November 8

I need to rehash dates.

Big dates are:

• October 31 - horrible diagnosis day, seeing that ultrasound absent of amniotic fluid, doctor after doctor gently speaking until one says "incompatible with life"

• November 8 - delivery date, it was a Thursday at 10:35 pm

• March 28 - estimated due date

I plan to take these days off work until further notice. They have primarily landed on weekends so far.


Minor dates include:

• August 12, 2007 - last day I did not constantly think about Toren, the last day of not worrying about that precious soul

• August 13, 2007 - positive pregnancy test revealed that Toren existed

October 31 is so important because that was the day he was lost in a sense. That was the day when I turned into one of those people who only exist in distant tales of misfortune and heartache. March 28 is important as it is the only day I can cling to and consider how under very different, or normal, circumstances Toren would have been out of the womb and enjoying the world. The estimated date of delivery is just a marker, it doesn't really belong to him, but it has become important because it could have been his birthday. I didn't get to make enough memories with Toren - I need his due date.

November 8 is kind of a weird date. The shock that he would die had already been revealed. October 31 started the horrid time of waiting to enter the hospital, frantically researching labor and delivery of a fetus, entering the hospital, day 1, day 2, day 3, and he was delivered. Not really a birthday. I think it was the day he died but he could have died the day before.

Delivering your dead fetus is a really crappy situation, but there was a huge sense of relief to have it over. No more dreading the hospital stay, no more fearing what a tiny fetus will look like, no more contractions and cramps.

October 31 and March 28 hold my anger, horror, and sorrow that the world can be so cruel. These are important days that I both need and hate.

November 8 is Toren's day. It's the day I felt a type of love that I could have never imagined. I saw him and LOVED HIM! There in my hands was a unique individual who cannot be duplicated. A tiny person made through love. A little carbon copy of his father. My heart and entire being flooded over with love. I thought I would deliver and then cry and cry over his body but there was no room for tears that night - sorrow for sure, but more wonderment, love, and joy from seeing him.

The next day there was plenty of crying. Rocking his cold body, playing mom, saying all I could think of to tell him before releasing his body for the last time and leaving it behind.

It's hard to make sense of the duality of so much sadness and that powerful positive feeling (which by the way, I think happens without seeing your baby, that's just the precise moment when I felt it). But if I'm going to recognize the bad dates and rage against the universe for this experience, then I need to, GET TO, remember my son's date of delivery with thanks that I felt that level of love, even if the object of my love had died.

My camera is not capable of taking a good photo of the necklace made by Barbara but I wanted to show it to you. It is SO BEAUTIFUL in real life. "TOREN" is stamped on one side, and the opposite side says "NOV 8 2007".

October already, which means the countdown for the first anniversary of Toren's delivery is marching steadily along.

Although I haven't read about this being a normal stage of deadbaby grief, I am in the stage of deep regrets. While completely honoring my choices at the time regarding what to do with his body, how I prepared for his delivery, and how much time I spent holding him afterwards, I so wish I had done things differently. It's been almost a year but the memories are so vivid and feel so near that it seems those moments are just out of reach - like if I could stand taller, stretch from tippy toe to finger tip just centimeters more I could change the past.

If I could re-do it I would spend the 5 days between finding out he was incompatible with life and entering the hospital cherishing our last days together. I would find him a special blanket and toy. I would have a photo taken of my husband and I while I was still pregnant. I would prepare for taking my own photos of him after he was delivered. I would have him cremated privately with the soft items I had given to him and have his remains returned to me. I would spend more time with his body afterwards.

I know I've said all of this before - must rehash, re-discuss, re-wish, over and over right now.

What actually happened - The first day and a half (Wednesday and Thursday) were spent crying, vomiting, and researching bilateral renal agenesis and delivery of mid-gestation fetus's. Then my husband took me to Helen, GA. We spent time together. Walked around, stayed in a beautiful bed and breakfast. Were intimate for the first time in about 6 weeks, because pelvic rest in an effort to prevent a threatened miscarriage was no longer applicable. We came back to town on Sunday and I met with a friend who counseled me regarding our choice - she said I needed to make room for the healthy babies who are coming in the future.

After the horror that the baby will die settled in a bit came the fear of entering the hospital. Fear of pain, fear of delivery - the aspect of pregnancy I hadn't had time to learn about yet. Fear of seeing the baby. So much to be afraid of that there was no time to find things that I wanted to give him, and really at the time I would never have imagined that I would have regretted not handling his body differently.

