The Happy Sad Mama

A Dream

2012-01-29T16:18:00.000-08:00

I am about to enter a soft, green room. There is a large table in the center of it, perhaps fifteen feet wide by twenty feet long. The lighting is like daylight, bright, but indoors.

I am just approaching the wooden, heavily hinged door, which has a glass panel in it with a shade drawn down over the window. In the doorframe stands Heather, the sister, and she ushers us in. I know why I am here. Heather's sister, my friend, her baby has died.

As I am coming across the threshhold I see him, twelve weeks old, I know it is him. His name is Henry. I know I am here because he died, but somehow it hadn't occurred to me that I would see him, that he would actually be here. This is a funeral of sorts. It's going to be very small.

I am going to cry so much, I suddenly realize. This is very sad.

Henry is lying about two-thirds of the way down the big table, almost in front of the door as we enter. He is naked, with soft, dark hair, and he's curled into a beautiful sleeping position. He almost looks like one of the babies in an Anne Ged.des photograph, only he isn't in a basket or flowerpot, he's just beautifully curled around himself like a sleeping doll. He looks amazingly lifelike, but I know he is dead.

I try not to look at him, and I turn to the left and head towards my seat, the one that somehow I know is mine, about five seats down on the side of the table that faces the door. I am trying to look purposeful, as if I have somewhere I need to be. But as I'm walking down, my back to Heather and to Henry, I realize what I'm doing:

I'm avoiding him on purpose, because I don't want to know that this is real. I don't want to look at him, and realize how adorable he is, and how sweet he is, and to understand the magnitude of what my friend has lost. I don't want to see his sweet face and feel this unstoppable surge of agonizing grief for a little life lost. But I know that I must. I must.

So I turn back around and I head for him. Somebody else is already there, admiring him. I lean over and see him. He is so sweet, so beautiful. He really looks like he is sleeping. I look at him very closely. Very, very closely. I think I can actually see his hand trembling a little bit. It can't actually be so, can it? This sweet, beautiful little boy cannot be dead, can he? It seems much too impossibly sad to be the truth. I'm almost sure that I can see him move.

The woman who is looking at him picks him up, now, and she tries to move his position. She's trying to re-curl him in another way, and as she does so I can see that under his arm, where it has been curled around his little face, it is all reddish-purple and bruised. In my mind I know that this is because he actually is dead, and the blood is beginning to pool from the gravity. (does this really happen, I wonder? as I ponder this dream)

My heart sinks. It is really so......

And here, the dream ends, as all dreams do, abruptly and without resolution.

n.b. The baby in the dream, o best beloved, did look just like Charlotte.

n.b. 2 Henry is a real child, the son of the real friend, sister of Heather, but he is a lively, blond two year old. Incidentally, his mother, a friend from High School, reached out to me after reading Charlotte's obituary in the paper, and rekindled our friendship which had lain dormant for 10 years. I believe she is the only person who randomly sought me out to say she was sorry.

The Leftovers

2012-01-22T17:37:00.000-08:00

In my bedside table drawer, there is a little mostly-used package of kleenex that my mother brought me in the hospital. I was sitting in the bed, gloriously pregnant, about to deliver the end of myself as I once was. She handed me the kleenex.

"Hospital Kleenex is so scratchy," she said, "I thought you might appreciate this."

It's remarkable that the whole packet isn't empty, but it's not, and it's still there, next to my bed.

Behind that, there is a tiny little diaper. It's brand new, an infant diaper-doubler. When I came home from the hospital, swollen, bleeding, and broken hearted, I found it half-under my bed where someone had missed it when they'd come to pick up the pieces of my old life. It was stiff with the amniotic fluid that had soaked it just 36 hours prior, I could see streaks of blood and still smell that sweet smell.

It occurred to me then that in the fluid would be skin particles, urine, all sorts of Charlotte that had soaked into the piece of cotton. It was her DNA, and I envisioned a Jurassic-Park like scenario where my daughter was conjured out of this evidence of her being.

I tucked it into my drawer, along with the kleenex.

It will probably be there for my entire life.

There's Always a First...

2012-01-21T11:10:00.000-08:00

It's hard to imagine that this has never happened before, but it really hasn't. Perhaps it's because Liam is a boy, and many of his newer friends that we've had over to play have been boys, and perhaps boys are less observant or less likely to comment on such things. But today we've got a little girl over who Liam has been friends with for three years. She's an awesome girl, she's enthusiastic and has always been very tuned into my pregnancies and babies. She and Liam play hockey together on weekend mornings and today we brought her home afterwards so they could spend the afternoon together.

They were eating scrambled eggs and toast together for lunch, and this little girl was looking around the room and her eyes settled on the three little ceramic plates mounted over our sunroom windows.

"Liam, Aoife, and Charlotte. Charlotte. Why does it say Charlotte?"

It's funny, but I've never explained this to one of Liam's friends before. It seems either they already knew, or they didn't ask. So I thought, here goes.

"Before Liam was born we had another baby, a little girl named Charlotte, and she died."

I said it simply. But of course this astute, thoughtful girl isn't going to take this at face value. They're almost eight years old now.

"How?"

So I explained it. Almost like I was telling her how to make chocolate cookies, or how to piece together a quilt.

Just a list of facts, ending in the death of my firstborn child.

Four.

2012-01-20T18:42:00.000-08:00

I am blessed to have these four children. I say this to myself, over and over again. I know this.

I am so lucky to know this. There are great challenges to parenting all these children at once, but in a strange way I feel my burden is lifted by this peaceful knowledge that I am so lucky to have them.

Knowing that Charlotte died from such a random, quick accident makes me feel that each one of my living children was a near miss, an amazing gift plunked down before me that I should savor. What would it be like if I simply expected them to be there?

I am envious of friends and family who have a specific, clean, definite answer to the question, "How many children do you have?"

I don't have an answer to that. I have four children, but I've had five babies. The answer is never clear, I never know what to say, and however I answer I am not telling the truth. The truth is, I don't have four children. But the truth isn't that I have five children. I'm somewhere in the middle, with four underfoot and another taking up airspace and headspace and heartspace but without a body to go with all that.

Aoife made me a picture at school yesterday with two girls, their arms slung over each others' shoulders. There was a rainbow over them. The message said, Dear Mimi-- I'm sorry my sister died. This rainbow that you will see on my card is for you to be reminded of Charlotte. Love, Aoife.

This is my life. It's all the real stuff of life, and it's mine.

I'm blogging somewhere else now, too. This is brand new. I haven't written here very much lately for a very real reason. I'm really in a whirlwind of parenting four living children, but this space feels very much like space that has to somehow revolve around Charlotte. Much of my parenting does, but sometimes I just need a place to try on the shoes of the lady in the grocery store with the four children.

Amazing what time will do for you.

So if you're interested in some more writing, check out this new blog, too.

I'll still be here, too, for there will be days where I need the friend who knows. And you will.

13

2011-12-13T18:29:00.000-08:00

My heart beats quietly beside her, as we're lying in the dark. I've stopped doing anything, everything I do in my life these last few weeks to let my little tiny one sleep when she wants, and it is paying off. This evening it's just past eight and she's beginning to doze beside me, even though her last nap ended at just before half-past six. So we lie there together, side by side, and she falls gently into slumber while I sing softly to her. It takes her about twenty minutes to fall into a deep sleep, but I have the time. This is the most important thing.

I think to myself, as I look at my baby, falling asleep in the safest place she knows, what a lucky little baby she is, to be falling asleep in her mother's arms, comfortable and cared for.

And what a very, extremely lucky mother I am to realize that there is nothing more important in my life right now than to lie there with her, breathing in this fleeting, delicate moment of her babyhood.

Today is the 13th of December. One year, it was Charlotte's seven month birthday on this day, and the next year she turned 19 months while her brother turned eight months. Some years later her sister turned one month, and then that next year thirteen months.

Eight years ago on this day Greg and I stayed home from work and sat across from each other at our dining room table and made wax-resist Pysanki eggs to hang on our Christmas tree. We wrote her name on them and wept as we did so. I was pregnant but could hardly think about it.

This year, as Greg was carefully hanging his egg, the last ornament to grace the Charlotte tree, it somehow slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor, breaking. The look on his face made me want to run away, it was Grief I saw, that haunting past I haven't seen him turn into for quite some time. He lethargically retrieved the broken pieces off the floor and spent the next half-hour in silence, filling the shell with cotton and using a hot glue gun to try to piece it back together. Liam was slightly horrified at this whole scene, and was continually approaching Greg and saying tentative things to try to mend the awkward intrusion of Grief into our holiday together.

Liam does not remember that Greg always used to cry when we decorated the tree.

The 13th of December, today. A Tuesday, the night where Greg is out and I tuck all the children into bed myself. A cold, blustery night, twelve days before Christmas.

(I have five children)

Amazing today

2011-12-12T18:05:00.000-08:00

We almost had no dinner, because just before dinner, everyone became totally engrossed in Christmas crafts. Greg and I were dashing from kid to kid threading needles, matching up felt pieces, and helping to design templates. French toast happened at the last possible moment, and against all odds, the children were all in bed, asleep, by 7:30. Perhaps the universe (or Charlotte) wanted me to have my craft time tonight to make Maeve's Christmas stocking.

Lucky me.

Good night.

2011-12-11T18:26:00.000-08:00

It's dark outside so early now, but there is a moon tonight that shines with such brightness that the trees are casting crisp shadows on the earth beneath them and the big, glacial boulders in my front yard are shining in the light. Inside, the Christmas tree glows with its tiny lights and the house still echoes from the voices and stomping feet of the six children who filled it with the noise of eighteen only a few hours earlier.

The dinner party over but the excitement still very much present, it took me quite some time to get Maeve settled down and into bed tonight. During the day I can wrap her up burrito style and walk around with her while she nurses and I talk to the kids, play Monopoly, or otherwise carry on with our daily life. She dozes off and I can then set her down upstairs for her snooze and leave her. But at night it's harder for her to calm down, and because her daytime naps are so erratic in both length and frequency, bedtime hasn't been consistent for her or me. (I could go on about this, because as you know the one thing I can get almost type-A about is children getting enough sleep, and all my children were out like lights by 7 PM at the LATEST by this age, But Maeve is different, and our life is different). So I try every night to draw in great, deep breaths and remind myself of how fleeting this time is, this baby-time.

So tonight I lay in bed with her, after we'd walked upstairs in the dark for a time to get her dozing. We lay in our bed together and she nursed a little more and I patted her back and sang to her softly while I looked out my great, huge windows that overlook the front yard and the river. I could see the moonlight reflected in the rushing water and the cold stillness of the earth below. The dark seemed to wrap itself around us, even in the silvery light. Somehow being able to see in the darkness made it more present. I lay there, looking out, and thought, I have all the time in the world for you, my dear. I lay there with her, feeling the warmth of her little body against mine, knowing with all the certainty in the world just how unbelievably lucky I am to have the privilege to do just this.

one amazing thing

2011-12-10T17:48:00.000-08:00

I just read a book by this title.

(it was a good book to read)

But it got me thinking about the year 2008, and how wonderful it is for me to go back and read this blog because so much of my life and my children and my thoughts are captured.

It made me think about how every day, there are many amazing things that happen.

So today?

One amazing thing was sitting on the couch, with our beautifully lit Christmas tree to my right, looking out the window to my left at cotton-candy clouds kissed pink by a glowing sunrise. It was seven o'clock, just dawn here as the shortest day looms less than two weeks away. The sky behind the clouds was a deep purplish grey. The two older children were playing together (and they were not fighting, not even a little, because sometimes they do that) and I had Maeve curled in my left arm, nursing, and Fiona curled beside me on the couch on the right side, nursing as well. I was wearing my big, fluffy fleece bathrobe, and the house was warm, and it was delicious.

That was a moment that could have been nothing, that could have been forgotten by morning tomorrow. But now, I will remember it. It was me alone with my four living children, everyone happy, while the sun came up over our corner of the world.

While I'm writing, I will share something with you that rocked me a little. I was in the shower yesterday pondering the amazing truth that I have four daughters and one son. Four seems like a lot of daughters for one person to have, it's getting on towards a collection of girls when you get that high, although of course three is a pretty normal amount of girls which is all a person can actually see of our family. But in the context of my considering the number of daughters I have, I stumbled upon a memory I hadn't picked out of the box in a while and it is this:

She is lying in my arms, her head in the crook of my left elbow, and she's just been born. I am dizzy with the overwhelming and surprising overlap of two, seemingly opposite emotions: intense, incredible joy at the little baby in my arms, paired with a haunting, suffocating grief I have never before felt in my life. I'm crying for the wonder and disbelief of the child I have created and grown and birthed and for the tragedy that will tear her from my arms in a quarter day's time. Through my tears, I gently move her tiny leg to the side and see that she is a girl child.

I look at my husband's face and I say to him, she's a little girl, we have a daughter.

Something about that word, daughter, sears it on my heart as the thing I will covet most: daughter. With the word daughter becoming mine, in turn I seize also the word mother, the word parent, the piece of my soul I have always meant to be the most important.

I used to think about that moment every single day, maybe 50 times. It was a part of the story I repeated to myself again and again: we have a daughter, we have a daughter, we have a daughter.

And now, in the process of collecting more of those precious, irreplaceable daughters for our amazing family, I have forgotten to think about this moment in time quite so often.

Just another one of those things that changes.

The littlest prophet

2011-12-08T18:46:00.000-08:00

Greg went into Fiona's room late last night, after hearing her cry out.

She was lying peacefully on her back, staring up at him.

"Charlotte is sleeping," she told him. He agreed.

"Charlotte has wings" she stated, and turned her head to the side and closed her eyes.

Interesting, given that we've never, ever told any of our children that Charlotte is an angel.

But perhaps she is.

2011-12-07T09:13:00.000-08:00

How I could have let it pass over me, I'm not certain. Memories get replaced by newer ones, I suppose, pushing onto the sidelines those that once circulated like wispy smoke through my brain: the happy moments before the storm, that vicious cyclone that ripped through my life and left me bleeding on the side of the road, broken and spent.

(Is this really what I should be telling people? Healing happens like this: your memories are so painful, so agonizing, that your brain will heal you by pushing your memories to the back of your mind, into a place that is like a locked file cabinet somewhere in a dusty closet. Sometimes you'll choose to crack open the drawer and let the memories seep out, but it's likely that when this happens you'll push the drawer shut with a slam, and collapse on the floor wondering how you ever managed to cope with such crippling sadness every single day of your life. Is it fair to confess that most of your memory of what happened will become a list of facts, and you'll learn to rattle off the facts while you carefully avoid matching the facts with the feelings that once paired with them? Should I tell people that one day they may learn to recite their story and feel nothing, to be devoid of anything while the words pour out of their mouth like water from a battered, well-loved waterbottle? Should I tell people that this is how it is, that you learn to live with the pain but that sometimes it's sad that your pain has turned into a story, and you can hardly even remember the sadness because you've done such a good job trying to heal? Do I admit that the sadness sometimes has to be re-remembered on purpose?)

So this is how it came to be that it didn't occur to me until I was watching this young, heavily pregnant woman sit in a big, brown leather armchair, with presents to her right being handed to her by her young niece, that I had once been this woman. Literally I had sat in that same chair, in that same living room, for that same reason, on April 13, 2003. A different, small blond child had handed me my gifts. I had laughed like her. One month to the day before all those baby shower gifts would become useless to me, mere tokens of a dream bitterly lost.

This is how it came to be that while I watched this woman open her baby shower gifts, and I realized that I had once sat in that same chair, heavily pregnant with Charlotte, that I let the gauze fall over the memory. I chose not to connect the dots between that fact and the agony of the loss, and I laughed with the others and commented excitedly about the cute clothes that inside I prayed she would have the privilege of using. I hoped so hard for her and her baby, but I did not let myself think about my own loss. And I was successful in not doing so.

Eight and a half years is a long, long time, isn't it?

(but she'd still only be a little girl. How could I have sidelined so much?)

2011-11-29T18:52:00.000-08:00

Wow~ Look what I made! Four beautiful children... and I had to throw that photo of Maeve by herself in since she looks a bit sullen in the group shots. I can only imagine what the fifth would look like.... maybe with some kind of photo technology they could combine the four faces to create the fifth.

I'll never know, will I...

Things are a little more under control here right now. It's hard for me to admit this, because the last thing I want to come across as is an anal retentive neat freak, but I do feel so much better about myself when my physical space is under control. The past few days have been good ones in terms of me getting everybody's things organized. I only have a few baskets of laundry, some already folded, the toys are mostly away, and I even got to make the beds today. Small potatoes, but somehow I feel more in control of things when everything is organized. It seems insane that something like too much laundry could send me into such a tailspin but I think that when I'm managing so many people when I start to feel out of control, the landslide happens fast and I get overwhelmed.

Thank you for all your words of support from my last post. Before I wrote that post, I was composing it in my head and almost started it off by saying, "I am not _____", and would have filled in the blank with another very popular blogging mom of many, whose posts paint beautiful portraits of long sunny days spent joyfully crafting and canning homegrown vegetables while the diapers dry on the line. And then I found, deep in the depths of her archives, a disclaimer which stated that her blog (obviously) chose to focus on those sunny moments, and of course she had her moments of complete insanity. I felt better reading that, more authentic myself, and it made me want to just dump the dark reality on the pages that I was typing on to just get it out there: because yes, this blog does focus on the sunny, but it started with the darkest of the dark, so it's okay for me to go there.

I'm glad the days are mostly sunny now.

2011-11-15T18:12:00.001-08:00

I am almost in a pit. But not quite.

I could use a few things right now.

A housekeeper.

A laundress.

A therapist.

A few long hours with some good girlfriends.

A big, cheesy pizza.

More wine than what I just drank with my 8 ginger cookies, fresh out of the oven.

Maybe a vacation?

So sometimes, the glass is seeming to be always half full. I remember only a month or 6 weeks ago crowing to Greg over and over again, I'm just so HAPPY. I'm just so PLEASED and THRILLED and DELIGHTED about our family! I was over the moon when I folded laundry, laughing to myself at the teeny little undershirts and Ariel underpants and dirty socks that still smelled like Liam's Keen sandals even after a trip through the wash. I joyfully prepared meals, giddy at the prospect of the six of us gathered around our beautiful cherry dining table, imagining the laughter and such that would ensue. The days were sunshiny and warm.

Aww.... and now?

The blackout really almost did me in, personally, because the house that saved us from the last 4 days without electricity had no laundry facilities. Of course the power went out with full baskets for everyone, so I came home to a trashed house that reeked of smoke and old, stale food, and 9 days worth of laundry for 6 people. There were about 10 bags to be unpacked, no groceries, and life just carried on. It was end of term for Greg, I had some meetings, and I am personally a little wiped.

So I'm basically complaining right now, but the real truth of it is that the kids (well, a few of them...) have been challenging lately. And it's much easier to write when things are rosy and glowing. My image of perfection, Miss Fiona Clementine, has turned TWO. Can you believe it? This, of course, warrants its own post singing her praises, but much to my astonishment, even Fiona has begun to be two. TWO. Like, as in, testing me from time to time, not always complying immediately and without question to everything I ask of her, skipping her nap, saying NO, and all those things. She's cutting teeth and demanding to nurse non-stop (which is difficult as of course I must think of little Maeve, who depends on the milk for her very life!) and has essentially turned from a child who brought nothing but joy and sunshine to... well, more of a regular kid. I suppose it had to happen. But it's a little melancholy for me.

And then there's Aoife. Poor Aoife. We had her parent conference yesterday and at school, she's just amazing. Happy, adjusted, enthusiastic. All the kids love her, she loves all the kids. She's learned to read and is writing volumes and loves math. She can sing a round and play the piano and organize a game with a group of 10. She is cooperative and attentive and lovely.

And the minute she steps out of the car to the driveway, she melts like the wicked witch of the west.

(is this a good argument for homeschooling, or what? but I LOVE my kids school so much, and so do they...)

The poor little girl is so exhausted and she just can't cope. I can't go into detail, I have to protect my little girl and her life shouldn't be splayed out here for all to read. But it's hard for her, and it's very hard for us. And I feel like the life has been sucked out of me from it. It's very, very hard, and almost relentless. I know I've been very lucky, I've been parenting for 7 and a half years and I really haven't struggled at all yet with a child in any phase. But my ass is being kicked right now good and hard, folks, and I could use a hand. (hence the cry for the therapist).

Liam is a rock star. He's learned to knit and is on his 7th project since September. Last week he read the 4th Harry Potter in 5 days. He hugs me good and hard and snuggles me.

Not that I'm comparing, but I'm so grateful to have someone who is so solid right now.

And Mae mae, she's butter and cream, laughing and babbling "mamamam" and rolling all over the place. But, that being said, she is a baby, and babies are hard work. And I suffer from some guilt of course from wanting to give her more than I have time to give her with three older children. She's always happy, though, which should be my gauge.

This is almost a rant, hardly a post. But it's the only way I can be here, and given that I don't have a therapist, I have to tell someone.

Things are a little hard right now. Hard and soft and everything all wrapped up. This month of Thanksgiving has me feeling desperate pretty often; desperate for some kind of time to feel myself think and to be an independent agent for even five minutes, desperate for someone to help me pick up the pieces, desperate for my kids to just settle down and love each other and themselves and me.... I want August back in my lap, the beauty and freedom of warmth and heat and schedule-less joy. I want piles of laundry that sit on the back porch and not in my upstairs bathroom to mock me when I brush my teeth. I want all the toys out on the porch and the rest of the house clutter-free and empty. I want laughing, screaming, hilarious children pouring in and out of my front door. I want OUT with the car and IN with the lake.

It's only November.

(but it is dark, dark, dark....)

I also know that part of what is hard right now is that I don't recharge, ever. Maeve is almost six months old and I really haven't had any time to myself since she was born. I haven't sewed anything (except Liam's octopus costume) and I haven't gone out with a friend and I haven't hosted anything interesting. I haven't done anything without at least one kid in tow. I'm so addicted to my children and I love them so much, but I almost need to find myself in all of this crazy chaos.

How?

Out.

2011-11-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

written on November 2nd, 2011

We would have laughed at the forecast for snow on Saturday night, except that already last Thursday the rainy afternoon turned to big, slushy flakes on the windshield on our way up to the library. By Friday morning there was a thin layer of snow on our ripe cherry tomatoes and covering the roses in the garden, and the children were joyously swiping what little snow there was off of the leaves and licking it delightedly as we prepared to leave for school.

So we heard it might snow, and groaned-- we'd had snow until April last spring, and it seems almost a cruel joke that after such a long, seemingly never ending winter last year, that the dreaded season should arrive on our doorstep only a few days after the flip-flops went downstairs to the basement to wait for spring. Indeed, it was only a little over two weeks ago that I had my ceremonial last swim of the season, running as fast as I could across the sand at my parents' beach and thundering into the icy water up to my knees and diving forward, feeling the water bite me as I swam underwater for 30 feet or so before realizing that the lake was, sadly, no longer swimmable. And now this?

But by 2 PM, suddenly, huge, giant, sloppy flakes began pouring out of the sky. Within minutes the ground was blanketed; within an hour, we had inches to shovel off the walk. It was steady for the afternoon, and the forecast of power outages when snowstorm meets trees that haven't yet shed their leaves began to ring true as the lights flickered and went out at 2, and then resumed but went out again at 4. But by 5 they were back on, and I jacked the heat up to 74 just in case. We rolled fresh pasta and made a fresh tomato, red pepper, and fennel sausage sauce, and filled a few soup pots with water along with our five gallon jug we'd bought to be prepared for Hurricane Irene . We ate two full meals per person with our friend Sara, who was with us for the night, and tucked into bed, flushed from the heat and the wine and the incredibly huge amount of food we'd consumed.

At about 11, I heard the white noise cut out, and the night lights went out. Fiona began to cry and Greg rigged her little sailboat night-light cover over a flashlight, and we all went back to sleep. It wasn't until morning that I remembered how cold the house would get, as I wiggled into wool socks and gaped at the snowbanks that had formed under our gutters. The world was absolutely painted in thick, white snow-- huge, thick layers of it on every leaf, branch, twig, and bush. Everything seemed to have melted, as branches hung heavy to the ground. Our little apple tree that had finally given us 26 beautiful golden russet apples this year looked like a tiny lump on our lawn. The cherry tree was sweeping the driveway. The rose bushes had disappeared. In all, almost a foot of snow had fallen. And it wasn't even Halloween.

