The Risk

I wonder to myself, Would you risk it all again?  Derek’s arms had been around me, my head pressed into the depth of his neck, and resting on his shoulder, our faces were turned toward the doctor sitting on my bed.  The others were behind her. They knew before we did.  I wonder what they thought.  The one on the bed was holding the wand pressed to my belly.  She moved it around.  She knew already, I am sure.  Perhaps she was trying to think of how to tell me.  Perhaps she was wondering what to say.  I asked the question.  Her answer, “No, I’m sorry.”  And then came the pain.  And tears.  And, “No. No. no. no.”  He held me so close, pulled me tight, bowed his head.  I sobbed. “No.”  sob. Sob. Sob.  “This happens this late?” He asked.  Astonished. Appalled. Off guard.  Tears. 

That was just the beginning.  Then home.  And to tell Sky that her sister would not be coming home.  Then the Funeral. 

That was the lowest I think.  Before there were visitors, or maybe not, I knelt before her urn.  I knelt before her bear, and her picture and her tiny, tiny jammies.  I knelt in my fear for her and for me, and my hurt and tears and my questions and doubts. I knelt and I broke.  I don’t know how long I stayed emanating sorrow.  But I sobbed great heaving sobs and they fell out of me like glass ripping away the pain and the sadness.  And I hurt.  I wish I had a sign that she isn’t just gone, that someday I might hold her and show her to her sisters.  How do you walk away from that?  And to see all the pain and sorrow in others, was humbling, as they honored what she should have been, and embraced us in our sadness. 

Then there was the pain of getting out of bed.  It wasn’t just physical.  I hurt in my soul to get up and move about my day.  I wanted to stay in bed, inside myself and hold onto the pain because to let go of the pain meant I’d have to move on from her.  I didn’t want to move on.  She is my baby.  To move on would mean (at least in my head at the time) that I was moving on and leaving my tiny baby behind. 

Some might think that writing down this pain is rubbing salt into an open wound.  It isn’t though.  It’s releasing it to fall around me like photographs.  Someday maybe I can pick up these thoughts like pictures and remember the pain and see where it has driven me.  I am not writing this down to be a masochist, to keep it in would be like returning to a nightmare over and over. 

All that pain and no one tells you that it could even be.  No one warns you that even if you make it 20 weeks or whatever it is, that you could still lose that precious baby you have lovingly carried and nurtured and dreamt about.  I had the tests and the sonograms, and the heartbeat monitors.  She was healthy and now she’s gone and no one tells you it may be so.  I’m supposed to call the doctor for birth control soon, I will get it now because it is best to heal more I think, 6 months at least according to the doctor.  Eventually I will have to decide, but the question stills stands.  Is all this pain worth gambling again that I may or may not catch the only wrong card on the river, or catch the right one and win the pot?  The prize is more valuable than any I can imagine, and the pain of losing is vast, deep, and dark.  I say I want another but maybe it’s His way of telling me I’m done?  Or maybe it was indeed just an accident.  My arms are still minus one.  And I hold my girls tighter. 

Raising sweet warriors

When you’re little it seems that your parents can take away all your pain.  Your mom takes care of cuts and scratches, cuddles with you, cries with you, makes you feel pretty, makes it so you’re a good person with a big heart, and then heals your wounded heart from breakups.  Your dad is the quiet observer who rescues you from the big problems, teaches you to be a hard worker, helps you learn to ride a bike, to drive, coaches you, and helps you with your homework.  Between the two of them, they are an unbeatable force that can help you to face the world. 

             Now I am a mom. I could not fix my Gabbie, I could not bandage her so she’d be okay and her daddy couldn't have known she was fighting.  I’m trying to be okay.  It still hurts to think I couldn’t have known.  I get it was no one’s fault.  I do.  I just wish…

 I wish my mom could heal my heart, and my dad could fight the fates and bring my baby back.  It’s a little girl’s wish.

As I type these things and have my quiet tears, Gracie turns before me from her toys.  She pauses and looks at me.  She crawls up on the couch and puts my arm around her.  Inches from my face, she reaches up and quietly and with much concern, wipes the tears from my cheeks.  “Why you cry mama? Are you okay?”  She kisses me on my nose and says, “Gracie loves you mama.” 

