by Band Back Together | Dec 4, 2010 | Anger, Anxiety, Baby Loss, Coping With Baby Loss, Grief, Guilt, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Livng Through A Miscarriage, Loss, Love, Miscarriage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Sadness |
I have never spoken to anyone about this but my husband, my mother, and, of course, my doctors. This may be one of the hardest things I will ever write. It may not all make sense. I don’t remember it all. But yet I remember it like it was yesterday. I will never forget it. This is my PTSD talking. I am in a very bad place right now. And I know what happened to me isn’t as bad as some but to me it’s worse because she was mine.
Anyway, Oh God here goes…
You were due December 25th. I was so excited that both of your sisters were Christmas babies. I love Christmas. And I still do. Your due date was so amazing I couldn’t believe it – three children born on or around Christmas.
The beginning of my pregnancy didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Normal morning all day sickness for me. Around 6 weeks something felt off I called my Doctor who is AMAZING, and she got me right in for an ultrasound. There you were – perfect. And fine. Little heart beating to beat the band with a due date of Dec. 25th. I felt better. Things resumed. We got to our 12th week and we told everyone and even started buying things. Come on – you were my fourth baby. What could go wrong? How could I even think that?? Everything was fine .
Then it happened. July 27th I felt yucky and my back hurt SO bad. I should have called the doctor. You might be here today. I should have known. But I just thought I worked hard that day. It was hotter than hell. And it was just a back ache. I never ever had back labor. At 2:12 on July 28th, I woke up and thought, “shit, I wet the bed.” I hit my husband and said, “I wet the bed. Go get new sheets.” And then I went to turn the lights on. And it felt really off. It was sticky. I turned the light on and there was blood everywhere. I heard a sound like I had never heard before – it was my screams. I told my husband call the doctor and tell her we’re going to the hospital. Something was very very wrong.
My mom came running in and tried to calm me, but it didn’t help. I remember telling her keep the kids out. I didn’t want them to see the blood. And my back – OMG the pain. All the sudden I felt a pop between my legs and there was a “doll” between my legs – it didn’t seem real. I thought WTF is that about my own baby. I saw your little chest heaving up and down. You were breathing!!!!!!!
I screamed for my husband to stop calling the doctor. We had to leave NOW. She’s here. She’s ALIVE. She’s breathing.
You were 18 weeks and 5 days. You were perfect – tiny and waxy, but perfect. You breathed for 5 minutes. I held you in my hand as you took you first and last breaths. I will never forget them. I loved you so much in those 5 minutes. You were my daughter, Ariel Grace.
But the horror didn’t come until we got to the hospital. You WEREN’T a baby. You were nothing. You were – I choke on the words now. You were a miscarriage. But I saw you and I held you. You WERE breathing for 5 minutes. I have a cell video of it. But you were going to be discarded as if it was a miscarriage. I flipped out like my husband has never seen me flip out. I screamed and I wailed. I hit a doctor, I think. Not my doctor. She was AMAZING. She held me while I rocked the baby. She stroked my hair. She couldn’t change the policy.
You would never exist to the world. You would get no birth certificate and no death certificate. But to me and your father, siblings and grandparents you were EVERYTHING!
I made my uncle call his friend at a funeral home. He kind of laughed – not in a mean way but he told my uncle, “She’s not even as big as a cat. I can’t charge. I won’t. It’s a freebie.” I have her ashes. Although that was a HELL of a fight. But I think they knew I was a mad woman and I would not leave that hospital without MY baby.
I have her ashes hidden in my room. I left the hospital the next day with nothing. No baby, no belly, no nothing. I was empty and blank and a Zombie for a LONG time. Hell, I still am. I never mentioned it to anyone. Some people asked questions. I think I probably stared at them blankly. But I never answered. My husband or mother would later. I couldn’t talk about it. It’s over a year later and the pain is still unreal. I have nightmares of waking up to the blood every five minutes. I don’t know that they will ever go away. But what is the worst for me is I can’t talk about her to anyone but my husband, mother and therapists.
Am I forgetting her, am I not remembering her, am I cold? I just it hurts so bad. And no one that I personally know can understand that pain. No one I know in real life understands my anger and bitterness of her not being a baby because she was 18 weeks and 5 days and not a viable birth. Isn’t breathing for 5 minutes viable? Had we been at the hospital could we have made it farther my AMAZING doctor thinks that those 5 minutes were pretty darn special. And so do I for a baby with such under developed lungs.
