best gift of the day

elle: "my mom..."

cg: "my pie..."

elle: "i love you mom."

cg: "i love you too, peanut."

cg: "elle,"

elle: "what, mom?"

cg: "what is love?"

elle: "love, ummm, love is like somebody to take care of."


happy holidays.

the mailbox

husband and i stood at the chopping block opening mail, many envelopes filled with christmas cards, some with bills, some with crap. one by one, we opened the cards.

husband: "why do people send picture cards of their kids?? who wants to see that?"
cg: "i do, you idiot! what the hell is wrong with you?!"
husband: "we will never do that!"

i never knew he had such a pet peeve. it would have been obvious, had he told me during our first infertility years...he didn't even talk to his friends who had kids, he couldn't even watch a diaper commercial! but now? i'm definitely not the card-sending type of girl, but i would have sworn he would want to send out a picture of his beloveds!! weird, i tell yah.

he got to one card, turned it over, and clutched it to his chest with a really shocked, "what the fuck do we do with THIS" face.

WHAT?
WHO SENT IT?

he stood there for a long time, not wanting me to see.

then he handed it over.

i saw who the sender was on the back flap, opened it, and read it:

dear [charmed],
i have been thinking of you so much since the anniversary of p@ige's death. when we last spoke you were finding some comfort with the bere@vement group. i so hope that has continued to help. i can only imagine that the triplets are keeping you extremely busy. i have had occasion to be in your area both with families i am working with and two students who are nearby. it would be lovely to see you. but most importantly, i wanted you to know how your lovely presence remains with me. my warmest wishes to you and your family now and always.
fondly,
[the pompous ass of a midwife who caused your baby to die]

i didn't really feel anything, but why the fuck did she feel the need to tell me she was working with families in my area...families whose babies probably would be born the way they should be? probably because it is ME and my dead baby that were just the unfortunate victims of circumstance, and had nothing to do with HER and her inadequate practice, or the rest of the world, for that matter.

maybe she sent it because she was just informed of the investig@tion recently opened against her license. i mean, we last spoke about two weeks after i delivered last september. why now? the holiday fucking spirit? this isn't even a christmas card. it's a blank-inside number with a close-up picture of a blooming iris probably symbolizing the opening cervix or some such shit.

whatever her intention, it was a shock. it also makes me wonder how much she already knows about the shit storm about to befall her.

hey, at least she'll have some notice...more than i had, anyway.

what shock looks like

i opened my eyes this morning and my first two thoughts were:

1- i think i left a comment on p@ige's name in the s@nd picture using my charmedgirl name and the pic is posted with her full name and OH MY GOD someone can google my last name and find this blog and i have open legal cases and i say whatever-the-fuck on here and HOLY SHIT i couldn't have done that, could i have?? (i could have and absolutely did...)

2- what the fuck was i thinking, having so many visitors in the hospital after having p@ige? i was in the hospital for five days, and there was a steady stream of people coming in and out, and i didn't even care. (don't bother asking what the fuck the photographer was thinking taking this picture, i mean, you'd think someone just announced i won the lottery for the love of god. husband will capture the moment, goddamnit. don't make me prove it by posting the picture he had taken of the two of us with his dead mother...) anyway, still sleepy this morning, i remembered this picture and thought, what a perfect summation of what it's like to have a dead baby, week 1. there i am, shocked, composed. there everyone is, visiting. mulling. carrying on with whatever the fuck. when it's time for them to leave, they leave. still i sit there, sometimes crying softly, sometimes ridiculously philosophical, sometimes just there, ever composed. there i was in bed this morning, thinking of this picture, this scenario. i cringe when i think of the visitors. i cringe when i think of how i was just so gone, so not even there. i hate that i allowed all those visitors. i hate that i was so gaping open and everyone saw...well, they saw what you see in the picture, me sitting there, composed. such a juxtaposition in my mind....

i'm glad i have that fucking awful goddamned picture. i'm not sure why, but i am.
proof? probably.

eta: i just noticed the bag full of piss from my catheter by the bed...meaning i was what, a few hours out from the c-section?? jesus CHRIST...it was worse than i thought...

*honey, let's have a baby!

*easily one of my most despised sentiments...for thousands of reasons...

****

ok so...we're doing another ivf. i've typed that a few times over the past two weeks, kinda not fully believing it. but there it is, in all its splendor...jesus christ...and an entire cycle's worth of meds. some of you (the few, the proud...yeah right) will recognize the line-up. i've seen the photo dozens of times, but still can't believe the one up there is MINE...AGAIN.

i've had a year to decide to try to get pregnant again, and also to decide why i would be a fool's ass in hell to try to get pregnant again. there are really good reasons- on the try side? the not try side? does it matter? there are NO ANSWERS. really, life and death, just simply NO ANSWERS...just what we end up doing/what ends up happening to us.

i feel crazy inside, but strangely calm. crazy, calm. faithless, serene.

at least now there can be an end. well, maybe not, probably not, NOT, but i can enjoy that thought for a minute, right? better yet, i should just try not to think at all. yeah, that's the ticket.

no words...

...except thank you, from the bottom of my broken heart.

http://namesinthesand.blogspot.com/

asshole!

once apon a time, when i was just infertile and not a dead baby mom, i followed infertility blogs.

well, i'm lying. i was in that fucked up state of being an infertile with children and (oops!) pregnant again.

because, you know, no matter how many times you carry life within your belly, if you've lived through infertility, you are always an infertile deep, deep in your bones.

anyway, there i was. pregnant (largely so) and following infertility blogs, staring at their positive pregnancy tests ( like i never saw two lines IN MY LIFE) and suffering with the ones who were blind for staring at their stark white tests...

there was one girl in-particular, one who achieved pregnancy after a few treatments. for some god-forsaken reason, i felt compelled to tell her about the guilt and general fucked up nature of pregnancy after infertility. cause, you know, pregnancy sucks ass in hell. and it especially sucks ass in hell when you worked your ass off to make it happen.

(i remember [way before the incident i'm telling about] telling soulmate friend, who was pregnant and complaining about trapped gas or whatever, while i was so desperately trying to become so, that AT LEAST SHE CAN GET PREGNANT. i feel like an ass to this day about that.)

anyway, i wanted to tell that woman to expect to feel guilty and confused about feeling shitty about the difficulty of pregnancy, despite asking (begging, sacrificing) for it. (right now, i wonder why the fuck i would stick my neck out like that. let people alone, no? to find out for themselves, no? i have no explanation for it.)

well, long story short, she was not very appreciative. she posted about blocking comments from assholes who wanted to rain on her two-lined test parade. i never technically found out if she was talking about me because i never commented again; the correspondence i'm referring to happened via email. i continued to follow her blog, and she subsequently experienced crippling hyperemesis. i wonder if she ever thought about my emails. i wonder if she ever understood what i was trying to tell her. i wonder if it ever clicked.

well, my long, drawn out point is, i still feel bad about it. i still feel bad about telling her about the dichotomy which is pregnancy after infertility way before she had reason to hear it. really, i'm surprised i even did it; i'm usually so opinions-off (or at least i like to humor myself that i am).

the real truth is, i was still in shock, depressed, suffering though an unexpected pregnancy after infertility and triplets via ivf. i was a mess. i had pre-partum depression. i was fucked up.

and i feel bad that i rained on someone else's parade.

small world

the other day, at work, amidst fetal heart tones echoing into our office, i read a chart that noted a patient had five miscarriages...at age 19. another patient that day was pregnant after a miscarriage her very last cycle...at 17. i share an office with the manager, and she suddenly said, in a voice all too recognizable (or at least what i imagine all our voices to sound like), "i should have been a young mother, too."

she went on to explain that she was married young and stationed far away with her military husband. she called them miscarriages. the reality is, i'm sharing an office with another dead baby mom...two dead baby boys at 6 months each. she went on to have two healthy boys who are now in their late teens...

but now, now that she also knows how i met our boss (ahem...in the ER with a dead baby in my belly), the discourse has changed a bit. when she talk to me, she often talks about her FOUR boys. she talks about how it happened, how she often thinks about what could have been if she was back in the states during (especially) her second pregnancy.

i don't think i have to say i was shocked, i guess still a bit shocked. there we sit, TWO dead baby moms in a big bustling OB office. i guess it slaps me into reality; i guess it shakes me out of my pitiful head. i don't have to tell you how many times i've heard the heart tones and felt like i heard a totally different sound than anyone else (in the world) in the office.

what's more, what made the discovery of her dead sons even more surprising, is that she'd been telling me about other, bigger, tragedies in her life...the BIG ones. her son was almost (and i mean skin of his teeth close) killed in a car accident at 16. a few months later, when he was just out of the woods, her niece (who lived with her at the time) was diagnosed with leukemia and died about a year later at 17. it's amazing what we as mothers have to endure and keep functioning (or pretend to).