So we lit a fire, and we launched into the day of snow removal and tree revival. Liam joyously leapt around the yard whacking limbs and bushes with his hockey stick, freeing them from the weight of the damp, heavy snow. Greg went up and down our long driveway with his snowblower, clearing the way, and neighbors came up and down periodically to check in and discuss damage and the power outage. It seemed the power was out pretty widely, but we weren't sure. By afternoon I was feeling hungry and cold and tired of it all so we all piled into the van and took a trip into town, just to see if there would be anyplace we could get a hot meal. We swung by the bigger town, and it was dark and vacant, the traffic lights all out, cars everywhere snaking through town doing just what we were doing: looking for warm food and somewhere to be. We turned east and headed into the next, smaller town, and happened to spot someone coming out of a darkened pizza parlor. They had their gas ovens fired up and some candles lighting their work area and we had a hot lunch, huddled around the greasy table in the dim light while Fiona ran around the table in delight. (with her 6 PM bedtime she hasn't logged very many hours in a restaurant!) Then we headed over to the grocery store where, to our surprise, they were open and running on limited power from a generator. The refrigerator sections were mostly cleared out to bigger fridges in the back to save energy and many cases were covered over with insulated cloths, but we were able to get bagels, fruit, and a box of super-softee donuts (the kind that're powdered, cinnamon, and plain) as a kind of snow-day bonus.

Back to the homestead we trundled, with our bags and the sun shining in the windows and the trees dripping melted snow on the tree-limb and power-line strewn streets. We came in quickly, to try to keep the heat in the house, and lit a fire in the fireplace to cuddle around, and got out the games. We moved the dining room table over, and we waited.

We waited, and waited, and although it was only late October the temperature outside was cold and inside the temperature dropped down, and down. That night when we went to bed it was still around 50 upstairs, so we dragged mattresses into our room and all slept together for body heat. We slept well under huge duvets (well if you try not to include the 4 or 9 times Fiona woke up crying, desperate to be nursed in the freezing cold) and when morning came (it was Monday) the world was still closed, our valley still almost completely without power, and our house was really cold.

It was one more day and night of mostly the same, three days in total of our house getting colder, and colder, and colder. Luckily, we'd anticipated the outage and filled our 5 gallon water jug with fresh water and we do have the river to fill buckets with for flushing toilets and such. Our camp stove was set up on the porch beside the coolers of food from our fridge, it was a bit like camping.

Except.

Except that it wasn't camping, and it was really cold, and the babies weren't sleeping well. And it was getting dirty in our house from all the boots, and we couldn't wash ourselves, and what would we do when the deep freeze started to thaw?

Thankfully, on the morning of the third day, power was restored to my in-laws house, only 3 miles from us. They were out of town so we moved right in, taking clothing for one day at a time, shuttling between the houses for four more days as we waited patiently for the crews to make it to our road, where our power line lay limply like a dead snake along the side of our road.

So then, on Friday, November 4th, our power returned, and the kids got on their costumes and participated in rescheduled Halloween....

and we were thankful, thankful, thankful to come home to a nice, warm house.

2011-10-25T17:38:00.000-07:00

So Maeve was sick this weekend, she had a fever and a cough and was oh-so-miserable. What made it harder for me was that she wouldn't sleep unless I was walking around with her... at all. Not even a little. As soon as I sat, or tried to lie, she would begin to arch, and scream.

Maeve never, ever cries. Not when she's hungry, not when she's tired. Never. She never has. She's just a quiet baby, and I've learned to read her squeaks and whistles and figure her out pretty well. So all of this screaming was kind of alarming, and while her fever broke on Sunday night, this inability to sleep much at all (she did go down at 3 on Sunday night, and at 2 on Monday night!) combined with continued screaming led me to one conclusion:

Definitely some kind of tumor, causing excruciating pain.

I cried about this, feeling distraught as I paced the dark dining room at 1 AM. Here I was, desperate for sleep after 4 nights of none, wanting so badly for her to go to sleep, and soon she'd be in hospital for months, maybe forever, and how could this be happening?

In the morning, after I'd had my coffee, I remembered about ear infections. I thought about how interesting it is that my brain visits the idea of fatal tumors before it suggests the possibility that a congested baby might have an ear infection, which would cause pain and an inability to sleep.

Oh, well.

I did make an appointment to bring her in tomorrow, but today she had a long nap on my bed and now she's been sleeping there for almost 2 hours. Not in my arms, not while I walk. So I think maybe my hours of pacing the floor possibly dodged us a round of ammoxocillin (and as she threw up the tylenol I tried to give her each time, I doubt that would have gone over very well) and I am hoping we are in the clear.

Fall

2011-10-17T18:10:00.001-07:00

It's time to write again.

My, how the time flies by, when you're spinning in circles all day long and then it takes an hour to make the lunches for the next day after dinner clean up because you're so tired. But it's all good work, for good people, and while I'm wondering who is going to make Liam's octopus costume and when, I'm still managing to hang onto my surfboard as the ocean undulates below me. Thankfully, Aoife has decided once again to be some variety of fairy princess for Halloween which means I can, with gratitude, send her to the gigantic dress up basket on the 31st of October to choose her own get-up.

This weekend was our town's fall festival. We live in a very small town up in the hills, and it's important for me to attend this festival every fall to remind myself how incredibly adorable this community really is. Of course there's the beautiful white church, town hall, and pristine library that comprise our town centre and sit perched atop a hill with panoramic views of the Connecticut River Valley. But on Festival day the back lawn of the library becomes a hubbub of activity with little tents, pens with all varieties of baby and adult animals, a cow pie bingo pen, lots of food tents, fairy house building, a craft table, and bounce house... and all the activities are free. Open to the public, and free. Amazing.

This festival consists of a kick-off 5K run through the hills (Liam completed his first 5K run, I'm proud to say, with Greg, Maeve, Grandpa and me!) followed by a variety of music, tours of the old blacksmith shop museum, home made sugar donuts, pies for sale, tractors to climb on, corn to grind, wool to spin, cider to press, and lots of animals to visit of course. There was a woodsman's competition and a trebuchet slingshot contraption flinging squashes into the forest.

The highlight of the festival comes at 4 PM when the Great Pumpkin Roll happens. At this time, all children get a small pumpkin and go to the top of the hill, and after singing a song, which is of course called, "The Great Pumpkin Roll," the starting gun fires and everyone pitches their pumpkin forward, and then great chaos emerges as each child rushes down the hill after his or her pumpkin. There are always a few tears as pumpkins are lost and kids trip on the incredibly steep hill on the way down, but there are way more smiles and cheers as the kids run sometimes half a mile down the hill after their pumpkins. One can easily imagine how quickly the 10 year old boys begin smashing pumpkins on the street on the way back up the hill and how shocked and horrified the 8 year old girls act as they compare how their pumpkins survived the journey and cradle them, hoping they will make it home for a good jack-o-lantern.

This year, our competitive by nature son was prepared to run all the way home if necessary (we live 1 mile down), and thrilled at the prospect of doing so. Aoife was almost going to opt out, as the throng of over-excited bodies pitching quickly downhill is always terrifying to her (and who can blame her, she's still barely 40 pounds) but a schoolmate's enthusiasm convinced her to at least pitch the pumpkin, and send Grandpa after it. Fiona spent the whole day saying, "Frow pumpkin down driveway, want to frow my pumpkin NOW down driveway, want pumpkin, want pumpkin NOW!" and then, in typical almost-two year old fashion, clung to her pumpkin and would not budge when the time came. It was an amazing day together, spent as a family, and it helped me to center in to the cute little community that I may have only lived in for 9 years but that has been my children's home for all of their lives.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how small our house is going to seem in 5 years, or maybe in only two, and how at some point we might actually consider the thought (just consider) of moving somewhere else. It really could only happen if we found the exact homestead that we envisioned originally, the dream that was too high to aspire for when we scraped together just enough to buy the tiny cottage that we were able to renew and expand to become what we call home today. It would have to be the farmhouse with acres of land and an attic to renovate into our bedroom, with a barn big enough for a swing and an existing place for our hens and enough room so that we could have a dog or two without wondering where even the dog would sleep. But I'm starting to realize that if we did, or could find that place at the time when our house was feeling too small, it might have to happen.

I know many people who have moved after their babies died, but I can't shake the feeling that I would be leaving Charlotte behind if I ever left this place. I think there's also a piece of me that feels so attached to this house because I feel like I absolutely became the woman I am here. I moved in here a slip of a girl with a basketball under my dress and I've become a wise, aged mother over the years, and more than feeling like I couldn't leave, I can't bear the thought of somebody else taking over this domain which is so sacred to me.

Maybe I'd have to be one of those weird sellers who would only sell their house to a family they really, really like.

And what of the placenta of the daughter I lost, which now lies encompassed in the root system of a very successful, 25 foot plum tree? What of that?

Little Fi

2011-10-04T18:46:00.000-07:00

What Fiona loves best is when, after her tub, I let her climb up with me into our sleigh bed and nurse her while she's bare naked, lying down.

Fiona slept with me every night of her life until she was nine months old, you'll recall. She was the snuggliest, coziest, most delicious little baby to snooze with until suddenly she wasn't. Suddenly she was a wretched bedmate, thrashing and moaning, nursing and ripping the nipple out of her mouth in frustration, only settling when I would jump out of the bed in utter despair, not knowing how to soothe her. It took me a few weeks to put two and two together and realize that this child craved space, and she's slept very happily in her crib ever since (albeit not through the night until the dawn of the ever-so-ingenious nightlight).

So, to snuggle with her cozied against me, naked to boot, is simply a delight.

She's so tiny, Fiona is, she's almost two but she's just over 20 pounds and just petite all over. She has this fluffy head of baby curls that are getting quite long and she's so wiry and strong and amazing to lie with. She still absolutely loves to nurse and I love to nurse her. It's such a sweet, quiet way to love each other.

Lately when we're nursing in bed after her bath, she's taken to gazing upward at the photoframe above the bed with all the photos of Charlotte in it. She knows it's Charlotte, but obviously can't understand who Charlotte is, or what happened to her. Her comments vary, and I don't even really try to rationally explain it to her because I know she's too little.

"Charlotte's asleep."

"Charlotte's sad."

"Charlotte's nursing."

"Charlotte wake up. Mimi have bandaid."

"Charlotte happy."

Once, a while back, before I had specifically identified the photos over our bed as Charlotte, she thought they were photos of me holding a dolly. At that point she probably thought Charlotte was a candle we lit on our dining room table, as her context was "Let's light Charlotte's candle".

It's funny for me to compare her knowledge of Charlotte at this point to Liam's when he was her age. When Liam was a baby, and it was just the two of us, I told him the story of Charlotte over, and over, and over. It was like a book we read, the story of the mother and father who wanted their baby but she died, and then they had this amazing little boy to bring joy back into their lives. His information about Charlotte was her story over and over again. Fiona has probably never even gotten the whole story, all laid out in a straight line like that. She gets whispers of it in her ear, she gets photographs all over the house that everyone in the family refers to and tells her it's Charlotte. She has everyone going around saying their wish for Charlotte before we eat. She even chips in now, saying, "We love you, Charlotte, we miss you," and I'm sure she wonders who it is she's talking to. When Fiona was tiny I was having such awful PTSD (if I may call it that) that I could barely think about Charlotte let alone tell her story out loud to the baby in my lap who lived.

I feel like I should make her a book about our family, explaining who everyone was, who came first, who came next. There's just so darn many of us now.

And I love it.

10.3

2011-10-03T18:19:00.000-07:00

I did have one, teeny temper tantrum the other night. It would be simple for all of you who have been blessed with living children to guess what it was about, and harder for those of you who long for sleepless nights to fathom...

of course, sleep.

I'm tired, quite.

Maeve Eloise sleeps quite well, sometimes. There were nights when she'd do 5 or 6 hours at a time, leaving me wondering how I could possibly feel so rested. I'd been up 3 or 4 times a night with Fiona up until a month or two before Maeve's birth, and now they were neck and neck, each getting me up once or twice.

(Fiona, incidentally, who has been up at least twice in the night every night of her life suddenly sleeps through the night due to my ingenious idea that perhaps a night light would help).

But some nights, she's nursing every ten minutes.

Like tonight, when I thought I could sneak down and do a blog post. But two minutes after I came downstairs, she's awake.

She wants to go to bed at 6:30 PM, with me.

No can do, girlfriend.

That's all I've got for tonight. My little Mae-mae calls, and my beautiful images of myself snuggled in bed with her, tummy to tummy, feeling her tiny little belly rise and fall against mine, will have to wait until tomorrow, or some other night when I might get five minutes instead of two to tell you about what things are like in the happy, happy (sad) house.

9.29

2011-09-29T17:56:00.000-07:00

I am itching to write, to capture moments, and I have to surrender: while I started this as a loss blog four years ago (almost), now my joys outnumber my losses four to one, and thus it only makes sense that perhaps my posts should begin to reflect this.

I am overwhelmed with happiness right now. I absolutely love having four children; I love so many things about it I can hardly begin to wrap my head around expressing what makes it so wonderful. I feel so lucky that I was physically able to pull of this feat of having four living children in my house, but I also feel lucky that I was emotionally and mentally able to open myself up to the chaos that this big family entails*. I feel, somehow, that being "busier" has liberated me somehow, and opened me to just really embracing how amazing it is to have these four people to live with, and to raise, and mostly to enjoy. I absolutely love their company, each and every one of them. I love taking care of them and watching them grow and I'm just so giddy and thrilled that I get to love FOUR of these little walking, talking people (or maybe not quite walking and talking yet....) which is four times as many people for me to love.

I am almost operating on a new theory, which is that suddenly now that there is barely time for me to do anything other than take care of them, I'm forced to just embrace that as the joy in my life as opposed to trying to find other things that are my own, personal things that I crave to do. I also have this sudden, alarming context to it all: (and could this be the result of having the second child enrolled in full-day school?) which is, that childhood lasts for such a brief flicker, and if I don't pay attention, it will be gone, and forever. I have so many years of my life to do other things, but only now to do this. It is not work to take care of them, it is my privilege. (oh, okay. So it is work, a lot of work, but that work is my privilege) And it makes me so happy.

Last night the rain was blowing in. The river was riding high, sounding like a fan on high speed as it rushed over the huge boulders outside my bedroom window. A cool breeze blew in the windows as I climbed into bed onto smooth bedsheets and lifted baby Maeve, who had been sleeping on the bed, into my arms to nurse her before I went to sleep myself. She was swaddled in her turquoise blue flannel blanket with wavy coloured stitching around the border, and her little fuzzy head stuck out the top. I latched her on and grabbed my book and suddenly became aware of her feet, which had come out of the bottom of her wrap and were now settled on my thigh as she nursed. The soles of them were flat to my skin, and as the wind blew across our bed they radiated warmth into my body. It felt so, so warm, so beautifully warm on my leg, and it was in such sharp contrast to the night air that surrounded us. As I laid down to sleep, I inched her carefully down by my side and tucked up my legs around her so that her feet stayed there, warm on me, as we fell asleep together.

I love this.

* Yes, there is a financial piece: I suppose that if Greg and I, who ourselves could barely send our children to nursery school, didn't come from families who can and will help us to conquer whatever pieces of university we can't get paid for elsewhere, we might have had to reel it in a little earlier. I just have to state that because obviously kids cost money; I will also say that we do sacrifice somewhat in order to have a big family: i do not buy myself a juice if I'm thirsty, and we don't get take out food or go to restaurants on any sort of regular basis or buy new things for fun. We share bedrooms and get our toys at our town dump's swap shop and we have a great time doing it!

2011-09-24T18:22:00.000-07:00

There he was, just sitting on a picnic blanket in front of me.

It was a man, we'll call him Rich, and I'd worked with him 10 years ago, the year I became pregnant with Charlotte.

I had known for several months that my new acquaintance Kellie had a husband named Rich, but I'd never met him or seen a photo.

Then suddenly there he was, right in front of me. He had a new 5 month old daughter and I had my new 4 month old daughter and it happened so fast, because he and his wife were leaving the picnic as I arrived, that I almost could have missed the fact that the last time I laid eyes on him was the day I left work, on the second of May, to have my baby girl.

"You're Rich?" I staggered, so caught off guard to know this man already. I was frantically doing the math in my head at the time, trying to figure out which pieces of my life story were known to him.

He was, of course, Rich. And as he and his wife left with their baby girl I wondered if there was anyone else on earth who I had known up until the eleventh hour of my old life and had not seen since.

I cannot think of a single one.

(typed with one hand)

Baking Cookies

2011-09-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

I'm making cookies right now, while both girls sleep. There are about 7 baskets of unfolded laundry and wet clothes in the dryer and toys strewn about my feet as I bake, but I really, really like to eat cookies, and so I'm baking.

This is another thing I've adopted lately, as my life has become more and more consumed with caring for others: I try to be really nice to myself in the little ways I can, like buying myself peanut M&Ms at the grocery store checkout before my girls are old enough to ask for a packet themselves, and sometimes sneaking in a quick read of the paper while I'm nursing Maeve during Fiona's nap instead of nursing her in the Ergo while I do housework.

Do you know that in 7 years of being a stay at home Mom I have never once just done something fun or nice for myself while my children napped? I hesitated to write this, because I had to spend quite a few minutes thinking carefully to make sure I was not conjuring up some sort of lie. But I think it's really true, I don't think I've ever just sat in a chair and tucked into a good book or started a sewing project (unless I was working frantically on the project for somebody else) on a weekday. You could look at that and say, "Wow, she's a really devoted mother and housekeeper" but I look at it instead and say, "Wow, what an idiot. All those hours where she could have had just half an hour of self-care and she's racing around like a madman and probably crabby by 5 PM as a result."

I remember that when I was pregnant with Aoife in the winter of 2006, Liam had a swimming class on Saturday mornings and Greg and I took turns bringing him. I vividly recall that somehow, since it was the weekend, I felt this gave me license to sit in the yellow glider in the sunroom with my book. It was so delicious to be alone in my house, just reading. I remember so well, it was Catherine Newman's book "Waiting for Birdy", and while it was a book on parenting (which usually annoy me to no end because the authors are so entitled and oblivious of the possibility of either loss or gratitude) this book did not strike me this way; one because I knew Catherine and she was so kind and emotional during Charlotte's death and Liam's birth, and also because her writing is neither assuming of her own good fortune nor annoying in any way. I read on those mornings and I felt no guilt because it was the weekend; yet I have not been able (or has it not even occurred to me?) to do this during the week in all those years. Why?

On those mornings, what I wanted to do was read, and so I read. But somehow I was under the (false) impression that since others (namely my husband) were at work, I also should be working.

But won't I work better, and more efficiently, if I'm happy and fulfilled? I say, YES, heartily and fully. So in the oven they are, delicious cowboy cookies, and if you're so inclined you could go and bake them yourself.

Enjoy.

1 cup sugar

1 ¼ cups packed brown sugar

1 cup shortening (I use butter)

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp/ baking powder

2 ½ cups quick cooking oats

2 cups chips (flavors of your choice!)

Combine all ingredients in bowl in the order given, mixing by hand after each addition. Place on greased cookie sheet (I use the parchment paper instead).

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or until light brown…..Cool on wire rack…

2011-09-20T17:17:00.000-07:00

I love this now.

This here, right now in my home.

Logically this seems odd, because I am far busier than I have ever been in my life, but it's caused an almost calm. The kids are in school and Greg is at work and the dishwasher is broken and the list is so long that I don't care anymore if I get it done. I don't have fleeting thoughts of time alone or a sewing project I'd love to tackle; right now what I crave is little spots of time with each child alone and quiet moments and times when we're all laughing together, usually at Fiona, and by now even little Maeve's eyes are lighting up when the room is afire with joy.

I sat tonight, in Aoife's room. She was having trouble falling asleep so I came and perched on the edge of her bed and scratched her back, ever so lightly in small and then bigger circles, just like I myself crave. She settled into her nest of pillows and finally, finally drifted off. And I could have stayed there, and it seemed like almost the first time ever where it didn't seem like there was something I wanted to try to get to after bedtime, I was just savoring bedtime. Savoring a warm, relaxed girl beneath my hand, and the quiet, and the dark, and the peace of being with her.

Why is this?

Tomorrow I might feel differently, but tonight, I'll take it. It's a magical feeling because you know, this is it. In 10 years I will be sewing and Aoife will have shut her door tightly and she'll be asleep in there alone and she won't want me (or maybe, if I'm lucky, she will...) to go in and lie with her in the dark for twenty minutes, just thinking and feeling calm. Or it will just be another night when somebody else needs me and I'm itching to get away but tonight it was just her, a little girl who couldn't sleep, and my lucky job was to sit on her bed by the night light and scratch her back.

Aoife will never be five again, and this point in my family's history is not going to repeat itself. The children will grow and be different stages of children and then they will be gone, and I will have the rest of my life to have a clean house, and cook intricate and fabulous meals, and sew interesting things, and have a fulfilling professional career. But this is it, this is the best. There will never be anything more beautiful than this.

Tonight, I nursed Fiona and Maeve together in the rocking chair after their bath. Maeve was sorely exhausted, and I snuggled them in on my lap in the tight little chair and began to rock, singing their little lullaby (a slight variation on the tune of Go Tell Aunt Rhody):

Good night Fiona,

Good night Maeve Eloise.

Good night my sweet girls,

It's time to go to sleep.

I looked off into the darkness of the room as I sang, rocking hypnotically, and when I looked down I saw that they were curled into each other while they nursed, and were clutching each others' hands. Maeve had fallen asleep.

I will leave you with that beautiful moment. Tomorrow there may be tears of frustration, I may fling a dish towel across the kitchen in frustration and shout at the top of my voice but today was full of things that made me glad to be just where I am, here, and now.

Lactation...

2011-09-15T17:19:00.000-07:00

Just a throw-out for the loss mamas out there.

As most of you know, I recently authored a pamphlet with a lactivist friend on Lactation After Loss (picture it as a trifold, folded up). I have received many requests from hospitals around North America to use the pamphlet (yippee!) to which I say, of course, HURRAY! YES! HAND IT OUT!

They say, I notice there is no copyright. I say, that's because I want you to copy it. I want you to give it to mothers. I want people NOT to be sent home with swollen, dripping breasts and no idea how to feel and what to do.

I am pleased and proud to be able to offer such a thing, it is an honor to me and my daughter's memory if people give this to as many mothers as possible.

Recently, I had a bereavement counselor say that she liked the pamphlet, but felt concerned about the section on milk donation. It was her feeling that we shouldn't include the section on donation, and that if mothers were interested in donation (and we all know that it is the minority who would have this interest) those mothers could simply ask about it and be given the information at that time.

I countered her suggestion that women would ask for the information by saying that I felt strongly that, while indeed the suggestion that one could donate could be a sensitive topic to newly bereaved mothers, it is presumptuous to assume that this information is simply to difficult and to therefore omit it. I have met mothers who have indicated that they wished they had known about this possibility. I also felt that we wrote the section sensitively so as not to make mothers feel as if donating is something they should do.

My take is, the right thing to do is to present all the options.

What do you think? (and feel free to call me wrong, if you wish. This is what I'm asking for)

Please share this pamphlet with your local hospital or support organization.

Our time away...

2011-09-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

I actually still exist.

It's been so long... so much longer than I ever thought I'd go without writing.

There are many aspects of my life that have fallen aside, intentionally. I have four children now, four very young, very precious, and very lovely children who need me desperately. They need me to hug them, kiss them, play with them, tell them stories, sing them songs, tuck them in, rock them, nurse them, change their clothes and diapers and shoes, pack their lunches, drive them places, pick up their toys (or could they do this themselves?), run a support group in her memory, they need me to wipe their noses and bums and wash their hair for them, lay out their clothes and breakfast dishes and pour their orange juice and stir their oatmeal and wash the pot, they need me to take photographs of them so we'll remember all of this and call the dishwasher repairman so we'll have more time together in the evenings and go to the library to get books. They need me to scratch their backs, and swaddle them, and change their sheets, and vacuum the house so we won't have allergies, and cut the grass so it's perfect for soccer. They need me to push them on the swings and take them to the park and grocery shop for them and get them school supplies and teach them how to knit, and take them to ballet, and drive to soccer practice, and organize playdates, and take them for a walk to see the cows, and rock them to sleep.

To all of this, I say yes. And lately, to the computer, I say a loud, and definite no. When all of the above has been accomplished, and it's 11:00 at night, and I have two nursing babies who need me all night long, I have remembered how important it is to prioritize what's here and now, and so I do.

I'll be around, I'll be around.

A better catch...

2011-07-23T18:01:00.000-07:00

This, here, is a better Maeve, captured in her usual pose. So, see? They all really do just look like sleeping babies. Sleeping Maeves, that is....

