First Step

I decided that I need to face some of the things that cause me pain. Face up to them in a manly way, look 'em straight in the eye, and say, "I can survive you."

So I went to my friend Robin's baby shower. She's due in two weeks. She's had her own troubles with pregnancy in the past, and now more than ever I'm pulling for her. She's almost at the finish line, she almost has her little boy safe and snug in her arms.

I wasn't sure if I could actually go through with it, so I kept my RSVP at "Maybe" on the E-vite. But Saturday morning, I woke up and thought, I just have to do this. For my sake as much as for Robin's. It felt exactly like the first phone call I made a few days after the miscarriage. Ross had been making all of the calls for me because I just couldn't hear my own voice talking about it with anyone but Ross and the doctors. I didn't know what to say or what people should say to me. I couldn't bear the thought of the finality of those conversations.

This was like that. I had a dread of the shower, but the conviction that I had to go. I had to affirm the goodness of life in the midst of my own pain by sharing in this celebration of the coming of a much-wanted and long-hoped-for child.

And it was good. I got to play with Lance and Lauren's beautiful little baby daughter for a good long time. I ate food and played games and chatted and laughed with all of my girlfriends. I gave Robin a lovely gift that I was happy to offer to her. She looked beautiful and calm and peaceful and composed and radiant. I hope I look that way one day.

The afternoon wasn't perfect. I had a couple of hard moments. The first was when my friend Laurelyn got up to leave. Her due date is one week after what mine would have been. We had many times joked about how we would get pregnant together, and then we did, and then Rebecca died. I can never take my eyes off of her when I see her because I should look like her right now. Anyway - she got up to leave and Robin stood to hug her. Everyone squealed and scrambled for the cameras and shouted, "Get the bumps touching! This will never happen again in our group!" I couldn't look. I stared at the carpet and blinked back the tears and wished it had been the three of us.

The second moment was when we played a game in which we were supposed to guess the size of Robin's belly by cutting off a piece of ribbon to measure it. I thought we would pass them to her or something, but they had us line up and measure it ourselves. I wanted to be a good sport and not make anyone uncomfortable, so I lined up with the rest. I put my arms around Robin and measured quickly, never looking her in the eye, and got away to dash the few tears from my cheeks.

But it's a first step. And first steps are usually shaky in some way. And they usually get better the more you take. So I'm going to take some more.

Brain Flu

I've been depressed since Rebecca died. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about her, miss her, dream about her... The grief has been hard at times, but easily recognizable to me as grief. I'm sure that there is some PPD going on, too. My hormones levels have never been particularly balanced, I don't think, since I get PMS regularly and pretty painful periods. And I've been prone to depression as long as I can remember, having my first major episode when I was 21.

But for the past five and a half days, it has been extreme. I have no idea, really, what triggered it. Like I said, I've had grief and depression at varying levels since my miscarriage in early April. But the intensification to this level is really out of the blue. I spend much of each hour struggling to get through work and my other responsibilites and reminding myself to breathe in and out. It seems both independent of and connected to the loss of our child. It is horribly painful. I actually feel pain in my body as well as in my heart and soul.

I heard it described by another depression sufferer as "brain flu". That's what this feels like. It's like some wierd illness that has invaded my body for which there is no cure, only more and less effective means of treating the symptoms. I kjust keep hanging on, knowing that it will end too, just like the flu ends.

I just wish it hadn't already lasted three months. And there's no way anyone can tell me when it will end. And, of course, no drugs for me since we're trying again.

I feel terrible for complaining to Ross about it. I don't know why this has to be such a struggle. I don't know why I can't snap out of it. But I can't.

Anyway, I start accupuncture soon and have high hopes for it. I'll keep you posted...

Complaint Letter

Dear Mother Nature,

I have some problems I would like for you to address:

I want a baby. I want a baby. I want a baby.

Also, I would like my waist-line, rear-end, and boobs to go back to their pre-pregnancy size (or smaller). Please. Thank you. In advance. That is until I get pregnant with the next baby and then go ahead and do what you want to with my body. Just promise me that I can lose it after the baby is born.

Also, this depression sucks big time. Please cut that out. Or at least give me a vacation in the Caribbean to take the edge off. I might be able to deal with it in an ocean view cottage with a plunge pool, an outdoor shower and unlimited rum. For a really long time. (One week is just a tease.)

I would really like to loose the knots in my shoulders, too. But the Caribbean and rum would probably go a long way in that regard.

Okay. I think that's it for now.

Jenny

P.S. The baby request is the big one, so if you want to focus just on that, great.

