A Bereaved Parent's Grief

Grief is different for everyone, that’s been well established. It’s also been well established that the loss of your child is its own unique monster; a clawing parasite of a beast that then lives with and feeds off of you for the rest of your life. What’s more is that it’s a taboo creature, not widely spoken of because a child’s death makes most uncomfortable. But that’s the new life of the parent or parents that get left behind; that daily pain and struggle to even just exist, that’s our new life. The only others to understand this are also living it on an intimate level, they’re the ones in the same ‘club’ as the rest of us; they too have suffered the pain of a child’s death.

And believe me, none of us ever wish to be a part of such an exclusive ‘club’. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t wish I could give back my membership, especially if it means I’d get to hold any of my precious babies. What I wouldn’t give to have watched my twins grow up or to see what their three younger siblings would grow to be. I’d give any and everything to not have to feel this unending grief.

It’s hard for some to understand how it feels to lose your child, especially to someone who may not have had to experience the same thing. But I’ll try to describe it to the best of my abilities so that you have some point of reference. Just know that even the words I choose can’t encompass the full scope of what it is we bereaved parents feel.

You ever have the feeling where, no matter how deep a breath you try and take, it doesn’t feel like it’s ever enough oxygen? Like you can feel your lungs expanding, but then they stop, they reach their capacity, and you still feel like you can’t breathe, like it’s not enough and you’re drowning in the lack of oxygen. It feels like there are iron bands around your lungs, constantly restricting how much air you can get. Take that feeling and add it to every single breath you take for the rest of your life.

Now take those very same iron bands that restrict your breathing and feel them wrap up and squeeze your heart. There’s this constant pain, sometimes an ache and sometimes sharp, in your chest where your heart struggles to continue beating. And it is a struggle. I can feel the way my heart sometimes stutters in my chest, like the beat of a drum falling out of sync with the rest of the band. It stutters so bad that sometimes I worry it’ll stop for good. Sometimes, when it’s a really bad day, I have a stray thought that, if it does stop, I’ll at least get to see them again. Hold them again. But it never truly stops.

Then there’s the exhaustion. The best way that it can be put into words is that it feels like there’s the constant feel of weight dragging your body down, as if someone or something has strapped hundreds of pounds onto all of your limbs, your chest and your back, and you have no way of removing them. They’re slowly crushing you. You drag so hard some days that you even trip over nothing; your own feet betray you. It feels as if you can do nothing but fall to your knees and sob, but you know that if you do you might never get up again. Even the simplest of tasks, like getting out of bed or putting away the dishes, feel as if they take everything you have to even just gather the willpower and energy to start them. And then when you do finally manage to start something, there’s no guarantee that you’ll follow through to the completion of that task; not because you don’t want to, but because you simply just can’t.

There’s also the distinct lack of appetite most days; food no longer holds the same appeal as it may have before everything happened. Flavors are muted, as if your tongue is coated in some kind of film and it doesn’t truly taste what food you try. Food is forgotten about until it’s brought to your attention that it’s already seven or eight o’clock in the evening and you should probably eat something before you go the full day without. Hunger isn’t registered the same way it used to be.

Then, if you’re the one that had to give birth, on top of all of that, your body is spending what little bit of energy you had left trying to heal and recover. You’re losing various amounts of blood for an undetermined amount of time, after already having lost blood while giving birth, and that in and of itself is exhausting. Then you’ll also have to deal with the ‘normal’ postpartum things. Your milk coming in, which is both physically painful and feels almost like a slap in the face because it is a stark reminder of what you’re missing; not that you weren’t acutely aware already. The rush and sudden withdrawal of hormones, which then leave you in a tailspin; the postpartum depression that’ll leave you numb, angry, sad and confused in the same moment. All of the ‘usual’ postpartum feelings but without the reward of being able to mother your child here and now.

And that’s just the physical side of things.

Mentally and emotionally, your whole world is like a minefield and you’re just wading through; trying to find the safe steps each day in hopes that you won’t suddenly break apart. And in the beginning, at least every other step sets off something. Every little thing holds the potential to cause untold amounts of pain. A family walking by with their child; a pregnant woman minding her business and waiting for the bus; a parent smiling at their child who did something endearing; all of it, every single bit of it causes your breath to catch, you mind to spin out and tears to well in your eyes.

Even worse than the triggers, however, is the soul wrenching guilt that eats away at you; especially if you were the one carrying that precious child. You start asking, even if just in your head, the unending ‘what if’ questions. Or, even worse, you start cataloging what it is you or your body failed at. The rub of it all is that you know on an intellectual level that you didn’t cause this; you didn’t actively try to end your child’s life. But even that knowing doesn’t stop the guilt that eats away at you. For me, I know I didn’t want things to end the way they did. We wanted our daughter more than we wanted air to breathe, we wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize that; and yet, my body failed. My body failed to do the one thing that it has been programmed to do. My cervix failed. Did I want this? No, no I didn’t. But it still happened; my body still failed and so, on some level, it’s my fault. And that guilt eats at me.