(this is Maeve fast asleep from the heat on our family's trip to Storyland, a trip I solemnly promised to my children last summer when I told them it would be "easier for our family" to travel this summer....)

2011-07-19T18:35:00.000-07:00

The photograph of Charlotte that you see on the sidebar that is one of the most beautiful we have of our family, our trinity. We only have two photos of Greg holding her, and there is something about the way the three of us are wrapped around each other that seems so circular and whole. The raw emotion that this photo evokes has always left me breathless. In the beginning it was every time I looked at it, but now, as it hangs in three rooms in my house and is part of the fabric of my being, it is when I sit down and try to process it with myself, my amnesic self who lives in another nation now: this was you, you and your beloved, you are young and in your twenties, and you are cradling your firstborn, dead child. This fact still sends me reeling. (will it ever seem real?)

Charlotte looks so beautiful to me in this photo. To me it's the one that looks most like how I remember her, the delicacy of her little features, the chiseled beauty of her face. It's the one I always think of when I am realizing how similar all my children look to one another.

But there's one thing that's always bothered me about it, that I've felt a little self conscious about. I've always stated that Charlotte looked just like she was sleeping. But in this photo, she has her mouth open, and none of my babies ever did sleep with their mouths open. So I would wonder to myself, maybe this looks odd to other people: maybe she doesn't just look like she's asleep to them. I desperately want her photos to look like she's sleeping, it's as if I can seize her as living for just a moment if I imagine that somebody might look at her photo and not be sure whether she was a living baby or not. But for that mouth, that mouth.

And then came Maeve, my fourth living child, my fourth daughter, my little wisp of beauty that shares the same chisled face with her sisters and brother and always, always sleeps with her mouth hanging open, just like Charlotte in that photo.

Thank you, Maeve, for connecting me just one more time with my little first born. Thank you for making her look like any other sleeping baby in my favorite ever photo of her beauty, captured forever in black and white, seared into my heart.

capturing life

2011-07-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

And all of it, because you never know.

I look at Fiona's face, and I think, this is how I cried. This is how it was, every day, for I don't know how long.

Did you know that grown-ups can cry like that?

I didn't either.

(it hurts your heart so much)

Finally...

2011-07-10T17:32:00.001-07:00

Almost 20 years after my sweet old Pentax bit the dust, I am back to a "real" camera... and so happy for it.

Daughters and Sons

2011-07-04T17:27:00.000-07:00

There was a time, after Charlotte died, where I felt sure that I would never, ever have another daughter. I steeled myself for a life of parenting rough-and-tumble boys, envisioning myself feeling wistful for a waif-like daughter with long blond hair, someone who would snuggle and read Anne of Green Gables with me...

Then, I had Liam. I had never had a boy in my life before for real, being one of only sisters, parented by a mother who was the same. I was amazed (silly me) to see how absolutely FUN it was to have a boy, and was humbled to realize that my son was full of more cuddles than I could ever imagine. Pregnant again for the third time, I imagined myself with another little boy: a pal for Liam, and his name was to be Owen Henry. Liam and Owen, my two boys... it seemed perfectly clear to me that this would happen. Occasionally the fear would flash before my eyes, but I would try to avoid it: maybe I will never have another girl, maybe she was it. But I would dismiss it, feeling defensive of Liam and how passionately I loved him. Boys would be fine, just fine. Perhaps I was not meant to have girls. I was building my walls of defense, just in case. Would it have been fine?

Three daughters later, I like to rationalize that the universe has a way of giving back to you somehow. Aoife gifted me a daughter and Liam a sister, Fiona gifted Aoife a sister. Maeve came close on the heels of Fiona to gift me the experience of two very close babies, as Charlotte and Liam would have been.

And when I look at Liam? I imagine this. The universe had a plan for me. A plan for daughters, a houseful of girls to run me ragged and keep me laughing and whip me into shape. But something happened, something awful, and that first baby girl couldn't stay. So Liam, sweet baby Liam, was a little special treat: the son I might never have had, the little boy I wouldn't have even known to miss if I'd never had him. I feel wistful, now, thinking that I won't have another little boy, ever, to visit construction sites and obsess over tractor models and farm equipment (although the last two rounds would have brought us Callum, not Owen...) It's funny to hold up the fear of not having another daughter with this near-sadness that I'll only have one son.

And my girls, my three living girls, they are a beautiful gift that follows, three little girls I can't say whether I would have had or not. But I'm sure glad I've got them. There was almost a sense of relief each time, like a catching up: somehow, with the birth of each daughter, we found ourselves with the number and ratio of sons to daughters we'd had in theory prior to her birth. Except that now we had one more. So we never caught up, of course...

I like to always tell the families I work with, although bereaved moms and dads often feel enraged at people who express a preference for the sex of a particular baby, it's also completely normal for those of us who are missing a child to have the (often very strong) desire to parent another child of the same sex. Why not? Wouldn't it simply make sense that we would want that experience? I hate the thought of parents feeling as if their worries are petty when they are grieving the loss of never having had the experience of parenting either a son or daughter. It's a real thing to grieve. And I'm saying this never having even really experienced it, as it was less than 3 years after Charlotte's death that my eldest living daughter was born.

It's the fourth of July. We went to a parade in a nearby town, patriotically dressing our 100% Canadian family in red, white and blue, waving little American flags. Our family looked tidy and complete and lovely walking down the street, bystanders sitting in folding chairs and on blankets waiting for the festivities to begin. Only I saw her, the ethereal mist following behind, the ghost of a daughter who began it all.

First smiles...

2011-06-30T17:37:00.000-07:00

Maeve will be six weeks old tomorrow, and she's smiling like crazy. It's so amusing to see somebody who still sleeps about 22 hours a day wake up and suddenly grin like she's absolutely delighted about something... it makes me melt. She's so cute and growing up so quickly. We took her to visit her new cousin last weekend-- they are almost exactly a month apart-- and it was so shocking for me to see Maeve suddenly look big next to her 7 pound cousin. At her one month visit she had gained a pound and a half and grown nearly 2 inches!

I'm trying to bite my tongue daily as I'm re-entering the world with my four children and meeting so many people-- acquaintances and strangers alike-- who find it their business to ask, only moments after they congratulate me on the birth of Maeve and mention her resemblance to the others or her adorable cuteness, whether I'm planning on having any more children. I really want to say, It's none of your fucking business whether or not I plan to have another baby... because really, how incredibly rude is it to be asking somebody you barely know about their long term family planning decisions? Honestly I don't mind when friends ask me, because it's usually in the context of a conversation, and because we've a history to back it up-- but I'm just amazed at how many people that I barely know who are asking this question almost without fail. Is it because having four children is so unheard of nowadays that they are just curious to know whether I'll continue to break the status quo and keep having more? Is it because my kids are so cute and well behaved that they are hoping I'll keep improving the human race by making more? (Just checking to see if you were listening).

Truly the reason why I probably hate the question is because probably the answer is no, I probably won't have another baby after Maeve, and I can hardly stand to think about this. I love having babies so much... I love every bit of it. I love giving birth (and I've gotten so good at it), I love nursing, I love teeny-tiny babies and everything about taking care of them... I love watching my older children adoring their little siblings, I love filling the chairs around my dining room table... I love all of these things. I would love, in theory, to have a few more babies. It's almost a romantic idea....

but really, I want to be available for my children at least sometimes. I hate having to say to Liam, no, I can't play catch with you because I'm holding the baby, and I have to make Fiona's dinner. No, we can't do that because the babies are napping. No, we can't have a friend over because Mommy is too busy!

I also realize, with each additional baby, that I also feel the stretch for the baby-- at this point a real treat for me (and Maeve) is when I can sit down to nurse her-- as opposed to nursing her in the crook of my arm while I make sandwiches, or in the carrier while pushing Fiona on the swing, or getting kids in and out of the bathtub.

The more babies, the less time I have for each baby, and I want to spoil them with love and attention.

And, I'm getting older, and I'm testing fate each time. And I have FOUR. FOUR healthy, beautiful, happy, amazing, LIVING children. This is a miracle.

So while I would never do anything permanent right now, it's probable that the end of almost a decade of baby making and having and rearing is over. Hard to imagine.

I really don't spend any time thinking about this when I'm taking care of Maeve, because I don't want to feel sad and wistful about her. I just want her to be Maeve and to love every minute of her. But I did, strangely, get a little sad a few weeks ago when I put my fifth and possibly final peri-bottle into the dishwasher to convert to a bath toy.

The end of my bleeding, which to me told me that I could no longer claim that I had "just given birth", gave me a pang of sadness. My uterus, retired.

The first big one...

2011-06-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

I was sitting on the couch.

The three kids upstairs were snoozing.

This time it wasn't just a wrinkle, or a twitch, or an attempt, or a maybe.

As I was talking to her my sweet little 8 and a half pound darling bundle of beauty broke into the sweetest little miniature smile.

I burst into tears.

She is real!

I can't wait for everything, and I love now.

If somebody had told me this would be my life eight years ago, I would have told them they were lying. How can I be so happy, when I have experienced such pain? And when the sadness still lies in my heart?

I certainly hope that the trueness of my joy can seep into the pain of somebody's recent loss to help you realize that while it seems absolutely unfathomable, somehow real, genuine, enhanced happiness is absolutely attainable... in enormous degrees. Right alongside all the sadness.

Two Poems by Liam

2011-06-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

Maeve (written 5/20, after he saw her freshly born)

Maeve

Soft as

silk

greasy

hamburger

she opens

her mouth

when she's

hungry

oh the

sweetest

little thing

is Maeve

Free (written last week after bedtime, as he sat by the window watching the birds)

Birds

Free

in the sky

Like the

wind

Out

there

to see

the world

But

I am

stuck

here in

my room.

I love it that my boy loves words, and randomly writes poems when he feels the urge.

This morning it's raining. Liam is still in school and Fiona is napping. I am letting Aoife watch the TELEVISION (a rare treat in our home) and I am trying to find the kitchen counter.

It's busy here with four kids. I would say mostly because two of them are under 1.5 years old, but of course I don't want to leave the older ones to their own devices just because I could. So it's busy, buzzing, and sometimes feels like running on a treadmill.

But I am one happy mama.

(and so delighted to once again be waking up to find a sweet milky head in my armpit. Move over, Greg....)

Me, Live.

2011-06-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

Here I am.

I won an award, and this is my "acceptance speech".

The Will to Live

2011-06-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

I almost went to a reception on Saturday night for the man who was the principal of the school I was working at when Charlotte died. He did an amazing job when my world fell to bits, negotiating all the pieces of my professional life for me-- my students, their parents, my colleagues-- so that my transition back into that community was as gentle as it could have been. I wanted to go to the reception, which honored his 17 years of service to the school, but when a little girl in the backseat let out a wail just as I was passing through downtown, I had to call it a night. We got out into the damp, misty night and walked together, she and I, as the sky darkened and the couples passed us on the sidewalks. We were a couple, Maeve and I, a new couple just learning the dance of our life together. She was warm on my chest as I thought.

I remembered the children, as I walked, the little ones who were five or six in my kindergarten when Charlotte died. They are now thirteen, most probably fourteen by now, finishing up eighth grade and ready for high school. I remembered that many of them became very concerned about me, wanting to be sure that I was still alive and okay.

A fleeting thought passed across my mind, which was that I, too, suffered a moment of panic: somewhere in the haze, between finding out and giving birth, I wondered if whatever random terrible fate that had snatched my daughter from my womb was going to take me, too. I wondered, and I cared. This struck me as odd, in retrospect, because the amount of time in which this could have happened was so very small. After Charlotte was born, if I had felt myself starting to drift away with her, I might have gone. Or perhaps not, I realize.

It seems almost funny to me right now to think that I would have wanted to live just for myself, when I had no children to live for. But I was already thinking ahead. When Charlotte was actually born and in my arms, I wanted fiercely to live because I was so desperate to actually be a mother for real. For real, and that feels so sad to say, that even as I held her in my arms I was longing for the next step. It feels like it sounds like such a betrayal, but instead I want to turn those words a little bit upside down so that you can hear that what I felt was such an absolutely overpowering, addictive love, that I was desperate for more of it. More in any form. This baby, who I loved so perfectly and beautifully, was making me hungry for more.

And when does that not happen? (even as I am running around like a chicken with its head cut off, feeling as if I am sinking in piles of laundry and lunches to make and mouths to feed, I sit here with Maeve on my chest and feel like I could have twelve more babies)

I wanted to live because I wanted to love, and because I was all finished living for myself. It's almost impossible for me to imagine where I would be and how I would think about myself, or the world, or even how I would go about my day if there were only me to think about. It's so amazing to think that at this point in my life I am delighted to the brim to be utterly self-sacrificing, and that this state of almost never considering my own needs actually pleases me. This was what I was aiming for. When Charlotte lay on my lap, I knew I wanted to lie myself down in front of a freight train to save her, and given that I could not, I was desperate to give myself somehow in service to my children. I wanted to pour my heart into theirs.

And I do.

Yet, tonight when I was tucking Aoife into bed, 45 minutes late, after about twelve rounds of antics ranging from spanking Liam's bottom playfully as he peed, pretending to brush her teeth with shaving cream, and pretending to fall asleep on the couch when it was time to go upstairs, I was firm to the point of hearing myself sound like an old crabbypants as I tucked her in. As I pulled the covers up under her beautiful little face, smoothed her blond hair on the pillow, kissed her buttery soft cheek, and sang her her most favorite lullaby, I felt annoyed.

So yes, I sacrifice, and it's not always with a big smile, but I'm still so glad to be here.

I can't believe how much bigger the world gets when you have children. I spend long moments sometimes contemplating what the world would look like if you were a person long past the childbearing years who had never had a child. And I shiver with the satisfaction and gratitude that I am so fortunate to have my life so incredibly full of love.

And this is why this is so addictive: because with each child is another person to love that much. I am so full right now.

The first...

2011-06-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

I had the first moment of PTSDish awfulness yesterday, short lived, and probably could have been easily avoided with a little thought.

So my dear husband's grandmother is in town. She is an absolutely steadfast, loving, amazing, tall and true Albertan. She drove the combine up until her 80th birthday. Like me, she lost her first daughter and then went on to raise three daughters and one son. I adore this woman, and I love the lifelong influence she has had on my husband, who reveres her with just cause. I love to share my children with her, and so when Maeve finished nursing just after she arrived yesterday afternoon, I cheerfully snuggled her sleeping little body onto Gigi's shoulder. I was truly happy to give this amazing great-grandmother a nice, long time with her newest great granddaughter. But this was a difficult time for me to share my baby, because it was right after a nice, long feed, on a long, hot, lazy afternoon. She slept, and slept, and slept. An hour went by. For that hour, I did throw myself into playing hard with Fiona, I threw a ball with Liam, and chased Aoife around. I did some things I couldn't do while I was pregnant, and definitely can't do with Maeve in arms. I can handle being parted from my baby for short periods when I am actively babying my other babies. But then, my cousin who was visiting brought Liam and Aoife down to the river to swim. And Fiona was puttering around on the swingset, and suddenly it hit me just so hard and deep, I needed my baby. I needed to breathe in the milky smell of her neck, I needed to feel her warm little scrunched up limbs in my arms. My eyes welled up and my milk let down, and I was over by the swingset gazing across the yard at her.

What happened then was that I got stuck. I was angry for not having her in my arms, grumpy with Greg for having family who swept in and took over my newborn, desperate to have her in my arms, but unable to come up with the words or the strategy to get her back. Words Greg had spoken to me when Fiona was a baby, and I struggled with this often, came back to me: She's your baby, just ask for her back. But I couldn't do it without thinking of a good reason why. And I can't lie. So I began to cry, just a little, staring across the yard at Maeve, feeling so awfully desperate for her. Fiona, who was standing on the platform of the slide next to me, leaned over and kissed my eye, and stroked my cheek. She wrapped her little arms around my neck.

Just at this moment, Greg came outside. He knew. He went to his grandmother, and gently fetched me my baby. He laid her in my arms. She smelled a little like somebody else, but she fit so snugly in my arms like a little lump of bread dough. She's so soft and wobbly and perfect right now. I took her down to the river and she laid in my lap as the cool rose up from the bedrock below us. I breathed a sigh of relief. I wished I could have just said something.

(p.s. can you see the huge bugbite on her forehead? bad mommy...)

Today, today.

2011-06-03T11:43:00.001-07:00

This afternoon is lazy and sunny, and for the first time in perhaps years, I find myself posting on my blog simply because I have time, not because I feel absolutely desperate to do so. I'm sitting in our little sunroom while Maeve snoozes on my chest, snoring softly. Aoife is upstairs playing with our neighbor's granddaughter, a rare treat for a little country girl with no neighbors under the age of 50. Liam is at school releasing salmon frye into the Mill River behind his school, and Fiona and Greg have gone to observe the action by the riverside. So I am here, basking, melting, sleepy and rocking in an upholstered glider rocker, the sunshine warming my toes as the crickets hum outside my window and the wind blows through the screen, refreshingly crisp after a week of hot weather.

After my post last night, I went upstairs with Maeve tucked in the crook of my arm. She's still so tiny that I'm not really one handed yet-- more one-and-a-half handed, because I can hold her in my elbow and still use that hand if I hold something close enough. She's also so tiny that I haven't really transitioned her to hanging out in a sling or a Moby yet-- and I have the privilege of having Greg home right now (and for another week) so I really can just swaddle her up and hold her. So up we went, and I brushed my teeth and changed into some cozy pajamas, and swapped out Maeve's filmy muslin swaddling blanket for a thick flannel one. It had grown cold and I closed the windows, and then we climbed into the big sleigh bed together. I laid her on her back on the bed and curled myself around her. And then I rested my cheek on the down of her hair, and breathed her in.

I thought to myself, I want you here until you're three, or four, here curled next to me. I thought this even knowing that it wasn't true, because at some point she will become big, and sweaty, and cranky during the night. She'll grow teeth that will pinch my nipple after she falls asleep, and she'll toss and turn and crawl around in the bed at night and it won't be peaceful anymore. What I want is just this: a newborn, sweet and milky, soft and delicious to curl myself around forever.

There is nothing like experience as a mother to make caring for a newborn simply the most delicious prospect ever. They are so sweet and undemanding, even as demanding as they are. Every single demand that a newborn makes is real: I am hungry, I am wet, I am lonely. There is no manipulation, no deceit, no desire, even. It is simply need, and as a mother, these are simple needs to fulfill. Children become ever so much more complicated as they grow: they need to be interpreted on a much more complex level. They try to swindle you and perplex you and wheedle things out of you at every opportunity. These are also the things that give them remarkable personalities, delightful wit and hilarious spunk. I love parenting my older children to the extent that it has taken away some of the bitter-sweetness of their growth. They are fun, intelligent, wonderful PEOPLE that I absolutely love to hang around with. But I love the primitive newness of a newborn. Maeve is here, undoubtedly human but still figuring out how to be out in the world. Her personhood lies twisted intricately with my own. I want to wallow in this mixed up love for as long, and as deep as I can. I simply love it.

I have said this before, but I'll say it again: I'm constantly curious about how much of my own deep gratitude and obsessive love for my children is grown out of my experience of loss. Having never parented before Charlotte, I could never truly know how much of what I feel is simply what any mother feels, and how much of it is born out of the incredible longing for life on earth that came along with her loss.

All I know is, I'm in deep. And I can't believe that it just keeps growing. Every child I have, I grow bigger, and have more love to give, and more to get, and my family feels more full and amazing.

Off to sit here, and rock in the sunshine, and breathe deeply the smell of a sweet, innocent newborn life. Lucky, lucky me. And you know I mean that. I am so unbelievably lucky, even given how it all started.

Thinking of Charlotte...

2011-06-02T16:36:00.001-07:00

My grandfather, who just turned 88, with Maeve

Liam, while I clean up from dinner...

The dust is settling, I suppose.

It's hard to imagine it as dust, unless I picture it as pink, sparkly fairy dust, glittering through the sky as it falls on the now-brown lilacs and the bright green leaves and grass and shoots of new life that surround me. This is a beautiful thing, it is.

It's always different, isn't it. This time, I expected and feared what happened after Fiona's birth: a menacing, haunting sort of post-traumatic episode, where I would wake in the night and fear for my baby's life, where I would feel ghostly and empty if I were out of arm's reach for her, where I was rendered incapable of sharing her with just about anyone, including her father.

This time, while her scent draws me to her, and while I lie mesmerised by her in the half-light of the nightlight in the wee hours, it feels different. This little baby is surrounded by the love of so many people-- by my own, by her father's, and by the true and very devoted love of her siblings, and somehow this time I am wanting to share her at times. When I see the true love that Liam and Aoife have for her, and realize that this is truly a gift for Maeve, I am glad to lie her in their arms, safely confined on our big, soft couch, while I clean up from dinner or take a shower. No longer do I feel paralyzed by my fear of leaving her, and while my body always feels that slight ache when she is not in my arms, the ache does not haunt me and recall the body memory of my depleted form following Charlotte's death. Instead, my body feels grateful for her life and delighted for her to have been born into a world where there are so many people to love and care for her.

Today is a weird sort of day. Maeve is 13 days old, and she was five days early, so I am eight days past my due date. This means that Maeve is, by her gestational age, 41 weeks and 1 day old, which is the very day I met my little Charlotte. The only day I met her. As the years go by and lengthen with my living children, those six hours seem so short. To imagine that my time with my baby would have just begun at 2:14, when I was upstairs trying to help Aoife get her newly purchased (with her own piggy bank money) cheap @#$% Tinkerbell jewelery box out of the box (fact that might surprise you: while I myself am a purist, I do allow my children to make their own choices with their own money, and when you're five... well, enough said). And by this time of the night, as the hour nears eight o'clock, I would be nearing the close of my time with her. Perhaps now was the time that we asked Trudy for the little pad of paper so that we could write a poem about her. Or maybe it was just after Greg's mother left, when we sat in the sad silence of Room 3, slowly and sadly coming to the realization that at some point this would all be over and she would be gone.

I have a lot of work to do in the next little while, folks. When May 13th rolled around this year, I really couldn't take it. I wanted to honor my little girl, and we did, but I simply could not do the rehash. At 38 weeks and 2 days pregnant, I simply could not dig up the details of arriving at the hospital to greet such horrible news, of the aching silence while I labored, and the stillness of the gray light in the room when my daughter was born without a cry. It was all too near, and too real, and too imminent-seeming for me to face. I said to Greg, there's a lot of thinking I need to do, but I need to do it later. I just can't see those things in my head.

It made me sad, to not think of her little face on purpose, so I remembered the feeling of her in my arms and the look of her sweetness and the feeling of first kissing those tiny, tiny lips while I blocked the horrifying truth of what had happened to her.

Even still, now, as I look at Maeve, and study the photographs of Charlotte to try to find their similarities, I can't face that I once held a baby for only six hours and had to say goodbye to her.

Tonight, in the half light of our nightlight, I will snuggle my nose a little deeper into my baby's neck as we fall asleep together, eternally grateful for what I have been given, and though I am taking my time in facing my past right now, never forgetting what (who) has been taken away from me.

Birth, round 5

2011-05-24T16:36:00.000-07:00

My admit bracelet reads 7:08 AM.

That morning, when the alarm had rung at 5 AM, I told Greg I would get up with him and eat a little something and see how I felt. I wasn't sure I wanted him to make the 45 minute drive to work. I had had some contractions in the night, while I slept deeply, which had felt more real-- and had brought me back to that primal place of labor. As I dreamed, I remembered those hours spent with babies past moaning deeply over the birthing bed, bouncing on the ball, standing in the shower. The realness of the memories made me feel as if these random, sporadic contractions might be leading up to something bigger.

So I had some juice, and a little coffee, and at 5:05 I had a little one, and at 5:25 a longer one. I took a shower, and had another one after that, short. There seemed to be no pattern. They seemed short. But somehow, they did feel real, so I asked him to stay home. He called in at 6:15 and asked for a substitute.

Another random one, but the pressure was feeling huge. Huge. So I called the midwife, and Greg called his parents and asked them to come. It was 6:25 and I lay on my side, tweaked from the weight of the skull pressing on my pelvis. Liam came down and sat with me while Greg brought our bag out to the car. I was beginning to feel desperate, and I wailed to Liam about how Grammie and Grandpa were taking so long. Checking the clock, he noted to me it had been only 7 minutes since Greg had called. It seemed like forever. I could feel this was real, and now.