Obviously now everyone knows she was never born and just went away. People have stopped asking questions. And I just can’t talk about it. I feel cold. And I miss her even more now. I don’t know that it will get better. She wasn’t a “real” living baby. But she was mine. I held her. I named her. I talked to her. And on her birthday I buy her a gift. I guess that really does make me crazy. Maybe I’ll stop someday. I don’t know. But I guess tonight on one of my darkest of nights, this needed to come out. Thank you for listening. No one else knows. And it hurt to talk about. A LOT so this was BRAVE. So thank you for reading.
by Band Back Together | Nov 26, 2010 | Anger, Anxiety, Baby Loss, Compassion, Coping With Baby Loss, Faith, Family, Feelings, Forgiveness, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Hope, How To Help A Friend With Infertility, Infertility, Livng Through A Miscarriage, Loss, Medical Mystery Tour, Miscarriage, Pain And Pain Disorders, Rheumatoid Arthritis |
*I know that not everyone out there is a Christian and I hope that nobody will take offense to this post. My faith is a very personal thing, but it helps me get through so much. My prayer is that everyone dealing with a life crisis will find something that will bring them peace and hope, whether it’s faith in God, faith in humanity, or faith in herself.
When I wrote about my miscarriages and TTC journey, it was the hardest piece I’d ever written. What I left out, though, was the behind the scenes issues. The emotions that I’m still ashamed of feeling. That probably sounds stupid. I mean, you can’t help how you feel about things so why feel shame? Well, it’s been six years and I still do, so I guess I can’t answer that.
When Jordan and I decided to start trying to get pregnant, we didn’t broadcast it, but we also didn’t hide it when people asked. And people did ask. We’d been married over a year at that point, and apparently that’s the time that everyone from your grandma to the cashier at the grocery store deems you ready to have a child. But when we realized we would need a little help expanding our family, we clamped our mouths shut. Our families and closest friends were the only people who knew what we were going through. But when we got that first positive test, we told everyone! I’ve never been the best at keeping my feelings under wraps and we were thrilled.
A few days before I got that positive test, my sister-in-law gave me the news that her sister-in-law was pregnant. I was pretty discouraged at that time thinking that the round of Clomid I had just finished had not worked. But here was this girl (who I love dearly, BTW) who had become pregnant accidentally. It hardly seemed fair.
But then I found out that the Clomid had actually done its job and all was right with the world again. I could be happy for my sister-in-law sister-in-law-in-law sister-in friend, if a little worried for her. After all, my faith had always dictated that “everything happens for a reason.” But then it all changed.
During the few days that encompassed the fateful ultrasound experience and gut-wrenching D&C, I lost more than my baby. I lost my faith.
I left the hospital a bitter, heartbroken person that I no longer recognized. I was angry at the world. I was angry at God. I didn’t go to church. I didn’t pray. I didn’t even sing; something that has always been my solace. For three months I was in this dark pit. Every time someone who didn’t know would ask about the pregnancy and we had to break the news again, I sank further.
At that time, I worked for an agency that provided low-income housing. It seemed like every other day I encountered another woman who was expecting yet another child that she couldn’t afford. All these women around me were getting pregnant so easily, some while actively trying to prevent it, and having the healthy babies that I wanted so badly. I couldn’t understand why I was being treated so unfairly. I couldn’t bring myself to go to the baby shower for my brother-in-law’s sister. Every time I saw a pregnant woman I would cry.
It kills me to finally admit those things. There are very few people in this world that I’ve told about that dark time. I still feel guilty for being so angry. But if my first miscarriage caused me to lose my faith, my second one brought me back.
My second miscarriage happened on a Saturday morning. I was in the ER for a few hours then sent home. The next day at our church was Youth Sunday. I hadn’t been to church in three months at that point, but Jordan’s best friend, David, was delivering the message that day, so I insisted on being there. Not many people at church had known I was pregnant that time, so we didn’t really have to talk about the loss.
Something happened that Sunday morning, though. The youth members all did a great job with their testimonies, prayers, and music. David delivered a beautiful message. And then the youth sang a song to tie it all together – Here I Am Lord. I had heard the song a hundred times before. I had sung it about half that many times. But that day, I actually listened to it. It suddenly spoke to my heart in a way I had never felt before. Thank God we were sitting in the balcony so the whole congregation didn’t see me burst into tears.
