TRIGGER WARNING: Pregnancy/Infant Loss, Language, PTSD, Depression
“Next time, you’ll have twins!”
This is what the nurse anesthesiologist said to me as she left the room after four failed attempts at administering an epidural before I gave birth to my stillborn son.
At the time, I’d already been living my worst nightmare for nearly 48 hours, and, lingering on the edge of a heavy benzo dose, her well-intended words sunk like a boulder in frigid waters in my gut. I mumbled a half conscious “thank you,” forcing a polite smile and nod as she continued to encourage my husband and I to basically rearrange our genetic traits, start a new family tradition and have a boy and a girl in our next pregnancy.
We hadn’t even born our son yet, much less buried and mourned him.
For the most part, the support we received from the medical staff at our hospital was gentle and empathetic. As word spread through our family and friends that we’d lost our son at 37 weeks pregnant, we were touched in the initial weeks by their visible grief and outreach of support.
But we still got those reactions, and they became more common as time passed following our son’s death. People who are incapable of embracing grief and sadness or were too uncomfortable with the reality of our situation to allow us the room to mourn our loss. People who put a time limit or an acceptable depth on our grief.
“It wasn’t meant to be.” “You’ll have another baby.” Or, my personal favorite, “he’s in a better place now.”
It’s a knee jerk reaction to smile politely and thank people for their “kind words.” When you’re sucked so deeply into the effort of simply moving through daily tasks, the idea of correcting them, and telling them the best place for my infant son to be is with his parents, you unfeeling bastard, flares and dies on your tongue.
In the wake of Twitter’s callous, insensitive, and even cruel response to Chrissy Teigan and John Legend’s loss of their son Jack, it’s never been more apparent how little we as a society know about how to navigate the grief of pregnancy and infant loss. I can’t speak for what others need or needed in their grief journey, but here’s an insight to mine.
WHAT NOT TO DO:
Please don’t tell me I’m blessed, or lucky. We may have had loved ones reaching out to help ensure our bodies are nourished and rested. We may be privileged with a roof under which to mourn and an employment and school situation providing us time to grieve and few worries about paying the funeral expenses. And for those things, yes, we are gracious. But the worst possible thing that could ever happen to anyone – losing a child – has happened to us. Right now, in this precise moment, we are the unluckiest people in the universe and would trade all of the above in a second if it meant we could have our son back, alive and well.
You can’t dangle something sparkly in front of my face and make my problems disappear. This isn’t the appropriate tactic for dealing with grief, depression, or trauma. Even animals grieve more deeply than that, so why do we expect our allegedly superior and more complex minds to be capable of such amateurish smoke and mirror magic tricks?
/*\
Please don’t make me feel your feelings. I am mourning. Right now, it’s still fresh, raw. I can’t bottle it up and set it aside for anything – it’s far too big to fit in any bottle I could find. I need to let myself feel my grief, and I can’t do that if I’m worried about how YOU are handling MY grief.
Please don’t pretend you know what we’re going through. Unless you have lost a full-term pregnancy or newborn, you have no idea what we are going through. Even then, the particulars of Logan’s delivery were so rare and unique, that level of trauma has been experienced by few others. The unthinkable happened to us, multiple times, over the course of four long, horrific days between Logan’s death and birth.
Your grief over your loss is valid and deep and painful, but it isn’t my grief, and it isn’t my loss. It’s not comparable.
/*\
Stop trying to fix me.
My grief is a giant, gaping wound. My chest is wide open. My heart is shredded into a kajillion pieces. A cardiotherasic surgeon would look at our grief and say “there’s nothing I can do here.”
There isn’t a bandaid in the universe big enough for this. There isn’t enough time in the world to heal this. It will never heal. I will always ache to hold Logan in my arms, to nurse him, and sing to him, and see his smile, hear his laugh, feel his little fist closed tightly around my finger. No other baby will fill this void. No distractions will ease this ache. No amount of “brainstorming ideas on how to move forward” will help me move past him. (Yes, that’s what a military grief counselor told us to do, three weeks to the day after Logan’s death.)
