It is October again.
It is the month of one in four and all of the memories that could come, but usually don't.
But today they come.
They come in the moments while checking out a friend's pregnancy photos. A strange moment perhaps. Yet there, in the moment of her joy, I remember my loss. There are multiple layers to my grief.
I have lost two babies and my last full term pregnancy, was traumatic. I think it is hard sometime to roll back the layers of grief because it is a grief mostly un-embraced. I find I do busy rather than do connected. I avoid connection with others and I avoid connection with myself and I avoid connection with God. It is hard to pull back the layers of it all. Why do I struggle so with being sad and anxious when she is here with me? She is living and full and vivacious and crazy and wild and untamed. I love her. Yet, I grieve also. I grieve for what I missed out on. Then I carry the weight of guilt. Surely this grief is just a poor use of time for she is here and she is healthy.
When most of my memories of carrying her are tied up with trying not to get emotionally attached because I lost one already and I woke in a pool of blood every two weeks while pregnant with her. It is hard to attach because I am afraid my heart won't be able to stay together if she doesn't make it. When I try not to think too much about what could go wrong... I read up on EMT's and bleeding in pregnancy. Bed rest while watching a toddler. I probably don't need to say more. It is hard to move through it all.
But perhaps what I mourn tonight is not the pregnancy but the lack of the memories. Because I didn't take pictures. I didn't even really take selfies. There are no momentos of your time in the womb, sweet little love, because I couldn't cherish you the way a mommy should because I was afraid and lived in fear rather than love. I didn't live in the moment. I lived in the past when I birthed your brother or sister at home into our toilet after being told there was no heart beat and perhaps I was miscarrying or perhaps I had two uteruses or perhaps I had an ectopic pregnancy or perhaps.
Perhaps.
There are no words for unassisted home birth in the context of a miscarriage that can cause those of you who have not been there to understand. I don't really need to go into details to share the grief. Perhaps the medical world will one day remove the word abortion from the paperwork. But there it is. Spontaneous abortion.
Maybe.
There was no one to walk me or my husband through that process. No one stood by to shush the silly comments about God's will or His reasons or to give a sideways glance to the one who might say "at least you know you can get pregnant".
Sometimes, dear readers, silence is golden.
There is no at least.
If you don't know what to say then just be silent with me. Don't speak platitudes about God or sovereignty or talk to me about it being for the best.
Trust me. You do not know enough about the sovereignty of God to be able to expound upon it in the moment of my valley of the shadow of death.
The sound of silence is what I longed for.
In the end you came 9 weeks early.
We thought we could buy a bit more time by not figuring out a middle name. We thought we would be in the house.
We thought.
And yet the bleeding started again and would not stop and we ended up in the hospital. And it would not stop and they transferred me to the wrong hospital. And it would not stop and we made some hard decisions. And you came into the world so early and so small. You were a fighter. You are a fighter. You take on the world and don't back down.
I must be so careful not to create things for you to lean into and resist just for the sake of practicing your fighting stance.
There are no pictures of you snuggled up inside, with us being loving and longing for you. There are no pictures of your brother touching my tummy or the 3 of us before there were four.
There are lots of pregnancy pictures of your brother. I hope you don't think that it is because we wanted you less.
So I lost my first.
I also lost my last.
In some ways it was harder. This wasn't a pregnancy we tried for. The trauma was still so fresh and so palpable. I tend to research too much. Placenta previa increases your risk. C-section increases your risk. Older maternal age increases your risk. The fear was so large. The anxiety was overwhelming.
No one knew except your daddy.
Oh how I wanted you.
But how scared I was.
When I started miscarrying this time I was angry and I was relieved and I was overwhelmed again with guilt. What kind of momma feels relief at the loss of her baby? The broken kind who struggles so hard to love because of the fear of loss.
I miscarried on the streets of New York City the day after Thanksgiving.
There was no thanks.
Only tears in a broken heart. We were with family. But no one knew and so I cried alone with Mark when no one was around and pretended the rest of the time.
My heart was in pieces.
"At least your not pregnant," should never be a phrase used.
Ever.
It was an especially harsh jab during this time by someone who didn't know...and couldn't have known.
I don't know why tonight while looking at my friend's beautiful pregnancy pictures it unleashed the torrent, but it did.
I don't think I have ever learned how to grieve and walk into the pain and lean in. I tend to rush away to think about something else, to do something else.
But sometimes I sense that freedom is on the other side of that grief journey. Where you lay down with your story and you feel it all. Where you step into the pain and allow it to embrace the broken pieces and don't run away from the cutting that comes, but lean in.
There are those of you who would comfort me with angels. I honor your journey but I don't share it. My sweet little ones are resting and I am looking forward with longing to the day we are re-united. Your angels comfort you, but for me they are but another layer in the spaces between us, where I struggle to enter in and talk of my story for fear that my journey will disrupt yours.
So tonight I sit here combing back through it all. The fear when thinking of my pregnancy with my third is still just as large. I am sure it changes my heart rate. I know I need to go down deeper into this space but it is so hard and the guilt is still there and the anger.
Many of you sweet mommas talk about your stories and how your hearts cracked open and you bled a million heartbreaks and you journeyed into grief. You remember the day, the hour. You know how old your sweet little one would have been. You named your sweet little one. Someday, maybe I will be brave enough to go so deeply into the story instead of hold my grief out at arms length.
I don't know how old my babies would have been. I didn't name them. I sometimes feel cold and unfeeling because I don't walk the path some others walked. This too is a part of the spaces in between. The loneliness of the journey.
Grief is a lonely path. No one can walk it for you.
There is no one right way to walk it.
My babies were just as wanted and just as loved.
My loss is just as real.
There is no easy with loss.
There is no right way with loss.
But perhaps in the sharing there can be some easing of some other momma's heart who feels guilty.
Someday perhaps I will be brave enough to step into the pain, to write more fully, to paint, to draw, to allow the bleeding to purge and bring healing.
Tonight, again, I just long for the sound, of silence.
