still life: spoken word blog round up

Angie over at still lifew with circles and also still life 365 has come up with another amazing prompt. i want to thank her from the bottom of my heart for this spoken blog round up. hearing the voices and seeing the faces of these woman whose blogs i have been reading for so long was monumentally moving. i hope mine contribution can measure up.
here is my video

on people's opinons on grief that does not belong to them

tonight i watched my recorded episode of 'Secret life of the American teenager' . i have watched every episode since the beginning, as i have now fostered 4 teen moms, and they all insist on watching it..
and well (embarrassment) now i can't.stop.watching....

i was very very upset that the writers decided to have one of the main characters deliver a stillborn baby girl last week. Not that i don't think media should portray the reality that some babies die--but that i know that a TV show cannot carry the weight that is baby-loss. I dread the episode when Adrian 'gets over it' ....

but anyhow, tonight's episode is supposed to be fast-forwarded to two months after Mercy's death. Adrian is depressed and angry.She will not leave the house and is eating all day long. Everyone on the show is worried about her, and trying to make her better.

watching this i am wanting to scream at the screen- 'WHAT SHE NEEDS is to talk with another mom who has lost her baby! What she needs is all of you to back the F off her case'
and what the writers had her say struck me. She said " i am so sick of hearing about how everyone is worried about me.it is such a burden. it is so heavy on top of the burden of losing my baby!"
I thought YES - this is it!

all the advice and judgment that has been handed to me over the last almost 18 months is a burden. Well meaning people (and some not well meaning people) seem to just jump at the chance to decide how i should carry my weight- and seem to have no filter for telling me.

I do not care if you think we should have waited to have Willow.
I do not care if you thought, or still think i was not or am not dealing with my grief appropriately.
I do not care if you do not like that i am angry.
I do not care if you think we shouldn't foster, or move or do anything 'rash'.
I do not care if you think i should or should not sue my midwife.
i do not care if you think anything about what i should or should not do in MY life.

do not add your burden onto this weight i have to carry. you may think you would do it differently, or better than me--- but really you should just be thanking God that you do not have to try.


*note- there are many people i have asked for advice- i am not talking to you. i am mostly talking about people who have said ugly things. if you are worried i am tlaking about you- just ask. i don't bite. promise.

blogroll

i have been added to the Stirrup Queen's Completely Anal List of Blogs That Proves That She Really Missed Her Calling as a personal organizer.
http://www.stirrup-queens.com/a-whole-lot-of-blogging-brought-to-you-sorted-and-filed/
this is a great resource for those hurting from baby loss, infertility, those fostering or adopting etc. please go check it out.

right where i am project : one year, 5 months

Angie , over at still life created this project. For grieving mothers to talk about where they are in their grief now. Because grief does not ' go away'. people like to say it "gets better over time". maybe it does with the loss of a grandma or a dog. But the loss of a baby does not go away. it does change though.
i am certainly in a different place now than last year, or even last month. My grief ebbs and flows it changes daily.

angie said
"I have read about this happening to other people. I remember from my early days reading about it with people years out. When their real life peeps into their online diary, and then have things held against them. They went private or password protected or went anonymous with a new blog name. I don't know how to deal with it, because I never thought I would care or not be able to just ask someone if they were reading my blog. I don't want to ask now and draw attention to my blog, and on the other hand, it feels like a violation if someone is reading about my emotions on a day to day basis. And that is just it. In the beginning, I didn't care if people read because I knew that grief was trumping everything. Now that people expect me to be normal again, I can't quite figure out why I ever thought telling anyone about my blog was like a good idea. And yet, I have come to rely on this space. So, that is the awkward grief place I am at now. I don't mind if people in my day to day life comment, or let me know they are reading, it is the awkward place of me not knowing what everyone knows. If they read here, they know way more about me and my weird hiccups in life than I know about theirs. It feel unsafe sometimes. It makes it sound like I dwell in grief, but this is the place I process that part of my life. And it is so important, I can't give it up. Blogging is strange, because the temporary feelings become permanent, and little dalliances with the annoying take on the gravitas of epic angers. Nothing is ever permanent with emotions. Nothing, except people can pull up a specific blog post and say, "But you feel like this.""

and what she said there is so how i feel (i bolded the points that really hit the nail on the head). Grief is such hard, dirty work. there are several people in my life (many who are actually family) who have taken what i write on here and stabbed me with it later...or taken my words and silently judged me..or gossiped about me with other people in the family. what i have to say to those people is ' shame on you.' it is so blatantly obvious that you have never been through anything resembling what my family has been through. If you had you would never take my words here and twist them or use them as weapons.

