Remembering

It's been two years. Sometimes it feels a million years away, and sometimes I feel like I just got punched in the stomach.

Isabel's death & birth have changed me forever, and I can't ever again be who I was. Sometimes I want to go back, to undo it, to skip over that part of my life. But then there'd be no Sadie. So I can't...instead I'm stuck in the middle. Isabel is there and she's not...and that's the way it will be forever.

And I'm learning to live with that, somewhat comfortably. For now, that's enough.

Long time gone...

Sorry I've been so absent. We've had a crazy, busy, overwhelming month or two. I've also had a dirty little secret that completely flipped me out for pretty much all of December and a good chunk of January. There's a lot of back-story here, so excuse the long ramble.

Sadie had issues nursing when she was born - a weird suck pattern from sucking on her ENTIRE hand in utero. I spent a few hundred bucks on lacation consulatants, talked to MANY people on the phone, and saw the pediatrician quite a few times. Ultimately, none of them could sort it out. I still wanted to nurse her, so we ended up in occupational thereapy. We did that for 6 weeks, and by the end, she was nursing like a champ.

BUT my OT red-flagged us with another issue. She believed that Sadie had a "low tone" issue, and because of her somewhat traumatic birth (dirty secret #2 - I had an emergency c-section, but that's a story for another day) she was concerned about cerebral palsy. And despite her saying that I shouldn't worry about it, I worried. I obsessed. And oh man, did I Google. And that's pretty much all I did for a month.

Each visit, she'd call in a different physical therapist for a second opinion. Each time, the PT would say they didn't see anything. But the OT was on a mission. So she called my pediatrician, who also freaked out and called us in because she thought she'd missed something.

Ultimately, the ped didn't see ANYTHING. She called in other peds from the practice, who all agreed with her. Bottom line - the OT was wrong. And Sadie is totally fine. And I'm breathing again.

We want our children to be perfect - and take every imperfection personally. I also have had way too much emotion resting on Sadie's surviving and thriving because of Isabel. I've compounded the pressure on her, and on me, I think to somehow prove that we're okay, we've moved on, we can do it. Not fair to either of us.

I had a major breakthrough in January. I feel like I was literally picked up and set down on a completely different path. Off a path that was full of fear, dread, worry, anxiety. And set back down on a road that's free from that. As Martha says, it's a good thing. So here's to a new year filled with a new, functional me. Hurrah for breakthrough :)

Oops, I did it again.

For the second time this month, I freaked out that something was wrong with the baby. I have been feeling pretty consistent movement for a couple of weeks now. From last night until this afternoon, I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. On top of this, I had some weird abdominal cramping last night that lasted for a few hours. So I completely, totally panicked. Called the doctor's office in tears, called Nate in tears, prepared for the worst.

And ultimately, everything was fine. Baby is totally fine, and the cramping was probably related to my intestines. So bottom line - baby fine, I have gas. GAS, people.

I know that a lot of people go through this experience and ultimately do not believe in God. That's not me - I came out of the experience dazed, confused, and believing that somehow, somewhere in there, God is still completely good. And I believe His hand is on this pregnancy. But I have a hard time being convinced that He & I have the same end goal. That it will turn out the way I want it to. And so it seems all too easy for me to fall into fear and reliving my last pregnancy, constantly assessing whether or not this baby is still alive.

Will I ever feel safe? Will I ever feel like everything actually might turn out okay this time? Or am I going to spend this entire pregnancy waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Ultrasound today

I've been surprisingly chilled up until this morning and now I'm starting to freak. Not a huge amount, just a little...

This is the first time I truly could not care less as to gender - I would love a girl, but my little friend here desperately wants a brother to sword fight him. He actually specifically told me that he ONLY wants a brother because, "Mom, girls are just not cool." Do 3-year olds really talk like that?

9 months ago, I went into my ultrasound with a sense of dread, completely convinced that something was wrong. And it was - she had died. I knew that somehow, felt it.

I'm not in that place at all this time. I'm just unsettled. So pray if you think of it, and I'll keep you posted.

Labels, schmabels

***I'm prefacing this with a disclaimer - I am not intending to in any way undermine or devalue the impact of a miscarriage. I am simply speaking out of my own completely biased experience - that's all I can do. ***

We lost Isabel just a few days short of it being labeled a stillbirth. Instead, she's considered a miscarriage. This one little label has caused me an unbelievable amount of pain over the past 8 months. I've been ashamed by it - that I was so caught up over a silly little miscarriage. I've been angry over it, I've been stressed, embarrassed, conflicted...you name it, I felt it. That label stripped away my ability to just feel what I was feeling in a totally honest way.