In retrospect I'm also pleased with how those 5 days were handled. My husband and I were close. It was an important time together. We weren't completely focused on what was upcoming. We were actually in public a lot, walking around, eating in restaurants, so we weren't displaying grief. We looked like a normal couple in love. I had a large tummy for me but did not look pregnant. No one looking at us would have guessed that we were just passing the time until our doomed baby left us.

The point of all that is I made the best possible choices at the time however now I would be greatly comforted to know where his body is. I want to honor Toren appropriately for the anniversary of his delivery. I have some ideas. Do any of you have ideas? What did you do, or what to do plan to do, to honor your lost children and express your love for them on special days?

Other stuff
I've been gardening again and I'll post some photos when all the planting is done. Yesterday was a bad day for one of my cats and my bank account. I don't feel like telling the whole story right now but here is what I told my real life friends through lj:

Picking up the story in the middle of it...

As soon as we got home my neighbor who owns the dogs came over to tell us the dogs were current on their rabies shots and they were just used to having a lot of land to run around on and blah blah blah... but it was very nice for him to check up on the situation.

X-rays showed no broken bones or internal injuries so that is good. But Sammy Kitty cannot move his right hind leg without it trembling and the few attempts he has made to stand made him growl and cry. He won't eat and the vet said the medications should be taken with food to guard against tummy upset but we gave him his pain medication anyway because it was clear he needed it.

A is going to bring the futon mattress down to the living room and at least I will be sleeping with Sammy down there. I don't want to put him anyplace high up in case he tries to walk around and falls to the floor, disoriented by the medication. I'll be working from home tomorrow.

So overall a good prognosis to a tense afternoon of rescuing the bloody kitty from a tree and taking him to the emergency vet, and I am so thankful for that, but it still is just very sad to see him in so much pain.

Sorry for this disjointed and rambling post - I took a Vicodin for back pain from gardening all weekend and I think Vicodin works by numbing your brain rather than the actual point of pain.

