stillbirth compassion

stillbirth is an isolating grief.

i sit here, five years later, after leaving our daughter in a stranger's arms at the hospital to return home...and i feel alone. it's an odd grief to wear. stillbirth.

i have witnessed other moms carry their grief and walk with it. i have watched painful heart wrenching deaths happen.....a 3 month old, a baby that lived a week....an 11 yr to cancer, an 18 yr old to cancer.

all these losses and they all carry a weight of intense grieving and sadness and amputation of the heart and life.

and then there is stillbirth. and we parents who wear that badge just struggle with our grief label. we just do.

culture does not get us. many friends and family don't either.

how do you grieve something or someone that society or culture pretty much says never existed?

how do you cry tears five years later, deep and hard and drenching enough as if it just happened, for someone that came and went so quickly and never took a breath in this world?

most in this society will call your loss a miscarriage. and pass it off as that. i have miscarried. and stillbirth is not a miscarriage. it's just not. it's different. both were so horribly and terribly painful and heart wrenching. but stillbirth is not a miscarriage. it's different. it's foreign and taboo. what should be a happy delivery of life, is a delivery of a death sentence and the labor results in a still child. that is gone. and it's just too odd and unnatural for most to wrap their head and heart around.

i fear in our culture and even in medical culture, that these children get treated as specimens and fetuses and never really give them an identity. they have no memories. no voice. i know this because i hear what they are called. i hear stories of awful names and cold descriptions from ill-advised and awkward nurses and doctors.

so then comes the fight and struggle for the parent who holds the still child...the child that for an entire pregnancy was dancing and moving and kicking, posing for 3d sonogram pics and fully alive inside the momma's swollen belly. we know that they were. they were fully alive and we were preparing room in our hearts for them, in our home and family for them....we were ready. we were anticipating with excitement and joy. we were in the waiting line if you will....and all of the sudden, we were not.

stillbirth is in a category of itself. and even five years later, i fight the fears of people not understanding the magnitude of our loss. i feel the need to defend why my heart is shattered-living-still-beating, why i am different now, changed, altered, hollow at times. because only a handful of people actually met our girl, held her, saw her.....i feel the fear and eyes that might second guess my sadness with an expiration date. i truly see how much stillbirth has affected my insecurities in my grief and in my life. widows and mom's that bury older children and spouses seem to have more to hold on to than me. and believe me, i know both ladies in those categories and i walk this grief walk with them and it's not to be compared or challenged. but it is just different. it just is. and i can't really explain it. but a mom who's delivered a sleeping still child does.

when any other death occurs, that person was known to many, by many. they forged memories or a relationship with others. and those others, experience the loss of that person in their life, as well as yours. but the loss is also theirs. they share it somehow. with miscarriage and stilbirth, the loss is uniquely the parents only at times. it's the waiting and the waiting and then the meeting happens all the sudden and in the same breath the goodbye. here is your treasure you waited for, now hand them over and say goodbye. you were the first responders to the great news and the bad news, the first attenders of the trauma. and then just like that, the child disappears. it's like you entered another realm and when you return you are the only witness and you can't explain what you saw. you are the only person that truly knew and had time with that child, growing inside you. and when they die suddenly, no 'others' were ever given the chance to know your child. so the loss is excruciating lonely that way. you feel at times that you are the only one who truly misses that child being in this world because you are the only one that 'met' them maybe. it seems like a bad dream. especially when the world doesn't stop for death one bit. the parents feel this unique loss in one way together and the momma who carried the child solely, has an even more unique sense of loss and connection that even the daddy never got to experience, sadly. so this loss, this stillbirth loss can almost feel at times like an invisible child happened. that there was expecting and then nothing. it went away all too fast for the 'others' to meet and know your child....you can almost feel so isolated and crazy in this surreal type of loss, that it feels like a dream. you don't have the childhood pics or memories to sustain such pain. it came and went and lies like "no one even noticed her" come to mind. it is this reason why the still-grieving parent must talk about their experience so much and process it and wonder and dream and fill in the blanks, which can't happen, so they guess. a lifetime of guessing ensues....ian says only someone at the battle of gettysburg knows what that hell was like. for us now, it's just history, a history lesson, a story we hear. many of us believe the cross to be true, but none of us being there to see it, trust that it happened and retell the story to recall and remember. therein lies the importance for the still-parent to tell the story of their child, yet fight the fear that for most, it just becomes a story or history piece. because most all of them hearing the child-story were not there, never met them and have no frame of reference or relationship to call upon to attach their own grief to.