Soon help arrived, and I smooched Liam in the driveway and we headed out, leaving the girls asleep. I was grateful not to have had to say goodbye to Fiona, because I felt so sad thinking of that morning as our last moment with her as my baby. To have had to say the words, goodbye, and to see her tiny little self, her blond curls and big, heavy lashed eyes waving to me, perhaps through her own tears, would have sent me reeling. This goodbye was simple, just Liam in the driveway in the misty rain, waving and leaping with excitement as we pulled out past his grandparents. They were walking up to the door as we pulled out. I was frantic.

In the car, every bump hit me with such fervor. I wanted out, but I was quiet and restrained. I wasn't sure what was happening. There hadn't been any apparent escalation or pattern to what was happening, but clearly this was labor.

We arrived just as the 7 AM shift was coming on. Our midwife Judie met us at the hospital, just as she had met us early one May morning eight years ago. She was bleary eyed, as she had been then, but this time charged with an optimism that was different. She walked us to the same room where Aoife had been welcomed five years ago. The lights were low, and she hugged us both.

I wouldn't miss this for the world, she said, and I knew she meant it.

Because I am a VBAC patient, there are a few hoops I have to jump through before getting started with a birth. So while I breathed heavily, leaning on my hips, sometimes arching back, always with eyes closed to the dim light, the blood bank came and took my sample and braceleted me, and the nurses fought to find a good vein to put in my IV port in case of emergency. It was 7:30 by the time they finished these logistics, and I was feeling so heavy and weighted. The reality of labor had hit to the point that while I eagerly awaited the result, I dreaded the work that lay ahead. The incredible, deep discomfort that is labor was suddenly real again, and it felt hard to embrace at that moment.

Judie wanted to check me, and I wanted to be checked. The last time she was our midwife was for Liam, and I remember clearly the strange look that passed over her face when she discovered that I was fully dialated, but that the baby was no longer in my pelvis. This was the beginning of the breech discovery and subsequent c-section, and so it was unnerving to me when, at about 7:35, Judie checked me and once again I saw a strange look pass over her eyes. This time, though, the news was in my favor. My heart nearly stopped with joy at her words:

Do you feel like you should be pushing?

Am I fully dialated?, I asked, hardly daring to believe that what I had felt, and not believed, was real.

You are, you are. Any time, take your time.

And I did. This news that the work I was prepared to do, but dreading, was actually already complete gave me this incredible peaceful strength. I was almost confused: when had this labor happened? How had I gotten all the way dialated without knowing it? But what a gift! This was my body's fifth time doing this, and it was good at it.

For a little while, with each contraction, I bore down just enough to negate the rush. I found that with just enough push, I could make the discomfort of the contraction go away. I gave myself this, for a few rounds, just to ease the strength of it all, and to give myself a few minutes to wrap myself around what was happening: I was having a baby.

I got up, then, onto my knees, and I asked Greg to put on some music: the Wailin' Jenny's, Bright Morning Star. He did, and almost immediately upon the opening strains of the music something happened which has always happened before: a strange break in my contractions, perhaps a three minute rest where I just lay, with my head resting on the top of the raised birthing bed, breathing slowly and peacefully. The labor almost seemed to have disappeared, but I knew what would come.

The calm before the storm, I said quietly.

About thirty seconds later, my water broke like a bomb, with a tremendous bang and a huge splash that covered the midwife from belly to forehead and had me three inches deep in fluid on the bed. I knew then that my moments of peace were well spent and that now was the time to work.

I pushed steadily and quietly. I didn't make a sound as I felt the head come down, and begin to turn the corner as it crowned. I reached down and could feel it coming through. I was blind to the world around me, deaf to the words of the midwife, of Greg, and of Trudy, our beloved nurse who has attended each and every birth of ours. I could feel the baby coming, and still I hardly dared to believe it was real.

But it was real, and I felt the head come out and reached down and felt it, the skinny little neck and the full, real head, and I could hear the midwife say, it's starting to cry, and ask Greg if he wanted to catch her.

Greg came over and held out his hands, and I pushed again, and Maeve fell out into the hands of her Daddy, and everybody yelped with joy, and Maeve cried, and I turned onto my back and reached for her, this fourth daughter of mine, this proof that May is not cursed after all.

Her face shone up at me, greyish and greasy and contorted with a beautiful birth cry. She had the same little face as all my other babies, she was so absolutely and positively mine. I clutched her to me and for the first time ever I did not cry, I just broke into a huge, unbreakable smile and was filled to the brim with a happiness I could hardly name.

This child, this new little girl, this life I had hardly dared to believe in. Through the Rh sensitivity scare, a cord around the neck revealed on ultrasound, extra amniotic fluid, and any number of nights spent eating ice cream and praying for movement, here she was: alive, beautiful, and so real. She shouted for just a moment and then, as most babies do, quieted as I held her to my chest and snuggled her ear to my heart. I whispered into her ear and held her close, and a warm blanket was laid over us, and our life together began.

It was 7:56 AM.

Maeve Eloise

2011-05-22T16:11:00.001-07:00

5.20.2011

7 lbs, 2.7 oz

miracle.

(more to come)

Sunday

2011-05-15T16:56:00.001-07:00

Today the rain falls, as it is forecasted to until the 22nd of May.

I am unable to catch my breath tonight, literally, and so I've settled onto the couch, my huge belly resting on my lap. My muscle is ripping away from my ribcage again, as it did when I was pregnant with Fiona, and the pain is excruciating. Now I think my physical anxiety to deliver this beautiful, ready soul is paired with my mental urge to do so. Baby, come out, come out. Come to me, baby five.

So many loose ends of my life are tied up now. Having passed the anniversary of Charlotte's birth there is some lightening to the fear I had that somehow fate would align the births of the two Maybabies. I needed her to have her own time. Tomorrow Greg will celebrate his birthday, and I wish that I could deliver to him the one gift he asked of me eight years ago, a gift I wept for years upon not having been able to provide to him. I hold that gift for him, tightly.

Tonight I'm merely breathing, or trying to, and wishing that ten days could turn into one, and that there could be some resolution to the mystery of the rest of my life.

And also, feeling slightly envious of all the people I know who only wonder when that baby will be born, and have no "if's" attached to the idea of birth. My "if" seems so huge right now...

8

2011-05-13T14:37:00.001-07:00

She is eight.

Today was beautiful, it was wonderful: the one day of the year that is only for family, where we don't answer our phone and we dote upon each other and spend every single moment basking in each others' company. Today was especially kind because I have had to postpone some of the essential pieces of the anniversary day which make it hard: those where I ruminate over every detail of the night and day of her death and birth. Replaying these details are important to me, they are such a central part of my personal history and of hers, but today can't be the day. I will postpone this piece until after the delicious, successful, healthy birth of baby number five. The imminent, upcoming birth. Please may it happen soon.

I had spent months preparing for spending last night awake, worried and beside myself. The baby swam gently all night, as if aware, and each time I came to I felt the stirring and let myself glide back into dreamless sleep, conscious not to let my thoughts pass into eight-years-ago mode.

This is so different from most May twelfth-to-thirteenths, where I will watch the clock, and wonder when it happened.

Then this morning, Fiona woke up at 4:39.

Was this the time? The time when we arrived, and our world came crashing down as the flat line appeared?

It might have been.

And there is some power to holding onto today as her day, as the day I have thought of as doomsday, and to feel the baby moving in my huge belly and think, history is not repeating itself after all.

I am grateful that my Charlotte will still have her day as her own. As this day where we mark the sad beginning to such a beautiful family, and pay tribute to the little girl who never got to grow and be a part of what I hold so dear.

In a few weeks, I will weep buckets as I recall the details of this day. And for today, I linger in the moments of the warm spring sunshine, knowing that my sanity rests on my ability to hold onto what today has to offer. Charlotte is holding my hand, helping me see that this is okay.

I love you, baby girl... who is not a baby anymore.

Who would you be today?

The Tuesday after

2011-05-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

I've gone dark, like a secret agent.

The whirlwind is slowing, though, and I am breathing again. There was the angst. Is the angst.

There were two things, two different weeks, that showed themselves on ultrasound, both of which have moderately resolved themselves. The universe testing me, one last time?

So there is the worry, the constant, persistent worry, but now the worry is slightly offset by the speed of the ticking clock within me-- I am now 14 days from my due date, so it is becoming more in the realm of possible that things will work out. Fiona was born 9 days early, Aoife 5. These are numbers I can work with. Even if this baby doesn't arrive early, at least I can hold out on the possibility that it might happen soon. That balances out some, a little, of the fear.

In the past two weeks, I selected from my computer library, uploaded on to Snap.fish, ordered, sorted, and put into albums exactly 2,078 photographs. I also put together a gigantic mailing for my loss organization that was posted just this afternoon, going to every midwife, OB, and family center in and around our valley. There are four birthday parties in the next week and the gifts are now purchased and wrapped, ready to go. Some semblance of order is falling upon what last week seemed like the most incredible disarray. I was whirling so fast I was labeling photo albums at stop lights while I waited. Too much, too much.

So now, tonight, for the first time in maybe a month, I am actually sitting. I sit, and the warm wind is blowing in the window beside me, and my black cat is vying for a spot on my lap next to the computer. The cherry tree is in full bloom out the window, her blossoms falling ever so gently as the breeze passes.

Today is the Tuesday after Mother's day, which was her day. For some reason, this year, probably because of my pregnancy, the days of the week have seemed very significant for me. On Monday morning I had the intention of running errands and having a swim in the pool when suddenly I was paralyzed by the thought that those were the same things I had puttered away my day doing that Monday back eight years ago. It seemed like too much of a coincidence, and I realized I couldn't do it, I just couldn't, and I ended up having a small scale emotional crisis and spending the morning hooked up to the monitor in my midwife's office, listening to the little one's heart pound while Fiona entertained herself with the dollhouse, and then getting sent over to ultrasound for a better view when the little bugger failed his/her nonstress test. That went like clockwork, with baby scoring 8/8 in a few minutes flat, with visible beautiful blood flow through the cord.

So tomorrow I will try to run a few errands, we'll see, or maybe Thursday. It will happen. And Friday, although to me it seems less like her birthday than today does, I will take the day to settle back with my family and love them up, remembering where it all began.

And also? I won a big award for my program. It was the President's Choice for Outstanding Community Outreach selected from among all volunteer programs in New England. This is the equivalent of me winning the mom-of-the-year award for Charlotte, in my eyes... and I'm pretty darn proud.

2011-04-27T17:59:00.000-07:00

So this is what the days are like:

The baby sleeps, and I worry. I poke its little bum and try to wake it up. It wakes up.

The baby rocks and rolls, and kicks and stretches, and I worry. Don't move too much! Is this panicky movement? Will it turn breech and get tangled up? Slow down!

I have never had such a wild baby, to be honest, and it's kind of freaking me out. It looks so cute on ultrasound but it's hard for them to measure anything because it won't stop moving.

It has scored well the last two BPPs. Thank goodness for that.

(and I'm sorry to repeatedly call my son or daughter it, but the he/she gets cumbersome)

There are exactly three days left in April, after today. Then we face May.

How am I supposed to feel about May this time?

Do I grieve? Hope? Fear?

(perhaps withdraw?)

For a few minutes yesterday, I allowed myself to remember that feeling that consumes me when I am home with a brand new baby, just settled on the couch, or in my sleigh bed, nestled in with the hustling and bustling of the other children around me, and my mum in the kitchen making me delicious food, and the phone ringing with excited voices. I could almost feel this strange emotion that just wraps itself around me, this cocoon of something that seemed almost recognizable but a little out of reach.

Was it joy? Delight? Passion? I imagined myself looking down at the sweet, swaddled bundle at my breast, and I could feel that something rush in again, and suddenly I recognized it:

Relief.

Above everything else, there has been relief. The freedom from absolute constant, eternal, paralyzing fear. There is nothing like this feeling of being suddenly freed, like a young, energetic bird. The euphoria and bliss of a new life settle gently into this amazing quiet pudding of a time where the fear is so different, and where at least there is only the known.

I can see the baby, I can feel her breathe. I can rest my head on her chest and hear her little heart beat. I hold her against my chest and feel her little toes on the outside of my skin, and there is some element of control: I can protect her now.

This has happened three times, and I want it just one more time.

Please?

2011-04-26T09:57:00.001-07:00

I've been missing, and there is a reason.

A few days after my last post, I went and had an ultrasound, and there was something that was of concern... mostly to me. It was concerning, slightly, to my practitioners, but not of enough concern to take any sort of action. Honestly, truly, I can't even speak the words to explain the story, because I can't add drama to the possibilities that might befall my life and this baby. Suffice it to say there was legitimate concern, and I went into a sort of self-insulating hibernation, a terror that affixed me in one spot and rendered me unable to even speak of my life at this juncture.

I moved decisively from the "when" mode, to the "if" mode, when thinking about everything in my future again. I had previously been priding myself on how strongly I had been standing in the "when" camp, perhaps not always with super-great confidence, but there for the most part, at least. But it was a quick decline back into feeling like this baby was a remote possibility at best. All this when I am a stone's throw from the range of delivery: at 35 weeks I was almost there, but not yet.

So I sat and wallowed in terror and resignation: perhaps, rather than some sort of atonement for what May has brought in the past, I was going to relive my past.

Today I had another ultrasound, and the "cause for concern" seems to not be a cause for concern anymore. Not that I am now definitively unconcerned, but I could see it for myself, so now at the very least I can explain to you that I chose not to post because I was sure it was all going down the tubes, but now I can post confidently that while I remain white-knuckled, clinging to hope with every shred of my existence, the technical, actual cause for concern seems to have miraculously disappeared.

I am due in 4 weeks, and I wish it were 4 days.

Real Today

2011-04-16T18:29:00.000-07:00

Today had moments that were hard. I don't mean emotionally hard, which is what I usually write about. I'm going to step outside of the fairy land of the beauty and love of my amazing life with my four amazing living children (an amazing concept, but yes, there are four alive right now) and address the reality of sometimes.

Sometimes, days stretch on for weeks. The children don't really want to play with each other, or play by themselves, and each child wants an adult all to him/herself. Sometimes, each child cries or complains or whines until said adult attends to the want of the day. Sometimes, I wish we didn't have all these wonderful science kits and fancy art activities so that my children could each just sneak off into a corner and entertain themselves while I lie on the couch and read my book. Sometimes, I fantasize about hiring a mother's helper to follow around the most adorable 17 month old baby on the planet, so that I can have an hour off from the exhausting existence of keeping tabs on her every step and every word. If you don't respond to everything Fiona says, she keeps repeating herself, louder and louder each time. Sometimes, the din in the house, with the two older kids trying to tell competing stories, and Fiona vying for her own spot at the mike, is deafening.

I am low on energy right now, I know this, and this is why today this was my experience. I don't have the foresight or planning skills to think through how I can best integrate the needs of these three sweet, amazing children into a fun afternoon for everyone. I am ready for a rest, a real rest, but at the same time I want this rest to include my sweet babies because I love them so desperately.

It's a catch-22 I find myself in often, this need and desire and desperation for some space and time and breathing room, and my simultaneous hunger for having my children around me, on me, with me all the time. Right now I dream of us all lying quietly in a big bed, watching some old VHS tape from the 1980's, maybe eating cinnamon toast and drinking milky English Breakfast tea with sugar. I dream of lying on a chaise in the backyard while the two older children scamper around in the woods, lost in a fairy-fantasy game, and Fiona digs quietly in the sandbox, immersed in her bucket and shovel and the white sand pouring through her tiny fingers.

Mostly, I dream of my body in the prone position, where I'm not bending over, the bile rising in my throat as my ever-growing baby presses onto my stomach.

I'm living the dream, the dream of real life, right now. I love it, I do, even though I am writing about its challenges. The truth, the end story of the Catch-22, is that if somebody offered me 2 nights at the spa in the Berkshires, all expenses paid, and a car to drive me there in the morning, I would politely decline. I don't want to escape my life, I just need to be true to what it is sometimes.

That being said, if somebody offered to cook all the meals, keep the house picked up, fold and put away the laundry, and watch the kids while I ran to town for an hour for a massage, I would gladly accept.

Tomorrow, the sun is supposed to shine again. It should be warmer, and I may get some moments by the sandbox, even though I don't have a chaise to lie on. Right now the little baby in my belly is stretching and kicking and so vital, and I am so excited for its arrival. I am due in a few days over 5 weeks. This is so amazing.

Coming soon...

2011-04-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

I chose my pediatrician carefully before Liam was born.

I had visions of myself, propped up on one elbow, my face close to the baby's to feel his breath on my skin.

I could see myself diagnosing every bump and bruise as a childhood cancer, every cry and gurgle as an ear infection or cold. I wondered if we would be daring enough to drive on the highway with him once he was born.

There were moments in Liam's early days where I was nervous, and maybe close to panicked, but for the most part, after his birth I mellowed considerably. The dozens of phone calls in the night that I had envisioned boiled down to one, perhaps two. Over time I began to trust his little body, and as he grew and thrived, that trust increased to the point that I almost felt mellow.

When Aoife was born, I was just in the thick of things. I had Liam, my survivor, and had somehow bonded deeply with his baby sister during my pregnancy. I had been nervous, yes, but was beyond relieved to be handing my not-an-only child a sibling who would stay with him. When she was born I was euphoric, amazed. I would walk down the hall with her in my arms and look from one to the other, stunned that I had now not one, but two small people in my charge, two living people who might just stay. The bliss settled, and stayed, and it was wonderful.

Fiona's birth was different. It had taken me 18 months to conceive her, and this long process had completely revamped my "body as damaged goods" perspective to the point that the pregnancy never seemed real to me, perhaps less so than even my pregnancy with Liam, where hope was my only focus other than despair. I detached and refocused on my cute little clan of two, cautiously hopeful in my conversations with them that "Peanut" would join us that November.

I remember vividly rocking on my hands and knees during my labor as I was seized by a particularly intense contraction, and bursting into nearly hysterical tears. I couldn't catch my breath, and the hot tears were pouring off my face onto the sheet below me. When the wave was over, our wonderful family friend and nurse who was with us took my hand.

What is it, she said, and I simply replied: I'm having a baby. It was like that moment was the first time I had dared to believe it, to reconcile the difficulty in conception and my fears that I wouldn't earn that "third" child. I had rubbed her sweet body through my skin and sang to her, I had spoken fondly of her and even talked of plans with the older two, but I had been play acting all along. Suddenly it became real, and I was overwhelmed by the waves of love and hope and anticipation that I had been afraid to connect with all along.

When she was born, it was like the biggest sigh ever, a fantastic, orgasmic moment of pure, clear amazement. My tiniest baby yet, born with her eyes wide open as I leapt over her umbilical cord and swept her up onto my chest. Suddenly it was so very clear to me that she, too, was my destiny, and I hadn't even known to expect her.

When I brought her home it was different. I was terrified for her. I woke in the night, my breathing sharp, sure she was still beside me. I would hold her under bright lights checking for changes in her skin tone, I even considered asking the pediatrician to run blood work just in case. Something about her made me sure I wouldn't keep her. Even Christmas seemed a long shot, and it was only six weeks away. Every time people talked about our future together I cringed, sagged, it was even worse than during my pregnancy.

During this time I could not bear to look at the photographs of myself holding Charlotte. I couldn't see that moment captured, of a mother's anguish and a dead child. I feared it too much to face it. It broke my heart to have to distance myself from her.

Lately I have wondered, did that fear come after the fact because I distanced myself from Fiona during the pregnancy? Did the attachment and fear during the pregnancy somehow allow for some kind of relief when this clearly-envisioned child arrived safely?

Of course I'll never know, but the reason I'm wondering might already be clear to you: I'm in my 34th week of pregnancy right now and still struggling to wrap my head around this miracle-to-be. My anxiety is mostly in check, I'm pleased to say, having developed a myriad of survival strategies over the past seven and a half years for coping with pregnancies. I am absolutely on top of this baby's movement and he/she is a lazy, lovely stretcher and wiggler, always subtle, but always palpable and there.

But I just can't believe I'm having another baby. I feel like we've just gotten to the point where Fiona is integrating herself into our family, and she's so diminutive and I baby her so intensely that it seems unfathomable that I'm getting close to another arrival.

I can hear it now, though, the gasp that will escape me when I scoop this new baby up, and destiny slaps me in the face again with the greatest beauty I have ever seen. I will wonder where I've been for the past eight months, rushing busily after my living three as this perfect being has grown and been loved by all of us in the midst of the fabulous chaos. I will wonder how I could ever survive without this one.

And I hope that I will this time escape the fear.

last day in March...

2011-03-31T16:12:00.000-07:00

I'm at the stage now where, if I spent a lot of time out in public, I should be able to comfortably sing Charlotte's name aloud on a regular basis. If asked by the man behind the laundry counter whether this is my first, I should be able to say with beautiful confidence, No, my fifth, and saunter out feeling proud of all my babies. And if it's a nice mother at the park, I would still say it's my fifth, and then counter her shocked expression with the sad truth that I only have three with me at home right now.

But it's still cold here, and supposed to snow again tomorrow, so I haven't been to the park since the fall. I don't go to the laundry, or really to many places at all, because I'm always juggling a sweet, small girl who needs naps and lots of time to play at home with driving the older two hither and yonder. In the past few weeks, as I have finally been able to downgrade my thick, puffy, life-jacketish down coat to a hefty fleece model, I have seen many faces of sudden surprise at my seemlingly sudden large belly. 32 weeks, and most of the world I live in didn't even know.

So go ahead, snow tomorrow. But then, please melt, and free me from these four walls and set me on the park to walk, and bask in the springtime sun, and speak her name out loud.

2 thoughts

2011-03-28T16:50:00.000-07:00

I dug in the garden yesterday, and it was Aoife's fifth birthday.

Digging is almost an exaggeration. I am approaching hugely pregnant, and bending down, particularly with the earth so damp, cold, and soggy, is close to impossible. I had a little child's rake in my hand and I used it to lift the old, dead leaves from the mulch in my garden beds, almost all of which have peeked their edges out from beneath the giant heaps of snow that are still in various stages of melt.

This year, mother nature gave Aoife a winter birthday. But I am searching for spring. As I lifted the wet, half-rotten leaves I unearthed the bent heads of tiny crocuses struggling to raise themselves against the odds to greet the sun. The children raced around the driveway on rollerblades, screaming with delight, hands still in thick mittens and their coats buttoned up high against the below-freezing temperatures and steady wind. As I came around the corner to the southwest side of the house, I saw that the little snowbank from our most recent fall of snow had melted, revealing the giant crocuses that had been buried in full bloom seven days ago. They were still brilliantly purple and standing tall. They had survived.

I, too, was buried once. I almost suffocated under the weight of what had fallen on me: a life I did not want, a future that was devoid of meaning. I almost gave up on breathing at times because it seemed to difficult and evidently pointless. There was nothing to breathe for, this winter would clearly go on and on, and even if I saw moments of sunshine or melted patches in other people's yards it still didn't mean that the snowpack in my shaded, wooded yard was melting any faster.

I hold onto this feeling of near-death, of being enveloped in pain and certain of a future that held nothing. I hold onto it because it stands in sharp contrast to what I have now, where days are somehow filled with laughter and joy and the relentless pace of children's needs. I mother with fervor, because I am free to do so.

*************************

This weekend, my sister was coming for the night with her almost-new boyfriend. He is the person she has been waiting to deserve for too long, and our whole family is ecstatic about his new role in her life. He is enthusiastic about our children and they adore him. While we've spent many weekends with him at my parents, he had yet to come to our home for a visit. This weekend, in honor of Aoife's birthday, the two of them would come out and take the children out for dinner and spend her special day with us.

I wanted to be especially hospitable to them, given his extreme patience with my overly-enthusiastic children, and so I had it in my head that I would give them our bedroom, and we would sleep downstairs on the pull-out couch. This would allow Aoife to sleep in her own double bed which usually serves as our guest bed. I spent almost an hour picking up my room, changing the sheets, organizing my sewing table to perfection, and folding laundry. I was tucking a little stuffed animal into Charlotte's little cradle, which sits under a double window next to my bed, when I began to worry about whether Nate would notice the little cradle and ask Steph what was in it. Then I even extended my worry to think about whether, if behind a closed door, I might poke around a little in the cradle, because I'd always kind of wondered what was tucked inside it and had been afraid to ask. I was thinking about whether this bothered me, this potential that one of them might lift the little blanket and see the urn with her ashes, or open her memory box and finger her little keepsakes, when my eye caught the photos over our bed.

12 photos, black and white, 12 inches by 14 inches, in a 4.5 foot by 4 foot refurbished window. The legacy of our six hours together, looming over our cherry sleigh bed. Twelve images of our grief, our daughter, our three naked bodies curled up in a narrow hospital bed to look over us while we sleep.

Us, while we sleep.

Not them.