And, on top of the guilt, comes fear. Imagine suffering everything here and then still, somehow, having the courage to continue trying after it all. Your mind will be filled with what could happen, since you’ve already experienced it once. What should be the most joyous moments of your life turn into what feels like the first half of a horror movie; you’ll feel like you still can’t breathe and you’ll worry every second of every day that everything will take a turn for the worst. Even a small part of you might just expect it; because you’re trying to guard yourself from this pain all over again.

Eventually your coping mechanisms kick in; helping you get through the seconds, minutes, hours and then days. For some people, myself included, that coping mechanism is anger. It becomes your constant companion, that little voice in the back of your head egging you on and goading you to react one way or another. If anger becomes your mechanism of choice, you’re liable to lash out at any second, for any little reason, at any one. And that includes yourself. Internalizing becomes a thing, and not necessarily a good thing. And, of course, you’ll be the harshest person when it comes to berating yourself. As they say, we are our own worst critics.

Jealousy comes next. Jealousy that others can have so easily what it is you struggled and strived for only to have it ripped away from you. Joining the growing number of constant companions, the green eyed monster can be especially nasty. You’ll want to be happy for others; you’ll wish them all the happiness and health in the world while secretly thinking ‘why you and not me?’. Jealousy will add to the ever growing guilt that eats its way into your heart.

To make matters that much harder, the majority of bereaved parents also lose the ability to focus. Words rush away as if a flood has run itself through your mind and taken them in the flow; eventually they all start to trickle back, but it takes time and until then you’re left trying to express something that you don’t have the verbiage for. Work then becomes a monolith that you have to climb without gear; no purchase for your hands and feet, no lines to keep you safe. Thoughts and words slip through your fingers before you can even grasp them. You’re lucky if you can get through even the simplest of tasks without having to stop and collect yourself again. Cleaning becomes something that either becomes your escape or it falls by the wayside completely; if you’re like me you just simply don’t care whether the dog fur piles up in the corners or the dishes start to stack up like a game of Jenga on the counter. Because you can’t find the point to doing it over and over again, this same thing you did constantly before your world fell apart.

What’s more is you’ll constantly wonder how it is that no one else seems to feel that the world has stopped moving, stopped rotating on its axis; leaving you suspended in this perpetual whirlwind of grief while everyone else keeps going. For you, every day drags, seconds feel like minutes feel like hours feel like days as you try to muster your way through, somehow; you’ll wonder how is it that everyone else seems to keep going so easily.  You’ll wonder how everyone else can’t see how you’re being left behind, stuck in the quagmire of guilt, pain and just soul wrenching grief.

And then, unbelievably so, the same world that’s left you behind will start telling you to ‘let it go’ and to ‘move on’. They’ll say that it was ‘God’s will’ or ‘their time’, and what’s worse is that they’ll think they’re helping. This, this is something that you can’t just get over or let go; this is a part of your soul that’s missing and you feel it. Physically and emotionally you feel the sharp edges where that part of you has been shattered and ripped away; and you’ll feel it until you breathe your last breath.

The death of your child isn’t something that gets better with time; it never gets ‘better’. With time you can learn how to live with the pain that is your new constant but it doesn’t take it away, it doesn’t make that pain stop. Eventually you’ll be able to breathe through it, be able to get through a day where the pain doesn’t make you cry. And that first day you’ll feel guilt over it, tremendous guilt, because you’ll feel that you’re dishonoring your child and their short life, but then you’ll remember that it’s okay to not cry every day. Sure, there’ll be some days where you feel that crushing grief again, as if it’s that first day all over again, and the tears will come, but you’ll still remember that it’s okay.

Hardest of all, even after everything you’ve already gone through, is gathering the courage and the hope to keep going. For me, it means finding the courage to try again; it means figuring out how to rise up and hold tight to that hope once more. Because, when that positive pregnancy result happens again, the hardest part will be finding the joy and excitement for what that little life will be; instead of thinking about everything that could take that life from us again. Because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, the ones that were already taken from us would want us to find joy again, even alongside the pain.

Talia's Birth Story

I wish I had a birth story for all five of my beautiful babies, because they all deserve their stories, but unfortunately only our precious Talia made it far enough to have what most would consider a birth story. So, that's what I'll start with today.

I’m going to start from the beginning, which is several days before she was born. May 31^st, John and I were at a friend’s place for a scheduled game night. It had taken a while for us to all manage to finally get together. A few hours into the night on one of my many trips to the bathroom, I realized I was bleeding so I told John and off to the hospital all of us went; yes, all of us. Not just John and I, but our four friends as well.