I actually found myself - and more than once, mind you, sort of frequently in the beginning - lying about how far along I was so that it sounded more significant. So that I could say she was stillborn rather than that I had a miscarriage. Because when you say you had a miscarriage, people say, "Oh my mom/sister/neighbor/boss/____ had a miscarriage." But when you tell someone you delivered and held your dead baby, it's completely different. It's not that I'm wanting people to feel sorry for me - I don't need or want the sympathy. Truly. What I want is for people to understand the significance of what happened and why I'm a completely different person. The experience of laboring & delivering a child that doesn't go home with you changes you 100%.

So call her a miscarriage, if you will. I have decided (warning - am about to speak French here) to FUCK the label. And I'm not going to be ashamed anymore. I'm trying to finally give credence to feelings that I've suppressed for a long time. So I apologize if the direction of this blog has changed radically over the last month, but this is actually who I am - so welcome inside my head.

Drumroll please...

I'm 16 weeks pregnant. I haven't really talked about that. If you've seen me in person, you probably know by now - or you think I've been hitting the Twinkies way too hard. If you haven't seen me, I haven't broadcasted. At Easter, my uncle really challenged me - said "Why would you keep it a secret? You need to tell us right away!" I really struggled for a response...I couldn't come up with much better than a stuttering, "but last time..."

Last week the owners of Josh's swim school also announced that they were pregnant. My first response was totally from the gut - a panicked "You can't tell people yet!" despite the fact that they're 15 weeks pregnant and pretty much everyone thinks it's safe at that point.

Everyone except me. I'm struggling along here with no safety net - no sense of when it will definitely be okay. I have even felt the baby moving for a week now and it doesn't offer much relief - instead I'm focused on the times when I don't feel the baby move. I hold my breath every month at the doctor when they try to find the heartbeat, and I scheduled my ultrasound for the absolute latest possible day because it scares the absolute crap out of me.

It's kind of ridiculous, understandable I know, and more than a little bit sad. I read a book recently where they talked about a loss of innocence that occurs after your baby dies. I really miss that innocence - feeling like everything is okay, and your baby will be fine because the chances are so slim of any other outcome...until I was in the 0.125%. And then the statistics - not so helpful. All of the sudded 1/8 of a percentage point is a huge gaping hole with the potential to totally gut you.

So for now, I'm better than I was last month, and hopefully that trend will continue. I'm actually finding other moms in the dead baby club quite helpful...I sit on Google Reader in the morning and plod through. I find it cathartic to hear that others are emotional, pissed off, angry, happy, healing, bitter, etc...it somehow validates the roller coaster of emotions I'm feeling.

So there you go - I guess I'm officially out of the closet.

It's so strange

I used to be a big fan of offensive jokes...namely Helen Keller and dead baby jokes. Totally offensive, politically incorrect, completely inappropriate. Not quite so offensive as the joke that Paul Provenza and friends all tell in The Aristocrats (what was that anyway? I swear I saw the movie and never quite got it.) But for my small town, Catholic brain, sufficiently offensive to make it entertaining.

But then I had a dead baby. I don't think I've ever written it out like that because it seems so crass. But I was reading this blog this morning and she uses that expression over and over. At first it really bothered me - I felt like "what the hell is wrong with you, why are you so offensive about it?"

But you know what? In my head, that's what I always call it. I don't ever say it out loud because it is offensive. But if we're all being honest, that's what happened, and that's the difference between you and me. There are the moms who had live babies (and I'm one of those too) and the moms who had dead babies. And I don't think you really get it until you're in that club. I thought I could sufficiently empathize when I heard of it happening to other people. I had no idea.

So needless to say, I don't tell the jokes anymore. And to be honest, the further we've gotten from losing Isabel, the less I've talked about it. Not because I've healed, although in many ways I have. More because it seems like old news - like how can I just keep dwelling on it, talking about it, thinking about it, processing it...but I am still in the thick of it. It's not as intense, not always as fresh, not always a paralyzing part of my day like it was. But it's still there. And I think it'll always be there. It's sort of like a scar - a permanent reminder that may no longer be an open wound, but has forever changed what I look like.

Caffeine & miscarriage

By now, pretty much everyone has heard about the new AJOG study linking caffeine to a significantly increased miscarriage rate. But also this month, a study in the Journal of Epidemiology showed no link between miscarriage & caffeine. So what should you believe?

I'm inclined to always err on the side of caution. It can't hurt to consume less caffeine - well, maybe a little. I know I'm quite fond of my Cafe Americano...but given the alternative, it's seems like an easy choice.

So if you're aiming for 200mg of caffeine per day, how does that translate? You could have around 5 cans of Diet Coke, but barely half of a tall Starbucks coffee. And I could comfortably have my beloved Americanos...visit this caffeine database for a comprehensive list.

