The news is good...

The world is just whirling by, in that good and wonderful and devious kind of way that it does... thus the many days since I have posted to this place.
I write so often, and it does such good for me-- the truth is that I don't ever even read over my posts, much less edit or plan them in advance. So why am I not just continuing to churn it out?
Oh, and I will....
the truth is I have been sick, and I'm cooking for a holiday party we're having this weekend, and I'm wanting to write good things so instead I'm not writing at all.

So-- instead, I'll post a few pieces of good news. First, the earliest indications are that the cord blood bone marrow transplant is taking in baby Andrew... potentially the first big step in the right direction for him.
Next, and completely unrelated, my dear friend Sara whose darling Henry died almost a year ago, on the 19th of December of 2007, gave birth yesterday to a healthy, beautiful baby girl named Kathleen Avery. Since I'm mentioning her, I may as well tell you the origin of her name: Kathleen comes from Sara's husband's sister, who sadly died of liver cancer last year while Sara was pregnant. And before she died, and before Sara had told anyone she was pregnant, that sister Kathleen dreamed that Sara would give birth to a daughter and name her Avery. So there you go. Kathleen Avery. Isn't that beautiful? What a beautiful tribute.
Congratulations, Sara. We are so happy for you (may I speak for you, too?)

Our first words for Charlotte 5.13.03

When we told our nurse we wanted ten more minutes with our baby, we asked her to bring us a piece of paper and a pen. Then, holding Charlotte, we wrote this poem. We did it so we would not forget her. Little did we know how impossible she would be to forget.
I can still feel my hand penning it, my little, warm, tiny baby nestled in the crook of my left arm with the table moved just so that my left hand could move the pen, scratching the words in messy black ink onto the tiny scratch pad the nurse had brought us.


Charlotte
We love you angel baby
Your long fingers with perfect little fingernails
Your tiny feet with elegant toes
Your tiny round belly
Your flat little bottom
Your little creases here and there
Your rosebud lips
Tiny pert nose
Your downy hair
Tiny wrinkles on your fingers, just like Mama
Little chin just like Daddy
Beautiful eyes that never saw the world
Cute, round ears, chubby at the top. So round, where did they come from?
Sweet, soft nipples
Charlotte, you are a little miracle.
You brought us so much happiness during the nine months you were in our lives
Now we have to let you go
The hardest thing we will ever do.

There is a park nearby, right on the edge of a pretty little pond. Seven years ago the Compassionate Friends group from a nearby city carved out a little corner and dedicated a Christmas Box Angel statue (also known as the Angel of Hope). There are 100 of these statues nationally, and they are inspired by this beautiful little story called the Christmas Box. (if you like this blog, you would like that book. It is lovely)

Anyhow, the park is very pretty and has dedicated bricks from when it was installed, a pretty gazebo, and scattered benches. Liam and I were waiting there for Aoife and Greg this morning, we were having a rendez-vous after I had taken Liam ski shopping and before he left to help a friend move.
The pond had a thin layer of ice on it, which probably formed last week, and since then the water level had dropped substantially. There was incredible cracking and moaning from the ice as the edges had clung to the surrounding earth and vegetation and were now sinking to meet the level of the water. Liam and I found some steps and went down them, and sat by the edge quietly together and listened to the ice thunder and ricochet. It was very, very cold and crisp.

From where we were sitting, we saw Greg and Aoife come around the corner, so we walked up the steps and back through the little park and statue area. I noticed that the top was off of the trash can, and being rather type-A I wanted to replace it, because it looked disorganized and messy to have the lid off the can. So I walked over, and picked it up as I walked, and put it back on top. It was an Oscar-the-Grouch type of can, metal and rusty, but kind of vintage looking. As I turned to walk away the orange graffiti on the top caught my eye, and I accidentally read it:

No dead babys

This is what it said on the top of the trash can. This is what some teenage asshole decided would be a funny joke in a park dedicated to the memory of people's children. The irony of it all is, since it is a Compassionate Friends sponsored statue, the bricks are primarily dedicated to older children. But this kid decided to focus on the younger lot: no dead babys. It made my blood boil.

I remembered when we placed Charlotte's little stone on the side of the Mill River trail, and Greg worried about this. "What if someone defaces it?" he asked. "What if they put graffiti on it?"

I answered, "Who would do that?"

I didn't mention it to Greg. I didn't want him to see it. Not because it would inspire fear for our own memorial, but just because it lowered my faith in mankind to see those words.

So I went across the street to the studio sale I had been planning to go to and spent $500 on lamps. But they are really cool lamps. Isn't that the type of thing people who make one teacher's salary should do? It made me feel great. I never even buy myself new socks or underwear (I can sew up a little hole here and there) but I bought these beautiful lamps. Is this what they call retail therapy?

I think the next time I return to the park I will bring some paint and paint over that graffiti.