meeting her has pushed me into a new place: RELATIVITY. here she is, two dead babies, her first two, and they play second to a whole other set of fucked up experiences. it begs the question, in my mind, if all i want is to move past this horrible fucked place of dead baby, what more horrible tragedy must befall me? knowing that anything is possible, how much longer can i entertain the doom-and-gloom? how much longer, in good conscience, can i allow my dead baby to take from my alive ones...not to mention from myself?

i don't have to wait for the next shitstorm, the next living hell.

i've felt a shift in my brain. not sure how long the flesh is going to take, but i am willing to let the residual dread live there instead of up front and center. it may be total and utter denial, but that's ok. for now.

cringe television

i was never the sensitive infertile. in fact, it was always husband who avoided friends with children, cried with pregnancy announcements, and turned the channel during diaper commercials. i, on the other hand, just made plans for cocktails with friends instead.

this new line of commercials though, i just can't watch. wtf? i can even appreciate the dark humor. what, am i getting sensitive in my old age? maybe it's the dead baby stuff. i don't know. and brooke...she went through infertility...is that why she finds it funny? i guess maybe at some point before september 9, 2007 i would have found it funny as hell. maybe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDZSxFLcMVg

evaporation

i took a pregnancy test this morning, and although negative, i kept it.

OF COURSE I KEPT IT!! anyone KNOWS you can't throw those things out! it can tell you secrets later in the day when you pull it out and make yourself cross-eyed staring at it!!

tonight, there was a faint line. any other time in my life, that faint line would mean something. i mean, of the hundreds of sticks i've peed on, negative is blinding negative. there's an old wives' tale, an urban myth, of evaporation lines...DON'T READ TEST AFTER TEN MINUTES!

tonight, at this time in my life, that little tiny hope against hope is scaring the living shit out of me. who am i to have this work??? i don't deserve it.

tonight, that tiny little line is still a negative. tonight, that faint line is a big fat joke on me. tonight, i'm on the *lucky* side of the statistics, yet again.

tonight, there's no one i can call, no one i can tell...no one to mull it over with. there's too much that wouldn't be said, too many underlying implications. there's no one close enough that wouldn't pity my pitiful, hopeful goddamned self.

tomorrow, i will wake up and take another test that will crush me and laugh at me and call me a fucking asshole. this is my life. and the alternative? that is a possibility, after all.
it can't be.

****
eta: took another test, same story. it's still early, so it can go either way (theoretically). i'll know for sure in a few days...in the meantime, i'm still wondering WHY i want to do this again? i can make this all go away and take control of my life again...theoretically.

time

our first halloween in our new house. the kids were about a year and a half old. we had just contemplated having another child and decided no, we were happy the way we were. i was happy. i had three children, we had just bought a house, and i made kick-ass chicken costumes. all was right with the world.

****

halloween, 2007. about seven weeks after delivering a dead baby girl. thankfully, the kids really liked their "funny ghost" costumes; i was a real shit mom. i felt like everybody in town was thinking i just had a dead baby, and wasn't i just a nightmare. when i look at that face, all i see is hell.

****

this halloween. isn't THAT a charmed life? don't i look recovered? doesn't it seem like i've moved on? i certainly put much thought and effort into creating a family of superheroes...don't you like my Deadbaby Woman (good one, c!)? i just can't seem to reconcile my life. I JUST CAN'T. i want to be better, in many ways i AM better, but MY BABY DIED. how can i be better? i feel ruined inside, like a wrinkled up woman on her deathbed, seeming to welcome slipping away because she's just seen, experienced, too much. i just want peace.

here they are, my superheroes. i try to appreciate what i HAVE. green oceanboy, red firegirl, blue skyegirl. they save me (and make me crazy) every single day. it kills me, too, to think of what having a one year old in the mix would have been like. they would have loved her. i wonder if they would have fought with her as much as they do with each other. i wonder what her costume would have been this year. i wonder what's in store for me.

my elle, skyegirl. i was going to make her feathered bird wings, but thought of callum and made butterfly wings instead.

fly on, all our dead babies. fly on.

****

eta: husband is an extremely vigilant cameraman. he's been harrassing me with the camera since the beginning of time. despite my arguements, i'm really glad to have all the pictures now, even if it is just to think, "damn, look how fat i was!"

also eta: it came to me a minute ago that the magnificents are three of the four elements, and that my dead baby girl is earth, sitting on my nightstand. shit.

"i hate that fucking angel..."

that's when i knew. page thirty-two. sure, the book is on one of the subjects that, since almost 14 months ago, hold my attention immediately, but the pages preceding were about *what happened* (and isn't that always the same story over and over). when i read those words, i knew this book would be different.

actually, i'm lying. the title. "an exact replica of a figment of my imagination." brilliant. isn't that exactly what we're all writing about? i've lived in this strange space of be-ing; i've questioned my own reality; i've questioned who and what p@ige was...beyond a figment of my imagination. real? ghost? IS someone real if no one's ever seen them except you? IS someone real if they never lived? the exact replica of the figment of my imagination- what i still, and will probably always, struggle to express in words. the reason why i still post on this blog is, undoubtedly, that deadbaby moms don't need exact replicas, they have their own to reference.

everyone else, on the other hand...it's what brings us all to our knees. what do we say? do we tell the small-talking stranger? how? what? when? what the fuck? Elizabeth McCracken talks about her book as a calling card, like the "I AM DEAF" cards we get handed on the train or busy sidewalk. jesus, do i wish that was acceptable. can you imagine just handing out a card that said "my baby girl was stillborn on her due date, 9.9.07"? ah, we are freaks...because that sounds really good to me. REALLY good. i think i was feeling something like this when i got both my arms tattooed; i am now a freak on the outside. marginalized. i am not like you. in fact, FUCK YOU AND YOUR SUCCESSFUL REPRODUCTIVE LIFE. on second thought, that's what i'd like my card to say.

to be honest, when she got to the parts about her alive baby after, i didn't like it. for obvious reasons, no? but she somehow made me keep reading (when i otherwise would have closed the book forever) by intertwining the deadbaby story in and out the whole time. there were times i had to stop and figure out which baby she was referring to, and then read the last few sentences over with new perspective. that was interesting, and revealing; all my children are intertwined, my feelings, guilt, love, frustration...it's all relative. my experience as a mother of the alive and dead is not mutually exclusive.

"An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination" by Elizabeth McCracken. it's a memoir by a woman whose first son was stillborn. what can i say? she had me at "fucking angel."

why do i want to get pregnant again?

it seems like a pretty reasonable question. i can think of a thousand answers to it- good ones, too. i also have a thousand answers to why i DON'T want to get pregnant. i think i can drag my brain either direction at this point.

the problem, the real underlying issue, is the reason i have so many answers.

I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TWO THOUSAND GOOD ANSWERS.

it only means cycle after cycle of negative tests. it only means i have to continue questioning my desire to get pregnant, my desire for another baby. it only means that others declare, "let's have a baby!" and are left answering those questions while staring at the two lines.

i'm so sick of justifying. i'm so sick of second-guessing. i'm so sick of having to decide how far i want to go in order to have a baby. i'm so sick of having to have good enough reasons.

i have been trying to get pregnant since january, my first period after. it's october. i'm taking medications. i'm temping and peeing on sticks. i feel like a total asshole; i sometimes do these things during moments of utter disgust and frustration with my alive children. the longer it takes to happen, the more times i will ask WHY and come up with a thousand yay and nay reasons. i'm not sure what i really want, because it's taking so long and i am just so NOT in control over it.

i sometimes read posts about ignorants who announce positive pregnancy tests immediately. when i got the positive with p@ige we told everyone the next day. the next day!! i imagine getting another positive and not telling anyone until i look like i swallowed a spaceship, and even then consider saying it's a huge tumor. but i also imagine coming on here and telling. i imagine telling you guys. i don't want to have that post where i "come clean" or feel torn. this is my only comfortable place; this is the only place i will feel happy about telling.

but first, first i need to get pregnant.

why do i want to do it again?

what a mother-fuck, infertility.

the waiting heart

Chance and Appollo have created the waiting heart to help fund their surrogacy journey. the following words are chance's; they are beautiful. please check out her etsy shop and BUY ONE!!

good luck, my sister.

****

A heart that is waiting to be filled. Unrequited hope, unanswered questions and open ended expectations.
The waiting heart pendant is a symbol for our shared, yet singular experiences. A talisman to represent our hopes and desires for ourselves and also each other, and a reminder that a heart waiting to be filled is also an open heart. Transformation. Evolution. Reassertion of hope. Transition. Hope…that terrifying word.