Why is it our society at large says the only way to acceptably grieve is quietly, alone, or with your therapist? Other than that, any negative emotions must equate to mental instability. Well, i have news for you---- this is dirty , real work i am doing.it is not pretty. i refuse to pretend to be pretty to appease your discomfort. What happened to Aquila was wrong. i have every right to be sad..to be mad... to be indignant at the whole mess. i was robbed. i was cheated. i am mad. i am STILL MAD.

But that in no way means i don't love my kids, or my husband.,,that we don't laugh or play.. that life does not go on.

So where am i right now?

i am coping. i cope by keeping busy. when a still moment comes i feel myself suffocated with self-pity. so i keep those moments as rare as possible. i focus on others instead of me. We have two extra (very time consuming children) here in the house. i find that keeps my sorrow put away. I just have less time to wallow..to picture the little dark haired impish girl running through the house. Even typing this opens the floodgates. so, that is why i still blog...even after all the crap thrown at me for it...i blog to be near her. this is the little compartment she fits in.

please: if you do know me in real life, and you read this- say something. just hello, i read at least...

happy Mother's day

another day without my baby girl Aquila. Last year, without a baby in my arms, church was torture. this morning, i look forward to praising god for the one i will be holding.

But, i will still be missing my forever baby.....

the further out

the further out i get from Aquila's death, the more my grief becomes hidden. i talked with a woman at church today about Aquila, and she talked about her miscarriage.
she was crying, i was not.
what is wrong with me that i can discuss my daughter's death and not cry??? but then, some random thing sets me off? This poor woman must have thought i am batty or made of stone.
I miss my baby girl so much, every day....i just don't want to share her with everyone i meet anymore..like her story is just too tragic. there are not any happy times, or wonderful memories. She died before i met her. Someone i loved and trusted completely failed me and failed at the job i entrusted her. I couldn't even hold my daughter for days. i never saw what she looked like before death changed her.

aquila's video

here is the version without the bugs!

my top words of 2010

on Facebook there is this App that finds your most used words for the year from your status updates. here were mine:

My Top Words of 2010
Here are top words from my Facebook status messages!
1:Baby - used 41 times
2:Willow - used 28 times
3:Need - used 26 times
4:Know - used 24 times
5:God - used 21 times
6:Dont - used 20 times
7:Please - used 18 times
8:Night - used 17 times
9:Someone - used 16 times
10:Lord - used 16 times

i was thinking of the myriad of sad poems that could be written from these...sigh

it's the most wonderful time of the year...except for me

Christmas songs are playing all around. This is season no one can avoid. And before Aquila i would not have a minded a bit. i loved Christmas. Loved everything about it. But now as the music creeps into every space and the red and green decorations coat the landscape i find my self constantly choking back tears, and wanting it to go away. I don't want to re-live last year. Don't want to remember burying my daughter 2 days before Christmas. Going through the motions like a zombie for the kids.
Where is my little girl who should be toddling around in her red velvet dress? Why is she not pulling ornaments off the tree? Ripping paper off the presents? I am not ready to celebrate a year of life without Aquila. What celebration is that? To celebrate the light the world lost?
I know that we should be celebrating the life of Jesus, which was given to all of us on Christmas, but i am stuck in remembering my daughter covered in blood.

A Different Child
A Poem

A different child,
People notice
There's a special glow around you,
You grow
Surrounded by love,
Never doubting you are wanted;
Only look at the pride and joy
In your mother and father's eyes.

