Fear, Anger, and Phantom Baby Kicks

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

C.S. Lewis

           

            Parker also managed to occupy me during my recovery, particularly so on the day when he “experimented” with a soft gray pussy willow he deftly and stealthily plucked from one of my hospital flower arrangements. During the course of his scientific investigation, he succeeded in firmly lodging the furry grey catkin up his nose. After frantically calling around town for advice, Parker and I spent three stressful hours in a specialist’s office, awaiting the doctor’s return from surgery, while I fervently prayed Parker wouldn’t inhale the plant part deep into his sinus cavity. Seventy-five dollars and less than five minutes later, the pussy willow was safely extracted from Parker’s nose.

            He’d been a picture of valiant patience until the actual extraction, when the doctor quickly velcroed him into a child restraint to immobilize him. That elicited screams of terror from my son, and I held and comforted him—as much as I could­—during the procedure. When we finally emerged from the building and started across the parking lot toward the car, Parker firmly grasped my hand, surveyed me with enormously round eyes and asked, “Mom, can I sniff now?” I laughed and breathed a sigh of grateful relief. (He had followed my firm instructions perfectly.) “Yes, buddy, you can sniff now!” He responded by smiling, expelling his own sigh of relief, and happily, victoriously sucking in a huge volume of air though his nostrils.

           

            When we arrived home, I didn’t waste any time in relocating the pussy willows to a high shelf.

           

            Not content to let me reminisce about one mishap, Parker frightened us awake in the middle of one night with a terrifying, barking cough. Chris and I quickly bundled him up, deposited him in his car seat, and drove in panic mode to the hospital. By the time we arrived, Parker was smiling and happy, with no signs of a cough. We also carried along a little plastic cherry from the game Hi-Ho Cherrio—a birthday present he’d been playing with that day—on the slight chance he’d ingested one of the cherries. The doctor obligingly x-rayed the tiny plastic berry, then Parker’s airway to see if they had a match. No cherry, just croup, and a prescription to take Parker home and keep him well moistened with a humidifier.

           

            This sudden, unexpected return to the hospital permitted me to carefully survey the emergency room where I’d arrived weeks earlier, and to interrogate Chris about that night’s details. So much of the scene had emerged in my mind as a blur of green and white moving objects and flowing privacy curtains. Walking circumspectly and cautiously around the ward while making mental notes of the setting, flashes of images struck my conscience as memory fragments unraveled chaotically.

           

            The private accommodation I’d been taken to upon arrival was now occupied, so I couldn’t scrutinize that room. Good thing. Why did I want to attempt a re-enactment? What purpose would it serve, except to transport me mentally and emotionally back to that night; and why would I want to go back there and relive it anyway? Shaking my head to dispel the images, I abruptly stopped my intense, purposeless wandering and gratefully returned to my husband and son.

           

            It wouldn’t be my final visit to their emergency accommodations. Within several months, Chris orchestrated another step across the ER threshold when he accidentally caused a screwdriver to lacerate his cornea. It seemed impossible to extricate ourselves from the place.

           

            In general though, the days wore on, and, as valiantly as I tried, I found it impossible to escape the complex, tormenting grieving process. Throughout the weeks and months following Victoria’s death, I was swept along in the violent torrent of emotions: sorrow, pain, guilt, anger, resentment, regret, sadness, and depression. Sometimes all of them engulfed me simultaneously. And I came to understand what C.S. Lewis so aptly wrote after his wife’s death: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” Fear of never being able to surmount the pain; fear of never feeling “normal” again; abject fear of another loss. Fear of simply living through a day.

           

            Following the initial shock occurred immediately after surgery. Then I slowly progressed to feeling abnormal, as if controlled by artificial, ultra-rational emotions—laughing, smiling, conversing as though nothing out-of-the-ordinary had happened. I teetered—sometimes rapidly—between an eerily calm composure and hyper-animation. I often felt as though I was acting out a dramatic role in someone else’s life.

           

            Emotional shock sets in rapidly like anesthesia: God’s built-in protection system against the inevitable anguish that arrives too soon. Anguish that stands poised to, without invitation or fair warning, to destroy you body, soul and spirit.

           

            I lost a sense of stability; an involuntary switch seemed to control my emotions. At times a weary numbness descended upon me like a heavy blanket of fog. Then all-consuming anger seeped through the crack carved out by the shock; anxiety and anger bubbled to the surface when memories and thoughts were too painful to acknowledge or feel.      