The winter I was pregnant with Liam, I took a pregnancy yoga class. It was with the same teacher that I had taken a class with the year before. I had been apprehensive about re-entering the class, wondering, in fact, if I might actually overlap with some people who had started at the tail end of my pregnancy with Charlotte. I sent the teacher an e-mail, asking her if it was alright if I came to the class, and wondering what I should say when people asked me about my pregnancy. After all, surely I couldn't speak of my recently deceased baby in the presence of a roomful of pregnant mothers?
It turned out I could. Arden, the teacher, was so gracious she made me burst into tears, which I had been practicing very hard not to do. She told me my birth story was a birth story like any other story, with a mother and a birth and a baby, and she told me I should never hesitate to tell anyone what had happened to Charlotte. She encouraged me to be true to myself and my child, and to remind myself that loss and grief are not contagious. I do not think I have heard such honest words since then.
I began the class in my usual location, and enjoyed attending. It was the one time of each week where I actually acknowledged my pregnant body and the new little soul blossoming within. One week, I couldn't go to the Northampton class, so I decided to drop by the Amherst class after work. The roomful of women there did not know my story. When I entered, they were talking excitedly to one another. I unrolled my mat and took off my shoes. I sat down, leaned onto my legs, and breathed.
I was having one of those days where I did not have the emotional energy to take care of other people. You know, if you too are bereaved, what I am saying. When you speak those words, "My baby died," the person looks shocked, then sad, then pitying. They feel terrible for having "brought up" this sad subject, and wonder if they have just ruined your day. So you have to convince them that, despite the dead baby, you are quite fine, (which is actually a lie) and not to worry one little bit. Some days, the emotional energy of facing the guilt and horror that will surely follow the dead baby announcement seems too much.
I was having one of those days, go figure. So I tried to just look like a yogi, breathe deeply, and not interact. But the truth is, I like to talk. So when I heard a question that nobody else had an answer to, I couldn't keep my mouth shut any longer.
"Has anyone here taken the Hypnobirthing Series," a juicy, jolly young woman asked. She looked so full of everything; of life, and hope, and innocence. But I had taken the series, and I had loved it, so I did speak up.
"I took it with my first baby, my daughter, it was wonderful, " I told her.
Suddenly, everyone in the room wanted to know all about it. So I spoke to the advantages of the training in mentally preparing onesself for birth, in creating healthy, productive attitudes towards birthing as a natural process, in thinking of myself as an animal being who knew, inherently, how to birth.
"But did it really help you when you gave birth? What did you think?" They all had their eyes on me, wanting to know. I just couldn't throw my curveball to this room full of innocents.
"I actually had a lot of complications with my birth, " I answered evasively.
"So was it really great to have all those techniques to use?" she asked.
"I didn't actually end up using many of the techniques during the delivery." That, kind of a very vague lie, skirting around the issue that I was actually paralyzed with grief and fear and that all the plans I had made for my birth went down the drain.
"Well, did you feel that having the hypnobirthing made you more prepared for the complications?"
Holy shit, woman. You are going to want to stop right there. You don't know what you are getting yourself into.
But of course I didn't say that.
"My situation was very, very complicated. The Hypnobirthing didn't really play into it at all."
"But do you think that having the more relaxed mindset helped you to be more flexible with what was happening?"
Fuck. Can you not take a hint? There are 16 highly pregnant woman staring at me right now and you are backing me into a corner. If you know what is good for you you will stop right now.
"I had a very difficult experience and the course did not really prepare me to handle what happened."
"So what happened?"
This woman was not giving up. She wanted to know what this Hypnobirthing had done for me, and she wanted to know tonight. I hated to break her heart, but I had evaded the question already as many times as I could. They were all staring at me. I had to answer.
"My daughter actually died during the delivery. I don't think there's a course that could have prepared me for that."
I think not.
All the faces in the room crumpled slightly, and the interrogator almost sprung back, exclaiming, "Oh! I'm so sorry!" There was a flurry of activity as yoga mats were adjusted and items were removed from and replaced into bags. People looked both horrified and pitying, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that not a single mother in that room worried for one single moment that their baby would be born dead. I was the horror story in the room, the person that you would never become, and they all felt awful that they had dragged the terrible truth from me as slowly as possible.
And me? My greatest regret was that I hadn't come out and said it right away, because in my interest in protecting them, I now appeared hesitant to speak of my experience, which I was not. I would have been glad to fill them in on any of the details of my very average, completely normal birth experience. Everything was normal, of course, except for the absence of a pulse. But because I was trying not to burst their bubbles, they now felt awful for "bringing it up".

As if I hadn't been thinking about "it" all day.
"It" has a name, Charlotte. And I never stop thinking about her, even now.

Tis the Season

This is the time of year where my world seems to close in on me in a beautiful, magical way. The night settles in as New England goes dark for the winter, the birds are gathering to feast on seed, and my breath goes frosty as I open the door into the morning darkness to let out the cat. Lights twinkle around the house; on the tree in the living room and the candles in the dining room. It is the beginning of winter, where being housebound becomes a privilege, where there is anticipation of all kinds, where love abounds.

