monitored via ultrasound, or an uncomfortable uterine biopsy. There's the indignity of going in on day two of your menstrual cycle for a vaginal ultrasound to check the status of your ovaries, and the ever-popular post-coital testing where you run into the office when you should be lounging naked with a glass of something and a cig, and have them take a sample of everything that you didn't leave on the mattress to see if sperm can indeed make it through the secretions that you produce. And don't get me started on the discussion with your husband, which starts with "Honey, I really want to have a baby" and ends with "And so you need to go into the office where they'll hand you a jar. If you're lucky, this office may even have some inspirational magazines for you as well."

And that's just to get a diagnosis. If there is one to be found. Like so many things medical, after all of this, the answer is often "unknown."

Because now we know, maybe, or at least have an idea, there might be surgery to rid of endometriosis or fibroids or a blocked tube. Or IUI (Intra-Uterine Insemination -- you know, the old fashioned way, except with a turkey baster). Or if your husband presents a problem in the equation, IVF with ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection. Say that 10 times fast). Drugs are dispensed, often to yourself with syringes and detailed instructions on what needs done intramuscularly. Sometimes you skip right to IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), and sometimes there's a mind-blowing discussion about dead or absent sperm or a lack of eggs or a misshapen uterus that ends with the RE telling you about gamete donors and/or surrogates. Sometimes there's the unexpected surprise that all of these miscarriages you've been having are caused by a genetic problem carried by you or your spouse. Sometimes there's simply a vial of pills, sometimes there's the fluke of luck while waiting for the next round of shots to start, and sometimes there's the hellish conclusion that this will not end the way you intended when you walked in.

I should pause here and remind people who are staring at this jumble of acronyms and procedures like hieroglyphics that much of this testing and prodding and medicating and inseminating is not covered by insurance. Unless you're lucky enough to live in a small handful of states (or countries) that have rightly deemed infertility a medical problem necessitating treatment and hence coverage (and you're lucky to have insurance to begin with!), you're paying for this out of pocket. According to Resolve, the average IUI runs $865, depending on the medication needed; IVF's average (that's average) $8,150K, NOT including medication (which runs, on average, an additional $3,000-5,000). (For the record, I just used some banal progesterone, apparently necessary to keep embryos attached to my uterus but not covered by my insurance. The cost per 4 weeks of a daily single dose was $800, and I needed 8 weeks. And I consider myself lucky that's all I needed this time around.)

I know people who took out second mortgages for ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology), and people who used inheritances, and people who drew out of their retirement accounts and/or borrowed from family. All to achieve what many can do after turning off the late night news and climbing under the covers.

But let's say you get lucky, and get pregnant.

Worth it, right?

And now let's say your baby dies.

:::

Back up for a moment to what this reader said to me: Infertility is it's own kind of grief. It's a monthly dash of hopes, a monthly reminder of promises gone down the drain, often with the checking account. It's the thought when an embryo is tucked safely inside you that this is it! This is life! This is our life.  This blob will be my child! Only to be greeted by one line and blinding white two weeks later. Multiply this over, and over again. Possibly for years. Possibly having set your limit -- your emotional and financial finish line on the next attempt: this one is the last one. This one works, or we grieve never having children of our own, and move on to something else. Hope and faith and trust and marital communication may have left the building long before the death of a baby. You may have been desperate, on that last attempt, bargaining, wondering if anything would work.

In that regard, the death of a baby is part of this winding vine already invading your life. It's another loss, another dash of hopes, but this time on a much larger scale because . . . well obviously, it's different to hold a dead child than to stare at a negative pregnancy test, but there's also the thought that That might have been it.

