Dream
I didn’t remember any dreams the first couple of weeks. Those three nights in the hospital, I would fall asleep for just a moment and get a scary image in my mind and wake right up. Then after coming home, I remembered nothing. I would hit the bed and fall asleep almost immediately. It didn’t seem that my sleep was deep enough for dreaming.
Last night, I dreamt that I went to a public swimming pool. The pool was empty, save for me, and I sat in the corner of the deep end. After deciding that I would swim across to the shallow end, a few people started arriving. I dove down and started swimming across.
I could see that these people were all up higher than me, watching me swim lower and lower to the bottom. They looked a little concerned and I tried to avoid their gazes. I noticed that the bottom of the pool was all gravel, like in the bottom of a fish tank. Halfway across the pool, I realized that I was coming up to the spot where I had given birth to my dead baby. I was at once terrified of and drawn to this spot. As I drew closer, I could see objects in the gravel. I hoped that they were somehow little bits of memorabilia that I could get and take home to put in my memory box. I swam faster and could now see that these objects were just little bits of garbage, water bottle tops and miscellaneous pieces of plastic. I dug through the gravel and came up with nothing related to my baby.
I could see the other swimmers over me, apparently wondering why I wasn’t coming up to the top for a breath. So, I tried to finish my way across the pool and show them that I was ok. But I was so heavy, the water weighed a ton and I couldn’t get my arms to work. I kicked my feet but made almost no progress. I was slowly, slowly moving closer to the shallow end but my chest was in the gravel. This is when Clara woke me up and I tried to hide my tears in my pillow.
I’ve read enough about dreams and I used to listen to a radio show about dreams every weekend. Water usually symbolizes emotion and we know I have plenty of that. Being weighed down, stuck in one place and unable to take a breath is exactly how I feel most of the day too.
When will the positive dreams come? When can I have a dream where Matthew is an angel and comes to tell me that he is safe and happy and waiting for me?
The Zephyr Song
It’s funny how almost every single song I hear now was written for Matthew. Even the most unexpected ones. I spent so many hours driving the kids around while I was pregnant. I would switch off my 70’s favorites and let them listen to their alternative rock. So now as they surf iTunes and play their music on the computer while I spend hours working on puzzles, I cry at the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Maroon 5 and Papa Roach.
I wish I could go back. I can almost feel the weight of my belly right behind the steering wheel, the heartburn occasionally coming up. Turning down our mountain roads while the music became a part of my pregnancy memory forever. I’m just so grateful that I enjoyed the pregnancy so much. I really did, I loved it.
This part of the Zephyr Song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers has been stuck in my head the last few days.
Fly away on my zephyr
I feel it more then ever
And in this perfect weather
Well find a place together
In the water where the scent of my emotion
All the world will pass me by
Fly away on my zephyr
Well find a place together
I relive those few days in the hospital just holding my baby while the world did indeed pass us by.
I wish I could fly away with him and forget the rest of the world, forget all these fools who mistakenly believe that my baby’s dead. How could he be dead?
Fly away on my zephyr
Were gonna live forever
Forever
Forever means something different to me now. My baby will be dead for the REST OF MY LIFE. He is dead FOREVER.
oh my god, i don’t know how i’m going to get through today.
I’m still alive
That’s how I feel lately when people ask how I’m doing. Well, I’m alive… and I’m not suicidal. Sometimes that’s all I can say.
I lived through holding my baby the last time and the funeral. I was SO scared to hold him. I was terrified that we would have to keep his face covered but it turned out that he looked just perfect!!! He was so sweet and beautiful and still smelled so good. His nose dripped a tiny bit from being moved around and after wiping his nose, I kept the tissues. They still smell like him so I keep them in his memory box.
Clara and Nicholas came in the with me and Nicholas cried so hard. As if it’s not hard enough to cope with this loss myself, it is absolutely miserable to watch my innocent children suffer like this.
Here is his casket. My husband chose it. I tried to let him make some decisions by himself because I know he felt like there was so little he could do. All of everyone’s attention has been focused on me since this happened so I hope that he feels a tiny bit of comfort in getting to do things like this.
You can see at the foot of the casket all of the things we buried him with. I wrote him a long letter, Nicholas made him a card with some jewelry glued in, my mom left her special rosary from Bethlehem and Clara made a card and gave him the book, ‘Love Your Forever’. That broke my heart how appropriate that book was.
Love you forever, like you for always, long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be. I have never been able to read through that book without crying. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to read that book again.
Here is Matthew after I placed him back in the casket. Leaving him here was so hard. I kept going back; one more kiss, one more sniff of his head, one more caress of his cheek. And asking Brennen, “There can never be enough of this, right? I eventually have to leave, right?” I was afraid of leaving without kissing him ENOUGH. As if there could ever be enough.
On we went to the funeral. I started sobbing as soon as we pulled in. To see that casket on the ground with the chairs behind it. To know that my baby was IN there and I couldn’t open it again, I couldn’t see him again. I was pretty numb through the service so I didn’t manage a picture but I did take one after the burial with the beautiful spread of flowers my mom bought.
And now here I am, 2 weeks and almost 2 days after he was born. My tears don’t seem quite as close to the surface. That is a blessing because I really thought I might just die from the pain. That sounds really stupid. As though the pain is gone. I have periods during the day now where I’m able to do something besides relive the death/birth. I can flip through a gossip magazine and lose myself for a few minutes now. And maybe I should feel guilty about that but I don’t want to die, I don’t want to go crazy. As much as I want my baby back, I don’t want this to define me. I’m so scared of never being normal again.