When I was pregnant with Josh, I tried to limit myself to one caffeinated soda a day (Diet Mt. Dew - 55mg). If I was totally wiped out, I felt like I could comfortably have a second one and still be well below the 200mg threshold. And if I could survive on limited caffeine intake, believe me - anyone can. Except maybe Nate - I shudder to imagine him decaffeinated. Not a pretty picture.

Here's a downer...

***Update - we ultimately did decide to get her a dedicated niche. They will letter it and them move her sometime in the next week or two. I feel relieved - I don't know that I'm ever going to go there, look at it, whatever, but it feels much better.***

So I've been generally upbeat but here's a rather depressing post. Sorry - skip it if you're not in the mood - it will not offend me.

I stopped by Roseland Park Cemetery on Monday to see if Isabel was there yet. I couldn't find a July 2007 box - but they had August & September. So I called their office and they said it went by cremation date, not date of death. That feels really wrong to me - callous or something - to just stick her in a box with about a dozen other babies based on when they cremated her.

I've really struggled all along with how much significance to attach to what happened. It started in the hospital - do we name her, do we talk about her, do we bury her, do we have a service...

In the end, we did name her. But if I'm being totally honest, I almost never use her name when we talk about it - I guess it makes it too important, too real, too much for me. But now I'm confronted with a decision that's tearing me up - do I leave her where she is, in the September box, or do we pay for her to be in her own box, with her name carved in granite for all the world to see, and for all eternity? The idea of a permanent memorial is very intimidating to me. I don't want to be one of those people that obsesses, dwells, fixates, mourns too long/too much, or whatever. But I don't want to brush it aside like it was nothing. I am so conflicted.

What would you do?

Justice, Joy & Psalms

So yesterday, I breezily asked my sister about her sister-in-law, who is pregnant with her second child. I said "So how's Lindsay? Does she know what she's having?" and my sister replied that it was a girl. Casual, breezy, and the conversation moved on...

Until midnight, when I started crying and could not for the life of me get it back under control. I was totally overcome with anger - not at Lindsay, but more at what she represents...what I should have been. I was supposed to be having a girl in December, just a couple of weeks before Lindsay. I just have these moments where I am so totally pissed off about what happened, and the fact that it happened to ME, and how totally unfair it all is.

I was talking to a good friend about her miscarriage many years ago. She told me that a friend of hers was pregnant at the same time, and that for years, when she looked at the friend's little girl, she felt a pang of what might have been. I can so relate to that...I know a couple of people due within a couple of weeks of me, and even dumb Nicole Ritchie. I look at them and think about what might have been, where I might be, where the baby would be...I just want what I lost, and I'm grieving.

Several people recommended reading Psalms. I was just looking back at what I've read, and I have consistently underlined David's down moments - the "help me, why have you abandoned me?" verses where he cries out to God.

Psalm 40:1 from the Message translation: I waiting and waited and waited for God. At last he looked, finally he listened.

It's hard for me to reconcile what happened in the context of faith. I really, truly believe that God is completely good in the midst of everything bad that happened to us. And I really truly believe that God loves us. I am trying to just hang onto that, despite the "why?" that constantly nags me...but I am continuing to ask God "why?" at the same time.

He gets angry once in a while, but across a lifetime there is only love. The nights of crying your eyes out give way to days of laughter. (Also Message, Psalm 30:5)

So that's what I'm hanging onto...days of laughter, here I come.

How Great Is Our God

This song is really speaking to me right now...

I've been trying to figure out what to say here. I think blogging would be good for me - sort of 21st-century journaling. It's a fine line though - between what's interesting and useful to share, and what is cathartic for me but inappropriate. So I'm stuck.

Bottom line because I know you care - I'm here and I'm okay. Physically, I feel almost 100%. Emotionally, I'm pretty much a train wreck, but I think that's what you'd expect at this point.

I'll be back online soon. Until then, just please keep praying for us. I'm in a difficult place right now - I actually have not prayed since we lost the baby. I haven't been able to. So if you would pray, we could use it.

Thanks for checking in...

P.S. Today was Nate's first day back @ work. His boss pretty much kicked him out when he got there, so he will be home until Tuesday. I'm relieved to say the very least - I wasn't quite ready to be on my own here.

Am going to be fairly brief. For those of you that haven't heard, we lost our baby at just under 19 weeks. She had a cord wrapped twice around her neck & arm. We delivered her Sunday July 29th at 10:14 am.

Isabel Grace
8.5 inches
7 ounces

We appreciate your thoughts and prayers, please allow us space to process...thank you.