Thank you Meghan! Words cannot describe the feeling of seeing an envelope in my PO Box; I opened it up right there, standing at a counter in post office. A beautiful card! A beautiful sentiment! Again, thank you so much for your thoughtfulness.

~~~~~~~

Leaving the hospital with a sad but entirely treasured memory box ... what are the words to describe that? Horrible. Unfair. A whole slew of swear words are also appropriate. The morning after delivery I wanted to see the baby again. "He will be cold", the nurse told me. My husband took the opportunity to haul the belongings we had accumulated the past 4 days in that hospital room out to the car; poor guy is not a fan of deadbabies. Toren arrived nestled in a tiny white basket; I sat in the rocking chair, the nurse handed him to me and left the room, and that was my time alone with him. Together we rocked and I told him all that I could, all that was applicable. No life lessons to be passed on other than sometimes things are entirely, impossibly unfair. Sometimes horrible things happen despite our best efforts and intentions. Pretty heavy stuff for a being aged 20 weeks gestation.

His body was so cold and his blood had pooled, turning areas of his skin so dark. I didn't unwrap him to see his body again; I didn't need to see the feet that were starting to club and the fingers growing in odd directions from his body being crushed by my organs. Since finding out he was not surrounded by amniotic fluid I had done my best not to slouch and crush him further.

Knowing what I know now, I would have sat there rocking him longer. I would not have felt rushed knowing that my husband was waiting or worrying that the hospital staff wanted to clean the room. That was my only time to see his tiny body. It's been almost 11 months and I crave seeing him again.

To leave the hospital room I needed another dose of Xanax. Then, finally, I left the room I had been in for the past 84 hours straight, walked down the hall praying not to see anyone smiling over having a new baby in their family, clutching the memory box.

This is it, the white box.
Now it sits in the bottom part of an end table in my living room. On top is a photo of Toren alive, taken via ultrasound; the photo that was joyously e-mailed to family members as a way of announcing the pregnancy. Also housed in that area are family photos and roses formed from palm fronds (or something) that my husband got for me from a guy on the street in Savannah (one of the most beautiful places on Earth). The box holds the soft blanket Toren was wrapped in, the tiny knit hat he wore, a stuffed dog, hand and foot prints, polaroid photos of him, cards received welcoming him to the world, and a few other various things from the hospital. Cards of condolence are kept behind the box.

Initially, I didn't know what to think of the box. It instantly turned into one of my greatest treasures (like if the house is burning down, grab the cats and the box) however the things inside were not items that he enjoyed during life. He never played with the stuffed dog, he never felt the softness of the blanket. His items, memories of him, but they are not his memories.

I wanted to give him so much.

I don't know if anyone else felt this way, but when I found out there was no way in hell that my baby would live outside the womb, finding things to give him did not cross my mind. I wish I would have selected a blanket or toy for his body to at least lay next to, but I gave him nothing tangible. In response to a post on Glow in the Woods recently I expressed my regret with how I chose to deal with his body, I'm not going to repeat it here. In hindsight, I wish I had selected an item just for him and had his body cremated with it. I wish I knew where his body was right now.

Which leads to the point of all of this ... months later the box is still not enough. All this time and all this effort spent on grief work and it turns out that container of memories just isn't enough. I now have a new card, a new memory, to add to the story of my baby's life. Sure it's the part of my baby's life where there is no adorable cooing, drooling, young human - we are limited to a heartbroken couple who barely speak anymore (and who are frequently drunk), a woman who refuses to move on and a man who (I imagine) wants nothing other than to forget the sight of his dead son.

Ready for the shameful part? The part that is our secret? I'm going to buy the things I had intended to buy for him. A halloween, jack-o-lantern hat and dinosaur pajamas. The things I never dared get since the pregnancy was classified as a "threatened abortion" for so long.

I hate that I was never able to tell him face-to-face, while he was alive, how much he was loved.

Still not gardening

With my husband out of town last weekend my nightly, private cries continued. By day I stumbled through social commitments, puffy eyed, all the time one thoughtless comment away from sobbing. That sounds like I didn't have a fun weekend but there were really fun moments and really sad moments. Stupid emotional roller coaster.

A grumpy rant
Two expecting friends have expressed, in my presence, how unnecessary they consider prenatal screening. The perceived (and INCORRECT) dangers, the high rate of false positives, and most gut wrenching, the fact that a poor prenatal diagnosis wouldn't matter to them.

"It doesn't matter if the baby has Down's".

Doesn't matter!!??

Regardless of issues of pregnancy termination I'd say few things matter as much as your baby having Down Syndrome or any other serious, life altering/threatening condition (Down Syndrome just seems to be the condition they are most familiar with, not knowing of other things that can go wrong).

"Oversensitive" may be an understatement for my feelings lately but I take great offense to opinions against prenatal screening said to me by people who know my baby was determined to be incompatible with life while in utero. But not because I'm so pro prenatal screening, it is a personal choice. But it feels like they are saying that not only are they immune to a poor prenatal diagnosis (unlike those poor saps whose babies are doomed, people for whom parenthood is just "not meant to be"), but also that they love their babies so much they could/would never interrupt their pregnancies. Seriously, do you not remember visiting me in the hospital last fall? When I went in pregnant and emerged 4 days later, a depressed, unstable wreck, with an empty uterus?

My wish is that all pregnancies end with a healthy baby and I'm so happy and relieved that my pregnant friends have healthy pregnancies so far. But the lack of empathy is surprising since they are only one bad ultrasound away from joining me in stunned sorrow. I think opinions against prenatal testing is a topic that should just not be discussed with me.

I cheered myself up with superhero-hood daydreams. The cause: generation of compassion in expectant parents toward deadbaby mama's, in particular those whose babies received a lousy prenatal diagnosis. Weapon of choice: Jizo statue head. Outfit: none - not as in naked (especially with the pregnancy weight gain I haven't bothered to lose), rather no costume changes are needed; the compassion smack down can occur in whatever I happen to be wearing. Like in this tea party outfit.

Of course the Jizo head thwack will be metaphorical to avoid assault charges, and the head is rather heavy to carry around constantly. I imagine this will involve an educational component as I correct misconceptions and depending on my mood a heavy guilt trip with tears.

On a different note, a happier note in an odd way, today I was interviewed for the National Birth Defects Prevention Study. I collected all of my pregnancy records and spent an hour and a half on the phone for the interview. I'm so relieved that somebody cares about my son and my family's loss. He is being counted. There are 9 states included in the study and I'm not sure if all pregnancies and infants with diagnosed birth defects in these states are included or if a sample is selected. I was contacted by them and I don't know if it's possible to be included in the study if they have not contacted you.