I gathered up the dirty sheets, loaded them into the washing machine, and got a clean set of double sheets from the linen closet. I re-made Aoife's bed and tidied her room, and placed a little mattress on our bedroom floor for her to sleep on.

Sometimes sacred space becomes so ordinary, you forget what it is.

2011-03-20T16:43:00.001-07:00

Several years back, I was hosting a training for professionals on the subject of caring compassionately for families whose babies had died. A conversation between bereaved parents on a panel and those in the audience arose regarding people who attempt to demonstrate their understanding for the pain you are feeling surrounding the death of your baby by comparing it to the pain they felt when a beloved pet died. I don't think I would need to elaborate on the fact that the parents unanimously felt pretty outraged when somebody said to them, "I know how you feel. My dog died last year and I had such a hard time coping". There was the feeling of anger towards these people but also disbelief that such a ridiculous comparison would be made in the first place. A caregiver in the audience raised her hand and suggested that she had extremely strong feelings for her cats, and that when her cat died it really did feel to her that one of her babies had died. I can remember at the time feeling surprised that she would offer this when it was so clear that all the bereaved parents were opposed to this viewpoint, but she did offer it and I seem to recall that the response from the parents was a muffled silence before the topic changed to something else.

Six months later, the same caregiver ran into me at a conference and confronted me about that very interaction. She told me she had loved the training and found it very informative and useful, but that she felt it was very offensive that, as the facilitator, I had allowed this conversation to go on which belittled people who felt strong feelings of love for their pets.

I can remember feeling shocked and surprised that she had hung onto this for so long, but also put on the spot and sorry, from the perspective of a fellow human being, that her feelings had been hurt. At the same time I was pretty sure that I didn't feel any different about whether or not the conversation was appropriate: clearly people are offended when people equate their baby's death with that of a pet. A parent panel had expressed their emotions on the topic, thus educating the audience. Was this not the point of the training?

However, I stumbled through an apology, saying I was sorry for having hurt her feelings, and that I would keep it in mind for the future. But looking back I realize how clear cut this is: it doesn't matter if her feelings are hurt, or how she feels about her cats, or the issue of whether you can love a cat as much as a baby. The only thing that matters, for her as a caregiver, is that bereaved parents are offended if you make this comparison. A firm statement, both in the context of the training during the conversation, and during this follow up discussion, should be that regardless of ones' opinions about pets and babies, it's important to respect that bereaved parents should never, ever be told that you understand because of the grief you felt for a pet. Never, ever, ever. Period. There isn't a conversation to have. It's only about learning where to draw the line. I wish that on the spot I would be better at identifying truth from emotion and laying it out, brick by brick, the truth of the matter.

March Muse

2011-03-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

The sun shone today, for real. It was bright and warm and there was a big enough patch of snow melted on our side lawn that I was able to lay down a big, sisal mat and serve peanut butter and jam sandwiches with apple slices and carrots to an incredibly pleased pair of children. Despite the fact that I am an admitted homebody, and do love my home immensely, I have felt lately the creeping crank of cabin fever setting in. I began to come home from school drop off and feel like I could hardly bear to figure out what to do with two girls with such diverse interests and abilities... and I would (and do) yearn for a nice, warm sandbox with a pile of buckets and shovels and maybe a few pails of warmish water to boot.

And so today we moved out, temporarily of course, but it was celebratory to be able to open a window and flush out some of the germs and dust and to make dinner and see that the toys I'd picked up last night still lay neatly in their spots, as we'd spent the whole day outdoors. This life will return.

I am over 30 weeks pregnant, which I suppose puts me technically somewhere in the middle of mky 31st week. It has taken me a while with this one to put on a good girth, but I've got one now. All of the sudden, somewhere over the past week, I feel very pregnant. I look longingly at the toys on the floor, willing them to pick themselves up. I feel thankful for the fact that my parents' dog is staying with us for a few weeks as it means I don't have to wipe up any messes off the floor after mealtimes. And all the things that a pregnant lady ordinarily cringes to do, I cringe, and I also have Fiona Clementine on my hip.

Fiona Clementine is an adorably petite little thing. She's now 16 months old but most people take her for around a year or less. She weighs in at about 17 and 3/4 pounds right now, talks a blue streak (we've made lists of words she can say on her own, as opposed to mimicking us, and the list was over 100 words) and she is now starting to put 2 and sometimes 3 words together. So how wonderful that this little fairy sprite can talk, for at least I know what she's thinking about and what she wants. But the one thing I could really use would be for her to learn to walk, because it's really hard to play outside in mud season when you won't walk. And I say "won't" because Fiona is strong, she stands on her own and will squat to pick things up, and stand back up, and do this repeatedly, and her balance is super. She walks quickly and efficiently holding one or two hands or pushing something, but she will not try walking without a hand. Of course I appreciate this aspect of her personality in some ways, with physical tasks she practices and practices with help until she can do things perfectly and with confidence, and only then will she venture out on her own. But right now I'm just really hoping that as the snow continues to melt and we start to be outside more, that she'll realize that running around with a ball is so much more fun than plowing through the snow and mud on your hands and knees. And, oh, there's also the part where I wouldn't have to bend over and pick her up again, and again, and again.

I'm really going to have another baby sometime rather soon, I'm beginning to realize... and I realize this with the most incredible and bizarre mix of delight and fear. Given that Liam was born only 11 months after Charlotte's birth, I always felt like I wanted to have the experience of having two children close in age. I think there's a part of me that feels anxious that I won't be good at this, that somehow having these two children closer in age than any I've had before will crush my romantic, beautiful vision of Charlotte and Liam as the two children whom I obviously would have raised harmoniously and without complaint if only I had had the privilege to do so. I know this will be hard, and I want to allow myself the wisdom and freedom to burst into tears when I need to, when the two babies and the guilt and the exhaustion push me into a place where tears are what I need. I want to allow myself to know that I could have raised Liam and Charlotte together, and to feel grateful that I have been given the privilege of reclaiming this tiny portion of my imaginary life with all my children in my clutches.

I just really can't get over that I'm having another baby. I feel so lucky, which scares me, because does this mean I'm assuming that I'm lucky, rather than unlucky?

I hope I'm lucky. (this being a day full of the luck of the Irish)

The Raging River

2011-03-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

River raging

fast

lightning

black as

the

night white

waters swirling

poem written by Liam R., early this morning, while looking out the window at the Manhan rushing outside our front door

There are still two hard, icy feet of snowpack in our backyard. The sky is grey and the rain pours down. In some places, along the borders of our south-facing house front, the snow has melted down within about six inches of our house walls, and feisty, determined tulips are beginning to poke their tips out of the soil. I can see them, and I know the end is in sight. Spring will come again, and May.

May will come, inevitably, as it always does. I rush through March, and I am eager to shed the coats, and boots, and hats, and other clutter that accompanies winter and children. I am desperate to closet my slippery down coat that causes the child I carry to slide off my hip; I'm hungry to be able to slip on a sling and bounce down a dry path in my sneakers. I want the smell of mud and sunlight in my house, I want to purge the dry, stale air of winter and invite the freshness of spring to take its place.

This spring, there is another replacement of sorts, or so I hope. May, as my long term readers will remember, takes my breath away every time. Somehow it surprises me with its arrival, perhaps because I am caught up in the excitement of the drying earth, blooming flowers and sunshine in the air. Our family has a week off towards the end of April, which passes by in a fit of springtime flurry, and then suddenly I realize with an almost heavy heart that it is, truly, the 30th of April and there is no 31st, and I must turn the page to May.

To May, where somewhere in the second or third line of the calendar it sits there, #13, like an ordinary day where others might go and buy a loaf of bread and fill the car up with gas while I sit at home, lonely and confused, wondering how I should be feeling and what on earth I should be doing. There is so much chaos in my house now that the stillness that used to settle upon that day like a blanket is unreachable now; instead it's a flurry of something or other while I think to myself of the moments that I can blink into almost present time that happened years ago.

This day has squelched May for me, made me fear its arrival. There is a lifting afterwards, but the downward slide is inevitable.

Except this year, May is getting traded in. I hope.

I suppose it's more of a matching gift. My feeling of doom that shadows the glorious month of May has always made me think that someday, somehow another child would tumble into our lives during this month, somehow helping us to restore the beauty of the month. And I think that's going to happen this May, I hope it does. I'm looking at this as the universe trying to give me back the gift of May, and hoping that this sense of balance will give me faith as May comes and the fear and pain settle into my core. The smell of the air, the color of the light, all of it will take me right back. This time, on her birthday, I will be 38 weeks pregnant.

Must I actually speak these words, or can you hear them? I always want to go early, to free the baby from the danger I perceive in the deep dark womb, but this time... this time...

I need her birthday to be her own, and I need this new life to have a day of his/her own as well. But yet how can I make it through that day, feeling the doom, knowing that another life teeters on the brink inside of me?

And then, when that life comes, what will May mean then?

Seven weeks 'til May, I needn't worry now.

But the river roars, my little one. She is coming.

On Morning

2011-03-03T18:08:00.000-08:00

This morning was so beautiful.

I slept past sunrise, which is a beautiful thing in and of itself. Fiona has started to sleep a little bit more, with the love and helpful guidance of her sweet father. Somehow the presence of a person without a milk supply has chilled her out and helped her to put in some longer stretches, for which my ever-growing pregnant body is incredibly grateful.

So she was sleeping, and I was sleeping, and Aoife was sleeping when my little Liam crawled into my bed at the very late hour of half past six. He curled into me, and went back to sleep for a little while, and I was in heaven. We woke together to the sound of Aoife getting up and I, wanting to wow and amaze them as well as log a few extra moments of sleep while Fiona was miraculously still conked out, offered the sweet candy of an early morning PBS show. Liam scampered down, after having told Aoife the wonderful news, and I began to drift off again.

Then Aoife climbed into my bed, took me by the hand, and stared at me earnestly in the eye.

Mimi, I love you so much, my love for you goes from here, out to space, and back again to here. And she planted a huge, insanely juicy kiss on my lips. I knew it was all about the show, but it was still the absolutely most wonderful way to begin my day.

I slept for half an hour more, then. I woke up to the sweet chatter of little Fiona down the hall, the 13 portraits of our holy trinity hanging over my head, and the sunshine streaming in.

Somehow it lifted the heaviness of winter.

And all this, on the day that is the birthday of a sweet girl who should be four years old, my dear friend Erin's Birdie. Perhaps she sent the love down, it was rippling in waves from her mama's house five miles away. But I was grateful for the beauty of the morning.

Touchpoints

2011-02-28T16:38:00.000-08:00

Today feels like some sort of intersection.

First, upon waking, it is the two year anniversary of one friend's baby loss. Here, I mourn for another.

Then, upon some strange realization, I am exactly the gestation (27 weeks, 5 days) of another friend's baby loss (and the two know each other). Here, I hold myself up to another's pain: I feel vulnerable, and simultaneously mourn for her.

Then, I got a card in the mail that my sweet, old, lovely friend from college whose baby died a year ago this month has had a new baby, a beautiful, sweet, living son. I wept opening the card. It was the most beautiful surprise. Joy, joy, joy. I am so thrilled. I feel the joy of possibility.

At lunchtime I spent 72 minutes on the phone with a woman who was interviewing me for a community service award for my loss support program. I feel so empowered, so proud.

I had a few minutes to play Uno with my blossoming, precocious son who is home with a cough, when the school nurse called to alert me that a classmate of his, unvaccinated, had been attending school unknowingly with pertussis for the past month. When she saw Liam was out with a cough she wanted to alert me, to have me take him to the doctor to be checked out. While he has been vaccinated, there is still some risk-- and while it's easily treatable for him, it's a much greater risk for Fiona and also, go figure and OF COURSE, for women in their third trimester of pregnancy. Vulnerability floods me, fear as well.

This sent me reeling; although I was not able to find anything to conclusively truly freak me out about what might happen to the baby should I become infected (and trust me, I did not look too hard) I still had an hour or two of harboring some recurrent feelings that I have about what I see as a public vs. private debate, and others see as a government and health care conspiracy: vaccinations. Here I have vaccinated my children for the better health of society (not to mention their own), and somebody else who chooses for her own personal convictions (to which she is entitled) not to vaccinate hers has put my child (moreso my baby) at risk. It causes me to heave a sigh, to know that it's all out of my control no matter what I choose. Please do not enter into this debate with me in a comment. It is not a conversation I wish to have, having studied public health and medical sociology I have made what I truly feel is an educated choice. (and by this I don't mean to imply that others have made uneducated choices, but just that I am past the debating stage). Here I only wish to express the frustration I feel at having been put at some sort of risk, and the irony that I feel that it seems sometimes that with pregnancy and me when something can go wrong, it will. (I hadn't mentioned the exposure to Cocksackie at about 8 or 9 weeks, another one of those moments, which only just preceded the Rh sensitivity scare).

So find me the part of my day that Charlotte didn't impact, will you?

I often say that she's just everywhere in my life, everywhere, and it's really true. With every breath I draw, she's changing the taste of the air I breathe. Just as her loss has changed the children I've birthed, the career I've chosen, has changed it all.

As a last aside, I have had a kickass boys name brewing for a few years now, just waiting for a recipient. But the girl's name is evading me.

Who do you see as the baby sister of Charlotte, Liam, Aoife, and Fiona? What rings beautifully in your ear? I am so very weary of reading baby name books. I've tried asking the baby, but she doesn't answer. (Maybe she's a boy, offended at my suggestions)

2011-02-16T17:26:00.000-08:00

I go to the midwife, cooperatively, once a month right now. I love these midwives, truly, and while my relationships with them feel a little strange at times because I have a semi-professional relationship with them, an almost personal friendship with them, and I'm also their patient, I wouldn't transfer my care for the world.

But still, basically, when it comes down to it, I don't like going.

I don't like going in, and having to talk about this. I just want to slip under the radar, the lady with the strangely swollen abdomen, and just be admitted every few weeks for ultrasound monitoring and non stress tests towards the end. I don't want to sit and talk.

Do you have any questions? Is there anything we can do for you?

Save the baby, I want to say. Figure this out, and save the baby.

I have done this so many times before. I don't have any questions about pregnancy and birth. I am pregnant, and I will be until I deliver. When I deliver, the labor will play out as it plays out, and I will endure what occurs and at the end, regardless of circumstance, there will be a baby. I will take what comes. But there isn't a question about this that somebody could answer until the day it's happening.

The whole idea of being at an appointment feels different. I don't bring my husband to appointments, we don't look forward to hearing the heartbeat together in anxious, joyful anticipation of our baby's birth. Likewise, we aren't gathered around, white knuckled, with the sole focus being whether or not this will work out. Instead, we stumble around, distracted and incredibly busy with the hands-on work of parenting three small children, and we have adopted the total and complete avoidance strategy. I'm 26 weeks pregnant and we have almost not talked about names AT ALL. Like perhaps the topic has come up maybe less than five times at a time when most people have pored over books and tossed around hundreds of ideas.

But do I love this little baby?

Oh, I do, I do. It's just how I'm getting through this time. And us moms like me, we just do what we do, and I've learned through time not to question how I'm enduring any particular stress. I just see what's happening, and I accept it. My strange, slightly awkward avoidance strategy this time might make me feel a little guilty for now, but I also know with complete clarity and certainty that when this baby is born he or she will instantly become an equal to the four who came before.

Perhaps that is the only sure thing right now.

SIx Months Ago

2011-02-15T16:26:00.000-08:00

Joy is so amazing.

I wanted to post something sweet and lovely and reminiscent of summer, after two days in the house with the whole family throwing up.

So here they are, laughing and so adorable, on a misty, warm summer morning.

A New Perspective

2011-02-08T08:29:00.000-08:00

When Charlotte died, I had already given up my job. I was a teacher of K/1 students, and I had worked up until April holidays, bright faced and excited. The children and their parents had given me a party with a big cake and a book for the baby they'd made themselves. In class, at book times they would gather close, their hands on my belly to feel her kick. I was the spritely, loving kindergarten teacher and they were the only children I had, at the time, and so our love affair was real and whole. I was afraid that when I left for my maternity leave, I would miss them terribly. I actually worried about this. The woman who had been my assistant for the previous two years was to step into my shoes, for the remainder of that school year and for the next. I had stated I would only take the year off as an insurance policy to myself. Because you never know, I thought. I could always quit later.

I was eight days late, so had three weeks at home thinking about them at school, with the other teacher. The day she died, my friend Megan called my principal to tell him the news. That night, the principal of the school called every single family in the entire school that very night to tell them what had happened. He later told me he did not want rumors flying, so it felt important to him that everyone hear the correct news from the source. They held a meeting in the gym the next morning with a midwife present for parents to process what had happened, and then the teachers all had meetings with their students to answer questions. Each class made me cards, and wrote me letters. They sent flowers, and plants, and food.

About a month later, through my grief stricken haze, panic set in: I had nothing to go back to. Would I sit in the house all fall, thinking about the baby I was supposed to be parenting? The school I had come from had already proven they could take care of me in my grief, so I called the head and asked him for something, anything, to keep me busy the following year. He offered me the position of being the classroom assistant in the 1/2. Same kids as last year, 1st grade math and reading which I could do in my sleep, and before or after school commitments. I agreed in a hurry, and then had 3 more months to sit and wallow in my aloneness.

I was terrified and extremely resentful when it was time to go back. It will be good for you to have something, my mother, and sister, and friends said. I wanted to slap them. How could they know how little I desired anything to take my mind off of my daughter, my grief? But I did go back, reluctantly, creeping in the back door with a photo of Charlotte which I shared, through tears, at the opening staff meeting. It had been 16 weeks since her death.

But when the students returned, with their refreshing honesty and truthful nature, I was relieved. Here were innocent children, unafraid of death, offering themselves, their love, and their questions. One boy walked in the door, met my eye, and said, "We heard your baby came out dead." Then he wrapped his arms around me, around my flat, flabby belly, and pressed his face into me and hugged me for a long time. You can't beat truth like that.

The children gave me something to do, people to care about, and I loved it. It was incredibly freeing to have hours of the day that weren't so excruciatingly painful that I could hardly breathe. The children saw me for exactly who I was, their kind, loving teacher who was very sad because her baby died. They loved to come over and sit on my lap and open my locket to see her little photograph. "Oh, she's so cute!" they would exclaim earnestly, unlike the adults whose hands would clasp over their mouths as they turned away with tears in their eyes. The children offered the most refreshing perspective, that death just was, and that sad as I was, I could carry on while I was sad, a photo of my adorably cute daughter slung around my neck. It was grief as it should be, just naked truth. There was no urgency that I leave the sadness behind in their minds. After a month or so I was so glad to have this respite from my silent home, although I never would have admitted it to my mother.

This is not to say there were not difficult days; and there was a little room high on the third floor of the old house that made up part of the school where I would often take my lunch, alone, and cry. There were stacks of paper there and I would sometimes search for the stub of a pencil and scrawl notes of sadness, of aching pain that was hurting me so deeply. I would feel I couldn't go back down the stairs to rejoin the class after lunch, but when I did, I felt better.

All of this came as a complete surprise, and perhaps the first good surprise in a long time.

I still think fondly of those children, and know that they will always think of me in years to come, their kindergarten teacher whose baby died. They are in 9th and 10th grade now.

In the Night, Part 1

2011-02-06T13:08:00.000-08:00

It happened last night, for the first time of this go-round. It was 3:30, and I had just gotten up with Fiona for the (gulp) third time of the night. As I lay down to try to return to sleep, I waited for the thump I liked to feel before drifting back. I have to be honest, when I wake up in the night these days (and with such frequency!) I'm often so exhausted that despite my paranoid brain, I forget to obsess about the baby's well being. But last night I remembered to obsess, and obsess I did. The baby was, quite clearly in retrospect, having a nice, good sleep, just as I should have been having. But I wasn't down with this plan. I wanted that baby up and moving, and I was hell-bent on making him/her do so. I spent maybe 15 minutes doing some quiet breathing, then started poking and prodding. After half an hour I ate a bowl of cereal and downed a glass of OJ.

After 45 minutes I started to panic. I wondered what I should do. Should I call somebody? Should I go somewhere, knowing I'm probably being paranoid? What would I do with the kids? Should I wake up Greg? We haven't even picked out names yet... it feels awful to imagine having to name a dead baby after the fact. And would we still go on our planned trip to Florida in two weeks if the baby was, indeed, gone? Well, I suppose we'd have to, for the kids, and wander around, dazed, watching the waves wash up on the shore, counting grains of sand through our fog of grief.

An hour had passed, and I was beginning to lose hope. I didn't know what to do.

Then the baby woke up, and had a nice long stretch, and wiggled around for a while. I don't know how long, because I fell asleep instantly as soon as I realized I still had an active, vivacious little being in there.

But what I'm left with, reviewing the panic, is this: when I envisioned myself going in to be checked, and imagining the worst outcome, all I could feel was shame. I felt as if I couldn't show my face at the place where I've had my other four babies, where the nurses know me so well that they move flowers to my room before I arrive and leave me post-it stickies welcoming me if they're off shift. I felt I couldn't walk in there, and know exactly where they'd be and what they'd be saying, talking about me in the work room, their heads shaking, not believing it'd happened to me again.

I felt I wouldn't be able to show my face at the support group I've given my heart and soul to; me, the facilitator, the symbol of a life rebuilt, shattered again. How could I look at them in the eye and tell them it would be okay?

And as for everyone else... the school, the friends, the neighbors. I could hear them, talking, the pity flowing. I couldn't bear the thought of being the object of their pity once again, the woman who could not bear a live child most of the time, the woman who must be "just amazing" for having survived this twice. I felt I could not face them again, ever, anyone.

Mostly, second only to the actual fear, I felt like I wanted to be swallowed up into the earth, because I couldn't stand the peripheral pieces that surround grief: the fact of me becoming, once again, the victim. The fact that somebody would have to give me bad news. The fact that I'd have to bear that news to others. The fact that this, like Charlotte's death, would never go away.

And so, now, I go off to read the baby name book. Because the only problem I anticipated last night that I could actually prevent is to pick a name. So I will.

To Ponder...

2011-02-04T15:37:00.000-08:00

So, when I'm at the YMCA, and I see the husband of an old friend who I met when we were both pregnant with our first girl, (and hers lived, of course), and he greets me so nicely even though I don't recognize him at first, and then he says to me that he hears we're going for.... and there is a pause... and he holds up his hand with four fingers upheld, do I feel sorry for him, because I can tell he wavered, and wasn't sure whether to hold up four, or five, or do I feel sorry for myself, because I know he knows it's really five?

Honestly, truly, I'm not sure how I feel.

_______________________________

As a complete aside, those of you fortunate to have living children who attend school should check out www.RaceToNowhere.com. It's an amazing film I had the pleasure to view last weekend, very thought provoking....

The Realest Winter Ever

2011-02-03T17:34:00.001-08:00

I love this.

At first, there was a squidgen, little nagging thought of, "Not this year! This is the year I need school to let out early, so I can have Greg home when the baby's born!"

That lasted for the first few snow days, but quickly disappeared.

The snow has come, and come, and come. Storm after storm, my children have not had a complete week of school since Christmas and we only have 2 more weeks until winter break. Our longest stretch of school so far has been 3 days.

It is amazing.

Here we are, holed up in this cozy, beautiful home, as the cold, fluffy snow piles up all around. Fiona can't see out the windows anymore because the snow is halfway up the first panes of our windows. The piles behind the driveway almost hide the cars. Anywhere is really a great place for the best snow cave you could hope to dig out. And so I'm enjoying this, loving it, and with two more storms on the horizon.

Who ever made up the hoopla about Summer Vacation, anyway? I'm loving this winter vacation... it's a beautiful thing.

(ask me about this again in late June, when the kids and my husband are making up the days)

Halloween

2011-02-02T17:26:00.001-08:00

So I had a scare, a while back, on Halloween.

The phone rang at 8 AM and it was my midwife calling, sounding confused.

Have you had RhoGam lately?, she asked me, and of course I said no, why should I have?

Well, she said hesitantly, I'm looking over your lab results and you're testing positive for the D antigens, so somehow between having Fiona and now you've become Rh sensitized...

She asked me, then, if I knew anything about what that meant.

Yes, of course I do, I said. It means your baby becomes anemic and can get very sick and sometimes dies.

Oh, she said, sounding crestfallen. Of course that's what you know. But that's not what usually happens.

The rest of the conversation matters little, because what she did was to try to reassure me, but that did nothing for what was going on in my head. The only Rh sensitized babies I'd known had ended up in the NICU at 28 weeks, fighting for their lives, and sometimes died. Rattling around in my head were scenarios of babyloss, paired with scenarios of a terribly sick baby in a hospital far away, and me with a 14 month old nursling abandoned at home while I wavered between my mothering responsibilities for my living children and my baby on the cusp. I wondered, given that RhoGam works 99% of the time, how it was that once again I had fallen into this statistically impossible category.