Loss
I started this blog with good intentions. After my last post about our rescued chickens, I wrote long blog posts in my head that never appeared on the screen. Lighthearted posts, all of them. How I wish I could go back and be blissfully unaware of things I am only too painfully aware of now. I thought I would write posts about vegan dishes that I made, fun projects the kids and I do on our homeschooling days and just generally happy posts about our life out here in the country.
After a miscarriage late summer in 08, I realized I was pregnant again around Halloween. It took me weeks to accept this. I didn’t tell dh for weeks, didn’t tell friends and family for months and didn’t see my midwives until I was over halfway through the pregnancy. It wasn’t that I was all that unhappy about it. I was afraid of people’s reactions considering the state of our financial affairs mostly. How silly that was. How completely unimportant.
Having 3 boys already (and 1 girl), I really felt the need to know what we were having this time. I had an ultrasound just for sex determination and was so disappointed to see that it was a boy that I cut the ultrasound short. It breaks my heart now that I wasted one moment wishing this precious baby was a girl. How could I be so petty???
Despite all this ambivalence, this was the best pregnancy ever. I had control over my emotions, I ate good and actually exercised this time. Dh and I got along so well. It was like the pregnancy I always wished I had had before and how appropriate that it was going so well considering it was my last baby. We bought our birth pool and tested it for leaks. I gathered my old cloth diapers and slings up, was getting ready to buy some more cloth diapers to fill in the gaps.
I was starting to get so uncomfortable and I knew that the baby would come early, I just knew it! On a Wednesday night, after spending the day at my mom’s, we were backing out of her driveway and she called after me, “Start a list for what you need for this baby! Write down everything you need and give me the list next week so I can start shopping!” Ok, ok, I would start a list. I knew we were getting down to the wire.
Did the baby kick on the way home? I can’t be sure. I didn’t pay close attention. Now I wonder if I HAD paid closer attention, would things be different today?
on friday morning, i woke up suddenly at 5AM and realized that the baby hadn’t moved in several hours. dh tried to reassure me that everything was ok, i should go back to sleep. i ate and drank some, still no movement but decided to relax and just go back to sleep. woke up few hours later and called the midwives. at their suggestion, i drank caffeine and a granola bar and sat for 15 mins. still no movement.
i was strangely calm as i packed the kids up and drove the 45 mins. to drop them off at mom’s and go down the street to my midwive’s home office. i must have been lying there 10 mins. while they checked his position and for heartbeat. i was shocked but held it together while we decided on the most midwife friendly hospital in the area and drove together to the er.
dh met us at the hospital and the 4 of us went in for the ultrasound. the doctor and nurse were very kind but it all felt so intrusive. i haven’t seen a doctor for pregnancy since 14 years ago and i hated being touched, checked and monitored. the ultrasound showed no heartbeat and baby with the cord around his neck.
the dr explained to me that the baby was transverse and it appeared that the cord wsa short. she tried briefly to manually turn him but she decided that the cord wsa just too short for him to be turned for a vaginal birth. my midwives were there to help me digest this all and even they agreed that it would be safest to have a csection.
everything happened so quickly. i was SO scared and it seemed immediate that they were starting my iv and preparing me. one of my midwives handed me a beautiful hat that she knit for him to keep with me during the surgery. getting the spinal was really painful and scary. i don’t remember much of the surgery, i just remember turning my head to see that dh was already holding the baby all bundled up next to my head. somebody said something about the cord being wrapped around his neck three times.
the midwives met us back in my recovery room and they stayed for hours, taking pictures while he got his footprints, measured and weighed. he weighed 4# 9oz and 17 1/2 inches long. i wsa in a daze for most of this time and am so grateful for the pictures to remember. my mom brought the kids later that night and they held him and touched him.
i spent the next 3 days in the hospital, keeping baby matthew with me almost the entire time. we coslept the first night but after seeing how quickly his skin was changing, i sent him down to the morgue every night after that. i was amazed that being kept cold really reversed the skin darkening so every morning he would look nice and pink.
i examined his whole body, dressed him in a diaper, cozy sleeper and matching hat. i brushed his hair too. i made sure to hold him in every possible position. my midwives helped me get him in the position with his head on my heart. that was so emotional holding his cold head on my bare chest with his hands curled up on me, just the way i always held my other babies.
saying goodbye to him when i left the hospital was the hardest thing i have ever done. i panicked at the lsat minute and started screaming, grabbing for him back, trying to smell him so i would always remember and then after they took him, i grabbed at my useless breasts and just screamed hysterically. i really thought i would go crazy.
and now here i am. he died 10 days ago. could it really have been 10 days ago? i feel like the more days i can put between now and the day he was born, the “better” i will feel. isn’t that right, isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work? because it’s not working that way. today was the worst day yet, worse than all the time in the hospital. i hate today.
i better get to bed. my mom is driving us to the funeral home tomorrow for me to hold him one last time and for us to put anything we want in the casket with him. it’s one of those “therapeutic” things. i KNOW that i need to do it, i know i will regret forever not doing it… but i don’t want to go. i don’t want to hurt anymore. it hurts SO BAD when i see his little shape under that fuzzy blue blanket my mom bought him. it’s just unbearable.
Matthew's name in the sand on a beach in Australia