In her face I see her sister, touching my cheek and telling me it’ll be alright.  My Gracie is my grace.  My mom and my dad may not be able to heal me or fix this like I may have once thought they could, but they have raised me to be strong and loving.  They have raised me and I have raised, am still raising, my girls to be the same.  She may be only two, but in her sweetness I see the kind of mom I am. In Sky, it’s also there.   I wish their little sister could be here to see it, too.  It is not a gauge of my ability to be a mother, that I could not fix my youngest, just as it is not a gauge of my parents that they could not fix this. There are no easy fixes no matter how I wish there were.  From others, I'd have taken their sorrow and held it all myself so that they would not have pain.  But this is a pain that cannot be taken.  

They cannot fight this, just as I could not fight for Gabbie.  I am glad my parents have made me who I am, so I could have my girls be who they are.  My girls are my warriors.  

 The hardest part about being a parent is seeing your child in a battle that you cannot fight.  The littlest warriors are sometimes our angels. 

Glaring absence

I notice she’s missing more on days when life is normal: sitting at home, watching t.v., grocery shopping, laundry, bedtime, bath time.  I notice her absence when life is the way it was before her.  The dishes, the showers, the chores should be a little more hurried, worrisome, to listen for her to wake up, or cry, or coo.  I notice she’s missing more when I go out for walks and should be pushing her too in the stroller, when the kids get out of the car and I’m minus an infant car seat.  Her presence is not there and the ease of life is deafening, the what-should-have-been is so loud in thumps in my heart, a missed beat. 

                Home is supposed to be a haven, but instead, it’s a sad reminder.  Not her pictures, or her bear, or her once-upon a nursery, but the times in life that are too easy without her.  I am sad by the empty presence all around me.  I feel her there, but I feel her not there.  Life wasn’t supposed to be so easy.  I saw a picture that was sad but true… “People are most messed up in life by what they thought was supposed to happen but didn’t.”   She was supposed to make my life more complicated; I guess she has but not in the ways that she was supposed to. 

                I don’t know how to not notice the glaring difference in a life made too easy by absence.  I’d give up almost anything to have the complication back.  I still wish I had a reason.  Maybe Derek was right… we are closer than we were before.  We had been sort of cruising along, comfortable, happy, content with what we had.  And now, somehow he is more to me than before, and I loved him fully then.   I hold him tighter, but let him go so he stays.  Does that make sense?  How can losing her make me love him more?  I loved my girls, and now I love them more.  How can that be? I want them to be carefree, happy, beautiful in their hearts.  Watching them is almost painful, their innocence and freedom, blinding.  This cannot be the reason for her absence.  It hurts too much to think of.  To lose a baby before I could even see the light of heaven in her eyes, a baby I loved before I felt her, in exchange for loving her family more? Am a fool for not loving them more sooner? I did not think then that it was possible. I loved them with all I had.  The absence is so glaring, the love I cannot share, the place that was reserved for her, now empty.  I am sorry if that is the reason for her going… I did not know I could love more. It cannot be the reason. 

to exhale

Gabraella,

                When you were growing inside me we had a plan.  It included you, was built around you and your sisters to make the best lives possible for you and them, at least according to how we saw it.  Then you went to heaven, and I cried and cry still. And the world was on hold, paused as if waiting to exhale.  How do I let go of the dream of what I thought should have been? 

                I would sit and rock Gracie to sleep and think about how you would look.  Would you look like her? Would you have hair? Would you have my eyes and his nose?  Would you be blond?  I wanted to see you look at me and watch you wrap your tiny hand around my fingers.  I envisioned the house we’d buy having 4 bedrooms one for you and each of your sisters.  The yard where you would play would be filled with toys.  You bedroom would be painted pink.   The house would be baby proofed so you would always be safe.  I had such day dreams of you and your sisters being happy carefree girls.

