Selkie over on her blog has a very good post on what it was like for her after she lost her daughter in miscarriage.
This really stood out for me.
My due date was the worst kind of dreary February day and I shuffled through work like a coma patient (a “withdraws from painful stimuli” coma patient), counting the minutes until I could leave. I wanted to go directly to bed.
I’ve had more than a few days like that since my baby was stillborn on All Saints Day 2002. Two days in particular have been hard, my due date and the anniversary of the actual birth. Remembering those days are hard enough and there is not really much you can do to avoid them. They’re there. They are coming. You get through them this time, they’ll be back next year. Remembering that I was supposed to have a child celebrating a first birthday back in February wasn’t as hard this year as it was last, but there was still a twinge there. I don’t know how the second anniversary will be this time. It was just sad last year.
The phrase, “withdraws from painful stimuli” Selkie found is one of the parameters in measuring the impact of trauma. Any loss is certainly traumatic. Losing a baby is a unique kind of trauma in that you are losing hopes, dreams, expectations instead of memories and a history.
I have found myself withdrawing from certain things that make being the mother of a stillborn baby more painful. I don’t like to be around babies, but especially 1 year olds because they remind me of what my baby would have been doing now and what my life would be like now if he were with me. The first time his name was going to be mentioned in the petitions at mass I was very anxious and happy to attend, but they scheduled a baptism for the same mass!! It was like a cold slap in the face. They also mispronounced his name so I felt more as if I had been assaulted than helped by that mass. I did mention to the schedulers that perhaps putting the name of a dead child on the mass for a baptism wasn’t the best of ideas.
Right after I lost my baby the anti-smoking group had billboards up all over town of a huge pregnant woman in a night gown smoking. You could just see her lovely and graceful curve of her pregnant stomach with her hand beside it holding a cigarette. I understand the message they were trying to make, but that billboard was also an assault on my eyes whenever I ran into it and it seemed to me that those adds were up for a very long time. Ironically there was also one on the way out to the cemetery. I really felt that God was pushing my face into it – this couldn’t have been a mere conincidence?
I’m not as sensitive now. The billboards are down and I can tolerate being in the same room with a baby. I do have a new unique challenge facing me next week however.
Three months before I conceived my baby, a very nice lady, a friend of mine in our music group at church suffered a stillbirth at 32 weeks. Lightening struck our small group again when 8 months later I lost my child. Our babies are buried close to each other in the Catholic Cemetery. There was a sort of sad bond between us then. Last fall she broke the news to me very gently, that she was pregnant again. She was very kind and gracious and we hugged and cried and shared and I was happy for her, and she was empathetic with me. We then made plans for our two 2nd grade sons to make their first communions together which they did at a special mass and it was a very lovely happy day.
Praise be to God, she had her new baby, a little boy. And hopefully that will be a blessing and a comfort to her. Next week this little fella will be baptized and I was asked yesterday if I would come to the mass to play my flute with the music group.
My instinct is to “withdraw from this painful stimuli!” As much as I am so very happy, grateful, and thrilled that she has her new baby, it makes my arms feel more empty and my heart feel more broken. Part of me wants to play and play beautifully for her special day, and the other part wants to guard my heart, protect my feelings… maybe send a beautiful gift and a nice card.
Mr. Pete thinks I should just play. (I can’t figure out why these things don’t bother him as much as the do me, except that this baby was in my body for 23 weeks – maybe that makes the trauma different for me. I don’t know.) I could. But I don’t know if I’ll cry – probably will. Don’t know if I could even play well enough or concentrate enough to make it worth trying. Something tells me that only I can protect myself in this because no one understands – except, of course for my friend. I think she would understand.
I guess I’m leaning towards the gift thing with a card.
Please feel free to leave a comment under the posting, or sign my Spiritbook (guestbook). You can chat with me on the tag board to the right!