           

            Then, along with the breast tenderness, my uterus taunted me with sensations of baby kicks—sensations that are usually a wonderful reminder that you’re carrying a life, anticipated, precious movements alerting a mother to continued breath and strength within the womb.

           

            Initially I thought I willfully imagined them. Okay, that I was nuts. Then I read information validating my experience: the physical response can be compared to the phantom-limb pain amputees suffer following appendage loss. But that revelation failed to delete what seemed a cruel joke. My body was temporarily disconnected from reality.

           

            These daily reminders of a womb once boasting hopes, dreams and the miracle of life, continued for weeks, sometimes strongly enough to cause me to abruptly stop my activities and lay my hand lovingly over my vacant womb, like an expectant mother patting her baby reassuringly when that baby announces their existence with foot and fist jabs and pokes. Strangely, I experienced the phantom signals of vitality with joy and thanksgiving for the life once held, protected and isolated, within my body, the precious life, once mine to share and anticipate with ravishment and wonder. Lingering recollections of hopeful, promising motherhood. Encouraging memories of sweeter dreams.

           

            

           And then there was that Saturday morning trip to the mortuary to claim Victoria’s ashes. The mortuary had called repeatedly for nearly three weeks about the arrival of her ashes, wondering when we’d pay for and collect them. Chris loathed the prospect of walking into the building to retrieve the little box containing the remains of his infant daughter, so he avoided returning their calls.

           

            The mortician had promised that Victoria’s remains would come in a “nice, little white box,” so I’d decided to forgo the expense of a crematory vase. A fresh shockwave rattled through me when I saw the simple, square, white cardboard box, folded and closed securely with clear tape. It looked like a generic shipping box displaying nothing more than a legal paper and envelop describing its contents as the remains of “Victoria Lee Owan.” The box was so homely and bare; so light-weight, cheap and sterile looking.

           

            “Here,” Chris said, quickly shoving the box into my hands. “I can’t look at it!” After grasping it tenderly, first hesitating, then gingerly shaking it up and down to validate the contents, I laid it gently in a corner on the floor of our pickup truck, out of sight.

           

            “What’s that?” Parker questioned when spotting the container from his car seat vantage point beside me.

           

            “Just something Daddy needed to pick up,” I said quietly. He didn’t press me. When we arrived home, I rushed the box into our study and placed it high on a shelf behind a picture of Parker—out of visual display but within Chris’s and my reaching distance.

           

            Victoria had finally come to stay with us.

           

            What a dismal homecoming.  

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NEXT WEEK: The C-section scar screams a daily reminder, the despair deepens, and the loss begins to strain and fracture our marriage…

*On Wednesday of this week I will add a special post describing how we commemorated Victoria’s death this past two days, and, for the first time in this 20 years since her death, really came together to memorialize her life and passing, grieve together, and give Victoria the cherished resting place and prominence she deserves. How healing spiritually it was for both of us!

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Thanks for joining me.

Until next week!

Blessings,

Andrea

The Painful, Nagging Question: Was It An Emergency Abortion?

                                         If you, LORD, should mark iniquities,

O Lord, who could stand?

But there is forgiveness with You,

That You may be feared.

Psalm 130: 3-4

           Soon after my mother’s departure, I plunged into unfinished home building projects. Finish work abounded. Door trim needed sanding; molding needed caulk. Paint awaited my brush. I launched feverishly and gratefully into these tasks, dispelling the taxing quiet with music, my loud singing, and the sounds and odor of sandpaper, freshly sanded wood and fresh paint. The work absorbed my day, swiftly advanced the hours, and provided me with a sense of purpose. With four weeks of remaining recovery time before returning to work, I happily engaged in exhausting, satisfying physical labor.

           

            Along with my vigorous undertaking of necessary home improvements, I made plans to return to the local junior college to continue my pursuit of a nursing degree. Enrolling in a freshman health class during the summer fulfilled two goals: obtaining necessary continuing education unit credits to maintain my athletic trainer credentials, and obtaining preferential placement for matriculation into the fall Microbiology class. It also fulfilled another purpose: running away from myself and my pain. I was systematically, blatantly ignoring the grieving process. I wouldn’t allow any time for it. Thinking I could do it on my own, I wasn’t giving God a chance to heal my spirit. I just needed to be strong and press on.

