Category Archives: Grief

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day

14 Sunday Oct 2012

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Many people know October as Brest Cancer awareness month, but it is also pregnancy an infant loss awareness month.  In 1988, President Ronald Reagan designated October as the month to bring awareness to infant deaths, including miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth, and SIDs or any neonatal death.

“A wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower.  A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. That is how awful the loss is.” – Jay Neugeboren

Because there is no word in the English language to describe this type of loss, it often silences those grieving.

October 15 is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.  It is observed in the US, Canada, the UK and New South Wales.  The day is observed with an International Wave of Light.  To participate light a candle at 7 PM in your time zone and leave it burning for one hour.  This will create a continuous wave of light around the world. I will be lighting my candle in honor and memory of my daughter Ansley as well as all babies that have died during pregnancy, at or during birth, or after birth.  Will you join me in remembering babies gone too soon?

“An Angel in the book of life wrote down my baby’s birth. And whispered as she closed the book – Too Beautiful for Earth.”

 

 

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Mental Healthcare in America

25 Wednesday Jul 2012

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It is a taboo topic, but in the wake of the tragedy in Colorado, I would like to share my experience with mental health.

I had never experienced an anxiety attack or depression prior to losing Ansley.  But as I tried to re-engage in life, I was often overcome with a feeling that is hard to describe.  It was paralyzing.  It was a new feeling and I didn’t know what to do with it.   It was anxiety attacks.

At one of my many doctors appointments, I had one of my anxiety attacks, but it quickly changed over to uncontrollable sobs.  My doctor asked that I seek counseling.  She was unsure if I was suffering from postpartum depression or grief and she didn’t feel qualified to make that call.  She explained, in a patient that had a normal birth experience, she would be sure it was postpartum, but with me it wasn’t that easy to determine.  

I began looking for a therapist to talk to that would be covered by my insurance.  To my surprise my insurance doesn’t cover mental health.  They simply offer a 1-800 number; a glorified suicide hotline.   And, I soon learned this is a normal practice.  Companies are not mandated to offer mental health, so many don’t.  I find this troubling; Dermatology is covered (treatment of the skin) but treatment of the brain is not? It seems like all the other organs in the body fall into basic medical coverage, but not the brain.  Brain illness is something different, something less legit or seemingly less important, at least according to our insurance policies.

Finding a therapist isn’t an easy task either.  It is much like dating.  You aren’t going to marry the first person you go out on a date with.  It took meeting with 3 therapists before finding one that I felt comfortable even talking to.  And, therapists aren’t cheap.  Each meeting cost between $75-200.  The one that I decided to see on weekly basis cost $125.  I saw her weekly, for about 5 weeks, before transitioning to every other week for the next couple of months.  All in all, I spent about $1500 in a few months on mental health care.  They were by far the most expensive conversations I had ever had, but they were helpful in getting me moving forward and getting back to my life.

Bottom line, mental illness is treatable.  There are medications readily available.  So why do we make it so difficult? While many people argue about gun control laws after a senseless shooting like the one in Colorado last week, I argue that we need to take a long hard look at our mental health care system.  For someone to open fire in movie theater, a school, a summer camp or a shopping mall, they must have some mental health issues that need to be addressed.  I also don’t think their mental health issues can be resolved with an 800 number and many state hospitals and institutions have been closed due to financial reasons.  The options for mental health are few and far between especially for those that have limited financial resources.  I do realize that someone would have to seek help to even benefit from mental health care, but maybe, just maybe, if it wasn’t so expensive and was readily available {read: part of mainstream health care and insurance} a future tragedy could be prevented.

Nursery

06 Friday Jul 2012

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Deciding which room would be the baby’s room was not a hard decision for us.  After all, we lived in a 2 bedroom house.  The question was what do we do with the guest bedroom furniture and the office?  The room was already pulling double duty. We decided to get a storage unit for the guest bedroom stuff, but what to do with the office. The office was a necessity as I sometimes work from home. That is when we decided to take on a rather major home renovation.  Our house had a double master floor plan, meaning the 2nd bedroom was almost as large as our master and had a large walk-in closet. The closet contained its own window.  I decided if we knocked out the wall at the top of our stairs, it would expose that window allowing natural light to flow into a normally dark hallway and provide the perfect space for an office nook.  And, luckily for me, I married a very handy guy who could handle that project. 

The first thing he did was frame out 2 new closets inside the bedroom with an opening in the middle.  He figured if he built the new closets first we were less likely to end up on HGTV’s DIY disasters.  Once they were framed, he took to demoing the wall.  And, wow what a difference it made to let the sun shine in. Finally we had to drywall in the old doorway to the closet.  The whole project took a couple of months and there were only a few bumps in the road. 

Closets being framed in

Finished closets

The new office space looked great and the space worked perfect.