They admitted us to maternity triage and it took me back into a room. After what felt like forever waiting for someone to come check us out, we finally had someone come in. It was one of those moments where I could tell just by the look on the woman’s face that something was wrong; you know those moments? The one where you feel your heart just drop completely out of your body. The woman told me I was four centimeters dilated and that the water sack was already pressing through. She told me that they were going to admit me into the hospital for overnight observation and then they brought me up to Labor and Delivery. It was there that we were able to get an ultrasound to find out what we were having; a little girl! Our Talia Aoife-Grace! It was then that we also managed to get a very clear recording of her heartbeat as well.

The hope was that the bed rest would allow the water sack to return back into my body and then they could perform a cerclage; where they go in surgically and tie the cervix closed with sutures.

Well, we made it overnight without any incident but it seemed that nothing had changed; I was still four centimeters dilated and the water sack was still pushing out. So they turfed me up to the Hospital’s High Risk unit and into my own room. That was Saturday night. I didn’t get much sleep the night before nor did I get much sleep that night as well.  That weekend I had a revolving door of nurses, doctors and friends staying the night with me. John couldn’t stay because we had the dogs and they had to work, but they made sure that someone was with me almost all the time; except for Sunday night. No one was able to stay with me Sunday, so when the Maternal Fetal Medicine people came early on Monday morning, well I was alone. John was trying to get there, but they didn’t really make it in time for the appointment at all.

That appointment was when we realized that there wasn’t anything that could be done. When they did the ultrasound they saw that Talia’s feet and legs were actually already down through the cervix and they told me that my options were to induce labor or wait it out. I couldn’t induce; I just couldn’t. They told me that she wouldn’t make it if we had her then and there, that they wouldn’t even try to resuscitate because she was beneath the twenty three week mark. I asked them if there was a chance she would hold on until the twenty three mark in there and they said that it was less than miniscule chance but I just couldn’t induce. If there was even just a one percent chance that our little girl could make it, I was going to give her every single opportunity to do so.

When they left me alone in the room, I sobbed. My heart was breaking, I could feel it, and it felt like I was in a waking nightmare. I didn’t try to keep it quiet, I sobbed until I couldn’t cry anymore, or so I thought.

John showed up about forty-five minutes after the visit from MFM and I had to explain to them what was going on and what the doctors had said. Those tears I thought had run dry? They hadn’t. We both sobbed our hearts out.

For me, after that, the day passed in a blur. I honestly don’t remember much of what happened on Monday after the visit from MFM. Just that I forced myself to work and John was there for most of the day. They had to go to work and go be with the dogs, so a friend came to spend the night with me in the hospital. What I DO remember from Monday is that that night the sporadic cramps that I had been feeling all weekend kicked up a bit in pain. So much so that a couple of them had me practically jumping out of bed from pain and I actually scared our friend at one point with how suddenly I jumped out of bed.

Other than that, Monday night was uneventful.

Tuesday came and John came back to stay with me for the night. They also told me that my mother was on her way down; it was originally meant to be a surprise, but my dad had spilled the beans on that one. So I was happy for that; with everything that was happening I wanted my mother there as well.

Tuesday during the day was uneventful for the most part; the cramps were still happening and sometimes they were worse than others, but they were still irregular. There was no pattern to them at all. As it got later into the evening, I started feeling more pain; like woke me up out of a nap, pain. It eventually got to the point where I felt like I couldn’t move. I couldn’t stand up, I couldn’t lay down, I could just stand at the end of the bed, bent over and almost crying. It hit me then that these were actually contractions, so my tears were a mixture of pain and heartbreak.

They managed to get me back in the bed and it took me a little while longer before I finally agreed to some kind of pain management. They gave me a shot of dilaudid and told me they were going to bring me over to Labor and Delivery once more. They told me to close my eyes, but that wouldn’t have helped much. Let me tell you, motion sickness mixed with the effects of dilaudid make for a horrible experience.  Unfortunately, even with the dilaudid, it didn’t feel like the pain was going away at all. Eventually I asked for an epidural and got it. By the time the anesthesiologist made it to my room and finally got everything settled, I was pretty much in a constant state of pain. The poor nurse that was helping me, gods bless her. I had to lean over, but I couldn’t move, I held tightly onto this woman and even though I was being jabbed with a needle in my back, I didn’t feel it. I screamed in this poor woman’s ear because I was in that much pain from everything else.

It took something like 15 minutes for the epidural to finally kick in, but when it did it was fantastic. The nurse got me settled back into the bed and told me it was time to try and get some sleep for a little bit. Sure enough, I was falling asleep fast. However, because nothing is easy in this story, every time I started falling into sleep, it seems that I stopped breathing and my oxygen level would drop. I ended up waking myself up several times before they figure out what was going on and the nurse put me on oxygen and I was alright in that regard.