Crazy

Dear Ross,

Am I crazy? I know I ask you that several times a day. I feel crazy sometimes. I feel like maybe my grief is a little too hysterical, a little too raw, a little too.... silly? I feel pressure (and I don't know where it's coming from) to get over this quickly. You keep saying that it has only been a couple of months. I know. And yet. And yet, why do people ask me why when I say I'm sad? Why do people think it's wierd that we gave our daughter a name?

It baffles me that no one thought of us on Mother's Day and on Father's Day. And I felt our loss so keenly on those days, thinking the whole time that I should be showing now, that if she hadn't died that we would be getting all of those cute Mother- and Father-to-Be cards, and now what we get is silence. I am still counting the weeks and months of our pregnancy. I can't get October 31st out of my mind. We had a date to meet her then, and she died before we could get there.

I feel like we are the only ones still thinking of this. I don't mean thinking about having a baby one day - many people have asked me if we are trying again. I mean, thinking about our daughter. I'm not "over" her. I'm not past this.

And then I think, "Am I crazy?" Does the rest of the world handle miscarriage by managing the physical aspect of healing and then going through the usual 2-3 months of quite secret grieving and then getting on with things? Do they stop thinking about their lost children? Do they think of them as children at all? Or are they all just like you and me? And are we just a crazy subset of adults - people who have children that have died before they were ever born - people who will never forget them, people who will never stop counting them among their children? And will the rest of the world - those lucky ones who have never lost a child - just never understand?

I feel frustrated. I feel outside of normal life. I want to cry almost every minute but I don't want to seem strange. I feel instinctively that my grief is not as legitimate as that of those who have lost a parent or a friend or a five year old. I was given condolences for my "medical situation". I was screamed at for missing a rehearsal because I was miscarrying, as though I just had a bad cold. The words "abortion" and "products of conception" and "tissue" were used in relation to our daughter.

Was she of less value because she wasn't old enough yet? I don't get it.If I'm not crazy then this world is making me crazy. No one would question it if I was still weeping two months after the death of our one year old. I need it to be the same for the death of our EDD -6 1/2 month old. Is that crazy?

Love,

Jenny

Father's Day

Dear Heavenly Father,

I can't believe we are going through this. I never expected, never dreamed that I would lose a child. In all of my doomsday imaginings of cancer, death in labor, infertility, I never ever imagined that my baby would die. I never imagined a Mother's Day or a Father's Day with the title "Mother" and "Father" but no child. How? Why?

I can't understand. I just don't.

I am clinging to the belief that you are Rebecca's father, too, and ours. That one day we will meet her, radiant in physical perfection, in utter joy. That we will finally know her, that she will be more fully ours than she is now, because we will be completely yours. You have promised to wipe away our tears. I will hold you to that promise because you say you are good.

Until that Day, I hope you won't take it ill if we shed a few tears for our darling daughter every Mother's Day, every Father's Day.

Love,

Jenny

Grief Greater Than Words

Dear Rebecca,

I don't know what to say. I keep repeating that to myself. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to put into language the emotions I feel about losing you, the tidal wave of pain I feel knowing that I will never hold you, never see your eyes looking back at me, never see your first smile, never know your mind and your heart and your soul. How do I say that?

People, all very kind people, ask with soft and tender eyes how I am. I smile, weakly and in response to their kindness rather than any inner joy, and say, "I'm ok." I'm not ok. I don't want to overwhelm them with what I feel. I can't say that I'm fine, though, which I'm sure is what people want to know. I'm nowhere near fine, but you just don't say that. How do you do that to people, people with busy days, people with their own lives to worry about, even the ones who care? And then there are the people who don't even know that you were here, that you lived, and that we lost you. How do we tell them in a way that's not somehow scary, in a way that doesn't totally unnerve them with the nearness of tragedy unexpected?

I hear about others having bad days or difficult times - a lost job, a daughter with the flu, a fight with a friend, a husband out of town, a disappointment of some small kind - and I feel myself choking back tears. I hear my own voice in my head saying, "Our daughter died. Our daughter died. Our daughter died." But I can't say that. I can't just come out and say that. I swallow hard and try to focus on what is being told to me and try to offer what sympathy I can. I wait for ears that can hear my grief: your father's ears. Oh, my sweet girl, how you would have relished having your father to talk to during the troubled times of your life! He's the world's best listener.

I miss you. I miss you so much. I want you back. I want to see you. I can't believe that you're gone. I can't believe that I could love a person so much who I had known for so short a time. And there will never be enough words to say what's in my heart.

All the love that's in my heart forever,

Mom