But when you were born, you were still.  You would never open your eyes, or hold my hand but you were beautiful.  Beautiful and forever quiet and still, and my world was paused wanting for you to exhale, an exhale that will never happen.  Daddy held you then, when you came out.  You were perfect in every way except you would never exhale and your heart would never beat.  Daddy held you and he cried.  He brought you to me and showed me… “So beautiful,” he whispered, and he kissed my forehead, I touched your cheek, and he was right.  You were perfect except you’d never exhale and I so wished and bargained and cried and prayed that you would.   And now I have to learn to exhale because I’ve been holding my breath waiting for you, to teach you how to exhale, to relax into the life I was sure we’d have; I’ve been holding my breath for so long I’ve forgotten how to exhale. 

I see you in Gracie, her baby pictures look just like you.  Her nose is your nose, her face is yours.  I look at Gracie and I see what you might have been in 2 years and I forget to exhale. 

Now, the plans we made have changed.  They are a tailored to a life without you.  But I can’t exhale.  Not yet.  Some of the money we’d have spent on a house has been spent a trailer to go camping, to make family time and new memories.  But the new memories are memories without you and that makes my breath catch.  The four bedroom house I dreamt of having filled with kids is now a three bedroom apartment with one less baby to fill it up.  No mortgage or unexpected expenses to be concerned with, no lawn to mow or snow to shovel, less bills to pay, less responsibility.  But still I can’t exhale.  I’m excited about the new changes, maybe it’s exactly what we needed.  But they are still all without you. 

Sweet Gabbie, when, when can I let go just enough to exhale, when I will I be okay with a future without you?  When will I be okay with the memories of a perfect baby that I could never keep? 

Milestones

What were you doing so long in there? He wondered as I came into the bedroom.  Didn’t she go to sleep right away? 

Sitting on the Dora puzzle mat next to Gracie’s bed I watched her sleep.  Snuggled into Monkey jammies, her blanket buddies all around, a binky glowing in her mouth, she slept and I thought.  She slept, and my tears fell in splashes on Dora.  In the dark I listened to Gracie sleep and cried for her beauty, and cried for her loss.  She’ll never know or understand what she could have had.  So sweetly she slept, I cried.  They’d have looked so pretty together, my Grace and my angel Gabraella, surrounded by my Sky.  They’d have been the best of sisters and now they’ll never know her.  They will go days and weeks and years without thinking about the sister that they have but never had. 

Today Gabraella would have been one month old.  You can’t mark the days with milestones baby.  It’ll kill you to think of her that way.  She is still with you, you just can’t see her or hold her.  Derek’s voice.

How do I not mark them?  I’ve counted each day with a milestone in me.  I counted by months and weeks and days until she’d be here.  And then… PAUSE… shift in the world.  Birth her, hold her, cry for her, cremate her, say good-bye to her.  So many milestones.  So many dreams she’ll never be.  Maybe it’s not that she’d be a month old, but a month has gone by without her.  At first there were moments in a day when I didn’t cry for her. Milestone.  There have been moments that I haven’t thought about her.  Milestone.  I’ll pass the day when she would sleep through the night.  A milestone I’ll never celebrate.  So many firsts that will never be.  First smile, and tooth, first night in her own crib, first steps and birthday, how do I not count the milestones of what she could have been unless I mark them by what she’ll never be? 

Friends had their baby yesterday.  Healthy.  Girl.  I’m happy for them.  It hurts to see others with happy sweet babies, who are good people, who deserve them when I feel like we deserve them too.   Our babies would have played together.  No one ever told me you could lose a baby who’d been healthy your whole pregnancy at the very end.  I guess it wouldn’t  have made a difference if they had. 

I saw a story in the newspaper about a man who pummeled his 8 week old.  How does he have a baby and we don’t? 

There are no answers.  I don’t expect there to be.  I expected to be a mother of three.  I expected to count milestones with gummy baby smiles not with tears. 

Happy one-month still-birthday Gabbie.  Mommy misses you every day. 

No control

                Perhaps the problem for me is the lack of control.  You live your whole life thinking that you are making decisions and choices that set your life rolling down a specific path.  Ultimately, however, you have no control.  I have no control.  We decided we wanted to have another baby.  Planned out how things would be tight with daycare expenses being greater and life being just a little more hectic.  We were okay with it.  Wanted the heartache and joy of seeing another little person that was a perfect makeup of us interacting with the girls and making our lives just that much richer.  We thought, we planned, I grew. 

