Fearfully, Wonferfully, Skillfully Made

     Hey guess what? I think I'm out of the initial postpartum phase. Yay! If I lived a hundred years ago I would take out my regular clothes and put away the black dress. I'm ready to head on with normal life while cherishing a memory of a day gone by. The hormones (blasted lil bugars) have made moving on without a baby quite a lot worse. My mind can rest easy, but I'll say it again - God made us moms to love those babies a whole lot. I mean, for the past 6 weeks I couldn't drive past a pet store without considering stopping just because my body is wired to be holding a baby and heck, if I don't have my own, a puppy or chubby little hamster must be better than nothing, right? The good news is, I believe my body has caught up with my mind and no longer is producing hormones that make me physically miss her as well as emotionally. Goodbye and good riddance! 

   What I've been thinking about lately is how there is not a second of this experience that I would wish away. I know I've blogged on that line of thought before and this is becoming very redundant, but for whatever reason it seems to help me, so...redundant it shall stay. I just, well, I dunno. I browse other blogs and read books for people who have lost babies. It seems to me that the standard way of viewing the death of a baby is by looking at it as though it is a huge tragedy that should have never happened, and by golly that baby should be alive. I'm addressing you other mama's of "defective" babies when I say this: I believe our babies were made perfectly, lovingly, meticulously woven in our wombs just exactly how they were. I find myself almost defensive about Phoebe's little deformed heart. It was a perfect little heart! So what if it wasn't compatible with this life. She was just different - and now I know why we use the term "special"  - her heart was a special heart that God blessed her with. I don't like people calling it defective. If you could have seen her...she was perfect. Not defective. What I'm trying to get at is that it doesn't matter if she couldn't live because of it. She is living with it still; it's pure and perfect and as happy as can be. Gosh. How do some of you make it through this without taking a look at the promises of Jesus?

    So, the tragedy thing. I guess it's a tragedy for our family. I mean, yeah, we're all devastated. But then again, the whole experience was a wild ride - a huge blessing! We rejoiced in finding out that I was expecting. We counted down each week. We felt her kick - saw my belly moving around when Paul would talk real close. We chose adorable little girl onesies. We saw her twiddling with her fingers on the ultrasound screen. Labor, birth. We had a new baby last month. And then, we gave her back to God. Whirlwind!!!! I mean huge, right?! It's something else, being present at a death. Similar to birth, I suppose. I just keep trying to imagine myself being inside a womb and helping the baby out from in there. She was born into a world that I know nothing of yet. She's gone from my sight until the day of MY birth....and then it will all make sense and I will know how right I was in thinking it's all going to be okay. ( : 

   Phoebe is a nice addition to our family. She sure changed us.

   

Jonah's Reminiscence

Jonah, my son, is two. He turned two just a week after Phoebe was born. He did get to meet her while she was alive, but it was the middle of the night and I have wondered and worried that he wouldn't remember his little sister.
  
  Tonight as I held him he fiddled with a necklace I wear that was given to me by a friend to remember Phoebe by. It has her name inscribed on it. (I love it!) He fiddled with it, and I have told him over and over that I wear it so we can remember Phoebe. He played with it and said "Phoebe" a few times, but then to my great joy he went to her picture and said "Phoebe!" And THEN - now this just breaks my heart - he reached his hand under my shirt and peered down to the only place he had ever seen his little sister; resting on my chest. I guess he was looking for her, but she wasn't there. 
  
                             Is it just me in my mommy pride or is this story super cute?

It gets better! He went back to the picture of his tiny baby sister and cried proudly, "My brother!!!"

Jonah closed out the conversation with this keen observation, "Phoebe's sleeping."

.....yea

  I'm feeling sorry for myself this gray morning. It's saturday and Paul is off working. We've had some unfortunate obligations that have taken up like the past months worth of weekends.

   I had a dream last night that I was heading to the hospital to deliver another premature baby that was going to die. Of course that is unlikely, but I woke up and started thinking about things like that and it occurred to me that while having another with another congenital heart defect is unlikely, I can basically count on having a miscarriage. My babies die. They just do - they die. One out of six is a crappy statistic.

  Some good friends had their perfect little baby girl this morning. Please don't think that it is their happiness or their wonderful outcome that hurts me... I am thrilled, SO thrilled, that their precious little one made it safely (and naturally!) into the world... but seeing the adorable pictures posted on facebook is not easy. We were excited when we found out we were both expecting, and both due around the same time. Now we both have baby girls, but they can never be pals like we'd hoped. The thought of having a healthy baby has been so far from my world, so surreal to me for these past weeks.