And if sometimes
Between the smiles
There's a trace of tears,
One day
You'll understand.

You'll understand
There was once a different child
Who was in their hopes and dreams.

That child will never outgrow the baby clothes.
That child will never keep them up at night.
In fact, that child will never be of any trouble at all
Except sometimes, in a silent moment,
When mother and father miss so much
That different child.

May hope and love wrap you warmly
And may you learn the lesson forever
How infinitely precious
How infinitely fragile
Is this life on Earth.

One day, as a young man or woman
You may see another mother's tears
Another father's silent grief
Then you, and you alone
Will understand
And offer the greatest comfort.

When all hope seems lost,
You will tell them
With great compassion,
"I know how you feel.
I am only here
Because my mother tried again."

Written by Pandora Diane MacMillan

7 months

well it has been another month.it is strange because on one hand i rejoice at each passing month, as it brings me closer to holding the baby in my tummy (hopefully),but it is also very sad because it brings me one month further away from Aquila.

i am hitting brick walls and running low on steam in the sphere of fighting this injustice...

the things i want to do over the next few years are not the same things my husband wants...

i am feeling down, can you tell?

oh feel the love- insert sarcasm

warning- grumpy post aheadd- read at your own risk!

i had hits, many hits, coming to my blog from some crunchy birth group on babycenter- so head on over to read this

BabyChappell'sMommy · Pass a Note!
Posted 07/13/2010

i think a lot of moms start ignoring their gut instincts when they're so gung ho to do things a certain way. I think part of hombirthing, and of course especially free birthing, is tuning into your baby and your body. The story that's all over the place on MDC... hang on let me go get it to link her blog.

ok here's the original birth story she wrote after her baby was born still:
http://ecmama.blogspot.com/2009/12/aquilas-birth-story.html

and the one she wrote recently after taking the midwife to court and chewing on it for a while:
http://ecmama.blogspot.com/2010/06/whole-story-tragic-homebirth-of-aquila_21.html

She is in her 3rd trimester of her first baby since her baby's still birth and is going with an OB and a hospital birth! She was such a HB advocate and her SN brings up tons of threads on MDC about how HB is the only way to go. That was of course after her daughter's birth. When I read her original birth story but gut was in knots- something didn't sound right about the way she was contracting and the pain she was experiencing with her 3rd (I think maybe 4th?) child's home birth. You can get a shitty midwife who can change your life forever- negatively. But that's no reason to post warnings in all the due date clubs on MDC about how homebirth risks your baby's life. Cry

Courtney (blog)

IBCLC in training & newly single mama to Ariana 8.31.08 (EBF, ERF & almost an EC grad)

and she said

ruralmama25 · Pass a Note!
Posted 07/13/2010

Courtney, your story reminds me of momofmanyfeet, she is on BBC and she had one successful homebirth and then one where she was 35 weeks and her baby died (my mw would absolutely not deliver a baby that early, I don't know what hers's problem was). So she goes around saying CPMs should be burned at the stake (she literally said that) and that homebirth is awful and she's very nasty about it.

Here's the thing that I think people should be honest with themselves about--birth is risking your baby's life. Not every pregnancy ends in a live baby. I'm sorry if that's harsh, but if you can't deal with that you shouldn't be getting pregnant. I know SO many people with full term or late term losses, mostly hospital but a few homebirths also. Some were iatrogenic, some were unavoidable, some were unexplained. I knew that it was possible DS or I could die simply because I chose to be pregnant (I was and am totally healthy by the way). I personally feel that HB with a trained attendant lowers that risk significantly for both of us, but it's unrealistic to think that every pregnancy and birth are goign to be rainbows and unicorns. But blaming a homebirth for something like a cord accident or a premature baby is just stupid. Those things happen no matter where you are, and some thigns like cord accidents are unavoidable, if a baby gets a knot in their cord, there is no way to prevent that--nothing you can do, it's just a horrible tragedy like being hit by a car.

Mother, wife, and educator--the rest is just details....