The hearts are solid sterling silver, engraved by hand (by Chance herself) and come on a Wear to Make Aware pomegranate satin cord, representing Infertility's Common Thread.

We’re all waiting for something…and even if our hearts are already filled; no one forgets what it feels like to wait.

I know I will always remember.

oh yeah, and one more thing...

seeing as i was all wrapped up in the birthday of my dead daughter, i missed the opportunity to share about husband's 9/11 experience as an NYPD officer. (quite a week we'll have from here to eternity, huh?) every year since then, i've circulated the emails he wrote to friends and family, you know, in an effort not to forget. no one has forgotten, but the emails, they are raw and touching, and anyway, here they are:


9/12/2001
I want to thank all who called and or emailed their concerns about my safety during this catastrophe, i arrived on scene at ground zero at the world trade center about 1030 am right after the towers collapsed........what i witnessed in the next 17 hrs is something i must live with for the rest of my life and pray none of you ever ever have to be a part of in your lifetime. my partner and i pulled 2 people to safety from the rubble and pulled dozens more who were already dead either crushed or burned.....we managed to escape the third building collapse simply on adrenaline alone..........other firefighters and police did not. we were finally ordered to leave and were rushed to a nearby makeshift trauma center at the Chelsea piers and treated for heat exhaustion, smoke inhalation, and shock which we did not even realize we had. our blue uniforms were covered in ash and pulverized concrete turning them white. i thank you again for you concerns......it means more than you know considering how close to death we came today. please pray for my fallen brothers who will number somewhere near 300 and for our firefighting brothers who's loses will almost double that number. i will be working 12 hr shifts from 4pm to 4 am so please bear with me if responses are somewhat delayed for the next couple of days. please give blood if you are in the area and stay out of NYC at all costs.....national guards, and the marines are now stationed to aid us. On a personal note i am absolutely awestruck, speechless, heartbroken, and in denial as to this cowardly act of terrorism......im sure it will set in soon enough, and i dread every minute of it. its late and im physically and emotionally spent.....stick together my friends.

9/13/2001
your words of encouragement have lifted my spirits and and give me more reason and hope to deal with this on a daily basis. today we dug, and sifted and seemed to get nowhere....our efforts were delayed for hours due to possible collapses of three surrounding buildings.......the wait was nothing short of agonizing. for my friends who have tried to call my cell, the phone lines are down and the cell connections are few and far between with very week signals. As far as ground zero is concerned.......there is a constant smoldering of ash and fire with a thick cloud hanging over the site forever......the smell is almost indescribable; a mixture of burning debris and concrete.....and it is everywhere......there are rescue workers everywhere and as we pass each other there is an unspoken meeting of our eyes that seems to explain it all combined with the appearance of our uniforms.....there is not a lot of talking going on as we all seem to know there will be many many bodies coming out of this wreckage with little chance of survivors...how do you begin to accept the loss of what could be 20,000 people? many of us keep looking up hoping we will see those famous towers above us but they never seem to appear......our precinct has become a makeshift headquarters with cops from all over the city assigned to our area stopping in to rest and we have received food donations from very generous local churches and aide groups. a list of names of missing Police Officers has been issued and it is lengthy. we have witnessed firehouses turned into living shrines as new yorkers come to drop off flowers and offer condolences and food. i took some pictures today of the devastation but stopped because i felt wrong doing it. we were told shortly after 11pm that the Police effort in the rescue would be cut drastically and this has torn our hearts out....we must now stand by and keep the area clear and open for all emergency vehicles and try to answer the typical radio calls. our fallen are trapped and buried and we can not even help......i cant even convey how this makes us feel.....the hours are wearing us down physically and our morale is very low. I still cant believe this has happened i just want to help and not leave with the hope of finding someone alive but it gets less and less likely. those brave people on the planes who knew those poor people in the towers who never had a chance. this is a nightmare.

9/16/2001
it is now past 11pm on 9/16/01 and i am finally home after what seems much longer than 4 days. my last shift at work was 46hrs long in which time my partner and i went AWOL from our assignments to continue our digging effort to try to find survivors. we did not find any. the night of the rain storm we worked feverishly through the night with members of the LA County urban rescue team and their search dogs.....the dogs; some trained to find live scents, some trained to find death known as cadaver dogs. we climbed the rubble and followed the dogs and marked spots everywhere they stopped and barked and dug......there were many many spots, each we marked with bright orange tape and i tried to mark as many of the sites with a makeshift cross as well.....materials and size were problematic. we found an 18 wheel truck crushed and pulverized beyond description....it was right at the very edge of the destruction......its occupant no doubt tried in vain to escape the carnage around him and was literally 10 feet from the edge of the debris field......some 4 hrs later after we called in welders, tractors, and a crane we saw what was left of the truck....it had been reduced to inches in some places......the occupant was unrecognizable to the untrained eye. we continued our search and actually found several pieces of the airplanes.....one piece with a portion of the red lettering from American airlines.....the FBI was notified and they sent in a team to remove the debris. An encouraging aspect of our search revealed deep "voids" in the rubble where we hoped we would find some survivors or some bodies........we found neither. it seemed as if we were being punished and we knew we would have to dig til we dropped to find anyone among all of this...... my partner and i managed to navigate the rubble and avoid the still burning fires hidden deep beneath till we found ourselves just a few feet from the still burning remains of the WTC. an eerie twisted, tortured, corner piece....all that was left of tower 2. there was an opening and what appeared to be an extremely large void going straight down for what seemed to be 60-100ft below us was actually the street.......the rubble was that high. we yelled down but no one answered back. the rains came and we were ordered to abandon the search.......during the breaks in the storm we continued but again had to retreat. we holed up for the storm in a corner bar called the ST. Charlies bar on Albany and Carlslyle St. all the windows were blown out, there was no electricity, and the place was covered in dust. this would be our new home for the next few hours. to our amazement there was a makeshift triage center in there along with many firefighters and other cops from the city as well as construction workers. we all shared in a toast to our fallen and voiced our anger and frustration through the night. cars and trucks had been placed on top of each other across the street to make way for equipment. out of nowhere a yellow cab seemed to come alive with its light on and horn blasting......my partner having reached his limit, screamed at the empty, crushed cab and soon others joined in as well. we were all exhausted and frustrated........we knew there would be no survivors and some would never be found or identified........some of the nurses cried, some of the firemen cried.....hell we all cried at one point. morning came and we tried to resume the dig but footing was made impossible by the rain. soon after word came down that this was no longer a search and rescue operation and that all searches would be halted indefinitely.......the big equipment would be brought in to remove the larger debris....our job it seemed was done. defeated, tired, and filthy my partner and i walked back to our precinct in the rain, hoping the wetness would wash away all we had seen.....it did not. we had just 2 short hours to get ready for our next 12 hr shift. we would not be sent back into ground zero again and knew no other cops would as well. from 4pm till 9am the next morning we were posted six blocks away on Broadway......sentenced to watch all the utility trucks, loaders, tractors and endless emergency vehicles head into the zone in a vain attempt to find people. not much was said between us that night, a comfortable silence if you will, a quiet time to remember and reflect. my god there was such destruction and we were helpless to do anything about it. our efforts were in vain, there were no survivors and never will be....those who came out alive were only rescuers who were injured trying to help the others. we knew how this experience would change our lives and how it had brought us closer than ever together.......we shared in each others pain and we never left each others side. our punishment in all of this is to be a survivor and to be forced every single day into remembering what we saw. the outpouring of American pride has never been so great and we witnessed that too. walking down the west side highway to get to the site, the sidewalks were lined 5 deep with well wishers,: women and children, men and grandparents, black, white, chinese and everyone in between....these people cheered us offered us home made food and just wanted to touch us as we walked.......we walked tall, we walked proud, and gave these people reason to believe even in the shadow of the task at hand...... I thank them and i thank you for all of your words of support and encouragement. I couldnt have made it with out you. Someday we will all get together and have a good cry over this and remember those who have fallen and those who are scarred from searching for them. I am home with my wife now and plan to spend every minute i have with her before i go back to work on Tuesday.....Surround yourselves in friends and family and talk about this experience. we will move on, our lives forever changed, our security forever threatened......be proud, we will rebuild. Thank you all again.

