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?

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...

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.

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.

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...

i wish i was still stupid

my grandmother turned 83 on sunday.

she is the oldest of 14 children, all born at home on a farm in puerto rico.

sometimes, over the course of my life, she would tell me about how many children her mother had, their birth order, and their names. sometimes it would be in response to a question about who's older than who, or something like that.

i would ask, "your mother had 13 children, right?"

and she would go down the list, keeping track on fingers which would run out before she was done. sometimes she'd have to start over. sometimes more than once.

once my dumb-ass stepfather asked my great-grandmother why she had so many children, and she said, "we didn't have television back then; there was nothing else to do."

so, my grandmother would recount all her siblings; she was present for many of their births. she would always start out by saying, "well, she had 14 children but one born dead," to which i always responded, "ok, so she had 13."

and my grandmother would look at me sadly and say, "well..."
and nothing more.

new territory

i went to babiesRus yesterday.

i had a gift card from when i was pregnant and it's been haunting me since she died. i decided to go and just spend the fucker and get it over with. the kids need potties and frankly i'm sick of dealing with shitty asses...and they ARE three, so i think i need to get a move-on before i start getting those weird looks and have to smack someone and scream, "DEADBABYPASSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!" jesus.

so, there i am in a baby store. the fact that i have an RE appointment already seemed to help tremendously...but did it really? i actually looked at baby stuff instead of running past it to the back where they have the toddler gear. there were also real-live babies, which didn't seem to bother me?

this is frightening. what the fuck is going on?

i am NOT better just because we are going to try to have another baby. but i feel better? where is my shit? this isn't real and i'm scared.

do i want another baby because i'm desperate to have my dead baby? is my mind playing tricks on me?

AM I MAKING THE WRONG DECISION?

i feel better yet lost and confused. i am trying to tell myself to take each day as it comes and if i feel better, then feel better while i can...the shit will come back when it comes back.

i know there will be so much of this; if i get pregnant again i will have to master holding two boxes at once. i know i will have to carry my dead baby and my alive one at the same time. i know i will have to learn how to be happy and sad all at once. i know this is to be my life.

i know i live with a ghost, but i have to try not to be one.



(and today is five months...i miss you p@ige. more than i ever knew i could.)

universal secret

(thank you, unknown postsecret secret postcard maker)

i used to think that the moment i became pregnant (before i ever had been), i would just magically have the motivation to change my eating habits. i used to think that i would be different and whole and connected, just because they were growing inside me, or here. isn't the creation and birth of a child THAT important? THAT life-changing?

well, it is that life-changing, but not in the idealistic way i thought; apparently it's not the fantasy many think it is. oh, poor ghost of charmedgirl past...you stupid, stupid girl.

the pain of knowing where i was mentally and emotionally during p@ige's tiny existence inside me is crushing my heart. i never, ever, ever in a million years would have imagined i could be so lost and depressed while carrying a baby. so many years of infertility, so many regrets about never being able to have a single birth baby...what the fuck was i so goddamn depressed about? i wanted to fast-forward time right to labor and delivery, even though in my mind, i'd want to put her back in for lack of sleep and everything else. i was an ingrate. i neglected her emotionally. i abused her mentally (and to be honest, physically). i was a bitch of a pregnant lady.

i have to change. i have to make changes BEFORE events that-shall-at-this-time-go-unnamed happen. i am making those changes, slowly but maybe surely.

i hate to hell that i am making these changes because my baby is dead.
i hate that i am going to be *a better person* because my baby is dead.
i fucking hate that i will go on to a more realized life because my baby is dead.

i hate that i hate it, because i hate the alternative even more; i hate the possibility that my baby died and i can possibly still be as fucked up as ever.

alone

i couldn't fall asleep last night. i kept feeling the ghost belly; kept remembering feeling her and the hugeness of it and sweatiness. i kept thinking about how i couldn't wait for it to be over, and just wishing i could appreciate her inside, alive. i thought about how she probably died overnight. was it because i kept waking up on my back?

all i could do was lie there and, "breathing in, i miss my baby. breathing out, i grieve her now."