Office Nook

Decorated Office Space

We had decided to put the crib inside the opening between the 2 closets. So, the last step to the renovation was Chris’s surprise for me.  He ordered fiber optics and created a starry sky, wired to a light switch, so she could sleep under the stars every night.    It was a very cool touch.  By this time, we had found out it was Girl and color and design selection was under way.  I am not a pastel pink kinda girl, so I went will less traditional colors; yellow, blue, red, and brown for the bedding.  We did most of the room yellow with a blue accent wall and we did her bathroom the same shade of blue.  I realize prior to the bedding getting added most people would look at the nursery and assume it was boy based on the colors. 

The nursery colors with a pillow from her bedding

Her closet had quickly filled with a newborn – 18 month wardrobe.  We had her home from the hospital outfit and even her Christmas dress.  She was going to be a well dressed little girl. 

So when everything changed, and we learned she would never be coming home to her nursery, the question became what do you do with all that stuff?  What do you do with the room? The room that you had dedicated to her. The room you had poured your heart and soul into; making sure every last detail was perfect.

Chris came home the day before I was to be released from the hospital and gathered all the baby stuff (which had spread out all over the house) and put it in the nursery and closed the door.  I took me 3 months after she was gone to even brave opening that door and a full additional month to actually step foot into ‘Ansley’s room.’

It wasn’t long before Chris wanted to turn the room back into the guest bedroom it once was.  To me, that was impossible.  It would always be Ansley’s room.

As time went on, we eventually had house guests again.  And, every time someone slept in Ansley’s room, my heart broke just a little bit more. Reflecting back now, maybe that was one of the reasons we moved away from our first house.

Songs

06 Wednesday Jun 2012

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It is amazing to me how the day can be going about my day just fine and then I hear a song and it takes my breath away and gives me that momentary throat lump.  I have come to realize that as time passes, this will probably never change.  And while many of the songs are about lost love, it only takes one line in the song to send my mind racing to Ansley.  Here are a few excerpts that get me every time.

“If I die young, bury me in satin
Lay me down on a, bed of roses
Sink me in the river, at dawn
Send me away with the words of a love song
Lord make me a rainbow, I’ll shine down on my mother
She’ll know I’m safe with you when she stands under my colors, oh well
Life ain’t always what you think it ought to be, no
Ain’t even grey, but she buries her baby
The sharp knife of a short life,” – The band Perry

“I know my heart will never be the same
But I’m telling myself I’ll be okay
Even on my weakest days
I get a little bit stronger” – Sara Evans

“Baby why’d you leave me
Why’d you have to go?
I was counting on forever, now I’ll never know
I can’t even breathe
It’s like I’m looking from a distance
Standing in the background
Everybody’s saying, he’s not coming home now
This can’t be happening to me
This is just a dream” – Carrie Underwood

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.
Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.” – Beatles

My First Mother’s Day

31 Thursday May 2012

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A little less than 2 months had past when I faced the first holiday that would challenge me to my core.

Mother’s Day!

It seemed to be nothing more than a cruel reminder of how much my life had changed.  It was also the first time I noticed that around Mother’s Day (and Father’s Day for that matter) advertising shifts to be heartfelt and family focused.  Shopping becomes a bit harder because as you enter the store, any store, you are faced with Mother’s Day displays of balloons, flowers, cards, and gifts.  And, while Hallmark claims to have a card for every occasion, they don’t; there are not cards for this one. It seems there is no way to escape it.  So, I needed to figure out how to embrace it.  It is the fight or flight response, I can either run away from life or try to fight my way through it.  Of course, that is easier said than done.  It comes with a great deal of emotions ranging from anxiety, to sadness, to anger, and even guilt.

By this time, I had joined a support group of other bereaved parents.  Many of whom, like me, only had children in Heaven.  It is a group that you hope and pray you will never be a part of, but it is a blessing to know that you are not alone. Rock Good bye Angle gave me an outlet to embrace my first Mother’s Day without Ansley.  We all met at the lake where we were given balloons to write a message to send to our babies.  It was a way to acknowledge them and at the same time reinforce our “status” as parents.  On several occasions leading up to the big day at the lake, I thought about backing out.  I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough to get through it, but I knew I needed to go.  I needed to set a precedent for survival; not just for this holiday and all the others I was yet to face.

Foreshadowing

15 Tuesday May 2012

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In the days following my first trip out of the house, I decided to try to catch up on some emails.  I was reading emails in small doses as sympathy can be hard to deal with.  I saw a message titled “So sorry”.  I opened the message and read the first line.  My name is Christy and we have some mutual friends.  Although I had never met Christy, I knew exactly who she was.

October 29, 2010… Chris and I went to our friends Matt and Robyn’s new house for a Halloween party.  It was there that I first heard Christy’s story.

She was only a few days away from her due date, when she woke in the middle of the night with a fever.  As she sat in bed, it dawned on her that she had only felt contractions not the baby moving. She woke her parents, whom she had move in with mid-pregnancy, and told them they needed to go to the hospital.  It was there that she received the news that her daughter had passed away.  The doctors induced Christy and her daughter, Evelyn Marie was born the next day.  They later learned she most likely died from a cord injury; the umbilical cord had wrapped around her neck. (www.babyevie.com)

I stood in the kitchen blinking back tears.  I had known several people who had miscarried, but Christy was well past the 12 week danger zone, she was full term.  My heart broke for her.  Little did I know, at that very moment I was pregnant with Ansley.  We would find out I was expecting 5 days later!