Support for Choosing not to Circumcise

and she said

ThrivingforBaby · Pass a Note!
Posted 07/14/2010

*clap clap clap* AMEN ruralmama! Seriously couldn't agree with you more. So many people just don't get that birth - regardless of where you do it - isn't 100%. And they always have to blame someone/something else if it goes wrong.

I'm fat because there's a McDonalds and a Jack in the Box around the corner from my house - it's all their fault. Boo hoo!

Oh suck it! Your fat because YOU EAT THERE - go eat a carrot, drink water and exercise. (So I'm being so general and offensive, but you get the point.)

I really think there are very few actual "accidents" and things that you can't control. Everything else is not someone else's fault. Could you imagine if everyone took responsibility how much fewer lawsuits there would be??

M. ♥ 's S.

Thriving for Baby
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so i said


ecmamaliz · you!
Posted 1 second ago

i would hope you people are kidding about what you are posting about me- but you are not- "you" do not "get" birth , until YOU have YOUR baby die in your hands. it is REALLY easy to talk about infant death as an abstract concept- that yeah some babies are going to die.until you have YOUR baby die- when they would have lived had you not choosen homebirth. MY baby would not have died in the hospital, as much as you would like to comfort yourself by thinking this.

i have never said to anyone ALL homebirths are bad. i have mearly pointed out truths. that you are not as close to the hospital as you think- and that when it is TRUELY an emergency transporting is very difficult- like with a baby's head stuck, or a prolapsed cord, or as your hemmoraging- especially since it takes 8 minutes to bleed to death. not all midwives are created equal. the difference between a CNM and a CPM is the differnce between a MASTERs degree and a GED plus some very easy classes. these are the things i have said- people who i have met ITRW or online who where looking into my midwife i have steered to CNMs here who have very good , long records- i have NEVER tried to convince any of them (and there have been about ten so far) to have a hospital birth, only a safer midwife.


and whoever on here is in my due date club on MDC, i noticed you never said anything to about this problem you have with me- instead you are posting about me else where- heres a tip for you- if you post a link to someones blog- they are going to see where the hit came from- so you are talking about me behind my back- and i can "hear" you.

so thanks for all your kind wishes. i hope all your babys are born healthy and safe, so you can scoff at me and think you in your great supiriority did a much better crunchier job than i.

liz paparella

Liz mama to DS 10, DSS 9, DD6, DS 3, DD (adoption!) 2, and Aquila born still 12/19/09..due with another girl 11/15/10 www.ecmama.blogspot.com
Report this Post a comment · Edit · Delete

this is the crap i am talking about. what's making me get more and more turned off from everything i used to think is the holier than thou, natural is always better crud that floods these circles. dosn't matter that i nurse my kids till three...dosn;t matter that all my births have been o natural, dosnt matter that we eat organic, that i cloth diaper and baby wear and cosleep- because i have BROKEN THE TABOO_ i spoke out against the reteric that homebirth is the safest option for mom and baby. it just isn't usually true. sorry, i have never been a person that belives to be considered in the "in group" -this one being "crunchy", one must follow all established rules in said group. and i will tell you a secret- i don't fully buy the left side or the right side of politics either! (gasp, shock!!) i think for myself. if that means people arn't going to like me- tough. it was never about what other people think about me- it is about what God thinks about me.

poem

The first week of grief- by the numbers

One: large box of chocolates

Two: the hour of the morning in which you will always awake, plauged by fresh sorrow

Three: large boxes of lotion Kleenex

Four: thousand dollars in funeral expenses

Five: living children keeping you alive with their aliveness, yet all the while suffocating you with their neediness

Six: children you were supposed to have; perfectly 3 girls, three boys

Seven: days, months, years; it never changes and you are always gone.

wow. i need to do some weeding.

my dear blogger friend Maggie posted this today and it floored me. this is so what i need to do right now....


Dealing with the reality of changing relationships after your child dies.
Written by Kristi Sagrillo
A wise gardener once told me that if you want a beautiful garden to grow you must weed it from time to time. Weeding for any gardener, whether it’s a small flower pot on the front porch or a gorgeous flower garden in the backyard is an assumed task and occasionally just has to be done. However, if you neglect to prune the weeds they will eventually begin to overcrowd or, worse yet, become invasive and try and take over your entire garden.