"breathing in, i miss my baby. breathing out, i grieve her now."
"breathing in, i miss my baby. breathing out, i grieve her now."
"breathing in, i miss my baby. breathing out, i grieve her now."
"breathing in, i miss my baby. breathing out, i grieve her now."
"breathing in, i miss my baby. breathing out, i grieve her now."
"breathing in, i miss my baby. breathing out, i grieve her now."

and then i fell asleep.

i had a dream where i was naked in a public shower. i was standing in the space between the rows of showers, in front of a long mirror. there was warm water. p@ige was on the floor, just born. she was not really alive, not really dead. i scooped her up; she was so heavy in the dream (like she really was). i sat for a minute shaking her, thinking she might live, but she started to get the same pattern of purpleness she had, and i knew the outcome would be the same. i sat there in front of the mirror with her, looking at her in my arms, not sad, but just looking; like i wished i would have done. i put her up on my shoulder and ran my hand across her back and her whole body. someone came by and said, "ooh, let me see her!" and i shouted, "NO!" and quitely went back to my baby.

sometimes people ask me what's the matter.
sometimes i say, after the initial confusion in my brain, "um, my baby died. remember?"

hope?

i've always had a problem with illusive concepts that lull a person into a dangerous kind of passivity. ideas that keep one from confronting issues and feelings that can destroy their lives and relationships.

for example, i've always had a problem with the concept of trust. if you ask someone what makes a good relationship, they will no-doubtedly pull the trust card (usually not knowing what the fuck they even mean by it, like "good communication"). i've always said bullshit to trust. isn't trust just a lazy way of saying, "i don't really want to put the energy into this whole thing, so just make sure you always do what i would want you to do, ok? i'm also pretty damn selfish, so don't go trying to sneak anything in just for yourself. got it, big boy (or little girl)? if something feels uncomfortable to me, i trust you will put my wants and needs before your own."

i've found people who don't (or can't) trust themselves to have the hardest time with the whole trust thing. isn't easier to just put all the responsibility for your own happiness onto someone else? isn't it better to have someone else to blame? don't get me wrong, i also feel that mistrust is just as dangerous. how many missed opportunities for growth have been passed by because of a blind mistrust?

basically i think it comes down to a lack of constant evaluation and revision in our lives. with new information and knowledge comes the responsibility to (re)evaluate your situation, and revise your beliefs and practices and alliances accordingly. trust or mistrust in (whatever) is the lazy person's downfall.

since my baby died, i've found i have a similar problem with the concept of hope. what is this hope, but a way to live in the future? a way to try to blind one's self to the present moment, one's present anguish and pain? i will admit, it's quite tempting...but something i just can't accept. the same way living in the past with its what ifs and what could have beens can bury you alive, so will living in the future.

hope can do nothing for me in this moment except distract me from my work, from my grief, from real growth. hope is a wolf in sheep's clothing; worse, in fact. hope is a siren's song.

for this moment, i feel just about as fucked up as ever. i am ruined. that is my truth, and facing it without the bullshit of hope is the only thing that can help. without the truth of this moment, while breathing in and out, we die.

this is definitely not good; i must stop, or THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN TODAY

this is definitely one of the drawbacks of having living children before a dead one. now, i may as well just say upfront that i feel like an asshole even pointing that out, knowing others who lost their first baby will want to vomit. but this is the shit of it, the other side of the same hellish coin.

p@ige looked exactly like @eva. this is me with @eva at four months. this should have been me, today, with p@ige. my fingers are wobbling and i can barely hit the right keys.

i don't know what made me think of looking at their old pictures, to compare, to get a glimpse of what it would have looked like...but i fear i've just added a new level of hell; i won't be able to stop. five months, six, seven...what will stop me, even at a year? at sixteen years?

this isn't fair to @eva, either. i've already looked at her countless times in real life and pretended it was p@ige. this isn't right. but i can't stop. how can i stop this???????

p@ige

it takes some getting used to, saying the name of someone who never really lived.

i love her name. it makes me so miserably sad that, even if, by some fucking miracle, i got pregnant again AND it was a girl AND she lived (WTF???), we can't name her p@ige. i guess that's not very nice, seeing as i already have a daughter with that name, but come on. i DON'T.

i am not that comfortable using her name. i feels way more realistic to just say "the baby", or "my dead baby". i can't convince myself that she was a real person. her life was never realized. her name, although engraved on a bronze plate in the hospital, and printed on a cremation certificate, never fell upon her ears.