9/25/2001
My friends and family, Its now been 14 days since all of our lives changed and we still find ourselves looking for answers and digging out of the destruction. For the first time since 9/11 i went into the portion where the plaza used to be. For those of you who remember it, it was vibrant and full of life with a giant golden globe just behind the north tower. All that remains eerily enough is that golden globe. It has a large dent in it but it still stands, as bright as ever. It is the only thing not destroyed on the entire WTC site. It sits among a sea of twisted girders and wreckage as high as some of the buildings left over. There are rescue workers still combing the site for survivors, but they know as we all do there aren't any. They look like little ants as they criss cross their way over the piles. The dog trainers ask us for our assistance every now and then by posing as "bodies" in the rubble. We will go off so the dogs cant see us, put some of the lighter debris on ourselves and wait for the dogs to find us. This is to alleviate the depression of not finding survivors for the dogs. They get so excited when they find us, its like they are recharged and all they want to do is get back in and find more live ones. The smell coming from the site grows each day. I cant not explain what the smell of death is like, and i definitely cant explain what over 6000 bodies smell like. That's the hardest part to deal with. There are still over 6000 people out there in the rubble, buried so far under our feet we cant even begin to imagine pulling them out for their families. So far the one thing that brings tears to my eyes and those around me is when they find FDNY, NYPD, or Port Authority bodies. Usually they bring a dog in on a part with a strong scent. The workers concentrate their efforts on that site until they find something. If it is a fireman, or cop all work immediately stops. Cranes are shut off and the area becomes very quiet. Men from their respected companies or precincts are called in. A small ceremony is performed right in the middle of all this chaos, and they place the body, or what's left of it on a stretcher. An American flag is handed down making sure everyone touches it and it is draped over the remains. Depending on how deep or far in the body is they'll either hoist it out with a crane or walk it out. Then the hard part comes. It is placed on small police or fire buggy, and all work outside the site comes to a halt. All our hats come off and an aisle of people is made, rescue workers, construction, PD, FD, nurses and anyone around. One of us will call attention and then everyone salutes as the body goes by, the salute is held until they have placed the body in an ambulance and is taken away. I usually begin to loose it at this point as i am in uniform and people are following my lead. I shed tears of pride and tears of sorrow for these men and women who lost their lives here. It is a moving experience, one that was repeated three times the other night as we found an FD, and two Port Authority cops. We have yet to find any NYPD officers that were lost, and it saddens me to think of their families that so desperately want the closure. Maybe soon. Maybe. The work continues round the clock and it seems that i too am working round the clock. Our shifts begin about 4pm and end usually around 7am, putting myself in bed by 830am, only to get up and do it all again. The hours are rough and exhausting but when i get down or really tired i take a walk over to where they have cards and candles set up from the children. I read them and it gives me renewed hope. My friends, please remember this is far from over. Holy War has been declared on us and as soon as we strike at those terrorist bastards, they will come looking for their cowardly payback striking any civilians they deem necessary. There are possibly thousands of them floating around just waiting, so i implore you to remain on your guard and be aware of your surroundings and those around you. If something does happen do not be afraid to fight back. Its funny how before all this, the cause of the month was racial profiling and how terrible and unconstitutional it was. Now we are being told and ordered to profile the Arabs in any instance. Always a knee jerk reaction. Anyway, stay safe my friends, and protect your family and those you love at all costs. If they hit they will come at NYC again so i will be ready as well. Remember those who have fallen in the wake of this tragedy and those who rose above to dig them out and rebuild. We forget all to easily in this country and i pray you never forget and keep the same fire burning in you throughout these trying times. Thank you for letting me express my feelings through writing. My outlets are limited and there is only so much i can place on my wife.
your friend, m.

be-ing

i can talk about p@ige without crying. i can talk about her story, my story; i can talk about the whole thing front to back without flinching. i tell people, strangers, that my baby, my daughter, died on her due date.

i feel the need to tell people about p@ige, but not because i want attention. i've never been an emotional attention-seeker; that was one of my biggest issues with having triplets- i hated the attention. my need to tell people about my 40-week stillbirth is that people don't think that kind of thing actually happens! people in general know that "miscarriage is common," and they "don't tell anyone about a pregnancy until after 12 weeks." but stillbirth? it's still a shock; it's still an alienating, lonely fucking shock. telling people that my daughter died at 40 weeks makes one person they saw, in the flesh, whose baby died. and maybe, one day, it will happen to someone they know, or even to them. and maybe, they will remember that girl in the supermarket/library/tattoo parlor that birthed a full-term dead baby. and maybe they won't feel so much like an asshole freak of nature. i don't want our babies to be dirty little secrets anymore.

don't get me wrong. i don't initiate the conversation about my dead baby unless we are already talking about our respective children, or if we're talking about something i'm doing that was directly inspired by my p@ige. even so, considering the nature of conversation between near or actual strangers, it comes up alot.

my only problem is wording.

i usually say my baby, or my daughter, died on her due date last september. people rarely ask questions, they just say they're sorry, which is totally fine. but really, there's this strange feeling i get when i say it (besides the obvious, telling a stranger my baby died inside me)...it's this feeling that it's not quite true.

i actually just figured this out on her birthday. it was not at all the constant tear-fest i anticipated. i went along with a couple of my plans, stopping at the hospital and getting a photo of her plaque (i also ran into both my OB AND my special nurse, which was strange because she NEVER works during the week), and making her cake. then i went to therapy. i only wanted to talk about p@ige and related topics; i made a mental list and it was all fine and good until words flew out of my mouth that, strung together, meant i felt like a fraud for telling people my baby died.

because really, she was not born alive and then died...yet i still say she was my baby. to my mind, a baby is someone you hold alive in your arms, even if only for one breath.

was she real?

she was a real baby that grew inside me, getting ready to live. but she died. was she ever really a baby?

saying all that out loud made me lose it. i cried and sobbed and all the things i hate doing in front of someone else. i'm not good at emotion. i hate it. i abhor it.

i guess my only problem is NOT wording. it's the fact that words betray me. words make me painfully aware that i grieve someone who never really was. i say all those things to myself and to people and to the universe with an emotionally dead voice. it sounds good and it makes me feel like i'm *doing* something about all the fucked up shit i feel inside. i'm good at actions.

conflicted as i am, i will never stop saying it.

the actual day

i've been thinking about what i would write today.

would i post a bunch of pictures, neatly documenting all that i have left of my pregnancy and birth of a baby that didn't live? would they, in a colorful row, evidence that i am indeed NOT crazy...that i am a mother to a dead baby?

would i bake the cake (red velvet), decorate it (whipped cream cheese frosting and strawberries and pink sugar crystals), photograph it (in my usual suck-ass picture-taking style), and then post it and tell about how i nearly lost it in the supermarket yesterday? how i thought about how one year ago yesterday i was wandering around the supermarket with husband, looking at all the babies and talking about how we were going to have her any minute, buying nursing bras and newborn diapers, with a dead baby in my belly? how i tried to hide some tears while trying to decide whether to buy one of those stupid *1* candles? how i then decided that the 1 candle would be way to creepy, even for a deadbaby-crazy mom?

the day is here, and i have no pictures to post. i have my stack of stuff: a positive pregnancy test, some photos of a pregnant me, some photos of a dead baby girl, a stained baby hat and receiving blanket, some letters of condolence, a couple of letters of donations in her name. let's not forget, and i almost did, a cardboard box of ashes in a gray plastic shopping bag. not much. who said recently that it's the ego that holds on to objects to prove that we are? i don't even know if i got that right...i just know that i believe it. i just know that i don't need those things to know her. i don't need those things to know it really happened to me. i don't need those things to keep me anchored in that time and place, because really, what she has given to me has no time or place or weight.

this thing has two lives: my suffering as a mother to a dead baby and all the raw, fleshy, memory-laden sadness and anger...and my growth and learning as a mother to a baby that will only teach me about myself and life and never piss me off with diapers exploding with shit, waking me up in the night, and fighting relentlessly with her siblings. the first mother needs to have stuff; the first mother needs to revel in the things, the evidence, the horror...she needs the memories, the details. the second mother wrote that airy shit in the last paragraph.

but today, today is the actual day...

i bought some chocolate mimosa tree seeds last week, and i want to start them today. mimosa trees have tiny, ferny leaves that close up at night (and when touched) and big, fluffy, pink perfumed flowers. the regular variety has green leaves, but the chocolate has brown. it grows 3-6 feet per year, with a 10'-30' shade umbrella. i think it is the perfect tree for sitting under...whichever mother i am that day.

i finally, after calling to follow-up about four times over the past year, got the call that p@ige's plaque is up in L&D. can you imagine it took this long? i might go over and see it today. and take a picture. (i hope it's not too hard to get a good photo of it, being brass and all...i suck.)

i want to try to write a letter to the sister of a co-worker who's carrying a baby with anencephaly. she wants to carry the baby to term. i want to tell her that her choice is beautiful- that she can appreciate what she has as the delicate thing it is, especially because i wish i knew i needed to when i was pregnant. i also want to give her a listing of blogs that i found written by moms who chose what she is choosing...because i am always surprised by the number of people who still have no idea what blogs are, and i don't know what i would have done without my deadbabymafia. (and in doing so i hope you all realize what i really mean to say is thank you, except in a much deeper way than those words can ever express...)

i want to contact the village cemetery and find out how we can create a small stillborn area where parents can scatter their baby's ashes. i imagine that some will choose to scatter their ashes there because they can't afford a plot and headstone, but others will choose it simply because they didn't realize they would need a place to visit when they were sitting in a hospital bed making decisions about their dead baby. i have no idea what that space would look like, if its creation is even possible, but i want to find out.

those are all the things i imagine i can do today...but this day, this actual day, my alive daughter told me that we need to wait for everyone to come over before we sing the happy birthday song.