The Infamous Question

24 Tuesday Apr 2012

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When the doctor finally lifted my bed rest orders, Chris and I decided I should try to get out of the house some; re-enter the world.  It is funny thing, as much as you can wish for the world to stop turning when going through such a challenging time, that is simply not what happens.  Life goes on but getting back to it is much easier said than done.  It is much like trying to jump onto a moving train.

My first outing was to a nail salon near my house to get a pedicure.  Everything was going fine until the lady tried to make small talk.  Her first question although seemingly innocent was,

Do you have children?

I froze; it was as if the question paralyzed me.  Of course, she assumed I didn’t hear or understand her so she asked me again. I still didn’t answer.

It was that moment that I realized I don’t know how to answer that question.  If I say yes and acknowledge Ansley as my daughter the way I would like to, the questions will continue, with boy or girl, followed by how old until finally I have to say she is dead.  I couldn’t even say her name without crying, so this was probably not the best option if I was going to try to hold it together while in public.  But, if I say no, then I feel incredibly guilty for not acknowledging her.

The third time she asked me, I said no.  It was in a tone of me yelling it at her but in the volume of a whisper.  She didn’t ask any more questions, and I didn’t wait until my toes were dry to leave.  I couldn’t get out of there soon enough.  The guilt from that one little word was almost more than I could bear.

I asked Chris how he would answer that question when he got home.  He was as dumbfound as I was.  Maybe it would be easier if there was a word.  When your husband dies, you become a widow. When your wife dies, you become widower.  When children loose parents they become orphans.  What about when parents loose children?

It has now been over a year and I still struggle with this question.  Sometimes I say yes, but often I say no.  I have been able to justify in my mind that when I say no, I am only speaking about living children.  Do you have rather than have you had.  I realize it is just semantics, but it allows me to sleep at night.

Oh The Things They Will Say…

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

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Upon getting home from the hospital, I was under strict orders. 

Order 1) bed rest

Order 2) very limited company

I was not to get worked up at all as it could cause a major setback. I was seeing the doctor every other day to make sure I was continuing to improve.  My doctor was very careful to keep me as calm as possible in her office.   As soon as I arrived, I was immediately put in a room and was often escorted out a back door as to not come face to face with a pregnant women or new baby.  

At home, her orders gave me the perfect excuse to not talk about what had happened.  It was like a license to crawl into my very own dark hole (aka my bed) and not come out until I was ready.  I was still in the shock and denial phase of my grief, but I was beginning to get a glimpse here and there of pain and/or anger. 

When I finally felt ready to talk or more accurately couldn’t hide any longer; I gradually began letting people back into my life. Many people offered condolences and tons of kind words, but to say I shocked at some of the things said would be a complete and utter understatement.  I appreciate how hard it is to know what to say. I loved hearing people use her name; it provided comfort that she would be remembered. Some of my favorite and most helpful comments were:

–          “That just sucks” – this one was said by someone I wouldn’t expect to use  the word sucks. So it was very meaningful.

–          The classic “I’m sorry” and “Your in my thoughts and prayers”

–          “I know what you are going through… No, I take that back, I don’t know what you are going through, I have not walked in your shoes, but I am sure it is harder than I could even imagine.”

–          And finally, Chris’ grandfather, who is battling cancer and I were both told in one sitting that we looked well, he leaned over and whispered “Don’t we wish.”

 I also want to share some of the things that were less helpful to me and explain why, because some of these statements are not very obvious while others are. In full disclosure, if you think you might have said one of these comments to Chris or me please don’t feel bad; I have come to realize that none of the comments were meant to be hurtful and people only commented because they care and/or wanted to learn about what had happened. 

–          “Your still young” – What does that have to do with anything?  It is okay that I lost my daughter because I am young?

–          “So…Is it like you are allergic to babies?” or “Can your body just not hold a pregnancy?”  –  Really!!! How about a simple What Happened?

–          “You can always have more children” – Well maybe or maybe not.  That is yet to be determined. And even if I can, a new baby won’t replace Ansley.

–          “You have your very own angel now” – I didn’t want and angel, I wanted a baby.  This one I had a particularly hard time with and it is hard to explain why.  It no longer bothers me the way it once did although still not my favorite comment.  In my mind, every time someone called Ansley an angel it made her less of a real person and more of an inanimate object.

–          “God has a plan” ­­–Gotta tell you, I really didn’t like this part of his plan.

–          “Maybe it was for the best” – FOR WHOM?

–          In reference to my delivery, “At least she was small” – A) tell that to my contractions and B) had she been bigger/ stronger, she would have had a much higher survival rate.

–          “Imagine how hard this would be if you had known her” – The most shocking part of this comment was that it was made by a pregnant women.  I was speechless. The relationship between a mother and her unborn child is intimate and real.

–          “Why are you waiting so long to try again, you aren’t getting any younger”- This one was said recently, as if I needed the reminder that I am getting older.  I will be 32 in a week and a half. I know how old I am.