After the death of my son, I began to apply this same logic to my own life.

On November 7, 2005 my son Alex was stillborn; I was 37 weeks pregnant with him. He was perfect and healthy, except for the twisted umbilical cord that cut off his oxygen supply. Alex was a beautiful 8 pound 21 inch baby boy. Up until this point in time, my “life garden”, as I will affectionately refer to it, was perfect. Or, so it seemed. But on that date, and from that time forward, everything was different. My life garden had been devastated. There were no more blooming flowers; they had all been drowned by the tears that showered down upon them. Those first few weeks after Alex’s death were very surreal. Nothing mattered any longer. Life had continued to go on around me and I felt like I was helplessly watching a horrible movie unfold before my eyes and I couldn’t find the door to escape.

Soon the weeks turned into months and I had noticed that my life garden had a small number of flowers that had weathered the storm. Of course, the black cloud was ever-present and it still rained sporadically, but it was not raining quite as hard or as long as it did those first few months. My husband and living children were still there, they had always been there I just couldn’t see them until the rain had subsided. And new flowers began to sprout up - flowers that I had never planted or maybe never noticed before. These new friends and past acquaintances were now offering me their genuine love and support and would become the flower border surrounding my life garden. The support they gave me and continue to give me is cherished, now and forever.

As my garden began to slowly grow back, so did the weeds. At first I didn’t have the energy or the strength to pick them so I just ignored them. But eventually they were beginning to suck the life right out of me. I was struggling with how to cope after the death of my son as well as what it meant to me and how his death would define me forever. There were family members and numerous friends (too many to count) that could not or would not grant me the space or the respect to figure this out. I did not understand why they could not offer me their support, after all they were there for me in the past, right? They had been there before when I needed them, what was so different this time?

It was the death of my child that was different. I had changed overnight but they had not. I was not that same person any longer and they wanted the “old” me back. They wanted everything to go back to “normal”. But this was the new me and my life had taken a different path and this was a journey they did not want to take with me. My grief had suddenly shifted from grief for my son to anger towards them and I was going down a very dangerous road. I had veered off my path of grief and was headed down the winding road of hate and rage. My world was spinning out of control and I needed to reclaim it. I realized that my focus needed to be on my son if I was going to move through this grief process in a healthy way. It would have been very easy to shut out everyone. But what I needed to do was to remove any outside forces that were preventing me from my journey.

So began the weeding process. There were the co-workers who would avoid me if they saw me coming their way as if they could “catch” my bad luck like the common cold. On the outside they looked like flowers, but it quickly became apparent that they were indeed weeds. They would be easily plucked from my garden because their roots did not go very deep. It was the weeds that I had ignored for too long that took more energy to pull. Their roots were deep and in some cases were connected to other noxious weeds. Pulling one meant pulling two or more along with it. Those were the seemingly close friends that never called, never offered their support; it was like they disappeared from our life after the memorial service.

But it was the family members that hurt the most. The ones you would expect to be there for you. The verbal attacks and insensitive comments like, “When are you going to move on?”, “Shouldn’t she be over this, it’s been 3 months?”, “She should be grateful she has two living children” (Like one can be swapped out for another!) The last straw for me was when family members questioned my parenting abilities towards my two living children, this only 4 months after Alex’s death. Evidently, I had allowed my children to make faces at the adults and this caused them great pain and disrespect towards them. Hmm…sounds like a great reason to attack my parenting skills.

Initially, the shock of finally removing them from my life stung, but if my garden was going to continue to grow it simply had to be done. I gave myself permission to do this and coupled with that permission was the power I needed to gain control over my life once again.

I continue to weed my garden but it isn’t needed as frequently anymore. I am stronger now and more attentive and am able to pluck any weeds before they even have a chance to touch the soil. I am planting new flowers everyday and watering the ones I have. Every now and again the thunderstorms roll in but I have realized that my garden needs the rain and the sun in order to continue flourishing.