"not this time," i told her, "nobody is coming over for this birthday. it's just for us."

i will try to extend her memory out of our bounds; i will try to plant and photograph and write and dedicate. i wonder if i will ever get over the fact that p@ige is only for us.

cut, torn

well, the boy has arrived.

after days and days of talking to my sister about when and how and what the fuck regarding her impending labor and birth, it happened, but certainly NOT quite the way i expected. (NO SHIT, right? did i just say EXPECTED??? well, yeah, i kinda did expect it to go smoothly and normally...it wasn't ME, after all. don't i sound like a spoiled friggin brat?)

her water broke on sunday morning and i drove down there asap. i got her walking, walking, and more walking. nothing. after about 5 hours of dragging her sticky slimy self around town without a contraction to speak of, off we went to the hospital...where we learned that she was GBS+...ummmm...shouldn't the doctor told her that? shouldn't the covering doc have checked that when my sister called in when her water broke?? it was right in the chart at the hospital, yet the covering asked my sister whether she knew (no) and then told her to do whatever she wanted.

ummmmmmm...am i an asshole or isn't GBS with a broken water a cause of term stillbirth??? was the covering doc going to call us back if my sister's "whatever she wants" included NOT going to the hospital until contractions started (which would have meant, pretty much, not for a long, looooooong- maybe into days- time)? maybe i am just over-sensitive.

we arrived at the hospital at about 4pm and they started her on pitocin, the scary, labor-inducing, monster contractions drug.

nothing. nothing. noooooooooooope! no contractions.

NO LABOR.

they upped the pitocin all night and finally turned it off at 3am. they tried again at 7am, to no avail. c-section was called for 10.30.

words can't describe what was going through me. my mind and flesh were so confused...i was bracing for being present for this labor and delivery, bracing for the envy and the plain heaviness of it all and then...nothing.

i was relieved yet very, very sad about her having a c-section.

i have never minced words, i have never tried to perfume my shit thoughts and feelings. i've always been brutally honest here, so i admit i was relieved that i didn't have to be slapped in the face, AGAIN, by someone with the same parents as i have. i'm relieved i don't have to be the fucking family freak...again...alone.

i carried triplets and my cervix never shortened or softened or opened. after (still)birthing paige (by c-sec) on her due date, the doctor told me he didn't think i would have gone into labor spontaneously seeing as my cervix was not soft, shortened, or open at all. my sister didn't go into labor after her some bloody show, ruptured membranes, and hours of a shithouse full of pitocin. maybe i would have had problems from the beginning...without triplets...even with one baby. maybe i never would have had the birth i think i lost because i got pregnant with triplets and an automatic c-section. maybe my fantasies are just that. maybe i can't know shit about shit so why wait around for things to keep disproving my *poor me* theories?

really, why bother?

moving on, the baby boy is really quite adorable. i am certainly NOT the baby ohhhing-goooing type, but he is pushing me into a *want a baby* phase. luckily those phases are short-lived, you know, considering i'm all let-go-and-let-the-powers-of-the-universe about getting pregnant.

reproduction is NOT what it's cracked up to be.

what i meant to say

i am still thinking about the dead baby mom.

i am thinking about being in the hospital, feeling so much like the only thing i was was mother of a dead baby. i think i thought that everyone who came in my room thought mainly about my dead baby, too. vulnerability is so scary.

i am thinking about the fact that when i tell people i had a dead baby last year, they are still just waiting to ask or tell me some other dumb-ass thing. i tell them about my dead baby so that they can know it happens to real flesh-and-blood faces. maybe they will remember when they hear about the next dead baby; maybe they will think about the fact that they heard that before and maybe it's not so rare after all.

we are all our own universes. sometimes it's hard to think about that. it's especially hard to think about it in relation to a dead baby. i think it's the feeling that she really, truly, only matters to ME. she was only alive to ME. she never lived and she's not counted.

i feel ridiculous to think it, because i know the answer, but are we really that alone?

they know not, or the other side

a post from an OB nurse blog (highlighting/paragraph breaks, mine):






Yesterday's shift wasn't so bad. My first patient was a preterm patient on magnesium, and was nice and stable. She was just hourly checks (reflexes, pulse ox, vitals, running her EFM strip through, I&O). The mag was working really well for her, keeping her contractions at bay - at most, she would have maybe 3-4 contractions in an hour, and they weren't that painful for her.




My other patient was my problem child. Her baby had died recently, at about 20 weeks gestation, and was an induction for IUFD. The issues (other than the usual grieving process) included: finding and establishing an IV site, and some serious BO going on in the room.




The IV site: multiple nurses tried and failed. The IV specialist nurse tried and failed twice. The anesthesiologist tried and failed THREE times. Enough is enough. I told the patient, since we hadn't even started her induction yet, we were going to give her a break from all of that poking. I explained why we needed an IV site, and she was just pissed off (and rightly so) about all of the failed IV start attempts.




She was also pissed off about the whole thing of her baby dying inside of her, and wanted to be discharged home as soon as she delivered. Anyhow, she wanted to just get this show on the road so she could hit the road.




I gave her juice and crackers to help appease the situation, and when she seemed receptive, I asked her if I may just look for veins for her IV. I also brought in the extra tiny IV needles (from the NICU), knowing that if I found a vein, it was going to need a teeny tiny angiocath needle.With her consent (giving her total control of the situation - something she absolutely needed, after how she was treated before I arrived), I looked for a vein. She had a very nice antecubital vein that was already attempted twice for an IV site. I tried to place a 24 g IV in it, but because those needles are so short, it didn't work. The vein was still there, and the patient herself said - "hey, this one is big, you want to try the bigger needle?" So I did. Darn vein vasoconstricted upon touching it. The woman was so patient with me, and I kept telling her that I would stop at any time she told me.



Moving on......I looked on her other arm. Nothing. Nada, zilch in the antecubital space. Seriously, you can usually find SOMETHING. Nope. Nothing. Looking down more...nothing. Looking in her hand. A teeny, itty, bitty little vein. I gave her the option - do you want me to try this one? - but this would be my last try. I would be using the smallest IV we had (the 24 gauge). She said do it. I did it. Nothing. No flash. Crap, I'm thinking......this poor woman has no freaking veins! I was oh so gentle with this vein....basically her last resort, because she had NOTHING....unless we tried in her feet (which also had no veins!).



Digging for the vein (I hate doing that, but she said to keep trying).......when all of a sudden....BLOOD FLASH!!! Holy crap! I'm in! I threaded that tiny angiocath over the needle....disengaged the needle....removed the needle...and blood was pumping out! SUCCESS!!!



Got her hooked up to her IV fluids, and the site stayed PERFECT. No infiltration. No pain. No edema.Needless to say, I did the Happy Nurse Dance at the nurse's station, when I announced that I got the IV start - something the IV specialist and the anesthesiologist could not get after multiple attempts. WOOHOOO!!

* * *

i just can't stop thinking about this deadbaby mom.

but this view, from the other side, was very...very...i don't know...unnerving. just how the whole world, every person, just keeps going on about their day and job and there that mom is...taking it...how the universe in her brain is spinning out of control. but i can't blame this nurse. who the fuck would even WANT TO KNOW what it's like to birth a dead baby???

who the fuck would want to know that? not me.

recall

i've been seeing recall info on some bassinet all over the place, and made me think of all the things that get recalled. the first thing i think about is whether i own the thing being recalled.

but recalls really mean something else: dead babies. as i sit there and read the blurb underneath the newscaster, some other family is in hell with a dead baby. when they see the recall it means THEM. every time they see a recall it will be a needle in their heart. i wonder if they will ever place another kid in a toy/crib/contraption ever again.

i wonder if i will ever get pregnant. i wonder how i'm going to live this way...i just am, i guess.

the mirror has two faces

here i am, simultaneously anticipating my dead baby's first birthday and waiting for my sister to call and tell me she's in labor.