Grief isn’t a checklist you tick off so you can close this chapter and start a new book of your life. Yes, we’ve read and are still reading books about grief and stillbirth and infant loss. Yes, we held him and named him and kept little momentos. Yes, we had a funeral. Yes, we’ve been into his room, we’ve looked at and held his things. No, we haven’t gone back to life “before.” There is no “after” or returning to life “before.”
If our sorrow makes you uncomfortable? Then go sit somewhere else. Don’t offer to carry it for us. Don’t offer to help. Don’t ask how we are doing. And for fuck’s sake, don’t try to fix it.
/*\
Don’t make us apologize. Every single tiny effort takes every ounce of energy we have. Getting out of bed is exhausting. Eating a meal is exhausting. Bathing and brushing our teeth is exhausting. Focusing on returning to and staying in a healthy state is taking everything we’ve got. There’s nothing left for pleasantries, social courtesies. Maybe someone you know somewhere lost someone they loved so dearly and they were able to muster together enough strength to extend kindness for a thank you card or a smile. I don’t have that strength. And expecting me to scrape together what little positive energy I have right now to give to you? Let’s think for a moment – shouldn’t I be keeping that energy? Shouldn’t I be using it to stand myself back up again? Shouldn’t Logan get that? Is he not my child, and deserving of that kind of unconditional love and support? Am I not?
If we’ve done something to offend you, just take it and let it go. At some point, I’ll come back to the land of the living and I’ll become a kinder person again. But right now, please don’t make me apologize for feeling my pain as deeply as I do. Have faith that I’m still a good person. Be patient with me.
/*\
Don’t judge how we decide to cope. Everyone is different, and although experience is valuable, we are choosing to take each “next step” in whatever way our hearts desire. You don’t get to tell us what’s right and what’s wrong. You don’t get to tell us how, or where, or when to mourn our son. Making suggestions is acceptable, if it’s asked for. Lending forward how you decide to mourn our loss is also acceptable, and even appreciated. But that’s where your input stays – within those lines.
/*\
More than anything, don’t offer help unless you mean it. If there’s a specific limit to what you’re willing to help with, specify what you have in mind. Don’t wave a branch in our faces just to drop it. We’ve had enough disappointment for a lifetime. Don’t give us reason to believe in you just to rip it away.
Additionally, don’t offer to be someone we can talk to you if you aren’t. It’s not that we expect you to drop everything to be our ear or shoulder in our moment of sudden grief, but if we spill out our hearts to you after you offer to be that for us, don’t ignore it. Don’t drop us like a hot potato. Be there when you say you will or don’t say you’ll be there. There is little else that can make this worse than making us feel completely alone in it. It’s as simple as that.
/*\
WHAT YOU CAN DO
I remember not knowing what to say or do for others when they experienced significant loss. Now that I have experienced that very specific kind of life-altering grief, I’m still not 100% sure what the answer is, or if there even is one. What I do know is that it’s a time that needs kindness.
The human brain changes after experiencing trauma. It’s not the fault of the individual; grief is literally physiological. And sometimes it’s permanent. In the initial shock of losing Logan, I felt like I was in a fog. I could barely string words together into a sentence, and survival was just going through the motions. I didn’t know what I wanted, or needed, and I’m still trying to reteach my brain how to make simple decisions. Now that the fog has cleared enough to be able to analyze my feelings, I’ll share a little of what you CAN do to help.
What you can do is listen. Sit with us in our grief. Remember and honor Logan in whatever way you feel compelled to (as long as it isn’t political). Recognize that he was (and is) real and valid and impactful. Understand that there is no time stamp on grief, especially this kind of grief, and that we will be mourning him forever, for the rest of our lives, in the big moments and significant days and every moment and day in between.
Finally, know that at some point, we may return to some recognizable version of ourselves, but we’ll never truly be the same people we were. We are parents now, without our child. We are as changed, if not more changed, than any other parent who experienced a different, more fortunate outcome. Accept us for who we are now – we could really use some support in our corner.
READ MORE ABOUT GRIEF AND PREGNANCY LOSS:
