Worse than getting your teeth cleaned

Recently I had a Bad Day, of the grieving subset of Bad Days. I had to go to the dentist and I just knew there would be an awkward moment when the hygienist asked me if I'd had my baby or why I wasn't pregnant. I was dreading it utterly and it happened almost exactly the way I had feared, except I hadn't predicted the part where I spent the entire appointment willing myself not to cry, then lost it in the car afterward.

As I told Maggie after her post IVF Shoes, I only want to talk about our loss with people I really care about and trust. Everyone else, it's a need-to-know basis only. I know they don't know what to say. I don't either and I don't feel like comforting them because I suffered a loss.

Like Maggie did, I bought a necklace as a tribute to my son. And what I like best about it is that it's meaningful to me--the two taller flowers sheltering the little one, each representing one of my three children--but I only need share that meaning if I want to.

Packed up and ready to go

We won't be leaving for my brother's place for a few days, but yesterday Opie packed a bag. Stuffed it, actually: "So I'll have choices, Mommy." Here is what he wants to bring:

• 2 pairs shorts (how optimistic)
• 1 pair pants (also optimistic, given the limited success of potty training thus far)
• 3 short-sleeved shirts
• 2 long-sleeved shirt (it goes without saying that none of the above articles of clothing actually match each other)
• 1 pair football pants (from Halloween costume)
• 1 football jersey (from thrift shop)
• 1 Superfriends coloring book
• 1 rubber dog-nose mask
• 2 pairs faux pilot goggles (a spare is important)
• 1 string Mardi Gras beads (turquoise)
• 1 6-inch-long piece of grosgrain ribbon (striped)

I guess I'll be packing the socks and underwear in my luggage.

*

Like Mrs. Chicken, I feel strange posting something frivolous today. I've been unable to write about Maddie (and now Thalon) in part because a silly, petty feeling weighs on me--that every mention of them is a tacit, although certainly unintended, exclusion of so many others: other babies who have been lost (yes, including my own), other families suffering other tragedies, too numerous or too unknown to mention. None of it is fair, none of it. But all I can do is enjoy the children I have.

My kind of spring cleaning

I am not talking about the real kind of spring cleaning (heaven forfend). I am lucky if I remember to change the sheets regularly, and our windows haven't been washed in at least two years.

But even though it's still freezing cold, with snow predicted for the next two days, I am on an out-with-the-old roll lately. I am mercilessly cutting Bloglines subscriptions; I just can't follow over 100 blogs anymore (but I'm sure yours is still on there). We are meeting with the accountant today to finally wrap up our 2008 taxes. I am changing my habits by shredding every day and being more thoughtful about what I eat. I am actually keeping alive the two new plants that recently came to live in our house. I am itching to put away my sweaters and corduroys in favor of skirts and t-shirts.

I can't decide what to do with all of the baby and maternity clothes, though. I know I am placing a lot of pressure on myself to make a decision, but it's driving me crazy to have all this stuff around. If we're done, I'd like to try to move on, to celebrate the new time and space it might create in our lives while also mourning the babies, real and imagined, we'll never have. If we're not done, well, time's a-wasting, you know? Limbo is just not a place I like to be.

This week in grief

It's been almost six weeks now and most of the time I am holding up fine. I think about my son all the time, but it's an undercurrent as I go about my day. I no longer can quite keep track of how many weeks pregnant I would be. But there are always moments, things I see or hear or read that tip me unexpectedly into a puddle of sorrow and regret.

Most recently it was the song "For Good" from Wicked. Looking at the lyrics now, they strike me as trite, but they hit a nerve nonetheless. Because I do wonder, often, what Lesson I am supposed to have learned from this experience. Is it presumptuous, or just premature, to think that I should take something away, that I deserve to get something out of it? That I ought to be wise enough to figure out what that something is? Is that too much pressure for my baby's tiny shoulders, or my own?

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return

Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun

Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you

You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend

I may not know exactly how far along I should be now, but I do picture, often, what would be happening now if our boy had lived, what I'd be doing and feeling. I expect I always will. I see three paths, three versions of my life--the one where I have a healthy, typical pregnancy and baby; the one where I have a child with disabilities, and am suddenly thrust into a new world of medical and educational and emotional challenges; and the one where I am missing a child. It's all very Sliding Doors.

Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good
--lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

Changed for good? That much is clear, even if not much else is.

Fine. Well, sort of. You know.

People want to know how I am. How I really am. I appreciate the thought and I wish I could answer them.

I am happy not to be spending every waking moment with a painful, hormone-induced headache.

I am sad when I see my son's face and wonder what his brother would have looked like.

I am relieved that the terribly stressful period when we didn't know if our baby would live or die is over.

I am wondering how I will ever get through the month of June.

I am deeply touched by the supportive comments, emails, cards, flowers, plants, gifts, and food we've received.

I am thankful that I no longer have vicious nausea and heartburn 24/7.

I am discouraged that my body is flabby and lumpy with nothing to show for it.

Mostly, I just feel weird. I've never done this before and I don't know how to do it. For three years I had resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't be having any more babies. I got pretty good at living that way.

Then I was pregnant, and that felt like an altered state, an alternative reality. So not being pregnant feels like a return to normalcy. But denying my son's short life is most certainly not normal.

You see the dilemma.

I'll steal borrow from Casey and tell you that you don't have to tell me you are sorry. She said you could tell her about your favorite sandwich instead. If you want to tell me something, what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? I was sorely tempted by a tub of Americone Dream the other day.

Haiku Friday: Low

I never got to
hold him, smell him, even see
him; still I miss him.

Feeling melancholy over here tonight folks. Not much to post because everything is too ajumble in my mind (therefore I can make up words like "ajumble"). It would probably help to write it down, but my browser keeps opening to Chicktionary instead of Blogger. Funny, that.

Out of the blue

My son will be four in a few months and everytime he picks up a crayon, he produces nothing but scribbles. I know you're not supposed to compare kids, blah blah blah, but Jo could scratch out the letters of her name and approximate a snowman portrait well before she turned three. So I started to wonder.

Then yesterday, Opie produced these guys:


And him:


Hello??? Where did this come from? They have feet! They have ears! They have ... cheekbones?!

Approaching one week later, I have my good moments and my bad ones. I indulged in some retail therapy. I tried to catch up on work. I even laughed with my kids. I also sat bolt upright in bed last night and bawled because I was suddenly seized with worry: My baby is so small, and what if no one is taking care of him? Irrational, I know, but I'm guessing I get a pass on being reasonable. At least for now.

Untelling, undoing

It would be a lot easier if everyone read my blog. I've given our news to as many friends as possible via email, and my mother and Jeff's have mostly told family members for us. That still leaves neighbors, teachers and parents at the kids' schools, even my dental hygienist. I dread each and every conversation. They don't know what to say to me and I don't know what to say to them.

More than that, having to say it means having to believe it, just a little more, each time.

I'm thankful we don't have a nursery to empty. Eventually I'll have to decide whether to give away the baby clothes and gear I've saved, but for now all that can stay safely tucked away. The last thing I want to do right now is wear maternity clothes, but neither do I want to pack them up, spending another hour or two confronting the fact that I don't need them.

Thank you all for your supportive comments and e-mails. We are getting along as best we can. The small-townness of Mayberry helps; word gets around and soon our refrigerator and freezer are overflowing. They don't bring our baby back, but these loving, caring gestures help us eat and sleep and breathe and sometimes even smile.

Sing thee to thy rest

We lost our baby, our little boy.

We'd known there could be--would be--was something wrong for a few weeks (which is why I haven't been posting or commenting). The end finally came just yesterday.

The end, and the beginning of us missing him and wondering what if and if only.

Every day of these awful weeks, I took my prenatal vitamin, I avoided alcohol, I double-steeped my tea to lower its caffeine content. Just as I've been doing since the first days of my pregnancy. I wasn't hoping for a miracle. I guess I just wanted to prove (to whom, I don't know) that I did every last little thing that I could to protect him.

It wasn't enough. And I do know that it wasn't my fault.

But I hope my little boy knows how much he is loved. And that my heart is as broken as his little body is.