(are you kidding me?)

i really am excited for her to become a mother. i'm really glad that she will be more able to relate to my stupid mom stuff. i'm so excited to become an aunt! i am really, really happy about our growing family, especially in light of the fact that we've pushed my mother so close to the sidelines she's almost in the parking lot. we are creating this whole new universe; we are creating this close extended family life for our kids. and my sisters and i, we're the new matriarchs. it feels good.

i am going to be with her during her labor and birth. we've talked about it- what she's learned in lamaze, and what i've read about what could be helpful. it's been making me a bit, i don't know, uneven-feeling, talking about something i've always wanted to experience but probably NEVER can. also, there's that whole thing about WHAT THE FUCK DO I KNOW ABOUT IT? i've never been in labor. on the other hand, i want to be an OB nurse, and this is going to be my first real-live birth. i sometimes wonder how i will feel helping women in labor and not being able to totally relate, but then remember how many male OBs there are. i may even be better than a bitch OB nurse who had nine vaginal deliveries. the real issue, i think, is my envy.

(don't worry- i realize that once those babies come out dead, i'll be star OB nurse of the fucking century...i wonder if i'll feel like i'm just doing the necessary until my REAL job presents itself (a dead baby)...like batman...haha)

talking to her waiting to go into labor...it's also sucking me right back into that huge pregnant body i had one year ago to the week...that whole WAITING to go into labor. the waiting. the wondering. the fucking anti-climactic WAAAAAAAITING. this morning i thought about how sometimes, when my insides start gurgling and kicking about, i'm still pregnant. i think i'll feel pregnant forever, in those moments before my brain kicks in and starts screaming, "YOU HAD A DEAD BABY YOU FUCKING IDIOT AND YOU CAN'T GET PREGNANT AGAIN SO JUST KEEP TELLING YOURSELF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE!!" i get sad for myself that she will (most probably) wait and wait and then begin labor but i will continue to wait. i get sad about it. i get sad about how my waiting ended in a silent ultrasound in the ER. i get sad about still waiting, in those moments when i'll be pregnant forever and ever.

i've been trying not to anticipate the actual birthday. i know that these weeks and days leading up to it are worse, but maybe the anticipatory grief is it's own player. i imagine the things i want to do that day. i can barely think about it without losing it. i didn't think i would feel this way, but i do. i can't believe i will think about having a one, two, ten, seventeen, twenty-three, forty-five year old daughter who is missing every year of my life on september the 9th. i can't believe my flesh will feel that torrential mourning when it feels and smells the summer warmth turn chilly. (fuck. fuck. fuck. FUCKKKKKKKKK.)

this year, i think i want to make a cake. it is a birthday. she was born that day, even though dead. i think i want to make a cake every year. i think i feel like she's not here, but i still appreciate her and everything i've become since she became a part of me. this all sounds really zen and accepting and big of me, but for real, when i think about that cake i feel like i want to die. to me, that might mean i'm on to something...

i've arrived

despite having mentioned my abortion before, i guess i had to pay my dues for a while until getting the privilege of my first anon right-winger comment.

but, my time has come! an anon comment from my previous post:


Charm from reality check:
"I had an abortion during my first marriage, and i always had the sense that i was a good mother to that baby"

You're not serious are you? A good mother for killing your baby?? your kids brother or sister?

repent.

my reality, or appreciation day

11 months

i realized, just a few hours ago, that today is 11 months. i've been pretty adolescent about how things have been going; i've got this thing down!! yet...YET...the year is rolling around pretty quickly now and i am feeling like a broken-down girl. this fucking sucks and i am really about to break. and what was my last, long-winded post about?

boo-hoo, poor me and my lost vaginal birthing experience where i got three live babies. and poor me again, because i couldn't even birth my dead one, but i didn't think about that then because i was too depressed during the seven or so months leading up to that wondrous finale of darkness.

this really is like the fucking mafia. DON'T EVEN THINK YOU CAN LEAVE...BECAUSE YOU CAN'T!!! and the more you think you have? well, the last laugh is on this vicious cycle, that's for god damned sure.

over and over and over and OVER (a letter to ngm)

I started using visualization in third grade, when I had chronic stomachaches. A very sensitive doctor taught me how to do it, and it worked. Every time. I started thinking I was powerful with my mind, and so, started to implore the universe to do other things, like clear up traffic on our way to summer camp and things like that, and it worked; if not every time, enough to support my blossoming relationship with connection. At thirteen, both my (younger) sisters got chickenpox pretty badly. I decided that there was no way I was going to have that disgusting disease, and told my mother I wouldn’t get it. I went as far as to rub them with calamine lotion and drink from their glasses. I have never had chickenpox. My mother kept me home for an extra two weeks, believing I was going to explode any minute. HA! WATCH OUT, WORLD!!

At twelve, I got my first period. They were irregular from the start…completely irregular. I was happy at first, because that meant way fewer periods than my friends. There was, however, a lingering whisper that it would maybe be hard to get pregnant. But who really cares at 12?

At 20, I got married to a horrible man about 10 yrs my senior. I told him I couldn’t get pregnant, and we didn’t use birth control. It took exactly one year to get pregnant. I was in shock! I was daring the universe, and it happened. My husband was MORTIFIED, and I quickly realized there was no way in hell I could give my child a father like that…and had an abortion 3 days later. To this day, I feel that I was a good mother to that baby. I left him soon thereafter.

The break-up was really terrible. He was a horrible narcissist (clinically, I believe). Suffice it to say that he did NOT appreciate the fact that I was leaving HIM. A few years later, still needing closure that would never happen, I remembered my power. Over the course of a weekend, using (some probably half-ass version of) self-hypnosis, I created a new ending wherein we parted with respect. The dreams (nightmares?) stopped. I was free to marry my current husband and move on.

Once happily married, we decided to try for a child. I knew I got pregnant before, but I also knew it would take some time. After the first year, we went to an RE and had the work-ups (normal), started the clomid, and had an iui. It scared the shit out of me. I wanted to be a midwife! I studied health and medical anthropology!! We don’t know SHIT about what really happens at conception! There was no way, jose, any possibility that I was going to let them suck my eggs out, inject them with sperm, and let them sit in a petri dish! HOW VIOLENT! Jesus god, there was JUST. NO. WAY.

I embarked on one year of natural fertility stimulation. I did herbs. I did acupuncture. I did BBT and cervical mucus charting. I did the fertility diet. I did OPTs. I even did the mother-fucking moon shit where you sleep completely in the dark and then with a goddamned nightlight on to simulate the phases of the moon, supposedly having some effect (on the pituitary?) to balance hormones. Whatever.

At about the four-year mark, I was spent. Marc was spent. We went back to an RE. We had IVF, with ICSI (sperm injection). To keep my spirits positive, I spent the dreaded two-week wait (for pregnancy results) interviewing independent birthing center and homebirth midwives. Then, THEN…….triplets. I spent my handicapped pregnancy grieving my homebirth- fuck, my VAGINAL birth-, grieving my chance to be pregnant once per child, grieving the fact that I would be split in three after the birth (I HAD NO IDEA). On the positive side, I never thought about the fact that they could (one or two or all) die. It wasn’t on the radar. The babies were pulled out of me at about 33 weeks after 4 days of PROM, steroid injections, magnesium sulfate…generally speaking, HELL. Two girls and one boy, 4lbs each, perfect. They were home from the NICU in twenty days.

The whole pregnancy, my only saving grace was breastfeeding. I could still breastfeed them! I spent hundreds of hours reading about how others breastfed triplets. LLL be damned, no one from there would help me! But I found, thank god for the internet, other triplet moms who had done it. I COULD DO IT TOO…until we all had thrush so badly I wanted to DIE. Pumping was slightly less suicide inducing, so I figured I would do that until the endless efforts to cure the thrust would work. It didn’t work until it was too late. I was broken. I pumped for a year and they got minimal formula. It shocks everyone that I pumped for that long, for triplets. I am proud that I hung on so long. But what was the alternative? There wasn’t one. I was a broken, tortured prisoner of reproductive circumstance.

When the three were about 18 months old, we considered having another baby. Lo and behold, my body was telling me it was time for a second child!! It didn’t know we made THREE the first time!! It would be our fourth but truly, seriously felt like a second. I never realized what people meant when they said “biological clock!!” We decided against it eventually. I mean, who wants to go back to an RE when they already have three kids?

Five months later, I was spontaneously pregnant. Our miracle conception. My dreams of homebirth (technically HBAC at that point), breastfeeding, ONE baby to care for…it would heal me. Birth is healing, right? I got me a homebirth midwife and a doula. I was worried that I couldn’t HBAC with GDM and thought I had it again (had it with the three). I tested blood sugar with my monitor. It wasn’t good. The midwife, on the other hand, convinced me I didn’t, and I believed her. I was gaining weight like CRAZY. She never asked me about my diet except, “how are you eating?” to which I would reply, “good.” It was good (ok, average) for someone without GDM. The baby was getting big, and she said as much. There was no GTT offered or even mentioned, despite history. It was a non-issue.