Because you can't simply wake up one morning and say, Let's try again. As hard as that discussion is to have another baby after the death of the last, if you're infertile it's more complicated. There isn't the subconscious knowledge that Well of course this will work again like it's supposed to.  You need to pick up the phone and explain to people what happened, and what you'd like to do next. You need to go through a lot of the rigamrole again. You may need to alter how many embryos you transfer, or depending on why your child died, move to gamete donation or surrogacy. Perhaps you need to now fork out for PGD (Pre Implantation Genetic Diagnosis) (Incidentally, another average of $3,500 on top of your IVF expenses) to make sure any genetic problems aren't being passed along. You need to set to set a new limit, a new finish line, and further deplete your bank account. And each month that passes with an HCG (Human Chorionic Gonadtropin) test of two or less, you sink further into a bleak place. Perhaps that child was it. The only time this would work.

And sometimes, that is it. There are people here in this community, who read here, who reached the end. The end of the line. The money tree dried up, their emotions were frayed after years of trying and failure, and they needed to stop and move on. Move on with another life than the one they originally envisioned when they simply set out to have a baby of their own making. And that, putting behind not only a dead child but the attempt to have another of your own, is it's own crucible of grief. Inextricably wound up with the death of a baby that we're all familiar with, but branching out and encircling so many other parts of your conscious and marriage and identity and being. And like any loss, this deserves its own moment of grief, too.

Did you seek Infertility treatments in order to get pregnant with your child(ren)? Are you having to with a subsequent child? For you, how does your babyloss fit in with infertility -- does it stand alone, or has it become a chapter or branch within a greater struggle? Do you have limits? Have you met them already? 

No News

It seems as though whenever I start to feel like things just might be a little bit okay the other shoe drops and I'm back to being an utter disaster.

The other shoe is always dropping.  The rug is forever being pulled out from beneath my feet.

The surprising thing is how surprised I am every time it happens.  I should know better.  And I do, in my head.  But it's my heart I have to worry about, it just doesn't seem to learn.

More bad news, you're thinking.  Someone's hurt or sick or dead or in trouble and the meager footing I've found isn't enough to keep me balanced in the face of more tragedy.

If only.

Just another baby on the way.  There are so many, always on the way, always fine, often unplanned or unintentional but a wonderful surprise every time.  Right?

But that's where I fall apart.  This good news not ours cuts me to pieces and then I crumple at how awful that feels.  

These days, I can handle bad news much better than good.  I'm like the welcome committee to Disaster-Land. I hear bad news and I'm like oh let me help.  A friend lost her father suddenly and it was the easiest thing in the world to ring her right away and share tears with her and hold her close and make sure she knew I was there for her if she ever needed anything.

I'm good at bad news now.  I can be sensitive and strong, caring yet practical, forthright and easy with the most difficult and painful of subjects.  But throw a little happiness at the people I'm close to and all I want to do is crawl away and hide.

We don't get to do that happiness thing anymore and that empty space where it should be swallows me whole.  It swallows my dignity.  It swallows my hope.

Everyone else but us.  Here we stand, frozen in the long, sad moment of our son's death, unable to achieve the only thing we want as everyone just zips on by, their lives moving forward with new children and new hope. 

It's the heart/mind divide all over again.  I'm thrilled for them in my mind, but inside my chest my heart cracks open and falls to pieces and I almost follow suit.

I want to be happy.  I want to be happy for them totally and completely.  I want to be psyched and loving and everything correct, but I'm not.  I'm twisted and shriveled.  I'm bitter and disgusted with myself and once again way beyond the edge of tolerable limits.

I thought the worst was behind me, literally.  I thought that the worst possible thing had happened to me and that from there it could only get better.  But instead it has been an endless slog through deep, smelly shit.  Obviously nothing is more painful than losing Silas but the problem is that we lose him over and over again in a million little ways.

The ripples of our loss continue to radiate outward from us, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.  Our tragedy causes pain in the people we love the most and prevents us from sharing in the happiness of those around us.  That is so ugly and revolting I can barely stand to be in this skin.  But there is no where else I can go and nothing else I can feel sometimes, besides sadness and anger and loss and grief, especially when the phone rings and it's good news at the other end of the line.