                No matter how much we planned and controlled, we had none.  It was all a deception of sorts.  He said yes you can plan, yes you can make choices, yes you can feel that you are the maker of your destiny, but I make the ultimate decision, and that decision is that you will not have another baby right now.  He gave no reasons.  And I must live off faith. 

                The weeks have spun so far out of control that I am dizzy, exhausted and out of sorts, lost. I became  victim to circumstance and my world starting spinning on April 2 with a car accident, and an overnight stay in the hospital, concerns about the baby and me, then stress about the car. April 25^th was the worst day ever in my life.  “Is she okay?” was followed by the eternally long 2 seconds before the “no, I’m sorry” that crushed my heart in its finality. I was dependent on an answer that I had no control over and couldn’t have seen coming at me had I had a telescope; so far from outer space, it flew at us like a not-so-mini Armageddon and rocked me to my soul. April 27^th meant telling my 8 year old daughter that there’d be no baby coming home and not having a reason as to why.  May 1^st I woke to my alarm set weeks before and forgotten about to get me moving for my scheduled c-section to birth my baby girl that would never be.  May 2^nd, funeral, knelt down in front of her little urn I crumbled.  Babies shouldn’t go to heaven before their parents.  Babies shouldn’t be your guardian angel. Babies shouldn’t sleep forever.  Babies, babies shouldn’t leave too soon.  More finality, less control.  May 8^th, a due date that was controlled and then snatched away again.  A minute, an hour, a day, breathe in, she’s gone.  A day, a week, two weeks, three, still gone, hold that breath, feel it in your lungs.  Wednesday I will have to mark the days by a month and more.  Still she’s gone.  Still I hurt.  Forever? It is likely.  Less? Probably.  I cry less already but only on the outside, only for the world.  Inside it’s still broken, that part of my heart that had been prepared for her, opened for her is now dark and sad and lonely.  And I have no control over when it’ll feel better. 

                He controls; I must have faith. He heals? I must have faith.  Faith makes me angry and yet it's all I have to create hope with.  I have no control.  

two roads diverged (May 15, 2012)

The plan seemed set.  Solid.  How could it be different?
The plan was working...
Pregnant by August, house on the market by February break, Baby in April, Moving over the summer.

There would be no camping, no vacations, not a lot of extra money.  Daycare would cost a small fortune, house would need 4 bedrooms to accommodate the growing family, time for other stuff would dwindle.  A list was growing of things that we would need, extra expenses.  All of this was planned for the five of us.

And then that one road, all mapped out and perfect in its imperfections and stresses, thrashed violently, vomited up a landslide, wiped the ground from beneath us, sent our stomachs into a plummet, threatened to eject us, and the road fell into the center of the earth and threatened to swallow us up and we hung on to the edge, clinging to each other.

The second road had been so obscured by what we expected that we never saw it, never even looked for it, never knew that it was there as it continued invisibly intertwined in our road...

and the two roads diverged.

There are places we have been in the last weeks that we would not have been had there been five of us instead of four.  A funeral for one, hearts broken, awash in tears, swallowing sorrow to go on, reading sympathy cards that choke us up, talking of an afterlife, talking of heartache, holding hands in the night, whispering "I love you" one extra time, checking and rechecking faith, And we were forced to take the road less traveled.

I'd give up the extra time, the money, the sleep, to be on the other road.  I can only hope that somehow being on this road will make all difference.

Reminders... (may 11, 2012)

I have to put away reminders.
The bottles she will never use are stashed beneath the cupboard. I cried.  I cried but I did it.
The blankets I never swaddled her in are being put inside a box.
The crib will be disassembled and stored away.
The nursery decorations taken down.
The clothes in the dresser that would have been hers, still soft and sweet smelling of detergent, will have to be stowed away, they would have only fit her for a while, but now they only remind me of how small and fragile she was.
The diapers she'll never wear, the baby car seat where she'll never sit, and the monitor that was supposed to measure her heart and breath (now too late) are all to be returned.
The flowers from her service, wilted, will be tossed.
Reminders of what should have been.