Through everything still, I could almost feel the bleeding that was going on below; I couldn’t lift my head or anything to check it out, because it was just too heavy, but I could feel it. And it was confirmed when my mom finally showed up, after driving for something like sixteen hours, and I remember her saying something about there being a lot of blood. I can only imagine that it scared her to see the crisp white blankets soaking up the blood.

Within ten to fifteen minutes of my mom showing up, the doctor and nurse came back in to check on how everything was going with me and Talia. That’s when I heard the words that I had prayed to each and every god and goddess I could think of to not hear for a long time.

‘I need you to give us a push’

And that was all it took; one push, after essentially five days of labor, and our daughter, our Talia, came into the world in silence at 11:46pm on June 4^th, 2019. The few seconds that they took down there felt like forever, but eventually they asked John if they wanted to cut the cord. I remember they said they didn’t but I talked them into doing it. I told them that if they didn’t, it might be something that they regret down the line. And I didn’t want them missing out on anything that parent would do in a normal situation. Once they cut the umbilical cord, they placed her right on my chest.

My daughter lived and died in my arms, on my chest. I held her as she struggled to try and take a breath that her lungs weren’t formed enough to take; it wasn’t more than a minute.

We got to hold her, kiss her and love on her before the nurse asked if they could take her away just long enough to take pictures for us and to get all the information that any normal parent would get. Birth weight, length, footprints and hand prints. They even took a cast of her feet for us.

When they brought her back in, she was lovingly wrapped in what once was a piece of someone’s wedding gown and a pink blanket around that. She also had an adorable pink hat on. And they gave her back to us; handling her with so much care, more than I can ever thank them for. They took some pictures while we all held her and loved her, and then they gave us some time alone with her before they were going to bring us all back to the high risk room. Going to get us a cuddle cot so that she could stay with us for as long as we wanted to keep her.

I remember taking every bit of her in and being in awe of how absolutely beautiful she is; I say is, because I can’t use the past tense when it comes to our Talia.

She has the cutest of button noses that she got from me. She has the longest fingers and toes as well as a full head of little hairs, which she got from John, her Adda.

I counted every digit and, while everyone was gathering things to be moved again, I sang to her. I sang the only song that came to mind at that moment. ‘Into the West’.

John held her, whispered to her and gave her kisses. My mom got to hold her too, also giving her kisses and talking to her. When we were ready to head back to our room in High Risk, my mom went to her hotel room to get some sleep. Talia was placed back in my arms and they wheeled us back to our room after mom went out. They set up the cuddle cot, a moses basket with a cooling pad within it to allow her to stay with us for as long as we wanted, and then they left us be for a few hours. We each held her, we gave her kisses and loved on her and just held her close before we finally managed to allow ourselves to tuck her into the cot for the night.

I didn’t sleep much, I know that. I kept waking up and checking on her, making sure she was still there with us, and the few times I did manage to get to sleep I was woken by nurses coming into the room to check on us.

Once the sun came up, once morning broke, we were both up and Talia was back in our arms. My mother came to visit again and she got to hold Talia some more, love her some more, and our friend Chrissy came as well and got to hold and love her. Eventually Chrissy had to go back home for work and my mom had to head back to the hotel, leaving John and I alone with our little girl for a little longer. The quiet was what we needed, just the peace to be there, all three of us, and to just feel everything we needed to feel. Cry, sob, be angry, everything.

One nurse did come in at one point while the three of us were alone and that moment was the only one bad moment we had with anyone on the hospital staff. She came in and saw the three of us on the couch, just curled up together, and she actually said ‘I know, it’s like you keep looking at her and are waiting for her to just take a breath’. In that one moment, I was enraged and absolutely shocked into silence. Just because we had been thinking it, doesn’t mean it was alright for her to say it to us. John and I were both too shocked to actually say anything before she was out of the room again.

We had decided to leave the hospital by the end of day that day; we could have stayed for as long as we wanted and had as much time as we wanted with her, but we knew that we couldn’t. So, just after five in the afternoon, we told the nurses and the grief counselor there that we were ready to leave. The nurses brought in the small box that they had put together for us; that box contained every single thing that Talia had touched since coming into the world. And the grief counselor came in and changed Talia over to a hospital receiving blanket so that we could also take the blankets and hat that she had worn also. And then she gathered our beautiful, perfect Talia into her arms with care and carried her out of the room.

That was the last that time we ever saw her like that.

We left that hospital without our little girl and it was quite possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. On the walk out there were so many times when I almost turned around to run back into that hospital and demand to have my daughter back, it was only sheer will that kept me from actually doing that.

The drive home was torture, but we did it. And not a day, not even a moment goes by now where I don't think about her. Our beautiful Talia Aoife-Grace.