I suddenly was at peace. After being angry for so long, it was an incredible feeling to let go of it. In that moment I knew that, like Abraham and Sarah, we would eventually have a child. And that there was a reason for my losses. I knew that it was going to fall to me at some point to support others going through it.
I was able to do just that several months later when my best friend had her first miscarriage. I’ve reached out to others as well – old high school friends on Facebook, a friend at church, etc. It’s what I hope to accomplish by contributing to this site. It also sort of paved the way for me to do the same thing as soon as I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis in 2008. Since then I’ve found myself in something of an online support network of people living with chronic illness. Without that moment of clarity, I’m convinced I would still be that bitter person. I’m sure that the RA diagnosis would have been much worse than it was, emotionally speaking. I honestly don’t know how I would have made it through either of my full-term pregnancies, much less through a certainty of life-long pain, had I not had that renewal of faith.
I didn’t tell anyone about what happened to me that day until a few months ago when Jordan and I had the privilege to see David ordained. I figured that was probably the right time to tell him about the impact he had on me that Sunday so long ago. Today, my relationship with God is the most important thing to me. Through Him, I can do anything. There are days when I just need a nudge and there are days when I’m forced to ask Him to carry me. And I’ve come to realize that everything truly does happen for a reason, even if that reason isn’t revealed during this earthly life. But the choices we make when facing hardship will usually go a long way to reaching that revelation.
“But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.” ~ Isaiah 40:31
by Band Back Together | Nov 23, 2010 | Anger, Anxiety, Coping With Depression, Emotional Abuse, Infidelity, Loneliness, Major Depressive Disorder, Marriage Problems, Sadness, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem |
I have a fairly melancholy personality, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see the good things. Most days, I do see the good things. I revel in them. But I do have bad days. Maybe more than your average chipper wonder-girl, but not enough to be a ‘bad thing.’ Problem is, there are parameters around my life that make it difficult to have any bad days at all. And so on those days, I feel very, very alone. Today is one of those days. Today, I had to write. I’m not alone if I have words to keep me company. I don’t have to be scared if I can still be coherent. But really, I am alone.
I’m married, but I have no husband. He would rather spend time with his Facebook or his phone. Or his pillow. He doesn’t love me. He says he does, sometimes, but how could I ever believe him? He doesn’t like to kiss me. He only touches me when there’s no chance of anything more. I go for sex and get excuses, or yelled at, or worse, silence. Snores. When I’m upset, he goes to sleep. The self-proclaimed night owl can’t keep his eyes awake at 8:30pm if he thinks there’s something bugging me (or I’m feeling amorous). I have one bad day in months, and it’s further proof to him that we should never have kids, that I would be a terrible mother. As if I’m the one unable to care for someone else. The best birthday present he’s ever received is an email from his ex-girlfriend. At least, that’s what he told her. He doesn’t know I know that. I asked him about his favorite birthday present, and he said it was the concert tickets I just gave him. The ones I couldn’t afford, but I rubbed two pennies together to make happen. Because for some inexplicable reason, I love him, I believe in him, and I have hope for us. And for my next act, I will jump off a bridge.
I’m a sister and a daughter, but I have no family. They don’t understand me, and they put up a facade of attempt. It fails. They fail. Or maybe I’m the failure. Either way, they’ve fenced me out. And then criticize me for it. Do I deserve to be the black sheep? My guess is that if you met all of us, you’d wonder how I ended up the way I am. You’d wonder what they have to vilify me. You might tell me I’m better off being the black sheep, but I don’t feel better off. Not today.
I have friends, too, maybe, but none are nearby. None know me. Not the real me. Most days, I like it that way. There are only so many words I can share on any given day. And how do you maintain a friendship without words? Besides, I don’t even know myself right now, so how could I possibly expect someone else to? It gets a little lonely sometimes. Then again, people are self-absorbed, and they give bad advice. Last thing I need is someone telling me how they’d like to solve their problems, under the guise of my benefit.
I’m say a Christian, but I have no real faith. Belief, sure, but in what? Who is my God? I don’t know. He’s a stranger right now (he, or she, or it, or them…). As a recovering fundamentalist, I don’t understand God at all. I’d like to try better, learn more, figure out what was and what is true, but when it comes to God, there aren’t answers, just more questions. Questions, and narcissism. Funny how God’s attributes line up so nicely with your own opinions.