Honestly, I have to wonder if grief can kill someone! It just seems like so much stress on one heart couldn't be healthy...I kinda wish it would just explode and I could go into like a coma or something for a few months. (I'm kidding, for Pete's sake...chill out!) Like when you have the flu and you just wish you could throw up already.   

Read this Psalm. Can I sue God for plagiarism? It is like He took the words right out of my heart.

I cry aloud to God, aloud to God that He may hear me.
In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
in the night my hand is stretched
out without wearying;
My soul refuses to be comforted.

I think of God, and I moan;
I meditate, and my spirit faints.

Thou dost hold my eyelids from closing;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak
 Psalm 77:1-4

Hot damn! If that ain't exactly what I wanted to say then I don't know what is. It fits just perfectly! Every word. I call to the Lord and I guess I'm too stubborn to be comforted.
   I think it is rather interesting that is says "I think of God, and I moan. I meditate, and my spirit faints." Anyone who has prayed and meditated deeply knows that feeling....in a Catholic kids serious (can't remember the name) it is described by calling it a hug from an angel. It's that overwhelming saturation in God... he hit the nail on the head when he said "I meditate, and my spirit faints". It's the presence of God, no doubt, but I've been taken off guard since Phoebe because I can feel the presence and still be super sad. It used to be that I felt really happy when I felt His presence, now I can feel it and still miss my baby something terrible.
  And it seems God thinks it's some kind of funny joke to put in there that "Thou dost hold my eyelids from closing" --- least Ya could do, Lord, is let me sleep without having miserable dreams of dead babies! Seriously though, that strikes home with the feeling I've talked about here of constant beatings and no time to take a breath of air in between; no time to rest. And last, and maybe most fitting, "I am so troubled that I cannot speak" - my attempts here on this blog don't cut it, not even close. I feel dumb. Words completely fail me. I might as well quit trying now before I write any more and look back feeling like I wrote a bunch of bogus that can't hold a candle to what is really going on.

One more thing. I desperately need to do something RASH! I already chopped my hair short. I suggested going to the Dominican Republic and not coming back until we have a baby....it's dangerous business saying those things with a laid back hubby like Paul because he always says, "Uh...ok. Sure." For the first time in my entire life I feel like the credit card is in grave danger of being abused. Buying what? I have no idea, but I just know that I want to abuse it and spend like a million dollars doing something rash.
Yikes, huh?

A Major Little Victory!

   I guess I've been having a pretty hard time. I can't deny it! I'm sick and tired of my baby being dead and gone. How long is every square inch of my body going to ache, ache, ache? I have been spending way too much time buried under the blankies with one those giant coronas you get at gas stations in hand. My appetite is history! If I don't put "eat lunch" on the schedule I completely forget to do it. Losing a baby SUCKS! I mean, really, really sucks.
vvvI have found that grief comes in waves, and also that my awareness of God's presence comes in waves too...which is particularly poopy because sometimes the waves match up just so and grief comes when it seems that God is nowhere to be found. Is it even remotely possible that God is trying to test my love for Him AGAIN?? (Just goes to show that there is indeed a feminine side of God...)  I feel like I have to hang on for dear life while the beatings continue. I'm so tired!!!!
   One of the hardest parts of this is that now a whole month has passed and it's no longer acceptable in my mind to talk about myself and my own problems non stop, but I still want and need too. I'm back in the swing of normal life, but I'm still having a hard time staying afloat. What I mean is-- I don't feel that I can burst into tears anymore without people thinking I should be getting over this already. I know you kind souls are going to comment and say that I can talk all I want and cry all I want, but it's just not as easy as it sounds. I want to be able to talk about what I'm feeling but I truly can't control my emotions. I don't enjoy making scenes and being dramatic. And I don't  enjoy having red poofy eyes either. As a result, I just can't talk about it to anyone. If I talk enough to actually tell the truth about how I'm feeling than I cry. When I cry I don't make any sense, so it just defeats the purpose altogether and I get red poofy eyes for nothing. Hence, the blog.