           

            Yet moments of deep emotional distress would strike unannounced and swallow me. During one grocery store shopping excursion, my legs felt like iron anchors as I forcibly dragged my unwilling body through the store. But what I really wanted to do was stand rooted in the middle of the supermarket, flail my arms and shriek, “Don’t you know what just happened to me? How can all of you just go about your business as though nothing happened? I’m in mourning here, and you aren’t even commiserating with me in my agony!” I didn’t do it, but it took every ounce of sanity I possessed to constrain my impulse. We need to go back to wearing black clothing and black armbands signifying a death in the family, to provide visual bereavement, I thought. At least, that way, everyone might not be so damned happy acting around you, and, at the very least, offer their condolences.

           

            Instead, I slowly migrated to the liquor department and wandered up and down the aisles. A bottle of wine would be just the right additive to my painkillers—to obliterate the physical and emotional pain. Didn’t I deserve a drink after all I’d been through? Getting good and drunk—in complete solitude—and sleeping through life sounded good, and forgivable. Did I even want to recover from the drowning? I could just close my eyes and awaken on the other side of this hell.

           

            After three or four return trips to stare at the wine bottles, I extricated myself—with monumental effort—from their allure, paid for my groceries, and drove home. I knew from experience that when the sleep wore off the pain would linger, accompanied by negative effects of a hangover and deeper guilt from having succumbed to a frail moment.

           

            The final nail driven into my sadness was the knowledge that they had intentionally removed my baby from my womb for the sole purpose of saving my life. Never mind that when Dr. Gordon opened my uterus he found an eighty percent abrupted placenta, meaning that Victoria wouldn’t have survived much longer in my uterus anyway. I felt as though I’d been slapped with a repulsive label: “emergency abortion receiver.” A placard that would hang on my mind and heart for life.

           

            Nagging questions ping-ponged relentlessly around in my brain: Since I’d actually gone into labor, was it an emergency premature delivery, or would it qualify as an abortion? Was I now a member of a club of women who endured the stigma of self-doubt, questions, misunderstandings and political lobbing? If Dr. Gordon had performed the C-section upon my arrival at the hospital, it clearly would have been an emergency abortion to keep me from bleeding to death. Had the definition changed because I’d been in labor six hours before he performed the delivery?

           

            What would have happened to me if abortion were illegal? Dr. Gordon didn’t indicate that he thought my placenta had abrupted before making the decision to take Victoria and end the pregnancy, but the immense blood loss must have given him an indication that was a possibility. He’d actually admitted to Chris that he’d taken too great a risk by waiting too long to go in. With humble honesty he to Chris, “I almost couldn’t bring her back.”

           

            Still other questions rattled me: Did Victoria take a breath? Dr. Gordon assured us she had not. Was he just trying to protect us from further pain? He had described me as a time bomb waiting to explode. All I seemed to do was browbeat myself with questions: What could I have done differently throughout the pregnancy to make it last longer, giving Victoria a better chance at life? Why couldn’t we have held on just three-and-a-half more weeks? If I’d been transported to a hospital with a NICU and specialists, might she have been one of those wonderful “miracle babies” you hear about in the news? If my original doctor and radiologist hadn’t misdiagnosed the previa, would complete bed rest have bought us precious days, weeks, months?

           

            My thoughts were often self-accusations: You just didn’t want her enough. You didn’t think of your health or the baby’s; you were selfish, pre-occupied, reckless. You foot! You took this pregnancy for granted! Yes...I did. One successful pregnancy to term, with a fairly uncomplicated delivery, lulled me into complacent expectations for an identical outcome. Other women had those problems, not me. I’d never given any serious consideration to the possibility of an insurmountable complication arising.

           

            Regrettably, I also attest to a time of resentment at what Victoria was doing to my body and my pre-planned, well-ordered life and had set out with resolve and determination to triumph in that battle. Now I was convinced I was paying the price for that calculated, arrogant confrontation.

           

            Early in recovery, however, I decided that God must have a very good reason for allowing Victoria to die. I don’t remember being angry with God, or questioning His motives. I merely wanted to be apprised of His intentions. But inwardly I recoiled violently during a phone conversation with my mother when she blindsided me with, “Well, I sure don’t’ know what you’ve done to deserve this!” The comment seemed so blunt, so harsh, so unfair coming from someone else. Little did she know that for days I’d been way ahead of her in my thinking: perhaps there was something in my past that required such harsh discipline. If so, I was prepared to accept full responsibility for my actions and failures. And when that acceptance occurred, something miraculous happened: Beseeching prayers seeking only God’s desired results from the circumstances slowly replaced my questions about why He allowed all of this to happen in the first place. What did He want me to learn from this? What was His plan now for my life? Where would this devastation take me?