All in all, I have a great life. Sure, it’s lacking in some areas, but I have no shortage of things to be happy about. Most days, I’m happy. Content and smiling and good. I want more than good, though. I want more than a decent marriage, I want an out-of-the-park one. I want to be married to someone who cares about ‘us’ as much as I do. I don’t have that. I don’t have a spendthrift cheating drunk abuser, but I don’t have a true partner either. I want a family who doesn’t just love me but accepts me. I don’t have that either. I could sure use a friend, too. Someone I didn’t have to pretend with. Someone who could point out my own childish crap without making me feel guilty or condemned. Really, though, I just want some answers. About God. I used to have them, until I saw how lacking my perspective was.
Right now, during this bad day, lack is all I can see. And that is why, today, I hate myself.
by Band Back Together | Nov 13, 2010 | Adoption, Anxiety, Blended Families, Family, Love |
I sing you to sleep.
The boys, whom I gave birth to, wouldn’t fall asleep to my singing. We sing together at night, before they go to sleep, but their song is filled with silliness and laughter. But you relax as soon as soon as I start your song.
I didn’t meet you until you were five months old. I was your fourth mother. I was nervous that you wouldn’t bond with us, after having been uprooted so many times. But, the second time we visited you, it was clear you recognized us.
The weekend you had your first sleepover with us, we went out to dinner. A woman stopped by our table to tell us how beautiful you were, and how she loved watching you stare at me.
“Babies always know their mommies,” she said.
I may be your mommy, but you are still not my daughter. We wait. The court is still considering its decision. It is a decision I am glad I do not have to make myself. We have come to know your birth mother, your birth father, your birth family. Both of your birth parents love you very much, and would like you to be with them. Part of me hopes they can do all the things they need to do to make their lives safe and secure enough to have you back. But, another part of me knows that it is a herculean task.
I also know that if you do go back, we will be devastated. Your father has already started looking into therapists, just in case. Your silly brothers, who adore you and compete to make your smile, will have a really hard time adjusting. I suspect this will make my postpartum depression look like a party. But what really worries me is you. Will you be safe? Will that nice lady and man you have playdates with be able to continue their progress? Will you miss your brothers? Will you grow up to be the happy, healthy, amazing woman I know you can be?
Who will sing you to sleep?
by Band Back Together | Nov 1, 2010 | Anxiety, Cirrhosis, Hepatitis, Liver Disease, Stress, Trauma |
The day I got the phone call, I felt the wholeness of my little world, my security, bodily health, relationship, and peace of mind break apart, red hot, and scatter in every direction around me. That phone call was an atom bomb. My life blew to pieces and then rained down all about me. Everything burned.
Three words changed my life: “you tested positive.”
The blood ran from my face into my feet as I hung up the phone. Although my eyes were open, in a spell of synesthesia, I saw nothing but the sound of the blood beating at my temples. I was delivered my test results in a department store, without my shoes on, and in jeans that weren’t even my own. My skin grew cold and foreign.
I don’t remember peeling the denim from my legs, pulling my coat around my body, or stumbling into the November air of the parking lot. Minutes tick by and I have no recollection of their existence. In the following weeks, I find that whole chucks of my life go missing. I am thankful for those disappeared hours… the sound of my own keening and wailing, all animal, would have later haunted my dreams.
I sat in the car as the sobs ripped through me and left no part of my body untouched. They pulsed through my fingertips, clung to my ribs, drew my thighs toward my chest. They puffed into little clouds of steam in the cold, dispersed, and were replaced by more tiny clouds. I cried all the way home, bent double, called my lover, begged forgiveness. He talked me down. Said I had nothing to be sorry for. He went on with life as usual and by doing so, pulled me through all of my darkest days.
I owe him everything.
You would think that I’d have more to say about the details of this day, but it’s grown flat. I remember the back drop of grey clouds and little else.
I wavered between periods of eerie silence that sounded almost like peace and inconsolable mourning. One moment I was calm, while in the next I swore I could feel the tiny, organic machines sliding through my blood, dismembering my liver. During those first weeks, I read all I could about viruses in fascinated horror. In this, I found a strange comfort.
I lived through the nightmare of half a dozen doctors visits, a battery of tests, and waiting for more phone calls that once hung up leave me sobbing into my shaking hands. My bilirubin was so high, I was only a hairsbreadth away from jaundice, a second antibody test came back positive.