In the end, she told me that the important thing was that in the morning she would find out what my antibody levels actually were, which would give an indication of just what kind of anemia and monitoring we could anticipate. I wondered at that point if she couldn't have just waited to call a basket case like myself until she had this information. The waiting seemed cruel.

For a day I felt certain the baby would die, but it was only a day. The phone rang the next afternoon with a different, equally confused midwife on the other end of the line.

Carol? she said, Somehow when the lab called over your results yesterday they gave a D antigen level from November of 2009, right after you'd gotten your RhoGam shot for Fiona. I looked over the paperwork for last week and you're fine, absolutely fine. There's no D antigen present at all.

My sigh of relief was so huge and all-encompassing that I didn't even think to ask HOW the lab had managed to make such an error, or even to feel irritated that for 28 hours I had been sick to my stomach with worry. I was so thrilled to be fine, just fine, that I simply thanked her and hung up.

And in the meantime, do you know what I discovered? That some people refuse to take RhoGam, because they think that if you follow "good birth practices", it's unnecessary. That the blood won't mix, and you won't get sensitized.

But what if you do, and the baby dies?

Like in the old days, when babies DID used to die from this?

But I suppose that's not a question to ask to somebody who's so privileged and sheltered that they can believe that by going totally all-natural and holistic, they have complete control over their baby's fate.

Damn it, I wish I could be like that.

A Week and a World Apart

2011-01-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

Two memories just blindsided me, one after the other.

The first, it is Monday, the 19th of May. A lovely, kind woman named Nan is at our house. She works at my school and she's here with a bouquet of bleeding heart and lilac, to sit with us and hear Charlotte's story. That afternoon she will return to school, to the staff meeting, and tell everyone our story. She will spare me from repeating it, over and over again. As of now, all they know is that our baby is a girl named Charlotte, and that she inexplicably died. When Nan meets with them, they will know the tearful glory of our time together, the beauty of her face, hands, and feet, they will feel the softness of final kisses and the love that can't be broken.

As I'm speaking, and Nan is listening with quiet, respectful, loving ears, I suddenly see movement in the backyard. With horror, I realize it's Todd: the man we'd hired to run an electric line from our house to our guest cabin. It had been less than a week and a lifetime ago that he'd told me he'd be by soon with some guys to complete the project. Now, here he was, a thorn in the sanctity of our tiny bubble of a home. I needed him gone.

Thank goodness for Nan, who nearly leapt off the couch and out the door to send him on his way. I remember seeing her, in the backyard, telling him what had happened, and watching his face change. He was a stocky, gruff fellow, a chain smoking, beer drinking, cheap electrician, but even he showed a change in his face when the words obviously hit home, and he knelt and retrieved his tools and walked across the yard with Nan, towards his truck. Nan returned to the house as he and his crew backed away, to return at some unspecified time, later in the summer. Our conversation resumed. I was awash with relief that someone had been there to stave him off.

Then, the second memory, which followed, even though it came before: I am leaning at the kitchen counter, writing a list, perhaps, as I am heading out for the day. I am going to go to Smith to swim, and then to run some errands. Todd is at the door, then, to tell me his plans for the upcoming week, about how he's going to bring some guys by to finish running that line to the guest house. I tell him, sure, no problem, we'll be here.

When are you due? he asked me, a seemingly almost odd question coming from such a type, as if his tough-as-nails, riff-raff type wouldn't notice my 9-months pregnant belly.

Last Monday, I laughed, and it was Monday, the 12th. I said something about how sometime in the next week.

Then I headed out to run my errands, not even knowing it was my last day.

Later that night, she would die.

The Shadow of a Girl

2011-01-21T18:50:00.000-08:00

Charlotte is very present in our home, even obvious, if you spend a little time here. For the most part, she is a known, present part of our family to whomever sees her here. When you know about our tiniest, but biggest girl, it comes as no surprise to see her name written on a plate hanging on the wall, or stitched into a cross stitch, or to see her birth-card, bracelet, and lock of hair behind glass in a shadow box alongside the other three.

But what of the other people, the ones who don't know, and who might not ask?

I think this about a few babysitters we have had, girls from the neighborhood who are 15 now and whose mothers knew about Charlotte when they were 8, but might not have told them. Do they sleuth around the house after our children are sleeping, hoping to piece together the mystery of the child no longer here? Do they go home and ask their mothers, and hear the sad tale of the young, vibrant new couple who moved in, glowingly pregnant, only to lose the baby a few months later? Do they hear the awful word I always avoid, stillborn?

I've been wondering a lot lately about the woman I've had the luxury of having to come and clean (not pick up, but actually CLEAN) my house since Fiona was born. For half a year it was a gift from my mother to have her come, and for the remaining half it has been the gift I give to myself. In fact, it's been the best gift perhaps I've ever given myself, to have this lovely, kind, soft, hippie-ish woman come and clean up the house after I've spent two days picking up all the things hiding the actual house from sight. She comes every two weeks, which seems incredibly often given how frequently I used to clean the house, and she's thoughtful and kind and does a wonderful job. I'm usually home while she's here, but cautious to stay out of her way. And she goes everywhere in our house, so she sees the cradle full of Charlotte's things in our room, and the huge, gigantic photo exhibit over our bed that features 12 , 9x13 photographs in stark, black and white of Greg and I holding her on the thirteenth of May. She dusts the shadowbox and the plate, and she also sees Liam, and Aoife, and Fiona running around the house (inevitably dropping cookie crumbs on the carpet she's just vacuumed) so she knows this is a child who is not here. She's never asked, and I've never had a moment where I felt compelled to explain to her. I'm sure some day Charlotte will come up. But for now, I just wonder what she thinks, where her mind goes with the mystery of this child who clearly did not make it.

In some ways, I suppose, this is why I like having Charlotte pasted all over our home: it means that even if I don't want, or have the chance, to share her with people, they still know she exists. They still see our family as missing a piece, an essential piece, and they know enough to see the shadow of a little girl, seven years young, flash before their eyes. Someday, I'll tell the tale. But for now, this is enough.

On Sleep

2011-01-18T18:18:00.000-08:00

First, a word of thanks to those of you who offered me your support in letting go of some of the guilt. I appreciate it so very much, and it does help.

And now, a post that really isn't about loss at all, but about being a parent for me, right now. Around here lately I’ve been consumed by sleep, or my lack of it. I suppose one could really be more specific and point out that it is Fiona Clementine who is struggling with sleep, not me. I imagine that if left, alone, in a dark, silent hotel room, I would probably sleep for about 27 hours without waking once. But, in fact, I live in a small-ish, old house with thin walls and shutter-style doors. And so if one person does not sleep, we’re all around to bear witness to her struggles.

Struggle, schmuggle, I often think, when people speak of their babies’ sleep issues. Babies aren’t supposed to sleep well, they aren’t supposed to sleep for long, they aren’t supposed to sleep alone. By saying this I’m not implying that I disapprove of people who do put their babies to sleep alone, because I absolutely believe in every family choosing the sleep style that works best for them, and I withhold judgement. But you can’t deny the biological fact that babies aren’t supposed to sleep alone, and so there is an element of learning that has to take place around all of this. What I’m struggling with is the fact that my baby, while still a baby, is going to become a big sister. And my internal struggles with what I should do about sleep and Fiona are becoming further complicated by incoming molars and a 4:30 wake up time... yes, 4:30 AM. Almost every day. Wow.

This might not be so awful, you might think, because I am co-parenting so one might imagine we could tag team. Except that my dear husband leaves for work at 5:15 AM, so once I’ve tried to put her back to sleep, and rotisserie-nursed for 40 unsuccessful minutes, he’s gone and the house is empty and cold and it’s hours before real morning should arrive. And Fiona Clementine is tired, but fiercely determined to start her day, and I’m pregnant and eager to get back into bed. And I wish I had some way to get her to agree with me that sleeping until 6 is a good idea.

Fiona has always been, since the age of 10 months, my most independent sleeper. She slept tucked into my armpit comfortably until she was 9 months, and then spent a month trying to clue me into the fact that she was ready and wanting her own space. Now, she actually likes her bed, she likes the space of it, and she really doesn’t like to sleep with me anymore. Ever. Some people might imagine that this seamless, happy transition to her own bed would be in my favor, and I admit that with the coincidence of my positive pregnancy test and her decision to sleep alone, I would almost jump to agree. Except that when she’s having trouble sleeping, I don’t have the back up plan of pulling her into my bed and letting her snuggle in and nurse and snooze with me. Because she won’t snooze with me. She’ll nurse, and crawl around, and then get extraordinarily frustrated that I’m not getting up with her. This is possibly the only time I ever see Fiona Clementine exert her will: when she wants to get up in the "morning".

But still, at some point about a week into this struggle, the nursing and snuggling did start to seem kind of nice to her. So even though she wasn’t really sleeping, and even though she was waking up, and wanting to switch sides, and maybe chat a little about every 6 minutes, she decided she didn’t really want to get into her crib. And when nap time rolled around, she was putting up a mighty protest, which was leaving me sitting bewildered in the rocking chair, baby at my breast, wondering what had happened to my champion napper. It also left me bewildered at 4 PM with an absolutely exhausted baby who was ready to go to bed for the night.

It was then that some really wise words my cousin gave to me rang a bell in my head, and I combined them with some of my own, personal wisdom.

The wisdom I have always held so dearly to is simply that sleep is important, and that babies need a lot of it. I cringe when my babies (under 3) get less than 14 hours of every 24. At our house we strive for 12 solid hours at night (solid doesn’t mean no nursing, just good sleep!), and when they’re little, at least 2 hours during the day. Fiona was doing an average of 3 daytime hours before the teeth and the fussing, and suddenly it dawned on me that we had whittled her 15 hours of sleep down to about 12, with the decreased naps and early wake ups. To me, this is a recipe to catch a cold, in addition to being an obvious precursor to a crabby baby.

So this is my wisdom, knowing that sleep is a health issue, and keeps my children not only healthy, but happy. I'm proud to say that in almost seven years of active parenting and three children, we've only been to TWO doctor's visits (knock on wood!) that weren't well child-- and we've had TWO bouts of vomiting and a handful of colds. I have been so lucky-- and I really do think a lot of it has to do with how well rested they always are.

And then, back to Fiona, I thought of my cousin Briare’s wise words which were, sometimes not sleeping is just an issue of saying NO, and remembering who is in charge when it’s in your child’s best interest. If your child fussed for cookies and cake every time she got into her high chair, you wouldn’t give her them no matter how hard she cried, would you?

Obviously not.
And so, sometimes, even when your baby says, I don’t feel like sleeping right now, and they are old enough to know their safe place in the world and to know you are always there for them, and to hear your voice saying, I know you don’t want to take your nap, but it’s important for your healthy body to have a rest right now... Then I think you do just lie them down in their little bed and let them be for a little while.

So I did it. I committed this for my little Fi, and I told myself that I had to just pick a routine and stick to it without fail so that she would know what I expected of her. Just like I give her healthy food to eat, and even though I know she loves ice cream I don’t give her ice cream when she throws her green beans on the floor.

So I sang the same lullaby I always sing her, and rocked her and nursed her and smooched her, but then despite her request of “no” I did put her in her crib. The first time she squawked and fussed for the whole “nap time”-- which was 45 minutes long. But that was it. The next time she squawked and fussed for a few minutes, and after that, she would still let me know on my way to her bed that she didn’t want to go down, but she didn’t fuss. She already knows that I am always consistent, so she learns fast. And so I’m on my way to reprogramming Fiona Clementine for her health and mine, and I’m glad I remembered that even though it is so hard to hear your baby unhappy, when it’s a matter of keeping them happy and healthy, sometimes it isn’t a real choice.

I am not a mother who supports the true “cry it out” method. But I also don’t support children who perpetually don’t get enough sleep. There are all sorts of evidence that support negative effects of sleep deprivation, and I do believe that there are certain elements of attachment parenting (a style of parenting that I mostly go along with) that are not conducive to a well rested child. I have seen so many children parented in this style who look so bleary eyed and are sick so much of the time because they can't sleep alone, and so they go to bed late and nap infrequently. I believe that it is fully possible to have a firmly attached child who feels safe enough to sleep alone at times. I suppose what I support is really good communication with your older baby, so that you can make your expectations of them crystal clear, so they know that you love them no matter what, and that you will be right there for them when they wake up.

That's my diatribe for today. It's part explanation of where I'm at, sleep deprived, looking for change, and part trying to justify to myself in writing that what I'm doing is good for my baby and for my family and for myself. Fiona's at 14 months of age and she's had no colds and 1 ear infection in her life, and I'd like to keep things going in that direction. I love her too much to see it any other way.

And also? I'd like to get some sleep myself, mostly between the hours of 4:30 and 6 AM. I am not opposed to getting up early with my kids. I think kids are, and should be, early birds. But 4:30? That's just not morning, no matter how you cut it.

2011-01-09T16:58:00.000-08:00

I'm here tonight to write about guilt.

It's a strange position I find myself in, one that might be foreign to almost everyone else I know. But for me, when the time comes where I have to confess that I'm pregnant, I hate to do it. I know that I will crush some people, make them feel jealous, awkward, and angry at the world. I know that my good fortune will be one more lashing for a good percentage of the people in my life. I know that having another baby will build a wall between me and some people I hold very, very dear.

Although with Fiona I so hesitated to write about my pregnancy here for this exact reason, I'm making a conscious effort not to do so this time. My rationale behind this is that each one of you can choose to read or not to read. I'm not a person who blogs so her family and friends can follow her, I blog for purely selfish reasons, to dump my innermost thoughts down into print. I've probably only told about five people about this blog in the three years I've had it. Therefore it seems bordering on ridiculous to censor myself because of my perceived audience. I know many of you are, indeed, baby lost, but I really don't know many of you. So here, I am going to allow myself a lifting of the guilt, and know that you will read if you so choose, and skip the parts that you don't like.

But out in the world, I'm growing everly more self conscious of my pregnancy. Now I am 21 weeks and you can see that I am pregnant. I still haven't had the experience of someone approaching me and calling me on it, but I'm really guessing that has more to do with the baby in my arms and less to do with my protruding belly. It's much smaller than it was with Fiona, but it's there. Perhaps the winter coats and sweaters are doing me a favor. Whatever the reason, I'm still in the closet, but I have to come out.

The most important place I have to come out is to the support group I run. Last time around I made the announcement at the end of the August meeting, just barely visibly pregnant, and then I didn't come back. I was so terrified of people seeing me. This time I'm toying with the idea of making the announcement this month that next month will be my last meeting to facilitate. I'm showing, but with the right outfit I could definitely conceal it for this time. But I'm wondering if this is a dumb idea. Will people instantly not want to be near me when they find out? Will I cause them pain just by being in the room, when they know that information?

I am so terrified of making people sad. I feel ashamed and awkward about having to share this information, and if it wouldn't sound so ridiculous I would want to tell people that I really don't want them to talk to me about it at all. It feels so dreadful to me to be admitting my good fortune to people who would give anything to be where I am, pregnant with my fourth child who might live, with three glowing babies at home. I am so afraid that people will congratulate me , because I really don't want to be congratulated by the bereaved. It just feels to awful and awkward.

There are a number of people who I have pretty good friendships with who are relatively recently bereaved who don't know yet. I am starting to feel deceptive by not sharing this information, but I'm just so incredibly afraid of how to say it, when to say it, and how to do it without making them feel awful. And I'm also just postponing the possibility that they may have to drop out of my life for a while.

And, for those friends who are bereaved and do know, now that I am starting to look pregnant, and realizing that sometime in the future I may actually have a newborn baby, this also feels like a loss of sorts. I realize that some distance may have to occur, and I accept this as what may have to happen. I hope they know this.

I'm just so worried right now. I wish I could keep this a secret forever so people wouldn't have to know about what's good for me. I hate, hate, hate the fact that when good things happen to me, by default because of the role I serve and the friends I have, my good fortune brings others pain. There are a few friends who I shared this news with who have never spoken to me since then. This makes me sad, but I have to try to understand where they are coming from. Sometimes it's just too hard.

I wish it didn't have to be this way. I wish I could have my baby and just feel happy, happy, happy about it. Honestly, I'd even accept the fear and anxiety that sometimes sends me reeling, but I wish that me having another baby wouldn't make other people really, really sad.

Because I'm not in the business of making people sad. I'm just not.

For Real

2011-01-05T17:00:00.000-08:00

This is real, isn't it? Can you see this little prehensile sweetheart, curled on his/her back, legs curled up? The hands were up around by the face, curled into little fists, and this little someone was sucking his or her thumb while we watched on the camera yesterday afternoon. Not only is the baby fabulously cute, but somehow, beyond all of my expectations, they could find nothing wrong with the baby. Nothing. It seems perfect, so far. All my nausea and sweating in fear for naught. Surreal can hardly describe this experience.

20 weeks, 1 day, and I still really don't know if this is real.

There were many times during the past seven years when I would think to myself, what I'd really like someday is to get pregnant without really planning for it. Somehow, I reasoned, a baby that wasn't carefully calculated and worked for might seem more like a mystical gift-- like a soul that came down when he or she felt ready to. Somehow, having had one soul stolen from me, it seemed appropriate to strive for one given to me unexpectedly.

I've said before that this pregnancy was, in fact, planned, but this was only on paper. In my mind, I was still a broken, half-useless infertile with a poor track record, and that with the nursling on my lap left me so far from believing that a baby would actually be conceived as a result of our "plan" to throw caution to the wind that I was, indeed, quite completely surprised when I became pregnant. So, while I hate to admit this in the face of so many people who have struggled so mightily to become pregnant, this happened so easily I didn't even know it had happened, and so immediately that I never even conceived of the notion that it could be happening. Somehow plans of this grand nature seem like they would take a few months to settle in, at least, but this one took root so fast and hard that suddenly it was here- he or she was here, is here, and here we are.

But what I hadn't done was already carve the emotional space for this child, which I had already done with each and every child before. With all of them, I had planned so hard in my head for the "next baby" that by the time I became pregnant, there was some huge void I was trying to fill. The next baby already existed in my mind well before she was created. But here, the baby existed in my belly before I even thought about what it would mean to have it in my life. And so in some ways, it feels like a beautiful thing that this baby just is-- it will be a joyful, amazing addition to our family and I don't lust after its existence from some place of angst and terror. I feel greedy and giddy to imagine another little one, but it's like a really, sweet gift, a fabulous present that I've been given.

So somehow I find myself feeling like my fifth pregnancy is the hardest one for me to really comprehend. I can't grasp that it's a real, squirming baby in there, even though I feel the kicks and squiggles. Part of this is what I've said above, and the other part is that it's so convenient to just ride on this wave of disbelief as a tool for detachment, just in case. Because, you know, if something goes wrong, it would be so much easier to be detached??? (this is obviously my emotional brain hard at work here). So here I am, feeling barely, maybe pregnant, and hoping that the disbelief will stave off the terror, and fear, which so far it has.

But yesterday, for half an hour, the baby was real.

That Day in May

2010-12-30T12:04:00.000-08:00

It almost feels like a sacred day, looking back, like my one, unfettered day of blissful motherhood. It came as a surprise, which it shouldn’t have. It was the eleventh of May, and our baby had been due six days earlier. I had been to see the midwife that Friday, the 9th, and I had heard the little heart pounding over the doppler. My non-stress test was scheduled for the following Wednesday. The truth of the matter, which was absolutely beyond my comprehension, was that sometime in the next week I would be having a baby, one way or another. The journey was about to begin.

When I woke up that Sunday morning, it did feel like a Sunday like any other. I knew it was a special day for some people, but I hadn’t thought to consider myself among them-- not yet. And so it was to my great surprise when I came downstairs and found my husband in our living room with a small, wrapped gift.
Happy Mother’s Day, he said, and handed it to me.

I blushed, smiled. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might honor me on this day. I’d mused about the adorable possibility of our baby being born on this day, but I hadn’t ever actually considered the blatant fact of my own motherhood.

Still smiling, head down, I carefully opened the wrapping paper and found that it was from the jeweler downtown. Lifting the lid on the little box, I discovered a pair of ever-so-thin, delicate gold hoop earrings, about 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Right away, I knew they were just the accessory for the busy new mother-- the earrings that could be worn every single day, without ever being removed or changed, comfortable to sleep in, safe to shower in, appropriate for every occasion.

But more than appreciating the beauty and practicality of this well-chosen gift, I was mostly humbled and delighted at the prospect that I had not only been given a gift for Mother’s Day, which most certainly made me feel like a mother, but had been given a thoughtfully chosen, expensive gift from a jewelry store, which made me feel like a very special mother indeed. Rising to my feet, I wrapped my arms around Greg’s neck as best I could over the swollen globe that was our daughter, and I thanked him from the bottom of my heart for honoring me on this special day. Suddenly the reality of my new identity seemed sealed, and I slipped the new earrings into my ears at once, where they would stay for over two years.

You may remember the details of what happened next, about the wonderful walk we took along the Mill River, the conversation I had with Gina about how difficult it would be if this baby were to die after I’d known her for so long, and our trip to the diner for grilled cheese sandwiches and milkshakes.

As the jukebox played our request, and Charlotte kicked along to the beat of the music, our waitress offered me a rose, in honor of Mother’s Day. For the second time that day, I beamed, realizing that this, the best part of my life, had already begun.

The rose was still alive, beautiful and full, on the kitchen table when I came home from the hospital, empty handed, empty bellied, and so full hearted I did not know where to begin. I was a mother, wasn’t I? They’d said I was only days earlier, when it had all seemed so real, and tangible. But now, but now....

I wore the earrings for years, knowing I had birthed her in them, knowing they stood for what I held most dear: my motherhood. I don’t remember when I changed them for the first time, only that after some years had passed I started to occasionally take them out for special occasions, again trying on a pair of antique pearls or a funky pair of African beaded earrings I’d loved in college. It was maybe five or six years later when somehow, somewhere, one of the hoops came loose, and I found myself gazing into a mirror at home one night with only one earring there. I felt destitute, lost. I wanted it back. I had no idea where it had fallen out.

I stashed the remaining hoop in my jewelry box, hoping beyond all reason that somewhere I would find its mate someday. I never did.

Then, several weeks ago, I came across the hoop as I was reorganizing my jewelry, and I felt sad to imagine that I would never wear it again. The flush of pride and love I’d felt upon receiving the gift of those earrings came to me once again, and I wanted it with me. Could I put it on a necklace? I mused to myself, and then it came to me.

Carefully removing the emerald ring that I always wear that marries me to my firstborn, I slipped the hoop on the ring finger of my right hand, like a wedding band, and it fit perfectly. The delicate clasp fit around the back of my finger, nestling in the little space that indents when I bend my hand. I slid the emerald ring back on, and there they were: like a pair that had always meant to be worn together. The circle of motherhood, broken, but symbolic of the beauty of that day, and the emerald ring that will tie me to my firstborn every minute of my life. I worried for a moment about whether the clasp might come undone, and the earring might be lost. Then I thought of the moments when I would look down and see this ring of gold, and remember that warm May morning when everything had been perfect. Better to live with the beauty of that memory for the time the ring stays on, I reasoned, than to keep it locked in my jewelry box to be forgotten once again.

And so I wear the ring, as if it has always belonged on my finger. I look down and am tied to that moment of purity, when motherhood and joy were fused without a wrinkle. It is with gratitude that I remember those brief moment, and that day.

2010-12-23T12:16:00.000-08:00

My sister gave the kids an amazing dramatic play kit for Christmas. She's a doctor, and she put together the white coat, the kids gown, and all the bandaids, ankle braces, ace bandages, thermometers, gauze pads and strips, masks, hairnets, and booties you could dream of. We cleared out a corner of the room and filled a little bookcase with all the new loot, and put an old crib mattress on the floor next to it for the patient to lie on.

Then, they asked me if they could take the wooden bedrail off my bed to make the bed more like a kids' hospital bed.

The bedrail, of course, is there to keep Fiona safe when she's in bed with me.

But the truth is, Fiona doesn't like to sleep in my bed. So I let them take it, my heart giving in to the truth of it all: when my baby ditched me in September for her crib, she really did ditch me for good. Since that time she actually hasn't slept in our bed at all. She's come in, but she never sleeps.

