A Poem by Stephanie Paige Cole from her book, "Still."

I thought I would share this poem (it's safer than sharing my own) by Stephanie as it reflects how I feel to the deepest part of my core.  I could name it Tuesday, and it would be mine, the circumstances are different, but the feelings are so the same.  Especially this week which has proven to be one of the hardest weeks I have had so far, besides those first few weeks when i couldn't lift myself from the couch and my eyes were literally almost swollen shut from my not stop crying.  Okay, here it is, brace yourself (those who have lost your babies), I could barely even read this the first time through because I was crying so hard and I know it will be just as hard to type it here and have to read it again.

Thursday by Stephanie Paige Cole
Concerned
Nervous
Anxious
Uncertain
Concerned
Why are they worried?
What's going on?
Kind of excited
I love ultrasounds
Is something wrong?
Their faces are frozen
Worried, just a little
BAM
"I'm so sorry…"
She's dead
It washes over me
Drags me under
She's dead
She's dead
Dizzy
Disbelief
No
NO
Do it again
They turn the monitor
I look
But I can't see
I'm gone
So is she
Dizzy
Dizzy
Nothing makes sense
"Wait here"
"Richy's coming"
"Here is a gown"
No
NO
I stay in my clothes
He's here
He's crying
Now I can cry
Maybe I'll kill myself
I wish I knew how
Confused
Scared
Complete disbelief
What are they asking of me?
I have to labor?
She needs to come out?
No
NO
This is all wrong
I want to go home
I want to die
Please make it stop
Why won't it stop?
Silence
Resolve
Utter disbelief
I detach from my body
They do things to that girl
I guess that she's me
IV, Pitocin, catheter
I don't care
Water breaks
Muscles contract
I don't feel them
Are they even mine?
Baby is coming
One last push
No
I won't
You'll take her from me
Keep her inside
She's safe with her mommy
No choice
No control
My body betrays me
She's out
She is dead
They say "it's was a girl"
Has she stopped being one?
She is a girl
I know
She's my daughter
I hold her
I love her
They take her away
I fall
Down
Down
Down
Days pass
Shock lifts
Disbelief stays
Pain comes
Piles of it
More every day
It crushes me
Darkness
Darker than darkness
Engulfs me
I stare for hours
The lights stay off
There's nothing to see
I ache
I long
I die every morning
I cry myself to sleep
I wake up
I die again
I hurt and hurt and hurt
It doesn't stop
Time does not heal
This will not heal
I will just learn to breathe through the pain
But I don't want to breathe
I don't want to heal
I just want to wake up on Thursday
And start over again

A better day

I am committed to having a better day today than I did yesterday and the day before.  Tuesday and yesterday almost did me in.  I attempted to go to work yesterday and lasted about a half an hour.  I went home and luckily Nate was home and he just snuggled up next to me and held my while I cried in bed.  It is weird how I have such a hard time on the days that I feel okay because I don't like to feel okay, but when I am low it is frightening how low I can get.  So, yesterday I did everything in my power to get out of that really low place.  I was cradled by my hubby, I went and whacked to pole he made me in the backyard with my martial arts stick (we created an anger release station in the backyard), I took a bath, I went for a run, I painted for the first time in years.  It was the most self-care I have done in a long time all in one day.  And, it worked to get me out of that desperately low place I was in.  I think it was the run.  I am going to try hard to make that a routine.  Before the run, I was pacing around my house, I just wasnt feeling comfortable even in my own skin.  Part of me wanted to lay down and hibernate, but there was too much emotional energy coursing through me so I would walk around the house and look for things to do, but had no motivation to do any of it.  The run allowed me to release some of that energy so that I could just settle a little.  I enjoyed painting too.  I am always hesitant to do it because I am such an amatuer (really, it looks like a 5 year olds paintings) and get too self-critical, but I am going to try and let that go.  It felt good to express some of my feelings and pain through art.  Maybe I will post some of the artwork an poems if I feel confident enought to do so.

May 8th...

is Mother's Day and the 2 month mark of Silas's passing.  I am freaking out.  I thought today was bad, I am now dreading that day.  The month milestones are so hard and to top it off with Mother's Day….I can't deal.  As sad and isolative as I anticipate to be, I really hope both Silas and I are recognized by those close to us on that day.  Actually now that I think of it, I don't really care about myself, I just want my son to be recognized.  Here's hoping.

I hate Tuesdays

It felt like my heart was ripped out all over again today, if that is possible.  I had my 6-week follow-up appointment with my OB today (exactly 7 weeks to the day that I delivered my Son stillborn) and had a full on panic attack sitting alone in the room waiting for him to come in.  I seriously considered running out, fuck it, I don't need to get answers, I dont need to make sure I'm healing, I don't even need to put my fucking clothes back on, just get me the fuck out of this room where I sat for 9 1/2 months and heard my son's heartbeat and chitchatted about the silly little pregnancy concerns I had.  Now, I sat in the room, with no baby in tow for my OB to admire, just my heart wrenching despair and uncontrollable sobs.  The office was eerily quiet, I was literally the only one there, I was expecting to be swarmed by pregnant women and have to deal with that, but I was the only one.  It's like they cleared out the office for me, or maybe for the sake of the other women.  Don't let them see this broken, lifeless woman the horrible reminder that their babies aren't safe.  I am the dead baby plague.