i use her name everyday, though. i used it in all the passwords (along with other very cryptic and mysterious password-y stuff) to my charmedgirl accounts.

i feel just a little bit consoled by the fact that my fingers are learning the pattern of her name. it was clumsy at first, but it feels natural now. not so much from my mouth, but for my fingers, it is natural.

p@ige.

a year ago today

i found out i was pregnant on january 9. not quite there yet, but i just realized moments ago that that is where it begins...the eight or so months of remembering "a year ago today" or "last spring/summer".

it's true, during the holidays i had moments of thinking, "last year i was doing such-and-such and didn't know i was pregnant yet." but somehow that's different. everything changed the day i peed on that stick.

i just want it to be over. i don't want to remember how happy i was on mother's day, or how miserable i was during the summer. i don't want to re-live through 242 "one year ago todays" how i fantasized about her birth. i don't want to remember how much i hated being pregnant, and now how much i hate that i hated it.

i just want the "year ago today" to be after her birth already.

i'd rather think about grieving her.

i'd rather think about being empty "one year ago today" than full of her.

i'm not looking forward to the next eight months.

ahhh, those zen buddhists

"they say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. everybody can see that. but only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well-- the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from the nothingness to maturity. in this respect, say the zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it is born."
quoted from elizabeth gilbert's "eat pray love"
italics, boldface, and lack of proper capitalization- charmedgirl


i read this, laying in bed, after i hung my dead baby's acorn ornament on our tree. coincidence? of course it is...but there it was, in my face, nonetheless.


at first reading, i thought of the baby that grew inside me, that little acorn of herself; and the tree, the life she would never lead, the woman she would never be.


i started this post days ago. i think before the weekend, even. my point in all of it was that i realized that I AM the tree, I AM who is to be born at this point. I AM the force that will pull my future self into existence. NOW is the time.

because shit, i couldn't do it for my kid, but i guess i should do it for somebody.

the only problem now is, all i want to do is smash that fucking acorn into a gazillion pieces. and then i want to stick the shards into my eyeballs.

i dreamt last night that i was pregnant; that made me happy in the dream. i am thinking about it again. i am spinning madness in my head.

1-my sister is pregnant, due three days after p@ige was born dead
2- just about the same moment she was peeing on the glorious stick, blood was starting to come out of my, well, you know...
3-i called to set up my IUD appt, and OH! they don't do that particular IUD right now! I JUST WAITED almost FOUR MONTHS to get my period since my baby died, and now i can't even get the fucking birth control??
4-husband was notified the friday before christmas that he was being punitively transferred out of his precinct; only the mayor himself can overturn it, and although many owe him favors, none are the mayor (this is a very long story, the abridged version of which is simply, THIS WHOLE THING IS BULLSHIT)...he's not very upset about it, because (in his words), "my baby died this year, who cares?" which kills me.
5- my baby is still dead

i don't want to clean my house. i don't want to write. i suddenly want to get pregnant again right now. i don't want to answer my phone. i want to sleep all day and not see another living soul. i hate myself and i hate what is happening.

oh, and i think i decided i'm going to see an attorney. i probably shouldn't just put that out there like that, but whatever. i am starting to think my pregnancy wasn't managed properly. that is making me very angry, and for once, at someone other than myself.

oh, 2008, please be better.


edited to add: soulmate friend just called to tell me the baby is being admitted to the nicu under SIDS observation and testing...2007, you are the year from hell.

boring, dizzy

i have nothing to say that hasn't been said, by me and everyone else, three thousand times. it sounds the same, feels the same, looks the same. i have it all, i have nothing.

i am going around in circles.

i can't remember who wrote they couldn't stop themselves form reading birth stories. i am stupid; i should have been warned. someone on another group, on a completely different topic, posted her very recent birth story and i couldn't not read it.

it's haunting me. i am jealous. i can't stop thinking about it...that fucking bitch.

i'm not the jealous type. soulmate friend is going to give birth within the next two weeks, and until now i've been as happy as i think i possibly could about it...until now. now i'm scared. now i'm scared to go to the hospital and cry and cry and cry. i will still go to the hospital, because i want to. i may stay in the waiting room...but i probably won't. and if i cry, and cry and cry, then i guess that's just what's going to happen. she will still love me no matter what, but i know it will hurt her, because she would rather have the pain for herself than see me with it.