~~ i have this growing , burning desire to start fresh in my life. move away. have a new beginning.please pray for our family as we (hopefully) get closer to this being a possibility.

6 months

Wow. 6 months. half a year. a lifetime.

there is no way to make you understand how different one little life , and it's leaving, can alter a person (unless , of course, you have lost a child yourself)

I can barely remember the person i was before Aquila. 6 months later it is easier, and it is harder. The pain is no longer acute, hemorrhaging. But somewhere in the last months it became apparent that this was a pain that was chronic..would be something i will live with forever. Will always keep me from sleep, and make certain activities painful. it will become more and more hidden from everyone but God and me, but no less real.

Today i have the pain of knowing that 6 months ago, you were still alive. you had a chance, baby girl. And i failed, others failed, and now you are gone.
Tomorrow i have the pain of fathers day, and knowing that my relationship with my father is nothing if not more distant than it was this time last year. And the following day i have the pain of looking in the eye the woman whose mistakes cost me my child.

deleted

nightmare

i had a terrible dream last night. i gave birth to this baby all alone. she was a girl, and she died in my arms. what more can i say?

today's happenings

church is hard for me. i think i might go to the most fertile church on the planet- every woman seems to be either sporting a bowling ball under her dress or carrying a sweet little one in their arms.

i avoid them all like the plague.

especially after a few months ago... i braved attending the "moms" bible study. i lasted about 10 minutes. till i asked this one mama with a baby in her moby wrap how old he was...he was born the day i buried my daughter. i ran to the bathroom where i sobbed for so long a friend had to drive up the church to calm me down so i could drive. and who should be at the woman's retreat? this lady with sweet little funeral baby in arms. and i am put in her room! along with 3 other nursing moms. it was hell . i did not sleep. i was able to be moved for the next night, but i continued to run into this lady over and over. finally i felt i must explain my rudeness when she started chatting with me about how i inspired her by always wearing my babies in slings. then i told her, "look , i am sorry if i come off as i don't like you but my baby died at birth and i buried her on the day your son was born" insert waterworks and choking back any other conversation.

i was just thinking last sunday how nice it is that i never see her at the service we attend. whew! but oh i should not have thought that. this week, who do i see? you guessed it. perfect view of their sweet family. i was sucked into imagining Aquila bouncing in my lap like her baby boy, and i had to stop myself.
ugh

but then things went better. while waiting in line to pick up sebastian i saw a new mama with her little tiny one in a ring sling. the sling was not positioned correctly and i all could think was how i should be showing her how to fix it. see, i used to own a business, making and selling baby slings. so i always help mamas with their slings. but not once since Aquila have i braved talking to some new mom. but I DID IT. i talked to her. i fixed her sling. i smiled. i told her her son was beautiful. i did not mention my dead baby. i did not cry. it was a milestone.

then when i got home i had two pieces of mail. one was my health insurance quarterly update. i did cry. Aquila's name was on it. everyone in my family- all our names listed in order the same way they read in my heart. health insurance for a dead baby.
the other mail was a notification of the day of the hearing for my midwife. i have not really discussed this on here, because i want to wait till after the board decides if she is keeping her license.
whew.. and it's only 1:42 in the afternoon.

What is and what never should be

i went to Aquila's grave today. For the first time since the funeral... My husband doesn't understand.most people don't. But i had no real desire to go there yet. She isn't there. And i wasn't ready to relive that day...
but, i went to today, and took the little ones. Lucca wanted to put toys on her grave. i know three other babies there. I was right in that seeing her grave did not upset me...but i did get upset. while looking for my friend's babies graves, i was very grieved by all the little toys..all the babies in that "baby garden" as they have named it. There should not be a baby garden DAMMIT. i knew that every little grave marked a set of broken hearts. that each baby had their parents sobbing over there cold bodies. and it just isn't right. it is so very wrong...

and that is where i am at with that my friends......

some pieces of art i have been working on

both pieces are in polymer clay. i am really enjoying this medium.