Lactation...

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...

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...

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....)

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

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...

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

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.