    I do have a major little victory under my belt that has made me very proud of myself. : D   I have felt immense guilt when I have told people I only have one child. I have never realized how incredibly often the question comes up among people my age. It seems so constant...ugh. I haven't had the strength to tell people that I have two babies - one of them here and one in Heaven. Last thing I want to do is cause a scene while talking to someone who knows me so little that they don't even know how many kids I have! Well, the victory is in the fact that yesterday I managed to coolie answer the question by telling the truth. First time since she was born! I knew I was in grave danger of bursting into tears and making that poor sucker feel awkward butI took the chance and it was fine. She didn't have to know that the one in Heaven only went there a month ago.
Yay me!
   Obviously it has come up in my mind about how that question should be answered when one has miscarried so many babies. I've decided that if I said, "Oh, I have one son, one daughter who died right after she was born, and four babies who I never even got to meet" it would just be too much. They can stay in my heart where God put them. They know I do remember them without me having to make a big deal about 'em in small talk.

Shit Happens

   I took my Neonatal Resuscitation course the other day, in pursuit of a career as a midwife. It's one of those things that must be under your belt if you want to be a worth while apprentice and assistant. The problem is, most instructors are in the hospital birth mindset...I really, really wanted to be taught by a particular teacher named Karen Strange who is a midwife and has a good reputation as an instructor. Sucks for me that she came to our region only two weeks after Phoebe died...there was hardly any other choice than to take the course while I had the opportunity.

   I was worried before the class that my heart would be pulverized when the day was over. When Phoebe was with us there was nothing more to do except allow all the NNR "no-no's" to follow their natural sequence of events: She turned blue, her respirations were labored, her heart rate slow, and then slower until it stopped altogether. The class was bound to bring back those recent memories.

   I did fine, really, for the most part I was able to put my own experience from my mind and think more in the caregiver mode rather than the mother mode. There was one thing, ONE little thing that I found remarkably upsetting.....so here are my remarks on it ( :

  It was when Karen told the class this: " Most of the time the compromised baby will need 4 or 5 inflation breaths, and that is all. Babies are almost, almost, almost always in good shape to be breathing alone without help....then again, occasionally shit happens." In the space of a few seconds my throat constricted and my eyes welled up against all my inner strength telling them not to. At that same instant the class around me giggled and snickered... I guess thinking, "Karen said shit. Teeheehee!" I don't mind, I don't care, I know without a shadow of a doubt that nobody meant anything by it. It's just that if anyone could comprehend just what it is to be the rare situation in which Shit Happens then there would be no snickering. That will never happen, and I don't care about that either. I'm not "remarking" in a vain attempt to get the whole world to be sensitive to my situation. It's so uncommon, I know. In all those 26 careers as birthing professionals maybe not even one will see true Shit happening. 

 As for me, though, I'll be sensitive to those rare situations when Shit Happens.

  I feel like an entirely different person than the person I was before Phoebe. (After all, Shit is a funny word, right?) The more time that gets between me and the 2 and 1/2 hours that I held my 2lb dying baby, the more I realize how my character is in the process of being formed. As someone recently put it for my benefit, I am the "pottery being fired." God is the potter, of course. It was going to take a lot to make me a more serious person. Without Phoebe I would have been becoming the midwife who blows off every symptom of a complication because my belief was that birth is normal....and complications rare....and I would have never expected to actually witness a true complication. Without Phoebe I wouldn't look at newborns and think about what a tremendous blessing and miracle each one is. Before Phoebe (and the miscarriages)  I had a plan for my family - as though we can plan such things. Phoebe will make me a better birth professional, that I can know now without a doubt! When I was expecting her with such a bad prognosis people would try to tell me that I would be a better midwife someday for it...I said no way man -  I'll suck at being a midwife because I'll be a little sad at every birth. Now that Phoebe has come and gone, and I brought her into the world and handed her right back over to God, I am able to relate to anyone who has lost an infant. I will be a little sad at every birth, to be sure, but I'll also be happier than before at every birth because I know now just how lucky that mama is that her baby is healthy and that she gets to keep it, cuddle it, nurse it, and get to know it.

  Nobody wants to be the one who tears up a little when someone says Shit Happens...wouldn't you rather be giggling? Then again, doesn't everyone (and now I mean those who are birth professionals) want to have plenty of experience? Very few midwives and doctors are able to truly relate to a mom who is losing or has lost her infant *Sigh*

Oh, I just thought of the corniest thing ever!! I must stick it in my blog as the ending sentence to this post. Please envision this last line being said with an air piety...