           

            Was I being too hard on myself? I didn’t think so. Perhaps I really hadn’t wanted Victoria enough, nor loved her enough. Maybe I’d been too determined to avoid any wrinkles in my life, to admit weakness or defeat. Pregnancy and delivery would have been just a blip on the screen of my life’s-accomplishments-checklist that year. Always the competitor, I’d been driven to continue working through my pregnancy because other women seemed so capable of this feat. Why couldn’t I rank up there among those super women?

           

            Maybe pride had undone me.

           

            With remorse and repentance, I became aware of the tragic disarray of my priorities; God started brandishing them before my eyes like blinding sunspots. My achievement checklist had been a mile long; Chris and I were roaring through life in a vacuum. We’d become too pragmatic, too worldly, too complacent, too self-absorbed.

           

            Then God had pulled the plug.

           

            Once again in my life, He was dropping His benevolence of grace and mercy directly at my heart’s front door. A firm knock to let me know He was there; a firm, disciplining hand reminding me that I desperately needed Him, and that I shouldn’t—couldn’t—go on, and really succeed in life, without Him.

           

            It was my responsibility to reach out, finish opening the gracious, compassionate gift He’d extended to me so many years before, and be completely engulfed in its contents.

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NEXT WEEK: The emotional fallout continues, Parker and Chris return me to the hospital…and we bring Victoria home…

This Saturday, April 13, will be the 20th anniversary of Victoria's death. Chris and I have plans to take the next step to bring more healing to our hearts.

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Thanks for joining me.

Until next week!

Blessings,

Andrea

            

Advice for Grandparents Grieving the Loss of Their Grandbaby

“The hardest thing about going through a loss with your children is the grief you feel for them, because you can’t do anything. I am conditioned as a mother to fix things, make things better, and I couldn’t.”

                                               

           

            When parents lose a baby in pregnancy, childbirth or soon after, they are not the only ones hurting from the devastating loss. Grandparents and the baby’s siblings will suffer a tremendous sense of loss and grief too. Today we’ll look at how grandparents grieve and how they can best help their grieving children.

           

            Grandparents may grieve for the grandchild they’ll never get to play with or watch grow. Along with the parents, they probably developed their own sense of expectations and dreams of, and for, the baby. They may feel shock and disbelief that what was heralded to be a family joy and celebration turned into a tragedy. There is no way you—grandparents—can prepare for this kind of grief.

           

            Grandparents may have difficulty responding to this tragedy, struggling for just the right words (sometimes there are none). They may have been raised in a home where tragedies such as these were not discussed (read my last blog on how my parents handled their loss back), and they were taught to quickly put the loss in the past and get on with life. (Western society, particularly Americans, have a distinctly “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and get on with life without whining” attitude.) Or they may be tempted to think they are helping by urging the parents to have another baby or counsel them that they should be grateful for the children they have.

           

            Although these comments are certainly well intentioned, they are most likely to be hurtful and resented rather than helpful and comforting. Grandparents need to resist the urge to preach, offer pious platitudes, or tell the parents how they should feel or what they should do. Instead, they need to recognize that mourning is a painful but necessary process and that every person grieves uniquely and distinctively in their own manner and according to their beliefs and needs. The process is never easy for anyone, so we shouldn’t expect it to be easy.

           

            Grandparents may wonder if they should their grief, or if doing so will add an extra burden to their bereaved children. Personally, for me, it did add an extra burden when my mother expressed her grief. Already weak from the blood-draining complication and surgery, and emotionally drained by my loss, I felt guilty and unable to support her. Having been brought up in a home where emotions were to be controlled, I also felt uncomfortable around her tears. But every family is different, and much of the reaction will undoubtedly depend upon your relationship with one another prior to the death of the baby.

           

            Grandparents must not expect their grieving children to be your primary source of support. They need to find friends, other relatives, clergy, or grief support groups who will help them walk through your own grief. Being sustained in their grieving will help them provide emotional support to your children.

           

            If they also suffered a pregnancy loss or death of a child soon after birth, they can be supportive when they share your feelings of loss, sorrow and pain. But they need to resist the desire to compare their loss with their child’s and talk about their loss in a way that might seem to overshadow their children’s. Sometimes they will just need to sit and listen without making comments. And above all, if they’ve have never experienced such a tragedy they must not tell their children they know what they’re going through because they’ve also suffered a loss. A grandparent’s pain differs from a parent’s; their hopes and dreams are different.