I never had this with my other kids. Until they were probably 2 or 3, they would always crawl into bed with me at 4, or maybe 5, and nurse and snooze and snuggle until the sun came up. But Fiona, despite the fact (or is it because?) that she was the only one who exclusively slept with me without ever going into the sidecar for an hour or two during the night, wants nothing to do with sleeping together anymore. For eight months we slept in harmony together, for a month and a half we slept in half-asleep annoyed tossing and turning together, and now when it's time to get in to bed at night, she nurses on my lap for a few minutes, then sits up, and says, Bed. She lies on her tummy, snuggling in as I tuck the wooly knitted blankets over her. And then I leave her there, and she falls asleep, and never makes a peep.

She still wakes up in the night, of course, and there's a mattress on the floor of her room, so we snuggle into bed together to nurse during these times. I always wonder whether she'll just fall asleep with me, and we'll end up logging a few hours together, but we never do. She nurses on one side, then asks for the other, and then wakes up and turns away and starts to sit up. This is my cue, and if I put her back to bed, again she snuggles in and goes right back to sleep. If I try to get her to lie with me, she gets irritated and cries. (how insulting!!) So I always put her back now, and I respect that this is just who Fiona is.

I have to admit that as I anticipate the arrival of a new little one in five months I am almost glad that she's like this on her own, that I won't have to harbour the guilt of a new baby taking over her spot in my bed. I won't have to worry about what to do at 4 in the morning when she wakes up and wants to nurse in bed with me. If she does wake up and want to nurse, I know it will be a 3 minute affair in her room, and then she'll happily curl up again in her own bed. I suppose, then, that her independence is a blessing.

And I laugh, knowing that this is what most people strive for, and to me it seems almost sad! I miss her little warm body in bed with me at night, still, after three months apart. I feel awkward and funny leaving her alone in her room to fall asleep. But Fiona is Fiona, and this is what Fiona wants.

And I do get these little snatches, every night, of the snuggliest love ever as I pull her down onto the cozy, down filled bed on her floor. She curls into me, fat and round in her quilted sleep sack, and her warm cheeks are so delicious and lovely. I bend my head down around her and kiss the top of her little soft head while she nurses, and I always fall asleep for a while, just like this, and appreciate the moment so intensely.

I remember, so vividly, being alone.

Coming clean, just in case

2010-12-21T09:57:00.000-08:00

A fellow babylost mother, who reads this blog but also with whom I share a personal connection, wrote to me last week. You seem so organized, she commented, like the house is always tidy, the laundry is always put away. Your kids go to bed early, and you don't yell, it seems. I laughed out loud, and then the laughter faded to a near guilt sensation, because I feel wretched if this is, indeed, the image I portray. I always make periodic efforts to come clean, with a confession of a really dreadful yelling match, or a moment of truth when I acted really childishly. I think the truth is, the areas in which I often get overwhelmed are just really, really boring: they are the piles of laundry, the mess, the never ending meals and dishes, the meetings to keep track of, and the usual ins and outs of being part of a household. These things are so mundane, and to go into the details of not getting them done is simply whining. I am not, by nature, a complainer, but I do derive incredible satisfaction (don't we all?) when these things actually, miraculously, get accomplished.

And so, when this happens, I post photos like this one, which showcase the areas of my home that have my heart singing with the amazing accomplishment of organization, beauty, and creativity. Here we see the children's art table, where they devote hours to artistic endeavors of all sorts. Here, again, we also see the art table. This is probably what the art table looks like about 70% of the time, due to the fact that the children are always playing at it. Organizing markers by size and type and sorting papers for keeping and recycling sometimes evade them, and in fact the greatest contributor to the perpetual mess is my own lack of organization. I never remember to tell them to stop working five minutes before dinner or we have to leave for school, and so there is no time to clean up. The mess builds, and builds, until we see this:
Ahh, yes. This is home, sweet home. I want to be very clear about this. There is a blogger (not babylost) whom I really admire, and I enjoy reading her writing, but I find that she neglects this side of herself: the one where, because she's so busy sewing beautiful handmade clothes and baking bread, the laundry piles for days and days (or even weeks). She doesn't mention about the times when the laundry baskets are all full, so she has to dump out the laundry on the bedroom floor so she can empty the dryer and switch the loads. It's possible, that despite the beautiful, rosy image, her bedroom also might look like mine does today:
Just like it's possible that the tidy, beautiful craft area that you envision me felting in, and sewing the skirts, and making these amazing appliqued shirts, actually looks like this, and I usually end up doing most of the work on the floor because the table is too messy.

Motherhood is messy work, there's no doubt about it. And I never, ever want to give off the mistaken impression that I do it all: the love, the devotion, the hot breakfast, the tidy house, the folded laundry, and the crafts seamlessly and without compromise. Every day I have to decide what gets done and what doesn't. My children always get fed. I should say no more often to the requests, but a little blond head asking for eggs or french toast on an 11 degree morning almost always gets me pulling out the frying pan. Sometimes I try to do too much, and I end up rushed and crying and wishing I was the mom who put the Cheerios out every day, because that's sensible and there would be no discussions or arguments about what's for breakfast if it were the same thing every day. But it is what it is, and I'm far from perfect, and most importantly I'm still learning how to do this. I'm learning now, and I will be learning 50 years from today (God willing) about how to mother these amazing people in the way that will allow them, and myself, the growth, opportunity, nurture, and unbounding love that they deserve.

So this is it, just making sure, that the singing of the accomplishments, of the beautiful, handmade Christmas, the shining two trees, the joy of parenting these four amazing souls (or should I start to say five?) doesn't have anyone thinking that yesterday I didn't sit in the sunroom and cry for a while because I just felt like everything was too hard. These moments still wash over me, sometimes often, and it's the truth at the base of it all: it is hard, it's always hard, and this is the place where I feel I can stand tall and make the announcements about the good parts.

So hurrah, for the life of this country girl. I do have so much to be grateful for and wondrous about, and I think I love the idea of embracing exactly what this blog presents: that we don't fixate on the piles of laundry or the times we lose our patience with our children. Instead, we should quietly try to accept these parts of ourselves, as humans, and have the focus be on the good parts, on the days when we do feel fluid and joyful. Highly ambitious, but a worthy goal just the same.

On giving, and receiving, and gratitude.

2010-12-20T17:30:00.000-08:00

This is the time. I have to say, unlike many of you who are reading these words, this time brings less bitter heartache and more joy to my life than I'd imagined it ever could seven, or six, or even five years ago. As my living children have grown I have come into the immense joy I get from making them and acquiring for them things that I know will make their cheeks split with smiles I can't wipe away. As a mother who never, ever gives material gifts to my children outside of Christmas and birthdays, I save up all year with ideas and thoughts of how to make them giggle with delight. It is a culmination of ideas and

love and hope all bundled up. I want to show them how much I love them; show them, and everyone else. I actually love this time now, now that some of the emptiness feels less echoey (this is some seriously creative use of words here, but this is how it feels to me).

As a woman who personally derives great joy out of making things myself, always in the fall I begin concocting lists in my head of what I'm planning on making for whom. I'm going to make Christmas banners for the mothers and sisters and in laws, I'm going to make matching twirly skirts lined with pink tulle for the girls, I have plans to applique designs on t-shirts for Liam. There are things I could

knit, endless creations to be made from the piles of wool felt on my sewing table, and the half-knit blanket for Fiona in my knitting basket under the table in the living room. When I start to plan, it's usually early October, and things feel managable-- it's not a huge list, and I've got time.

This is when, without fail, nine weeks fly swiftly by and I suddenly find myself a week into December. The raw materials still lie ready and waiting, but the clock is ticking.

So I have been a whirling dervish of late; whipping up felt food faster than I can see it coming, appliqueing octopuses and sharks, and making banners until I think I will go cross eyed. I love, love, love all of this-- but I do harbor the hope that some day, I will enact these wonderful ideas before the calendar hits the month of December. It would bring me more pleasure to take my time with these things than to sit with them late at night as my eyes sting with the exhaustion.

Tonight, I said, tonight I am going to begin the wrapping for the kids, and then I'll work on the projects for my mother and sister and law. But when I came downstairs, I realized that what I needed to do was to take some time for myself. So here I am, content on the living room sofa, by the light of the holly-jolly Christmas tree, feeling glad that I am almost finished with my projects and that right now, I'm doing what I want to do.

So there is the giving part, and now there is the receiving part.

Today a beautiful thing happened. I took part in Jenni's ornament exchange, and mine arrived. I had been looking forward to this, but I hadn't anticipated how deeply it would move me. At lunchtime my mother-in-law had come to be with the girls while I went and spoke to a roomful of IVF nurses who wanted to know more about my program. Feeling professional and satisfied, I pulled up into my driveway to find a small white box on the back step, addressed to me, followed by the words, For Charlotte Amelia.

My heart did that melty thing that it does when just for a brief, almost second, it's as if your child is real. Real and there, I mean, like an ordinary child who might be at school or inside the house playing with playmobil while her grandmother makes her lunch. I had that flicker of imagining what it would be like to really just be, not just sometimes and to some people, but all the time, Charlotte's mother. It was a beautiful thing, and I held the box for a long moment before I stepped into the house.

The girls were all riled up to see me and Fiona had to be tucked in for her nap before I could open the box. I thought about inviting Aoife to help me, but it felt deeply personal. I worried about the box, about the label, about the contents in that way that one can only worry about the sacred things that connect us to the reality of our little lost souls. I carefully cut the tape around the label, being sure not to rip it in the process, and set the white rectangle that bore her name on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, where I could see it easily.

There she was, real.

Carol McMurrich

for Charlotte Amelia

A daughter, just like the other daughters and son who get mailed things care of me.

And how almost sweet it is that this first part, just the receiving of the box and the opening of it, were so delightful to me that this in itself could have been the gift.

But inside was the most beautiful ornament made by Sara, who I hadn't known of before. She included a note that explained that the angel was made with a victorian technique called quilling. I felt so honored, and humbled, and connected to imagine her working on this amazing creation at her home in Montana while I stumbled around in my little mundane-to-me life here in Massachusetts.

Sara included the link to her blog and so I learned a few brief details about her life in the three or maybe six minutes I was able to steal. Sara has seven sons, five with her, and I marvel at this: that one woman could create seven sons. Seven sons! I think of the hilarity, and comraderie, and absolute meltingly soft love that must ricochet around a home as filled with sons as this one is. It felt so filling and wonderful to even snatch these few details about this woman whose hand had penned those words, whose hands had created this ornament that I then shared with Aoife and let her hang on the Charlotte tree. Sara, of the seven sons.

As I daydreamed about what this would be like, to have seven of one kind, I remembered that last night I had a dream about meeting a woman who introduced me to her daughter, about six, and explained that she had five younger sisters. I had awoken pondering the concept of people who somehow produce child after child of the same sex, and remembered suddenly thinking of a family I had known who had had eight daughters and one son (born last). How odd, I thought, that I should meet in my dream this woman, with her string of daughters, and then the same day, a real woman named Sara with an even greater number of sons.

It made for a wonderful new light in this day, which had almost revolved around giving, and honestly I can't really imagine that there will be a moment again in this Christmas season that will make me feel more deep-seated gratitude than I felt upon receiving that little white box. So thank you, Sara, because you've given me this moment to be Charlotte's mother, and to remind me that even while I stitch and sew and freezer-paper stencil away, with a smile on my face, I need these moments so desperately I'm probably afraid to realize it. As the years have passed and my really amazing ideas of what to do for Charlotte at Christmastime have faded into pretty good ideas that will appeal to the other children, I really can't put words to the importance of having this one, small white box appear with her own name on it.

For Charlotte Amelia, my daughter, the one who started this whole thing. It really would be impossible for me to offer even a thought on where I'd be now without having had her in my life. For just those eight months and eleven days that I knew she was living in me, she began this journey for me and really there isn't a thing in my life now that can't somehow be traced back to her.

Charlotte's Tree

2010-12-14T15:58:00.000-08:00

I'm so delighted because this year, in addition to our usual, gorgeous, joyfully decorated Christmas tree in the living room, Charlotte has her very own tree. Last year, we realized that almost the entire top half of our tree was devoted to her, and the tree was getting crowded. So this year I put my foot down and said it was high time we had a special angel tree for her special ornaments. It's in our dining room, and it makes me so happy to have it glow around us while we eat and relax in the big soft armchair in the corner.

This year, when we decorated the tree without her for the eighth time, we did not cry. I felt joyful to be dedicating this corner of my house to her, so conspicuous and obvious and out there. It would be seen, and admired, by everyone who entered.

I felt wistful and sad, as we hung the ornaments on a cold Tuesday afternoon, but there were no tears.

I wondered if this is okay.

Snow

2010-12-11T08:03:00.001-08:00

The first snow fluttered down last night, gently coating the yard with a dusting of white. I could see it in the darkness, the rooftop below my window glowing, as I pattered down the hall to Fiona sometime in the 4's. This, in addition to the incredible, bitter cold that has set itself upon us, brings real winter, the bitterness, the closing in. Darkness settles.

I remember waking up sometime in December of 2003, and coming down the stairs to the sight of my husband's back facing the kitchen windows. Our house was tiny then, and the stairs fed right into the kitchen. I was on my way to the bathroom, having just woken up, when I saw the flakes drifting downwards, and noticed the all-too familiar quake of his shoulders.

It's her first snow, he managed, and then his face was in his hands, his head on the counter.

This morning I awoke to the sounds of Liam and Aoife gleefully hurling small handfuls of snow at each other, pulling a small plastic sled around the yard through the three-quarters of an inch of snow. They were fully dressed in snow gear, their cheeks apple-red, noses dripping in the bitter cold. Their shrieks and giggles were loud and glorious. I lay in my bed and gazed up, twelve images of my forever-lost daughter looking down at me. I looked into my own face, and that of my husband, our eyes filled with the most intense and haunting longing I could ever conjure up, and I looked into the face of that beautiful baby, and wondered who she would have become. The shouts of joy from outside continued. This is where we are, now.

A few minutes later, Greg brought Fiona in to me. She was rosy and warm, double-pajamaed against the chilly morning, her cheeks shiny and red from the eruption of molars. As she has many mornings of late, she also turned to the photos over the bed, pointing.

Daddy, she said. Dolly.

Remember, my sweets? I say to her, She's not a dolly, she's a baby. Daddy is holding Charlotte. She's your sister.

S-har-uh. Ba-by. she offers, long pauses between syllables as she struggles to make the sounds. Ba-by.

I struggle a little, now, with how tiny Charlotte is in the photos, and how long ago in the dust her older siblings have left her. I look at her tiny countenance, her slight limbs and long, elegant hands, and I think about how long it's been since Liam or Aoife, even approached that tininess. Even Fiona Clementine seems bulky and robust at 17 pounds 4 ounces, her immense and ever-growing vocabulary pulling her farther and farther away from her infancy. More often now I find myself pondering not how big Charlotte would be now, as a seven and a half year old, but how tiny she was then, how intimate and new a baby is, and how very much we've lost. Unlike when she would have been two, or four months old, now I find I can hardly fathom who she would be, or what she would look like. I almost can't try to picture her, because I have no idea where to begin.

I have a goal, for the next little while, and it's to be true to the now.

Often, when I write here, I am myself looking backward: I am a mother who didn't have the support of other babylost moms when I was one, or two, or four years out. I am reliving those moments in some retroactive attempt at support and companionship. I want others to hear my voice and say, yes, me, too. But I realize that I am not there, and that no matter how vividly I speak of what it was like then, I will always be further down the road. While I reach desperately for some kind of peer support, those I am viewing as peers see me as someone in a different place. Someone not a peer, but somewhere else. Despite this difference, which until now I hadn't pondered very deeply, quite often I can hesitate to speak of the now, of the joy that exists, of the happiness that could still come, because I fear causing pain for some, or creating a rift between myself and the readers I wish to have. When I was pregnant with Fiona I almost stopped writing because I couldn't write about the anguish of Charlotte's passing in the advent of another birth. It never occurred to me that I could just write this, just write about other things, that I could write deeply about the terror of the pregnancy and the secret hopes that I harbored. I felt this wasn't the place.

But if not here, then where? This is a blog, an anonymous, ill-advertised, kept-secret from the real friends in my life blog. I think it's time to be me, to just accept and love who I am, where I am, to invite into the now myself, and you, and anyone who cares to peer into what it's like here.

So, today it snowed. My older children frolicked, joy spelled clearly across their chilly, sun-lit faces. Fiona crawled around on the rug in the sunroom, pulling books off the shelves and making animal sounds, while I ate blueberry pancakes by the Charlotte tree. I worried in the shower that I'm not really showing yet, and wondered if I should ask for an early ultrasound to measure growth so I can get an early read on whether this baby is developing properly. I went back to the photo on this blog, from May of 2009, of me 16 weeks pregnant with Fiona and gasped, and suddenly felt awfully self-conscious and silly for not being in maternity pants yet and still telling people that I am pregnant. I'm getting ready for a holiday party at our house tonight, making hot hors d'oeuvres with things like bacon and mayonnaise and other untouchable items.

Liam is reading choose-your-own adventure books, now. And I think to myself, I didn't choose this adventure, but I don't get the chance to know what would have happened if I'd gotten to pick page 23 instead of 98. I was assigned this adventure, and I'm riding the wave. I also don't get to choose anyone else's adventure; but if they choose to read about mine, I'm the better for it.

Here I am. It snowed last night.

News, and such

2010-12-07T10:18:00.000-08:00

There's a long story and a short story to everything, and so I could choose between the two in offering some thoughts on the dearth of writing lately. I'll select the short version, and state it like this, uncontained within one sentence as to state it as another might would make it all seem too real: 16. weeks. pregnant.

Did anyone really think I could ever stop this baby growing process with the culmination of my last beautiful effort, Fiona Clementine, she who has been like a blossoming new flower, scented beautifully vanilla, smiling and offering greetings and waves everywhere we go? Who curls into me and rests her fat cheeks on my shoulder and whose wet lips smoosh into my cheek and leave me breathless every day?

I have always known I would have to exceed all measures of practicality before I would be able to call it a day with conception and birth and, hopefully, the parenting of a newborn infant. So here I find myself, with a 6 year old, and a 4 year old, and a just-turned-1 year old, and as her half-birthday rolls into view and passes another one might come into our life, rosy and whole as her/his siblings, and the end may have come for this stage.

At this point we will have exactly one hand per child, not enough bedrooms, hardly room in our car, definitely (practically speaking) not enough money, and so this makes it just perfect for us, because to be practical in these circumstances, when there are amazing people to be made, is simply a waste of an opportunity.

So an opportunity we decided we would seize, should it present itself. Those of you who have known me for quite some time will remember the drama of conceiving the wee Clementine, and so will understand that whilst an 18 month spread does seem quite, absolutely, daunting to me at this point, there was no possibility for me to at once want another baby some day and at the same time use birth control for a while to try to space things out. I knew what I know now: if I'm ever lucky enough to conceive again, I will conceive again, and I will be grateful and lucky and beholden to everyone and everything. And days, or maybe a few weeks, after that decision was made, something took hold, and somehow it is still there.

And so it shall be.

And so I hardly dare to breathe the words, since things feel so precarious at all times, this is the truth of now.

A Pat on the Back

2010-12-02T17:51:00.000-08:00

Here I am...

Warm Water

2010-12-01T11:48:00.001-08:00

I'm in a gratitude phase right now. I'm marveling every day at the roof over our heads, at the numerous rooms, at the collections of books and wide variety of foods to choose from, even when I might claim at 4 PM that the cupboard is bare. But it's a really simple thing that I always feel so amazed by, something that I wonder if some people ever stop to ponder.

Every night, after they eat their warm supper, my children trundle upstairs to our yellow bathroom, and they get into a lovely hot bath. It's so simple-- I turn on a tap and gallons upon gallons of beautiful, clean, pristine well water, at precisely the right temperature for their little bodies, pours into the tub. They get in, and while some nights we grab the bottle of soap and scrub them down, most nights they just play in the warm water, rinsing their little bodies off, and relaxing from their busy day. I find this so amazing that every single day we have this luxury. The children aren't even dirty. We don't even wash them all the time. It's just something warm, and soothing, and lovely that they do together every night. A symbol of true luxury that could pass right by my eyes if I didn't stop to think about it. If I didn't stop to ponder how many children in the world don't have access to clean water, or running water, or warm water. Or how many children in this country do have access to these things but whose parents just park them in front of the television and don't bother to let them play happily in the tub before their appropriately early bedtime. (did you know that the symptoms of extreme exhaustion and fatigue mimic ADHD symptoms?) My children are blessed, and I am blessed to be aware of our good fortune.

Home

2010-11-24T07:38:00.000-08:00

House became home over the course of several weeks or months, because we couldn't go out and we needed a place that could envelop us in comfort and safety. The soft pink exterior was almost flesh colored, with multiple gables like slouching shoulders. A weathervane perched on top, a flying pig, that seemed to keep watch of the world around. Tall, tall pines towered around the perimeter of the open backyard, while drooping hemlocks lined the drive that curved down the hill toward the road and the river. At night, the sky seemed black and in winter Orion was framed by the pines, the stars twinkling as gently as a lullaby. A small cabin sat at the back of the yard, it housed a perfect, tidy bedroom with a woodstove and a writing desk.

A path led from the cabin out through the woods behind the house. You had to know the way to get there; a right turn at pointy rock, under pine bridge, a left at woodpecker tree, over France rock and around Porcupine rock to the second river behind the house. The water rushed fiercely here, travelling swiftly over large, moss covered rocks and shaded by the steep hemlock slope behind. One could cross the river here, over the old dam, and walk for miles on deeply grooved horse trails through the woods.

But going back, back to the house along the little path, it would suddenly seem shady as the brightness of the grassy yard approached. Coming around the corner of the cabin, the little house stares with wide windowed eyes, and the bright perennial beds leap forth a greeting in summer. It is here that one leaves the rush of the backyard river behind, climbing the knoll that the house perches on, and the sound of the front yard river meets the ears. There is never silence, and when the wind blows hard it rushes down the little river valley with a howling fury that sounds like a thousand wolves at once.

And now, seven and a half years after the house gulped and surrounded us in our isolating anguish, its walls echo with laughter, its floors are marked with footprints and the corners house old cheerios and dust bunnies. The bedrooms call out with cheery colors, soft bean bags, and shelves of games and toys. Song bursts from within every day.

I am thankful for home.

Change is Good-- Or, I love MotherWoman

2010-11-18T18:05:00.000-08:00

Oh, I love this organization. Check it out here. MotherWoman, an advocacy group for mothers, held a community breakfast today, with over 300 people, and it was truly inspirational. I am so full of ideas, thoughts, and missions for my future.

MotherWoman is actually creating change before our very eyes, with fierce love and enthusiasm and gentle, tender care. They are refusing to accept the plight of American mothers-- among the most unsupported mothers on this planet-- and are running, faster than the mouse on the proverbial wheel, to try to make this different.

MotherWoman supports and empowers mothers to create positive personal and social change for ourselves, our families, our communities and the world.

Amen.

It's curious, because personally, while much of the MotherWoman crusade thus far feels incredibly important to me, imperative, even, I don't have a personal connection to it. As a mother who has embraced and adored the ability to stay home with my children (and has not felt for one second like I am a prisoner in my home; rather I feel slightly guilty and giddy that I get to avoid a career and focus every second of my day on raising these amazing people), I have not personally suffered because of a lack of fair wages and/or maternity leave. And, as someone who has gratefully and mercifully avoided post-partum depression of any kind, I have not required MotherWoman's fabulous services here, either. I haven't needed to be held in many of the areas that they focus on: but still, I am a mother, and I am a rational, educated individual who believes in honesty and justice, and so these things mean a great deal to me.

I am so grateful for where I am, for the simplicity, the ease, the meaning to my life with my children. I wish more women had the means, the ability, the head space to find such peace. I wish more women had the community I have to share motherhood. I wish more women were lucky enough to have never felt that being a woman has ever stood in the way of anything she wanted. I wish more women had access to the things I have access to; half the journey is knowing the support is there if you need it, whether or not you actually do. MotherWoman, through so many avenues, is seeking to help women all over the globe to feel (and actually BE) supported by their nations/states, communities, families, and most of all, themselves. I applaud their work.

But there is an ulterior motive to my love for MotherWoman as well, and it is that what they represent also holds my personal mission so neatly. The resources, research, and political activism that they have so strongly advocated for could almost 100% be applied to the experience of perinatal loss. Should we advocate for bereavement leave for mothers and fathers whose babies have died that is longer than the normal three days (if anything)? And then, given that there is nothing of this sort, should there be a policy allowing mothers who utilize some portion of a maternity leave to grieve for a baby who has died to take another maternity leave sooner than would normally be allowed since the first baby died? I argue yes. I know a woman whose baby died. Her body was healthy, fine, in perfect shape to conceive another baby within a few months of her daughter's death. She was desperate to have another baby. But she carried the benefits for her family, and because she had taken five weeks leave when her baby died, she had to wait a year to conceive again so that she would be able to keep her job and support her family once her next baby was born. The pain I felt for her, knowing that her inflexible company's policy was preventing her from taking the one step towards future hope and happiness that felt most important to her, was immense.