The whole pregnancy, I was severely depressed. How do I cope with depression? Why, with food! I felt cripplingly guilty that I was going to “heal myself” from my previous hellacious reproductive efforts. I would look at the three I had and cry about the disconnect. What the fuck was I going to do if the baby was born HBAC, one baby, who I could care for the RIGHT way…what of the tremendous GUILT of not being able to do the same for my other children?? So eating, eating, EATING over those feelings kept it, I don’t know…bearable for the instant I was stuffing myself? I was eating the good foods: fruit, veg, etc…but I was also eating the crappy.

Then she died inside me, the day before her due date.

The moment the tech put the wand on my huge belly, I knew she was dead. The thought was, exactly, I KILLED HER. I knew I killed her with the depression and the eating. I knew, somewhere in me the whole time, I DID have GD. The morning before, I had googled “high blood sugar fetal demise.” So, there it was.

She was ripped from me, DEAD, on her due date. Another c-section.

I went to therapy. I am accepting. I have learned and grown and know my baby girl gave me new life. I have seen things, raw things, things that I would have never seen had she been born alive. I am better for having had her. I know I am going back to school for my RN and will work in L&D/antepartum. I will be the hands off, woman respecting OB nurse. And Paige showed me that. And more. She is me, and I am her mother.

I know that, even if I did become pregnant again, it probably can’t be a VBAC- GDM, 2 c-secs, history of irregular periods and infertility. I’ve read that many IVF moms go past due and need induction, probably because the hormone insufficiency that caused the infertility throw off the normal signals to begin labor. Uterine scars=no induction. Infertility=possible problems starting labor. Previous c-secs+GDM+previous stillbirth at term=possible compromised placenta=very nervous providers and mother.

In other words, even if I did get pregnant again, I still probably will not get the chance to BIRTH A BABY. My dream is DEAD. And how is that going to affect my ability to be the L&D nurse I want to be? Will I grieve every time for the loss of my own dream? Will I be effective enough, never going through it myself, not being able to truly understand from that place of experience?

And, what of my connection to my alive babies? They were violently “given” to me. They pinned me down during pregnancy. Then they were violently birthed. The process that was meant to empower a mother has broken me. I DON’T WANT TO BE A PRISONER TO MY BROKEN REPRODUCTIVE SELF ANY LONGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what to do?

it's over...the dreaded convo

i hadn't told my daughters (or son) that my sister was going to have a baby. i didn't want to tell them someone else had a baby in their belly. there were many reasons, as you can imagine.

here's how the conversation went, on the drive to her baby shower:

me: "girls, i have to tell you something. auntie j is going to have a baby. IT'S A BOY. the baby is in her belly right now."

(i thought to stress it was a boy so they wouldn't think...i don't know...about my girl.)

a: "like your baby, mommy...but you have a girl in your belly!"

me: "no, honey, mommy doesn't have a baby in my belly anymore. she died."

e: "oh. can i have cake at the party?"

i've read it over and over in deadbabyland. the conversation will cut you like a knife and then be over with the most flippant of requests.

but they remember.

incest

to elaborate on the "washing of hands" of everything reproductive, i had a job interview today.

being at home with three three (and a half)-year-olds is doing nothing positive for my sanity level. unfortunately, the whole deadbaby thing came around the same time they were to begin transition into the TRUE terrible phase of childhood....THREE.

NOT good for a deadbaby mama.

last week, the camel's back broke; i realized they needed something i couldn't be: a preschool teacher. and that's ok (right? RIGHT?!?). i've always been against sending them to school before kindergarten but i have to admit that it's my own ego standing between them and what they need.

and i can't lie to you. I NEED IT TOO.

as it stands, i will be working only to pay their tuition. and that's A-OK with me.

so.........the incest part.

i will be working in a women's health group practice (read: OB).

i will be working for the same doc that delivered p@ige.

i don't know what that's going to be like. but i do know that, in terms of my future nursing plans, it's right where i need to be.

happy birthday, to one that lived

me.

for the past week or so, i've been so melancholy. i've never really cared much about my birthday, but this year it's bringing me back around to p@ige. i haven't realized why until now, when i checked bloglines and there are just SO. MANY. DEADBABY. BIRTHDAYS.

last september, when i first had the need to google "stillbirth blog", i remember noticing how many women became deadbaby moms on or right exactly around my birthday. i remember thinking about how sad i would be for us on the day i was born alive. and it happened, and i didn't even know why.

i've been surprised, actually, because i've been at a pretty good place. i've been reading OB nurse blogs; i've been trying to re-direct my focus to the future i can actually control (you know, as opposed to fucking infertility, that mother-fuck). i am now leaning way more towards iud and a symbolic wash of the hands of this reproductive black hole. which is good. really good.

until my next episode of baby desperation...but i suspect that those episodes will continue forever, since, of course, you know, i am still pregnant with a ghost.

for now, happy/sad birthday to me. and to tash, and ashleigh, and janis...because for me? i was born the day she died.

what a miracle

if i can't get pregnant again, that means p@ige was special. it means she was some kind of freak happening; we were really lucky to have that happen.

i don't want her to be special. maybe i just want to get pregnant again so she won't be special anymore. i think i want to get pregnant again so i won't feel like i killed my miracle baby; so i didn't squander my only opportunity.

i got pregnant by accident, by surprise, and acted like a fucking brat the whole time. i feel like the only opportunity to fill some of that goddamned hole of regret is to get pregnant again and have a do-over. i KNOW it's not a do-over. i read read reeeeeeead about the pregnancies and babies after deadbabies and know it's not a do over.

but right now, it kinda is. i can't help but feel like it still is a little do-over even after you get another pregnancy and baby, but no one wants to admit it. am i wrong???

ghost baby

i'm not sure what i want to say about living with my ghost baby, but i feel like this picture, with it's hidden, secret baby, says alot of it. can you see it? i wonder if i'm just angry that everyone can't see my ghost baby either.

for the gipper

i really do feel like i need to win one. after everything- the infertility, the multiple birth, the baby death- i want to just win this last time and be done with it all. but i think the whole thing is just a fantasy. the carrot. the plaster.

all your comments are so, so right. and the farther i get from achieving a pregnancy, the harder it is to want it. the less desperate it is.

on the other hand, it's probably when i feel the least like another baby would be a good idea, that it would happen. because FUCK ME, you know?

i just want to feel like i've already won, which i kinda do. i want to feel like i'm winning every moment. sometimes i do. other times...are just other times.

sometimes i just feel like i want another chance. but another chance for what, exactly? what chances am i giving up every moment i waste thinking about getting pregnant again? because i don't know if it will happen; no matter what i do, i can't know. i just have to win every moment anyway.

i am finding out that i have a hard time with feelings. my DOING keeps me from my BEING. my "knowing" keeps me from the knowledge that i can not know.

for now, i just don't want to miss the moments with the people i'm already a mother to; i don't want to lose those moments to fantasy. i've already won.

yet, here i am.

stark raving white

i've been staring at one line since yesterday, and my eyes hurt. my eyes are seeing lines where there are obviously none...obviously, at least, for anyone else but me. the area below the test lines are blindingly white, yet still i stare and hallucinate.

i am stuck. i am stuck in indecisiveness, which can work with infertility. i guess when i think hard enough about getting pregnant or not i can be happy with either, but jesus christ above, the frustration of negative test after negative test is maddening...

which begs the question, am i again caught up in the success of the two pink lines, or do i really, really, REALLY want another screaming, crazy-making child?

the process of infertility is feeling a bit safe these days too, ironically. i know how to do it. even the craziness feels warm and familiar. i wonder how long and how far i will try.

really, though, i am not as pathetic as all that sounds, thank god. i am actually feeling pretty good. i am learning to be mindful and appreciate every moment, and trying to compartmentalize the infertility. i am a mom, after all.

no matter what happens, i am already a mom.

my mother's day gift

my dead daughter gave me my father back.

in the months since i realized my mother has narc1ss1st1c pers0nal1ty d1s0rder, we've learned that she's lied about incest, tried to convince all of us that we were molested a la munchhausen by proxy, and last but not least told my entire father's family that if they didn't cut off my father after the divorce, they could not continue relationships with us (the kids).

i saw my father this past monday, after about 10 years (if not more). he's scared shitless of my mother. he is so different than she is...he's exactly like us- my sisters and i. it makes me so sad that we've missed so many years; it makes me so sad that we've been mentally and emotionally abused by my mother all this time and had not even known it.

i'm sad that i would have let my father go to his grave without having a relationship with him without the shit goggles my mother put on all of us...and i'm REALLY sad that i got my dad back because my baby is dead. because, really, that's what happened. that's how this all went down.

how do i reconcile it all? happy, sad. my baby has given me so much, yet there's nothing i can do for her. except realize that i am her. she is me. and i'm gonna take these gifts, goddamn it.