My heart pounded as I read domestic magazines in waiting rooms. The insides of my elbows turned the color of plums with bruises that bloom in the wake of one blood draw after another. I dropped ten pounds in a few weeks. The nurses looked at me with chiding eyes and said, “you really need to eat, you know. You can’t lose any more weight.”
But food turned to sand in my mouth. I had been hollowed out and couldn’t seem to fill myself again.
During all this, my one respite was sleep… plagued night after night by nightmares all my life, the dreams I had at that point were more beautiful than any I had ever assumed possible. My sleeping mind drew images in the dark that blotted out my suffering: my beloved dead showed up, smiling; an evening was lit up bright as day with my mind’s fireworks; a door set into the floorboards swung open to blue sky.
My dreams provided me with a much needed unremembereing. Waking up was the hard part; the sweet flesh of night gave way to the hard light of morning. Really, the relearning of your life as you wake up is the hardest part of this disease, next to liver failure.
This is not to say that there is no hope.
Treatment is long and brutal, similar in its side effects to chemo, but at a success rate of 50%, worth the hair loss, headaches, nausea, anemia, and sleeplessness for the chance to have my health back and a glass of chilled white zinfandel. I did my research and found I was ready to wander 48 weeks in that desert of treatment at the chance of being delivered from my suffering.
It was then I decided that I wasn’t going to mourn any more, I was only going to fight.
by Band Back Together | Oct 26, 2010 | Abuse, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Anger, Anxiety, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Feelings, Forgiveness, Stress, Trauma |
One MAJOR roadblock I had when I reclaimed my life from the childhood traumas that haunted me was forgiveness. One small word, one LARGE hurdle.
You see, I didn’t want to forgive my stepfather who sexually and physically abused me.
I. DID. NOT. WANT. TO. FORGIVE.
But that damn rat bastard word, forgiveness, kept rearing its ugly head. In books I was reading for my healing, conversations with my counselor, in the news, on TV shows, in song lyrics. EVERYWHERE. Forgiveness was haunting me, stalking me. I had to deal with it.
I didn’t want to forgive because I felt that forgiveness was saying that what he did to me was okay. I thought that if I forgave him, I was giving him a free pass. A get out of jail free card.
“Yes, you were beyond horrific to me. You scarred my soul and took away my childhood. You abused me in every way you could think of. Ah, never mind.”
I didn’t understand what forgiveness was about.
So, I turned the tables and I began stalking forgiveness. I read books and articles about forgiveness. I listened to sermons and personal testimonies about forgiveness. I talked at length about my dreaded enemy, forgiveness, with my counselor and others I trusted. I devoured any information I could find on the subject.
I learned a lot. I learned that anger and bitterness really only hurt the person carrying it. My stepfather didn’t feel any effects of my anger. He was living far away and had no clue how I felt. Nor would he care if he did. I was the one suffering. Stress. Pain. Anxiety. Anger. Hatred. Not a lovely mix to carry around inside of me.
I learned that almost everyone struggles with forgiveness in their life. Most importantly, I learned that I needed to forgive – not for him, but for me. The pain, anger and bitterness was going to eat me from the inside out if I did not find a way to release it and let it go for good.
By forgiving him, it does not mean what he did was okay. It will never be okay. It will never be right. It will always be horrible. It will always be pure, unadulterated evil.
Forgiveness means I will no longer carry the hatred and burden for what he did.
Since I did not want any contact or relationship with my stepfather, I did not have to forgive him face-to-face. No letter, no phone call. Nothing. It was only important that I knew I had forgiven him. So I did. I have to admit, spitting out the words “I forgive my stepfather” was vile the first time I did it. Part of my body rebelled and I wanted to vomit after I said it. But I knew it was important. I had to say it several times before it didn’t make me feel physically ill.
Then, one day I said it and finally, I felt the shift. I had forgiven him.
Do I thank him? HELL NO. Do I want him in my life? HELL NO. Do I hold anger and bitterness toward him or wish him dead? Also, NO. Forgiveness set me free to feel absolutely nothing toward him. I have no investment at all in what his day-to-day life is, what he is doing, where he lives. Just like I don’t have any investment or feelings toward someone I pass at the DMV.
I simply don’t care. His hold over me; over my life, is over.
Forgiveness is a gift I gave myself.
I’m thankful that I did.