 The grass is always, and will always be, greener on my side of the fence so long as I allow God to water it. 

That's the Lord for ya...

   I keep discovering just how close God was to me even when He seemed so far off. It's pleasant to discover these little surprises but also a bit humbling...here I was whining about how He wasn't listening to me crying out to Him when clearly He was there all along.

I read this lil prayer book everyday called Magnificat. It has the Scripture for each individual daily Mass written in it according to the Liturgical year. On the days that Phoebe was born and died, I did not read my Magnificat since I was rather preoccupied. Tonight I decided to look back on those days and this is what I found: 

• The Psalm for the day that Phoebe was born, April 11th, was Psalm 23. My faithful midwife played it for us on her computer after Phoebe was born and I was so hooked that I got my sister to sing it for the funeral. The song has been stuck in my head ever since!  Here it is:

Psalm 23

The Lord is my Shepherd: I shall not want. 

In verdant pastures He gives me repose;

Beside restful waters He leads me;

He refreshes my soul.

He guides me in right paths

for His name's sake.

Even though I walk in the dark valley

I fear no evil; for You are at my side.

With Your rod and Your staff

that give me courage.

You spread the table before me

In the sight of my foes;

You anoint my head with oil;

My cup overflows.

Only goodness and kindness follow me

All the days of my life;

And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord

For years to come. 

• For the day that Phoebe died, April 12th, this is part of the Psalm used for the Mass (I'm not typing the whole thing because....well I have to wake up at 4:00 tomorrow morning...haha):

Psalm 102

O Lord, hear my prayer,

And let my cry come unto You.

Hide not Your face from me

In the day of my distress.

Incline Your ear to me;

In the day when I call, answer me speedily.

• On the day that Paul and I went out at my family's property in search of a nice place to bury her, it was still gray and wintery looking. Within the space of that day and the day of Phoebe's burial, the cherry trees up and down the drive came into full bloom ( : 
• I believe I've already mentioned so in this blog, but the day of Phoebe's funeral happened to land on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. That really struck me because I had begun to understand in a small way what she had gone through as a mother who had to live to see her Son die. All through my sucky pregnancy I developed a stronger relationship with her because of her sorrows, and I knew beyond a doubt that she would be praying and praying for me as I endured a pain that was, again in it's own small way, somewhat similar to hers. 

 

   I could go on for quite awhile about how His hand was there at the birth also (pushing away the nurses and doctor...mwahaha) but I'm getting to tired. I may or may not continue this post another day [ :

What now...?

  I don't know if I am beginning to resent that silly Memorial Ticker at the top of this page or if I'm beginning to love it. Right now it says it has been "1 week and 2 days since she went to Heaven".
 
   Aye me, so many emotions to keep under control. I feel like I look like a walking blob of tangled, messy emotions. One second I feel calm and content with the Master Plan, the next second I see a preggie and I get to feeling like my life sucks. I'm not pregnant anymore, my belly is flat and empty again. No more kicks, no more hiccups. No more peeing 4 times a night - never thought I'd be reminiscent of that -  no more shopping for baby clothes, no more sleeping on my left side all the time. No more baby. She's gone. Just like that - a life was brought into existence and taken in two seasons. She was here long enough for her parents to fall head over heals in love with her, and then she left us behind.
 
  I don't like recovering from childbirth with no baby. My mind can hold on to the fact that there is a good God caring for me, but my poor body is just now figuring out that there is no baby to take care of. I am reminded of those poor goats we had when I was a kid. They'd have their babies and we'd take the babies away because we wanted the milk for ourselves and we'd feed the babies formula or something. It hurts my heart remembering how the mothers' were SO upset....in fact it hurts my heart so bad I don't even want to think about it! *hum hum hum*

   Yesterday was my 31 week prenatal appointment turned 1 week postpartum appointment. It is a sad, sad, unnatural thing to be going to a postpartum  appointment with empty arms. My pregnancy is over, a thing of the past. The baby is buried, the postpartum appointment is complete, the milk is gone. I am left behind with a nature designed perfectly for loving my offspring. Trusting in God won't take away how He designed the heart of a mother. 
  
     Is there really nothing else to say? I don't have the words to say what I'm feeling. I don't want to abandon the blog because I don't want this to be over, funny as they may sound, I want to cling to the last drop of Phoebe. I am afraid of forgetting....