FUUCKKKKKKK

i am staying away. i haven't posted, have barely checked my charmedgirl email, have stayed away from bloglines (lest i drown in the sheer numbers).

i am losing weight. i am feeling more my old self. i am questioning my desire to get pregnant again. i think i've decided not to do the RE thing, but instead try the fucking OPTs for a few months. and then, i think, maybe, stop.

i am going out with friends every other friday. friday night was always good for me. it's still good, maybe even better now because on sunday i don't feel depressed about an empty life with no children. things are looking up.

husband is edgy and depressed. he is with me on the no RE thing, but he's just so sad. he doesn't want to work. he wants to be home. i don't blame him. i told him he can't escape it so don't try; i also told him i feel like i'm getting better and he's getting worse. he agreed.

p@ige...i'm forgetting. i want to forget. i want to move on. i still cry, but not like before. she ripped open my head and my heart and my flesh...made it possible to uncover so many truths. she's my savior, my personal jesus. she is dead, but i'm alive. i guess i want to forget the pain and remember her, and what's happened because of her.

my deadbaby friends, i miss you! i am trying to figure out how to live my life and still come back here. i'm not sure how it's going to work. i think about you and sometimes read your blogs...but i'm scared to comment and lose myself in deadbabyland. i'm an asshole.

c., i am so, so sorry. i'm so fucking sorry. FUCK.

do i even want to?

my sister is 19 weeks pregnant.

two weeks ago, they informed her that her blood serum indicated an increased chance of spin@ bifid@. last thursday, i went to the genetic counselor with her because her husband couldn't make it. it turned out to be a good thing, since i had to answer so many questions; my infertility and stillbirth increases her chances of problems...from their chart's point of view, anyway.

two days ago, she had her ultrasound. (i'm still fucking shocked at how long they made her wait to find out. i would have NEVER been able to wait that long, but then again, i'm totally batshit crazy at this point.)

the baby is fine, as far as they can see. it's also a boy, which i'm thrilled to death about. i'm really glad i don't have to worry about having another baby girl around to remind me of anything. A BOY. a totally different species. thank the good lord above.

(it's seven months today since my baby died. i am running out of steam. i am running out of care. it's inside me, but i don't want to acknowledge it.)

i'm still not pregnant. HOLY SHIT!! big surprise, right? the whole thing just seems so ridiculous. i'm trying to get pregnant again. the longer it takes to happen, the more times a day i will go back and forth on whether or not i really want it to happen. i am so fucking angry. and sad.

i don't want to do this anymore. i don't know what i want. i just hope i keep caring less and less.

records

it seems like so much has happened i don't know where to start. and that makes me feel like never posting again...like there's just too much, i can't remember it all. why bother. i think that's why i posted my creepy cemetery picture. if i did that i can't just walk away, right?

i picked up my medical records from the hospital last week. i could barely skim each page; i wanted to read it all so fast that i barely read anything the first time through. all i kept seeing was (big surprise) fetal demise. fetal demise. fetal demise. fetal demise. fetal demise. fetal demise.

the other thing that really bothered me was seeing the date over and over. what the fuck? did i think that date was erased from history?

and the ER records. i remember being wheeled around, knowing the worst was happening...and there was what everyone around me was scratching into my chart. fetal demise. no viability. no bloodflow. confirmation. confirmed.

another interesting thing was the full dictation from the ob. he had no idea if i would even show up the next day for my delivery. he thought there was a real possibility i would try to return to the care of my midwife. WHA?? everything aside, it was truly the last goddamn thing in the universe that even entered my brain, but i guess it's possible that someone, somewhere, would do that. i, on the other hand, remember thanking my lucky stars that i'd had a c-section and could get another one the next day. i wanted it over asap.

reading those records was like going to the dimension where the photo album of my pregnancy photos are stored. i'm starting to feel like it didn't happen to me. i'm starting to feel like i want to run away and just move the fuck on with my life. i seriously considered not coming back, not writing anymore. i still do. but i just don't trust myself enough right now.

if i'm going to drop off the face of the www, my return post better be good, right?

this photo was taken the morning after a night of cocktails. before getting home, we decided to walk into the heart of this cemetery. it's on a major road in one of the boroughs of NYC, yet so overgrown that there was no chance of being spotted.

i wonder what i would have thought about if i knew then what i know now...instead of, "this cemetery is cool," and, "i wonder who these people were."

on the way out, we spent two hours cleaning garbage and pushing dead leaves off ground markers. we could have gone on for ten more hours and it wouldn't have made that much of a dent.

so, yeah. standing naked in an overgrown graveyard picking up garbage and dead leaves. that's what i've been up to.

(and thanks to those who emailed. really, thank you.)

ETA: i should have clarified...this photo was taken, i don't know, in 2003? it relates to my recent activities totally metaphorically. SHIT, what i would give to have that belly back after triplets...

my mother, my midwife

i've been thinking, WHY THE FUCK did i allow my midwife to neglect my care like she did?

i'm not stupid. i know some stuff about nutrition, health...even pregnancy, labor, and delivery. i observed things about my pregnancy (important things) and let her convince me i was wrong. i let her convince me i was only following the antiquated protocol of evil obstetrics. i let myself emotionally and physically fall to shit...i mean, i had prenatal care; everything was going to be fine in the end. she was checking all the important stuff, right? my only concern was not getting another c-section.

when i look back on it now, i can't believe how many ways i was neglected by my caregiver. i understand that her belief is that no intervention is best, the body knows what it's doing, everything will be fine...(like i think coggy said,) IN A PERFECTLY HEALTHY WOMAN. the signs were there. she never ever should have taken me on as a client. in trying to prove (i guess) that no matter what, you always get a baby when you let nature take it's course, she let my baby die. to quote my ob, she also put my life in danger. and you know what??? KNOWING I WASN'T A CANDIDATE WAS NOT MY JOB. IT WAS HERS.

so, was it just blindness? was it blindness to the fact that i wasn't a candidate because i wanted a homebirth so badly? i read all the studies on uterine rupture and felt my risk was minimal. i felt confident about having a vbac, even at home (i have a master's degree in public health, for the love of god; i know how to read medical literature). but the real problems were lurking underneath all of that; the real problem was that she treated everything else about my case the same exact way she would have any other run-of-the-mill perfectly healthy pregnant woman. AND IT WASN'T MY JOB TO KNOW I WASN'T.

it also scared the shit out of me to learn (after my baby was dead) that her back-up plan SUCKS. there was absolutely NOTHING in place...she has no doctor liaisons at the hospitals, and her "medical advisor" is such in name only. once i was in the ER with a dead baby in my belly, she had nothing else to offer...no referrals, no NOTHING. i fell into the lap of the ob on call, and i was fortunate enough to get a really, really caring one. if not? fuck me, i guess.

it's not like i would have expected her to continue my care. i know, with a full-term dead baby inside me, i was out of the scope of her practice. but HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT, what if i was in labor at home, and had a real, time-sensitive emergency??? i know that there are risks in homebirth, especially a vbac at home. the general rule is, no farther than 15 minutes from a hospital. no problem, i'm 10. but...and this is a huge BUT...once you get there, then what? the ultrasound tech on call lived an HOUR away. the ob on call was also sleeping in his bed. if anything went wrong during labor or delivery, we BOTH would have been dead.

i asked her about her backup plan a couple of weeks after i was no longer with child. she told me that what happens is she calls hospitals in the area to assess which is better staffed and then we transfer to the chosen hospital. is it me, or does that not seem good enough? and why in FUCK didn't i know about that while i was still pregnant?

so many questions. so many questions. the first answer, to me, is I MUST BE STUPID. i must be an ignorant, naive, daisies growing out of my head IDIOT. how could i risk so much, through blind ignorance, just because i wanted something a certain way? how could i trust my midwife, not ever having had the important conversations?

my genius of a therapist said a week ago, "doesn't the midwife remind you of your mother?"

it wasn't a pitch darkness to light brightness kind of lightbulb, but a slower, dimmer-switch kind of one that is increasing in brightness day by day. i felt comfortable being left to my own devices, felt comfortable being neglected, felt comfortable trusting someone so narcissistic, because that's what i'm accustomed to in a caregiver.

this whole thing is getting bigger and bigger, like a wet stain on a california king sized bedsheet. my baby died, and now i'm finding out i have no fucking idea who i was. my baby died, and now i'm finding out i had no idea who everyone else is either. having a dead baby is becoming the easiest part of this whole mess to figure out...she was here, she died, i love her and wish so fucking bad she was here, but she's not. but the rest? HOLY SHIT. i'm just gonna keep going, day by day, until the wet circle stops growing (maybe never).

someone said (maybe kalakly) that even her name means "messenger." still not buying anything remotely resembling *this happened for a reason* but i do know that having her is changing my life. my job, at this point, is to rise up and live it.