But for the most part there is, at the most basic level, the isolating, traumatizing, anguishing experience of having a baby die at any point. This is not a syndrome, it is not a mental illness, it is a reaction. The grief that follows the loss of a baby is crippling for many people, yet it is among the most silenced of all sorrows.

I listened to a woman, a brave, powerful, humbling woman, share intimate details of her own postpartum emotional crisis this morning. MotherWoman had its annual fundraising breakfast, and this beautiful, open soul stood on the podium and threw words out there that I knew only too well: Anger, helplessness, guilt, sadness, hopelessness. As she described herself, right before her husband did the last thing he could think of and brought her into the ER to be admitted, I saw myself, and so many others I know whose precious babies have died. I was curled on the floor. Hours of crying had swollen my face, soaked the carpet, and wet my hair, which hung in damp strands. With no real confusion around this topic, I did not want to be alive. If somehow I could have slipped away from this earth, disappeared, without inflicting this same pain upon the people who loved me, I would have done it in an instant. I remember realizing then the true meaning behind the human act of crying, at any age, at any stage. True crying, the wailing, uncontrollable cry of a baby, or a toddler, or a grieving parent, or a person in complete crisis, says one thing: Help me. I cannot help myself.

Fortunately for me, I was grieving, and was not simultaneously unable to recognize my own importance to others. While the thought of not being here was so very appealing, the idea of acting on those thoughts was absolutely terrifying. Who could possibly hold my husband, also bereaved? How could I deprive my parents of their daughter, as I had been deprived of mine? As I staggered through the early weeks and months, people looked at me, with my swollen face, and tearful voice, and empty arms, and swollen breasts, and they said, poor Carol.

And that was all they could do.

There was nobody they could send me to.

I had no peer support.

There was no recipe for healing, or getting better, or making this okay.

Some would-be supporters returned to the age-old standby of implying that you simply had to get yourself knocked up again and trying for a fresh start. It's true that this is a mentality around pregnancy and infant loss that is still mighty present: people who experience this type of loss are obviously in their childbearing years, and from the outside perspective there are still an enormous number of people who suppose that the obvious solution to this "loss" is to simply conceive another child, effectively replacing and starting again with an new child. Just as the obvious solution to postpartum depression is to get off your horse and enjoy what you've got. Yeah right.

Anyone whose spouse has died will tell you that you can't just go out and get a new husband. So why am I expected to go out and make a new baby?

So what do we do?

We reel, us the bereaved, keening in the darkness of the night, alone in our sadness. We know that the world has no words for what has happened and that nobody knows exactly how to hold our hand through this. We grieve for ourselves and the life we imagined, and we grieve for a little person who we loved who never got a chance. We grieve for our family and friends who we've let down, as there will now be no new baby. We agonize over the new, angry self we see: she who wants to throw dishes, curse pregnant women, eliminate other people's babies from our sight. We suffer alone with the extreme guilt that our bodies have failed, that if only we had eaten better or not taken advil or been more vigilant, our babies might have lived. We grieve for the happiness we once knew, we grieve for our innocence lost. We fear for our own lives, for the lives of our remaining children, we face death and know it as real, as part of life. We are vulnerable, alone, and helpless. We can't imagine that this will ever get better, because we know we will never, ever get our baby back. And it seems brutally apparent that nobody, no one, can help us.

Unless.

Unless there is something. Unless there is something known, something out there, that people know about, that is real, thriving, throbbing with lives and stories of people who have also lain in that ball on the floor, willing themselves to eat, to breathe, to live. Unless you know you are not alone, that what you are going through is normal, and you see living, breathing examples who tell you that it is possible to some day heal around this wound. Unless somehow it isn't hard, or complicated to find all those other people out there who have had similar experiences.

When there is community, when you know that each person's grief follows its own path, when you realize that we all create our own stories for ourselves, we can be empowered to grieve. We can see this as a painful, arduous, excruciating process that accomplishes something as it happens. Even when we are captives in a dark, whirlwind of a gloomy place, we have people with us, who describe being in that same place, who recognize where we are, and tell us we can find the way out over time. And, over time, we begin to believe them. And over the years, we see the light at the edge of the dark, once bottomless pit. And we tell our story, again and again, until it becomes a part of us that is soft around the edges. We carry our child who has died, with us always, and after the knife-like pain has eased, and after the suffocating loneliness has become less so, we begin to live again. This is how it can be, and how it should be.

And this is the reason why I love MotherWoman: because their mission, when it comes to the individuals, is that together we can help each other to help ourselves. They know that we can only save ourselves. And MotherWoman sees this cause, they see my Empty Arms organization, and they know already that this mission is closely linked to all areas of motherhood. They see us bereaved mothers as a substantial group. They recognize that this is a glaring need, and they want to help me.

MotherWoman will help me, I know. They will help me for whatever I need, whenever I ask. But moreso, they represent to me that when you are part of a group that is marginalized, a group that is isolated and crying out for help, attention, and change, you can do something about it. MotherWoman has already changed the lives of so many women in this Valley, this state. They are reaching their arms wider now, on a national and even international level. People are seeing the work that they do, nodding their heads and saying, yes. This works. This is true need, true response, and real results.

I feel so privileged to be a part of such an amazing, fantastic organization. And it helps me to be patient to see the amazing work that MotherWoman has done with the causes they have chosen to embrace thus far. I realize that one day, when I don't have small children at home to devote myself to 24 hours a day, Empty Arms can become exactly what I envision it to be. That it can wrap itself around this valley, and even farther, bringing in all who need each other. I can do the things I dream of, and I will be patient with myself, knowing I am not alone in wanting to create change in this world.

Change is good

2010-11-18T12:28:00.000-08:00

Last year, for six Sundays I attended the MotherWoman Facilitator training here in Northampton, Massachusetts. First, allow me to confess that I signed up for the training almost against my will. It was offered to me by the amazing, powerful, and inspirational leaders of this organization and I thought to myself, I've taken other facilitator trainings. I would really like those Sundays to myself. But I also realized that being affiliated with MotherWoman would be beneficial for Empty Arms, and so I wrote the check and signed up and agreed to attend.

The first five minutes of the first meeting proved me wrong. Personally, those six Sundays would provide me with an invaluable opportunity for reflection, growth, and community.The companionship of the 21 other women in the room, all so different yet so alike, would prove precious to me. Professionally, the ways in which the training would affect and change the groups that I run is almost indescribable. I am so grateful to MotherWoman for inspiring so many people, and I am continually inspired every time I lead a meeting.

MotherWoman groups operate on the principle that it is essential to create a steadfast, ironclad, calm, earnest, SAFE space first and foremost. They reason that if we take the time to speak exactly what we intend to do, and exactly what we intend to accomplish, and exactly how we intend to do it, it can all be done. They celebrate speaking the truth and encouraging others to do just that. They pull for the underdogs and seek honesty and truth-seeking in all endeavors. They believe that each person can be her own best advocate, and that each person has the power to create the change within herself that she needs. They believe that we can accomplish this within the context of community, when we are held in a safe space, when we are allowed to be honest and real and truthful about our experience, our process, and our direction. (these words are all mine, extracted from my experience with this group)

In a MotherWoman circle, I soon learned, the first substantial chunk of time is spent spelling out the parameters of the shared space, to ensure that everyone understands that they are safely held, free to express themselves openly, confident that their words will never leave that space. Their mission is spelled out, the guidelines explicitly explained, so that we can all sit with what the hope for the time together is. Specific time is spent separating that space from the outside world, making it unique, apart, a place of safety and comfort.

This part was easy for me. I wrote up guidelines and principles easily for my group, modeled on the MotherWoman principles, and they were as follows:

Empty Arms Group Principles

We know that losing a baby is an isolating and devastating experience. In our groups we support bereaved parents by naming the incredible challenges they are experiencing, knowing that this group is one of the few places where parents can speak the truth about the depth of their emotions and the details of their experience.

We believe that speaking the truth about the heartbreaking journey of losing a baby is essential. Healing comes through understanding what we have been through and what may lie ahead. By speaking about our experiences they can become integrated into who we are and allow us to move along. We celebrate breaking the silence that bereaved parents have been historically subjected to.

In these meetings we do not compare losses. We respect that each and every person’s experience is uniquely challenging in its own right. Regardless of the gestation or age of our baby when he or she died, we all hoped that we would have a lifetime with the child growing within us. Consequently, we all have the right to grieve our loss, and we support one another in our grief.

We believe that grief takes many forms. Emotions such as deep sadness, anger, confusion, longing, and even a sense of intermittent peace can all be normal parts of grieving. No one person grieves like another. We believe each person has the right to follow the path of grief they are most comfortable with.

We respect that each person has his or her own comfort level for sharing emotions and stories. We believe that the very act of coming to this group demonstrates each person’s commitment to their own growth and healing, whether they share a little or a lot. We believe that this extends into the greater world, where each bereaved parent should be liberated to share the pieces of their story and their child in a way that feels comfortable to them.

We believe that each one of you has the inner wisdom and courage to come out into a brighter place, without ever forgetting the baby that you lost.

Empty Arms Group Guidelines

Confidentiality. We hold everything that is said in group to be confidential and ask that you share it with no one outside of this group. Furthermore, we also extend this confidentiality to within this room, in that we ask that you request permission from someone to talk with them about what they have shared when the formal discussion is over.
In this group, we hold each other with respect, compassion, and non-judgment. We remind you that there is no right or wrong way to go about grieving.
We do not give advice or interrupt. We welcome responses in the form of “I” statements, which can help another person to see another way of doing things without hearing advice that could be interpreted as criticism or judgment.
When we’re sharing stories, please feel liberated to include any details you wish. The only thing we ask that you not include is the names of professionals that may speak of negatively.
This is not a therapy group, and it should not replace therapy for individuals or couples who need it. Grief brings up a myriad of issues that can not always be adequately addressed in this forum. Therapy can often be very helpful, and we would be happy to share the names of counselors/therapists that we know if you would be interested.
Self care- Be aware of what you need during the group, and take care of yourself. Food and drinks are on the table, feel free to eat, drink, and ask someone to pass things to you. If you need to cry, blow your nose, or laugh, do it. If you need to use the bathroom, it’s right down the hall. Take care of yourself. If at any point you feel you are overwhelmed and you need to go home, of course you may, but one of us will follow you out to make sure you are okay.

The next part did not come so easily for me. In a MotherWoman circle, beginning with the facilitators, an object is passed around the circle, and each person is given space to speak. A topic is posed, which participants can choose to address or not, but each person is given air time to introduce themselves and speak openly and honestly about their experience. During this time, there is no cross talk, and there are few interruptions or commentaries from even the facilitators. Occasionally, when somebody expresses something that the facilitator believes it would be poignant to point out to the group as it is such a shared experience, they will carefully and formulaically offer a reflection and unifying statement about what they've heard. But other than that, during this time, people are handed an object and invited to speak.

I simply can't do that, I thought. I can't force these people to speak. The people who come through my door are wounded sparrows, they are limping, their wings hang broken, they have been silenced. While some are eager to speak and will share their experience from the start, some simply cannot. I had always historically honored this silence and maintained committed to the idea that participants should be able to choose whether or not they would like to contribute. The idea of handing somebody an object and putting them on the spot seemed almost repellant to me.

Furthermore, I was also concerned about the fact that people wouldn't immediately be able to connect and comment on each others' experiences. In a community so silenced, and where most people coming to my group have not one single person in their own lives who has even a point of reference to understand their experience, I knew that connection and the establishment of common community was absolutely essential in my groups. When these people shared their experiences in the outside world, they were often almost speaking to a brick wall. There was no comprehension whatsoever; this was what made so many of us feel like we were going crazy, or doing grief wrong. I was afraid to limit cross talk in a group of people so desperate for commonality.

However, I saw for myself after the first few MotherWoman circles I sat in how immense the power of that object is, and how incredible the safety of a well-established circle can be. As I sat there and heard women weep, and express themselves absolutely honestly and from their hearts, I began to see the strength behind the format. MotherWoman circles work. I would see this week after week.

For the first five months of my MotherWoman training, I was on maternity leave from facilitating Empty Arms Groups because of my huge pregnant belly that I had no wish to parade among a group of bereaved parents. So while these ideas were brewing and stewing, I wasn't in a position to try them out. Finally, in January of 2010, I returned to facilitating and announced to the group that we were going to have a new format for meetings.

Slowly, and deliberately, I welcomed people to the meeting. I told them that I was going to read these new guidelines in hopes that it would effectively mark this space off as separate and different from the busy, fast-paced, world around us. I told them I hoped they would feel safe in sharing their stories and feelings, knowing that we all have the common goal of supporting each other. I read the principles, making eye contact with each and every person as I did so.

Then, I introduced myself, and told the group about Charlotte. I spoke about winter darkness and the depth of my love for her still. I recalled the pain that had once nearly robbed me of my very life, and reflected on how, six and a half years later, that pain felt so different. I spoke for only about two minutes, modeling brevity, and then I took a deep breath, and I passed the little stone heart I had been clutching in my hand.

It was amazing.

People began to speak. There were people around the table who had come to 10, 12, 15 meetings before, who shared things I had never heard before. Tears were shed by people who never cried, and everyone listened with an open, honest heart. Nobody was thinking about their response or comment to what someone was saying, they only listened. Although I had given people the option to pass the stone if they didn't feel ready to share, nobody did. I was floored, my first instincts having been absolutely, positively proven wrong. As people spoke, I thought about commonalities that were being shared around the table, so that when people were finished, I could thank them for their honesty, and start our shared conversation with that common thread. That meeting was the first of many that I hold so dear, so precious, so wholly in my heart. The plan had worked.

What was especially amazing to me was this: while MotherWoman is primarily an organization that serves women, I was seeing the greatest change among the men in my groups. While they previously had been more likely to let their wives/partners take the reigns and share the details of their story and healing journey, suddenly now a warm stone was being passed to them, and the room was silent. Suddenly these men were being asked to share from their hearts, and one by one, they did. The more they spoke, the more they spoke: it was as if the men in the room found the experience of being emotionally liberated so empowering that they could not stop talking. Unlike before, where the women clearly dominated every meeting, we now had meetings that were absolutely split, with fathers and mothers equally talking, crying, and sharing.

I have now been running my meetings using the MotherWoman model for nearly a year. Every month, I worry briefly about the length of the introductions, whether people will feel pressured to speak, or how the topic will be processed by the group. But month after month, it works, and it works well. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity, and I thank the amazing women at MotherWoman for reeling me in and for encouraging me to join them on their crusade for change. Check them out.

JOY

2010-11-14T18:03:00.000-08:00

I love this little birthday girl so much.

She was so worth the wait.

My Phoenix

2010-11-10T19:45:00.001-08:00

He's leaning over his little green math book. He's an amazing math genius, my boy, something I've never taken the time to brag about, but it's his favorite thing to do. He brings his little book home every Monday and breezes through the week's pages with such gusto and joy. Then he poses questions of his own, out loud, for all to ponder. "I wonder which day we'll be 45 % of the way through the school year?" As Greg and I exchange worried glances across the room, his gaze is fixed, and by the time the two of us have determined a strategy to solve the problem, Liam has figured it out. It's humbling to be regularly out-computed by your six year old.

But on this day he's just plugging away, and I'm leaned over some felt I'm cutting out for Fiona's birthday. I'm struggling with figuring out how to do a layered felt dog in a book I'm creating for her. As he works, Liam chats to me periodically.

"I've figured out what I'm going to be for Halloween next year," he offers.

"Mmmm..." I say absently, my scissors paused halfway through a snip. I'm cutting out an extra piece to sew on top of the existing dog to give the head more depth, but I think I'm not getting the shape right. Maybe I should draw a template?

"It's going to be fire colored, and I think we'll need to get lots of feathers and maybe dye them," he continues.

"Is that so?" I offer, as I figure out that if I cut the ear separate from the head the dog looks more real. I put it on, satisfied.

And Liam says, "Next year I'm going to be a phoenix".

I look across the table at him, this strong, lean, growing tower of pulsing flesh and blood. This soft, sweet, sensitive, beautiful boy who asks me to lie with him every night when I tuck him in. This caring, loving, devoted little son of mine.

I look at him and I see him for what he is, this magical soul who defeated the odds I perceived and rose, alive and alight, from the ruined shards of my would-be life. He brought me back from the place from which I thought I could never return. Liam was my rebirth. I have always thought of him as my phoenix.

I looked across the table at him and said, "That's a great idea, Liam," and smiled for the millionth time at this old-soul boy of mine.

How did he know to be a Phoenix?

(by the by, I've always secretly wished I had given him Phoenix as a middle name)

The Missing Piece

2010-11-08T17:58:00.000-08:00

As we're walking out of the Haymarket, a tiny, dark, hole-in-the-wall coffee shop on Main St in Northampton, Jenni poses a question I've never thought of before, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

"So who's your group of peers?" she asks.

"You support all these people. But who supports you?"

This gives me pause. I'm on the stairs, on my way up, and I begin to speak, but stop.

I feel so well supported. There's everyone in the group, there's the loyal readers of the blog, there are close and wonderful friends who love me and hold Charlotte so dear.

"I was thinking about it," she continued, "I don't know anyone else who's 7 and a half years out."

Come to think of it, neither do I.

I don't feel unsupported, I don't feel like an island. But when I break it down to that, it's really true. I don't know anyone else who is just where I am. And when I have a night where the three living kids are running me ragged, I don't know anyone else with three living kids and an almost eight year loss under her pillow who I can call and cry to. There isn't anyone who ever puts her arm around my shoulder and knows what it's really like to have these three kids plus one more, not somebody who actually knows. I think I miss that person in my life. I just hadn't realized it.

And while thinking about this could seem like a bit of a downer, or maybe nearly alarming, for me it came almost as relief. It gave some real structure to the feeling I get sometimes, late at night, when everyone else is asleep. Perhaps I am leaning over my computer, trying to draft a letter to the director of the childbirth center, or maybe I'm e-mailing a newly bereaved mom and trying to think of just what to say. It's always late, the packed lunches are in the fridge, the house is almost clean, and the kids are happy and dreaming. I've taken time to read to them, to scratch their backs, to sing to them, to lie with them. Meanwhile the meeting for tomorrow night is planned, I've sent out the reminders, and I need to get on the website and update something. The next conference in the works, and the volunteer project for the nursery school is halfway done. I have plans to go into Liam's school tomorrow to help with writing workshop, and my friend's child will come over in the afternoon so she can go to the doctor. As the minutes tick by, and the caring-for-others continues, I have moments, sometimes, where I do what all moms do: I wilt, I fall, I wither, and I cry: why doesn't anyone ever care for me? I just want someone to take care of me. I am tired, weary, bone tired, of caring for others, of giving my time, of running around in circles over and over and over again. I want somebody to do something for me.

This is selfish, greedy, wretched, I accuse myself.

Because what in life brings me the MOST satisfaction?

(a question that need not be answered, I pray)

And I think of all the people, the big, huge circle of amazing babylost people in this valley that I have discovered, and they DO hold me up, but they don't know it. And they are not my peers. But I think that sometimes, that is just what I wish I had. I wish I had someone who was where I was, who could relate to the vague distance and alarming normalcy of my life; who could understand the random tears and even laughter over the other kids lighting the memory candle at dinner, who could be part of the wrath of the overtired mother and the overtaxed heart when the anniversary time rolls around.

I have survived without her this long; and I will continue to. But knowing she is missing from my life gives me a little pause to take a breath and say, it's hard to do it without her, and I feel almost braver for it.

This week's menu

2010-11-04T16:07:00.000-07:00

It's comfort food week here.

The rain is coming down, almost in sheets, as the red and now brown leaves swirl around in the gusty gales. The temperature today did not top 45. Winter, cold winter, knocks hard upon my windowpane.

(come now, we gather, to dance the night away)

Monday was simple, black bean, red pepper, and corn burritos with jack cheese and brown rice, nicely toasted on my griddle for a little crunch. Then when the sky turned a little more grey on Tuesday, I had to dig in my heels. That night I cooked Ina Garten's turkey meatloaf (sounds so mundane, but you, too, could be converted if you partake in such things) with cheddar and sour cream mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts from our farm. The next night was just as good-- with a simple salad I made macaroni and cheese-- this recipe is amazing. Chop up two baked sweet potatoes and mix right in-- with your cooked pound of noodles, 16 oz. of cheddar tossed with 2 T of flour, and 2 C milk whisked with 8 oz. cream cheese. So easy, so simple, bake for half an hour with a little panko on top if you like a crunch.

Then tonight, the best of all bests, my barefoot goddess again brings me her Chicken Stew with biscuits... this recipe tops all in terms of winter yumminess. The heavy goodness in my belly is making me so happy. No need for anything but that bowl of delicious wintertime.

Food can make you feel good, and I love that.

When I have a minute...

2010-11-03T17:07:00.000-07:00

I am fiercely committed to the idea that every single one of us fills up every minute we have. I can sit here and imagine that somebody with only one child has a good deal of free time, given that only one child has to be fed, bathed, driven places, and cleaned up after. But I am also certain that at one point I did have one (living) child, and I was very full, very busy. I didn't find holes in my life to make time in unless I looked for them. Life whirled past.

Even before I had one child, for a year I had one very big child, a big spirit, a hole in my life. It takes an incredible amount of energy to parent that, I tell you. Just this evening I was putting together a plea-for-meals for a friend whose unborn baby passed away several weeks ago. I thought about her, at home, glazed and thunderstruck, her two and a half year old son running around her in circles, and wondered just how long we could stretch the meals on wheels for. I imagined myself, after Fiona's birth, a few weeks later feeling proud that I had slung her in the Moby wrap, as Aoife and Liam amused themselves at the art table, and cooked our family a complete meal. But a newly bereaved mom? You just can't take that grief and wrap it up in 17 feet of stretchy cotton, get on your feet, and function. The lack of baby sucks the very life right out of you, and you are flat on your back. I was thinking maybe if I could stretch her meals to about six months, or eight, maybe she could feel a lightening then. But maybe not.

But although I admit that we all fill our time, I have found myself lately being angry at myself for letting certain things slide. I feel sad about this blog. I know that I have lost a good many readers over the last eighteen months because I haven't been posting regularly. Five comments feels like a good day, and I cringe when there are only two. I want--need--this community, yet can I blame people who give up when weeks pass with nothing? Similarly, I have been working on a project-- not a secret project, just not one that is fully developed enough to share in detail, about lactation after loss. My mind is absolutely swirling with details, ideas, calls to bereaved mothers to contribute, questionnaires to write, people to contact... but the days pass.

And in the days, I get children up, and dress them, and feed them, and drive them places. I run around doing their laundry and picking up their toys and hanging up their coats. I try to sweep the kitchen floor so Fiona won't eat too much organic matter. I put in laundry, take it out, try to fold it and put it away from the five overflowing baskets. I pay the bills, try not to lose anything important, and pick the kids up. I play with them, love them, enjoy them. I feed them some more, bathe them all, read to them, tuck them in. When they are in bed, at long last, I clean up from dinner, wipe down the counters, wash the baby seat, make the lunches, and try to figure out what we'll eat for breakfast. Then I lay out their clothes, make sure I can find coats, and shoes, and dig my car keys out of whatever pocket I left them in so I don't have a temper tantrum tomorrow morning. And then, I look at the clock, and it is 9:00 every time.

So if I want to go to bed at 9:00, where's my minute?

BUT...

But, but, but. There is a big difference between what the above could mean, and what I mean it to mean. The above could mean, oi! I have NO time for myself!

Or it could mean, and does to me, WOW! I have a lot going on in my life right now, and I haven't even touched on the support organization I run out of my kitchen and the weekly meetings. But it's full with EVERYTHING I love and everything I chose (well, not the bereavement part, but I did choose what to do with it), and so rather than look at it as an opportunity to complain, I choose instead to look at it for what it is (busy) and say, I'm busy right now. I'm not going to get to blog every day, or work on my project three times a week. I do what I can, and I have to know that I have thirty-four years behind me and hopefully at least that many ahead of me and there's nothing more beautiful than those little blonde heads resting on pillows upstairs....

And so, I bid you adieu for the night, knowing that I've just used my minute (or five) to tell you all of this.

Good night!