I got answers though and will have to update Silas's story.  I am not sure how to process the information that I received today.  I can't really even start the absorb it.  It's an answer, but is that good or bad.  My doctor told me that Silas had a heart beat the peaked back up to a healthy range between my contractions up until the last five minutes.  In that last five minutes he was crowning and too far into the birth canal to really monitor.  However, from reviewing the heart monitor report with his colleagues the only answer they can come up with for what happened is that maybe that strong heartbeat they saw in those last moments was actually mine and not Silas's.  He said they can't be sure, but that's the only possible reason.  His autopsy report showed that he was a perfectly healthy baby, heart, lungs, brain all perfect.  I had a perfect son and I suffocated him inside me.  Dammit!  Why?  In just five minutes….Who ever thought a five minute time span could destroy your life.  I carried him for 9 1/2 months and in the last five fucking minutes before I would hold my precious baby in my arms and hear his cries and see his perfect beautiful eyes (that I think were a beautiful blue like his mommas) he died.  THE LAST FIVE FUCKING MINUTES!!!!  Really, did that really happen to me?  In five minutes my whole life, dreams, hopes were crushed.  What kind of cruel trick is that?  What does it mean?  It is sooo sooo hard not to go to such a dark, self blaming, self hating place.  And, honestly, I sit there a lot these days.  I am so angry!!!

Okay, I am clearly starting to process this as I write.  I am angry, so fucking angry.  What sort of God, universe would do this?  How can I be given something so precious, something I love so intensely, so deeply with all of my being just to have him taken away? How do you live once he is taken away?  I don't want to be here without my baby!  He was my life, my everything and he was stolen from me.  Whoa, okay…I think I have to end this for now.  This is too hard.

Guilt

My therapist said today, "It sounds like you hold a lot of guilt about things" (this was our second session), what an understatement!!!  I think I feel guilty about almost all my thoughts and feelings, okay maybe that is an overstatement, but you get the idea.  Some of the context about where this statement came from I am not going to divulge on here, but a lot of it had to do with my grief process and how to identify myself without my baby boy by my side.  Specifically, today a woman said to me, "it's so nice to see you happy again" or something along those lines and I instantly felt guilty.  I shouldn't look happy it has only been a month and a half since I lost my son.  I feel like I need to time warp back to the early 1900's and wear black garb for a year with a veil over my face.  At least that is how I feel in the inside, even if I have a smile on my face and casually shoot the shit.  Silas is never not right there in the forefront of my thoughts.  So don't be fooled.  What you see is only an empty shell of the person I once was.  I feel guilty when I fool you, but like I said earlier I need to embrace those short moments of reprieve.

Oh, but that guilt is strong.  What kind of mother can feel moments of happiness?  Are they truly happy moments anyways, I think not?  Am I really a mother though?  What makes a mother?  Today I referred to myself as a mother and felt weird like this person I was talking to was going to look at me weird or perplexed?  Where is my baby to prove that I am mother?  If I am a mother, what kind am I being that I can't even keep my baby safe?  And, please don't comment about how great of a mother I am, I am not fishing for compliments and nothing you could say will alleviate the deep seeded guilt about not being able to bring my baby home and doubts about what that means for me as a mother.  I think I will always feel guilty and ashamed about this.  Trust me I wish it was different, but this is my reality now, as shitty as that may be.

Embracing the quiet moments..

...during those short, few and far between times when I am not heavy with sorrow.  It may be minutes, hours, or the majority of a day that I feel "okay" and I have realized how important it is to really accept those moments in order to build enough strength to weather through the storm that I know is just around the corner.  It is hard never knowing when my grief is going to hit and how strong it will be in that moment.  Sometimes, I may shed just a tear or two and other times I am knocked over by depths and the rapidness of my pain.  I was mistaken when I thought that with time this pain would become lighter.  It sometimes seems the exact opposite.  It's like the veil has been lifted and I cannot hide from this reality that has become my life.

I have never been much of a daydreamer and in the first month this helped save me as I didn't try and picture what I would be doing at any given moment if I had Silas with me, as was the plan.  Now, I can't seem to stop thinking about it.  I am constantly thinking about and daydreaming about what my life "should" look like right now.  I was at a museum the other day and kept thinking my baby boy should be in a carrier right now strapped to my chest.  At the beach, I cried thinking about how Silas should be in my arms watching his daddy surf with me.  I imagine being able to caress his little chubby cheeks, kiss his forehead, play with him on the carpet and tickle his belly, show him off to everyone I see.  And, I don't just imagine the good, I would be so happy to have to be up all night trying to soothe his cries, change his gross, messy poopy diapers, to be exhausted from all that it takes to be a mom.  But, no I sit in an empty quiet house.  I walk around like a zombie, absentmindedly going through the motions of my life with no care or desire to do so.  This life is nothing without my baby.  And, it is overwhelming difficult to be me right now with such pain, loneliness, and emptiness.

So, in those short moments when I feel "okay", I take a breath and prepare myself

I don't want to hear "it will getter better"

I am not ready to even contemplate that right now.  I don't want to get further away from the time I had Silas.  Right now, I wish I could turn back time and freeze it in the moment I held my precious son in my arms.  He never took a breath, but he was perfect.  I can still feel the weight of him in my arms, picture his beautiful face.  If I only could go back to that, spend more time caressing his sweet cheeks and kiss his forehead.  I don't want to move forward and further away from that moment.  I am afraid the further away I get the the foggier that memory will become.  If I don't remember who will?  

The moon

Several nights ago I went into my backyard for the first time in a very long time to look at the stars.  It was surprisingly warm for an early spring night.  The sky was cloudy, but you could see stars peeking through and the full moon was bright.  As I stared at the moon it became brighter and brighter, glowing through the cloudy night.  I felt an instant sense of ease, as if Silas was illuminating the moon for me telling me he was okay and that he loved me.  This morning the moon was bright again, not ready to depart and make room for the sun.  Again, I felt like it was Silas’s way of saying hello, “Good morning mommy, I love you.  You’re going to be okay.”  I feel okay today, I haven’t felt that for some time now.  How I miss my precious boy!