For so many people, recently bereaved, Christmas and this entire season is devoid of anything that might mean joy. I had that, once, that awful Christmas where we went to the farm up the road and bought the tree because, damn it, we had planned to and I still wanted to, for her. We put it up and decorated it with shaking fingers, tears streaming down our faces. While Greg went to class in the evenings I sat home and embroidered on two beautiful Christmas stockings, to match the ones my aunt had made for everyone in our extended family. One said "Daddy", and the other, of course, said "Charlotte". I cried as I made them, for the man who did not get to be a daddy to his little girl, and for the girl herself who was robbed of this privilege of life that most of us take for granted. I was so intent, that season, to show her something of myself, to let her see what a good mother I truly was. I put up that tree, and I hung her stocking. I played holiday music and sang along. I needed her to see joy.

I also needed to feign joy for the poor, untended baby in my womb, the child around whom all the hope in the world was wound tightly around, and whom I was almost too terrified to face. I loved my new, unborn child with all my heart, I needed him desperately, but I feared for him. Feared for his life, and also feared that he would be born melancholy and wasted from the sadness that had engulfed him in the womb. I would talk to him, through my tears, as my sobs wracked my body and bent me sideways over the swell of him, "I love you so much, I love you so much." I hoped so deeply that he would know that I would find joy in him, although I had none at that time. And so there were some, intentional times where I would create it out of nowhere, with the sound of my voice singing, or by skipping somewhere instead of walking, so that perhaps the motions of my body would create joy where I could find none.

And that Christmas, there was hope for everyone but me in that swell of my growing belly, because I could not trust that all would be well. I knew there was a chance, but I was still much too wild with grief for Charlotte to acknowledge that somebody else was on the way. They were just too close together for me to truly take pleasure in his presence at times. And I am sorry for that.

But I do not need to explain the joy that swept me with his birth, my saviour and rebirth, Liam Gregory. He was born the day after Easter and it seemed almost like a resurrection to me; I was reborn a new person when his cry split the air. The sadness was still there, so fierce, but this joy that I felt severed the part of me that could not hope and transformed it permenantly because this I could see, good things could happen. I wanted this little boy to feel nothing but love, and not just love for one baby, he would feel it for two, and I would give him anything.

So now, at Christmas, I delight in the joy that my children feel, in the pleasure of giving and the treat for them of receiving my thoughtfully made and selected gifts. I love seeing them surrounded with family members, all smiles, safe and rooted in a loving home.

Our Christmas table has one of those beautiful angel chimes, with the four candles on the bottom that turn the little fan and ring the bells. We all say a wish or hope for Charlotte at supper, by way of our grace, and it brings a strange mix of sadness and pride and joy as my children express what they are grateful for, and what they wish could happen.

"I'm so grateful for our family," Liam says, "and I wish Charlotte could be here."

"I want Charlotte to come back and live with us," says Aoife, the same wish she has made every night for about a month.

My heart swells. I am sorry for them, forced to miss a sister they never knew, but sincere in their wishes because love is contagious and they have caught ours. Greg and I make our wishes, and the bells tinkle gently as we eat our supper, talking and singing while the quiet night falls, icy cold and frosty around our family's home.

Flicker of a Soul

Last night I lay with Liam in the mostly-dark of his bedroom. The sound machine whirred, the walls were reflecting a dim yellow-blue from the glow of his little night light. I lay next to him, my head almost over him, buried in the covers beside his head. Suddenly, he started.

What was that? he said.

What was what?

That shadow. A shadow just went gliding across the ceiling.

I looked, and saw nothing. There was nothing animate between the light and the ceiling, nothing rational to make a shadow.

"I don't know," I said. "What do you think it was?" But inside, I smiled to myself.

Tonight, at dinner, I told him, "That shadow you saw? I think it was Charlotte's spirit."

He looked confused. "But I saw it," he said.

"Sometimes," I told him, "If you are very lucky, you can see a spirit."

He smiled at me then, a knowing smile of pure joy. We said no more.

What I can't relate to

There is another thing that makes me turn red on the inside, while I smile on the outside. Somehow I have never been able to get past carrying on as if an interested participant in the conversation, but I can feel hot liquid oozing out of my ears and from beneath my fingernails. Ants crawl up and down my spine and I want to jump up and run out, out, out... And this is what it is. I'll put six statements in chronological order, and you will understand immediately.

2003: Sometimes nursing can just be really difficult.

2004: They can really just get to be such a handful once they're walking!

2005: It's just such a treat to finally know what he has to say, to see his personality emerge.

2006: Oh, my god. Having a two-three year old presents a whole new set of challenges. I never know what to do!

2007: Can you believe it? She can draw real people! Look!

2008: I am so proud. He can read! It is just so exciting when they figure out the code.

So you get this, eh? These are the people who have the children Charlotte's age, who are talking to me not as the mother of Charlotte, but as the mother of Liam, who is a year younger than their son or daughter. This is a mother telling me, look out! Guess what's coming!

But you know what I hear, don't you?

This is what you are missing right now, this is what you should know, but you don't. You have no idea.

They never mean harm, never ever, never ever. Some go on more than others, but they never even know that I am melting inside, seething with the sadness for what I am missing. I have never said a thing.