this is yet another reason why timely cards and phone calls and texts and mason jar's filled with daisies during painful weeks are so sweet to this parent....a name-filled sweet bracelet from your mom and a dragonfly broach from your mother-in-law, both to wear at your child's funeral say, she mattered to you but also to us, the 'others' who loved her too. when your oldest and dearest best childhood friend gets on a plane and is by your bedside in days, complete with pieces of your baby blanket you gave her long ago, to bury with your girl now she says, this cries i want to remember and join you in this sacred. getting a picture sent to you from a state away of friends who plant a tree in honor of your child, screams we want to remember her. flowers sent each heaven-day anniversary by loving grandparents to help say 'we remember and loved her' matter..little tea plates with dragonflies sent from states away by a friend thinking of you during a well-known hard week speaks volumes to this hurting parent. warm meals made as a celebration and brought to the house during the hard week means those friends are willing to listen and enter into the sacred time with you as you remember what could have been....a charm necklace with your child's name on within hours of her passing bought by your best friend and special ornaments bought each year for your child by the same friend says, i want to remember her with you. i want to walk this with you, i don't get it, but you are not alone. all these 'joining in' efforts help the bad dream lie lessen and fill the still-parent with assurance that their child, whom so many never got to meet, mattered. they that were in fact REAL. and in flesh. and blood. and HERE. these precious effort-things happened to us after sydney, and we are thankful and they did help lessen the surreal alone time. yet stillbirth is still such an isolating momentary event, that the still-parent's heart still craves for those efforts and that needing to remember. EVERY day.....

so your husband buys a tree. for his daughter's five year heaven day....FIVE years later this says we want a lasting tangible good fruit that beckons our hearts to remember, to not forget and yes, to celebrate the life of the momentary child......

i fight for the rights of grieving moms and babies when i speak regularly with grief and sensitivity training for nurses at the local college and hospital. i fight for this strange and odd isolating grief to be exposed and transformed. i fight for these nurses and doctors to ATTEND these sacred moments with grace and mercy and privilege. i long for a day when i don't feel insecure in my grief. when i don't feel odd and strange and odd-man out everywhere i go.

my faith that was rocked and then challenged and then transformed and renewed is my only Hope on days when this stillbirth cloak doesn't make sense, odd-fitting. yet, there is a peace in that, that my God who suffered more, gets it. and he knows the strange and odd, as so many didn't believe him, didn't believe he was who he said he was in Christ...the gracious peacemaker and justice bringer and mercy giver that was Jesus, was odd-man out in his society. he didn't fit in and his ministry that would be KINGDOM purposed and life giving would be to purposefully go against the grain of culture and society and comfort...to bring God's Truth to light and be a beacon for grace. and Life. and rescue.

i am, in fact, not alone at all. he is with me. he gets me. that is my only peace and comfort on days when i feel left out. carved out differently than those around me, suddenly at 30 years old, set apart from all the other happy child-bearing moms that don't bury their children or shop for urns or plan funerals and heaven anniversary days or cry at target in the girls section or ache silently as all the five year old girls around them as they start dance recitals and ballet. those that laugh over silly birth stories and complain about sore feet and pregnancy, and effortlessly carry babies to term. that stopped being me five years ago. and since then, the magnitude of our loss has also been matched with a feeling different and worrying that no one will understand me. that no one gets me or shares this awkward still feeling. i wonder what our daughter's smile looks like, her laugh or her cry. i wonder so much about her.....there are so many empty blanks and spaces with stillbirth.  that odd empty wondering leaves you feeling different. though young, my heart and body feel aged and old and tired. though, i am here on earth, half my heart groans for the new one. and lives on the other side of eternity now. it's like i am two different people. and that's a hard life to live....

i am thankful for the soul friends that God saw fit to bring into my life that would get me early on. that would look at me and see a familiar face and heart, that could echo my groans and never judge me. he allowed me to not have to go the weird alone. he did in fact bring other still momma's into my life that get what i am talking about right now. i am thankful as well for sweet friends and loving family too, that would love us unconditionally in our grief and JOIN US. my own precious mom is a stillbirth mom. as was her mom i believe. i know i am not alone and that she knows the empty blanks feeling too.

today marks the five year mark...of the day i went to go check on our girl at the hospital. and was told a most hellish fate instead. today marks the day of death news....tomorrow will mark the day of delivery and 'birthday'...(again, sadly the stillborn child doesn't really even have a birthday without quotes) and us meeting our baby girl face to face. i replay and revisit and i try as hard as i can to recall. sights and sounds, her face and her lips. her hair. her soft skin. her fingers and her smell, the way my tears fell on her head as we sang to her...it's all i got...i don't have an album of growing up pictures or videos or memories. my only memory of the physical her, in my arms, comes with trauma. it's a bittersweet two-fold, catch 22 weird memory. that is both sacred and priceless, sad and haunting, lovely and beautiful, terrible and wonderful. and it's all i have. for now, thank you Jesus...

i long for a day where stillbirth parents don't feel this way. i long for a day when stillbirth doesn't even happen. i long for a day when my faith becomes sight and the set-apart-odd-man out feeling dies away and is replaced with eternal peace and Life. and Hope and Home. and redemption. but until then, we must find a way to make this kind of loss matter more and love these hurting still-parents with a love and understanding that makes them feel valued.....and honor there momentary child that is a forever child to them, no matter what society or a death certificate says.

if you are reading this and you have been a still momma or daddy like us, please know that you are not alone. that my heart echos and groans and hurts with you. and feels different with you. the face that we can give to this kind of loss can change. it must be one of dignity and value and worth, purpose and mission.

and our children, our momentary forever children lead the way for us and they give us a reason to fight. and to give grace and value to stillbirth. and value ALL life. and live in a way that would honor our still babies and our God who created them, beautifully and WONDERFULLY made.