           

            Another emotion a grandparent may contend with is guilt. Sometimes grandparents are upset that they have lived to suffer this loss, especially if, up to this point in their life, they haven’t suffered tremendous loss or pain in their life. They might experience what is known as “survivor’s guilt,” when they feel guilty for being alive when their grandchild has died. They may wish that they could have died in their place.

           

            Grandparents should honestly share their feelings with their children or spouse to avoid feelings of guilt or resentment settling in.

           

            If the baby died due to a genetic disorder, a grandparent may feel they are to blame if they were the ones who passed down the gene. Or even if they don’t know what the cause was, they may feel this type of guilt.

           

            Then there are the grandmothers who suffer guilt because they had a full house of healthy children, carried each child easily to term, experienced smooth childbirths, had all their babies at home with midwives, or never experienced even a tinge of morning sickness or a miniscule—or major—problem.

           

            What is most often helpful is if a grandparent is honest about their own unique grief as a grandparent and honest about their grief for their child who has suffered such a loss. They can take a cue from their grieving child: ask them if they’d like to talk and don’t if they do not; ask them if there is anything you can do, but don’t push or force them into making any decisions or feel slighted if they do not ask for help. They should not be offended by their children’s actions. Grieving is tough, exhausting work. Everyone will go through it at different paces and in different ways. That should be allowed to happen, without expectations. If you are a grieving grandparent, let your grieving children should know that you are more concerned about them than yourself and what you might be going through personally.

           

            I hesitated to talk about my loss and pain because I feared that my feelings might be judged, and I wanted to avoid parental “advice” as much as possible. I felt weak, and I feared displaying emotion in front of my parents that would make me feel even weaker, or that would bring forth emotional displays from them. Unfortunately, none of us did a very good job of relating to or communicating with one another in our grief.

           

            While I was still in the hospital, one of the first things my father said to me was, “Well, I don’t know if I’d go through that again.”  I vaguely remember him going on about having one healthy child, with the implication that I should feel satisfied. At the time, I didn’t know if I could “go through that again” or if I wanted to try, but it certainly wasn’t the time to be making that kind of decision or discussing it. I know he was concerned for my life and feared my risking another pregnancy with the same, or a worse outcome, but sometimes parents need to bite their tongues and listen, and spend their time praying more about their responses and what their grieving children need rather than expressing their unsought opinions.

           

            Sometimes simply helping with household tasks, caring for the other children, or just sitting and keeping a grieving child company is what is needed and most helpful. If you don’t live close and are unable to help in this way, recognition of the loss via a phone call, cards, letters or flowers will let them know that you love them and care. My husband’s stepfather—who lives across the country—called Chris and said, “I am so sorry. I don’t know what to say; I have no idea what you’re going through. Please tell Andrea how sorry we are.” That message and the follow-up card were more than enough for us to know that Chris’s mother and stepfather cared and shared some of our grief.

           

           

            If your children gave their baby a name, be sure you refer to the child by that name. It will help confirm in your child’s heart that their baby was a precious and loved family member.

           

           

            Grandparents need to be careful about voicing differences in opinion, especially about funeral arrangements, services, packing up baby things and clothes and getting them out of sight. As a grandparent, you will undoubtedly have your own views, but the grieving parents’ wishes and desires must be respected and made on their own. They must also make the serious decision about planning for another pregnancy on their own too. If they want your advice, they will ask. Wait for them to do so. If you want to help, ask first and see what kind of response you get.

           

            Family get-togethers may be difficult for everyone. Respect the grieving parents’ decision to decline invitations to attend baby showers, special baby events, christenings, etc, especially in the early months following the loss.

           

            Losing a baby grandchild will have a permanent effect on the involved families, but many families say they gained strength from one another as they rallied together to help one another grieve and confront the loss. Above all, be patient, kind, gentle and longsuffering with one another, selflessly, unconditionally loving your grieving children through this dark valley. And pray for God’s guidance for your words, being quick to listen and slow to speak.

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NEXT WEEK: My poor coping methods continue…

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Thanks for joining me.

Until next week!

Blessings,

Andrea

(The opening quote was taken from A Silent Sorrow: A Pregnancy Loss page 261.)