I will have to convince myself that all these reminders are only things.  I am not putting away the memory.  I am not storing her in a box to take out on occasion.  I am not hiding them from the world or forgetting them in the attic.  She moved in me for a while.  She created in me a dream of all the things she would have been.  She grew and had a heartbeat.  I loved her before I met her, I had dreams of holding her and rocking her and loving her even more, and now I have to put away the things she'll never need because she's gone.  My heart hurts and I miss her.  But they are only things.  I tried not to cry today.  It's not the pictures or the bear with the heart of my Gabbie that hurt.  It's all the things she'll never have and never do, and never be, the dream of what should have been that hurt the most.

a reason (may 9, 2012)

I need a reason, not a medical one for her death... I can grudgingly accept that there was nothing anyone (including me although I'm her mother and feel like I should have known somehow) could have done... but a reason in the ultimate plan, the map or web of existence that has each life destined to BE something or someone of importance to someone, at least one someone. I need her tiny beautiful life to have had a meaningful and sweet and good purpose. That all this hurt and sadness and let-down and feeling of emptiness and confusion and shaken faith in myself and in my beliefs was for a reason that was for a good that may at least balance the scale some. I wish I could have a reason for why I was "allowed" to carry this gift for so long and just when I was about to have her she was taken. This "there's a reason for everything" line is making me angry... someone just tell me WHAT the reason is for me to be given her to love and then for her to be taken with me to only dream of her sweet little cries.
Silence.... for no one knows and that is what I'm finding hardest so far to make peace with... my Gabbie is gone, and no one can give me a reason as to why.

I know it's not my fault... but what about the "supposed to's" (may 7, 2012)

I was due to give birth on May 8th 2012. I had a C-section scheduled on May 1. I woke up April 25th, the day before my youngest little girl's 2nd Birthday. I cleaned up around the house, I made breakfast, I did mother things. I did not notice that the baby within had not moved all morning until just before noon. After calling my husband, and then the doctor I was rushed immediately into L&D thinking the entire time that she had just dropped a little more and run out room.
The first nurse found a heartbeat with the monitors, but did not respond when I said, "oh that's a relief." She simply said minutes later that she was going to confirm the placement of the baby in a sonogram and quickly left. The heartbeat had been mine.
She returned trailed by three white coats and all three stared intently at the monitor. The one with the wand asked if she could sit on the bed. My husband held me closer.
"Is she alright?" I asked.
"No I'm sorry." And my supposed to be future stopped with her little tiny heartbeat.
Every thing, every plan that we had made over the last 9 months that was so certain to happen, that was SUPPOSED to be is changed. I was supposed to hold her, and feed her, take care of her, love her, watch her grow and play and interact with us all. I was supposed to save her and keep her healthy and I was supposed to touch her pink cheeks and count her pink toes...
I held her, My Gabraella Joy, after, after they unwrapped the cord that was not SUPPOSED to be wrapped four times. I held her and loved her, and love her still. But I cannot love her like I'm supposed to love her.
And all of these "Supposed to be" things I'm somehow supposed to make peace with and I'm SUPPOSED to one day be okay with and I still can hardly wrap my mind around them. How with two beautiful healthy girls at home did I fail so miserably at saving the smallest?
I know... I know.... there was nothing anyone could do. But it's not much comfort.

if i go to sleep (may 1, 2012)

If I go to sleep I'm one more day since holding you.
I'm one more day since believing in the dream of having you home.
I'm one more day to fading memory.
I'm one more day to holding the urn with your ashes.
I'm one more day since being told there was nothing they could do.

If I go to sleep I'll have to wake up and realize this is all a terrible heartache worse than any dream.
That I couldn't do my job as mommy: the saving, holding, raising, feeding, changing teaching and loving.
If I go to sleep I'll wake up and you'll still be gone.

Sadly ironic

It’s a funny in a sad ironic way that I started this blog and left it untethered for months:  Funny that I’d put words and thoughts so close to me out there nearly forgotten, ironically sad in that the topic of the very first blog nearly foreshadows a very real feeling of intense failure as a mother.   

I wondered if I were truly a good mother, talked about a potential broken heart, looked for answers where there are none all the while the very thing that would break my heart and perhaps teach me how to be a better mother and wife was already growing there inside me.