i'm sorry, c, in advance.

it just occured to me that i may feel so angry towards anonymous birth-story lady because i won't allow myself to be angry about soulmate friend. well, so be it......because that's the way it's going to stay.

i am going around in circles.

thanksgiving

i'm just going to say what happened, besides three valium, a shit load of wine, and basically no food.

my mother is a total self-centered child. my sister and i planned every course and made all the food. did i mention my mother is totally incompetent? how did this woman raise three children? mind you, i say "raised" pretty casually. and i don't feel anyone gave two shits about the effort my sister and i made for the meal.

the highlight of my night was crying incessantly about my dead baby. when people started to filter into my safe room, i went onto the bathroom where i rocked her back and forth. crying. soon i pulled the towel from the rack and cradled and rocked it and cried. sick, yet satisfying.

i am not thankful for anything. well, i am thankful for my children, yet i don't really feel thankful. that's the truth as it exists for me.

my baby is dead, goddamn it. i have alot of hatred about that.

i mean, what the fuck?

to sleep...

last night
i had a glass of wine and a valium
i went into bed
and cried and prayed
that i would dream of her
i didn't

in your face, world

a few weeks before my due date, i ordered my birth kit. it had all kinds of stuff: mucous syringe, pads, squeeze bottle, herb soaks. i opened the box when it came, and there, above the plastic blue pad backings, was a tiny off-white baby cap. it made me think of the birth- something i was so excited, nervous, and curious about. i studied some midwifery in college and was so sad about the c-section i had the first time around. i wanted to experience birth and she was my partner. and there, before me, was the actual beanie she would be wearing when we met.

while i was in the hospital after she died, husband and friends dismantled the birth pool at home. i instructed my midwife to also take the birth kit. what the f*ck would i do with it?? she had plenty of women who were lined up to birth LIVE babies. i wonder if it was a girl or boy who wore p@ige's cap. i wish i told husband to take it out of the box.

my midwife called last week to ask me if i would be ok with the recipients sending me a check for the kit. i said i was...hey, there's always something to use $65 bucks for.

i used it to buy a little 3-line plaque for p@ige. it will be added to a big wooden wall plaque on the labor and delivery floor where she was born. i almost feel like it's my own personal joke...putting my dead baby's name and birth date on a plaque surrounded by "welcome to the world sweet benjamin!" and shit like that.

really, though, my time in the hospital was special to me; as special as it can get when your dead child was pulled out of you just days before. it was the most normal i've felt since it happened...laying there, not fit for the tasks of regular life. being a patient, being a victim of circumstance. i didn't have to fake it when i was there. i was a dead baby's mother. period.

p@ige francesca mcnamara

september 9, 2oo7

thank you, mary pat

(mary pat, my special nurse)

so there, world of crying babies born alive. SO THERE!

and so it is

the past two days have been bad. angry and sad, all at once.

all i know is, i need to be going somewhere; i need to change. i can't be what i was before, and i don't want to... but i need to go slow enough that the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual can all keep up.

foretold

back during my infertility days, i used to have alot of creepy dreams. many of them were about teeth; gnashing teeth, teeth falling out, teeth being pulled out (by me), loose teeth i would fear losing, and finally, shattered teeth with a whole lot of blood. i HATED those dreams. (i hear teeth in dreams signify the fear of not being able to have children. i haven't had a single one since i have...)

i also had many, many dreams wherein i would piss on a stick and get two lines. i would be so excited to have passed the test i would wake up, still thinking i was pregnant.

then there were the baby dreams. i would give birth to a baby (always alive...i mean, who ever has a dead baby anyway??) and think, "wow that didn't hurt at all!" i'd hold her a little, and then tuck her right into the refrigerator.

ummmm....yeah. i said REFRIGERATOR.

i had this dream so many times. a couple of days would pass (dream time) and i would think, "oh my god! i haven't fed the baby!" i would run back to the fridge and get her out of the vegetable drawer. she'd be cold and lifeless, but alot of rubbing would bring her back. i can't remember what would happen after that.

the second day after paige's birth, i asked to see her again. they pulled her out of the fridge and rolled her up to me. she was cold. i didn't bother rubbing her.

my brain made me practice with a frozen baby? did my body know this all along?