If this is a test then we are failing.  We are not excited when we get the wonderful news that someone is pregnant, and that just sucks.  The ring of that call is always a little shrill in our house.  So here's the deal, all of you that are currently pregnant now, you're all good, but after that it has to stop.  The rest of you, no more hanky-panky until we give you the okay.  We're up next.  We've been up next for so long.

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So what are your tips to help us get pregnant?  Tinctures?  Chants?  Meditations?  Roofies? And don't even think about telling us to just relax and let it happen because that's just not going to work.  Unless there's wine involved.  Should there be wine involved?

losing it. perhaps literally.

“She’s got such a pretty face. It’s too bad she can’t do something about her weight.”

This remark can be attributed to a member of my own family. One I’ve secretly never forgiven.

My love/hate relationship with my physical self started very early. I have a crystal clear memory of being on the school playground in the third grade being called fat by a friend who was angry with me for one reason or another.

I spent high school in a fog of self conscious, shirt tugging anxiety, never happy with myself. Not until someone fell in love with me did I feel remotely confident. That helped, as did the roughly 30 pounds I lost over the summer following graduation. It wasn’t a conscious effort; I simply worked on my feet and rarely stopped to take a breath. Even relatively thin I dressed conservatively for someone my age, feeling as though other people shouldn’t have to be exposed to any more of my body than necessary.

Fast forward, past more than ten years of student and office life spent largely on my arse and I was back to where I was at 15; softer around the edges and thicker around the middle than I’d like.

And pregnant.

By the time Sadie was born at 42 weeks I had gained just under 60 pounds. I was comically rotund but somehow I loved every stretch-marked inch of myself. Even though my knees creaked when I climbed the stairs and I couldn’t get out of bed without rolling out, I felt better than I had ever felt before. My mind was as clear as my skin. Months of clean eating and plenty of sleep had made what I thought would be an indelible impression on me.Within two weeks of Sadie’s birth I had lost 20 pounds. Four weeks later she was gone.

If I’m being honest, I completely lost interest in caring for myself the morning we said goodbye to her.

I’ve spent the past year eating and struggling and drinking and feeling excessively. I joined a gym and went sporadically for two months before abandoning it altogether for three. I suffered from random insomnia and popped pills in all moments of weakness: hangovers, backaches, constipation, and depression. Rest certainly hasn’t come easily for me since her death, not without some sort of help. Whether that was a glass or four of sauvignon blanc or a couple of herbal sleeping pills, it was always something. Like many parents here will understand, it’s when the lights go out and I’m left along with my thoughts and memories that is most painful.

So much for my body being a temple. At the moment it’s barely a lean-to. I can’t decide if I enjoy punishing myself or I don’t believe I deserve to feel good in the first place. Whatever the case, I feel as vulnerable now as that third grader in the schoolyard.

Less sensitive people have been asking us whether we’ll try again for months. Others have tactfully left it to us to bring up if and when we’re comfortable. I have often wondered if Sadie hadn’t been our first, would we be where we are right now. I am doubtful and terrified that my abused old body may not even be capable of making a healthy child. Am I strong enough, physically or emotionally, to try? Am I too far beyond repair to risk it?

My husband has lost more than 20 pounds since Christmas; regularly pounding out God knows how many frustrations at the gym. It wasn’t until he started annoying me with a daily ‘calories burned’ report that my latent competitive streak was roused. Then it got even worse: the bastard started shrinking (damn those men and their superior metabolism). I’ve literally had no choice but to get off the couch and pick up my sneakers.

I’m not making any promises, least of all to myself.

If I were brave I might ask myself why I’ve let the idle lifestyle go on so long. Knowing I won’t allow myself to get pregnant again without being in suitable physical shape first, I might also ask if there is a chance I’ve been using my body as an excuse to put off trying again. But I’ve never been much in the bravery area.

How has your body image changed after pregnancy, and after your loss? Have you ever knowingly punished your physical self, it be with neglect or otherwise?

This post is a part of The Body Shop at Glow in the Woods -- a month of themed reflections and memes that explore what we do in an effort to occupy these physical selves with grace after babyloss.