Leaving 2014 Behind

A dear friend asked me this week how New Year's was for me. In truth, it wasn't easy. It isn't easy moving into a new year because this new year, 2015, is one in which Wendell won't be alive. He was alive and present in my life in 2014 and moving on from that year feels like moving on from him. I know I can't go back to when he was alive. I would if I could. Even so, it hurts to move forward.

I've got friends who had hard things, very hard things and great losses, happen in 2014. And some of them have said "good riddance" to 2014. And I understand that. But to me, 2014 was a precious year. The year my son was alive in my womb for seven months. The year I met him and saw his precious face and held him close. The year I said goodbye to him and saw his body buried in a little plastic box under about two feet of soil.

Wendell will always be a part of me, yes, a part of my life. He's in my heart forever. But he won't be a living part of my life for any year other than 2014. That's tough. It feels like one more layer of separation between me and him. As much as I want to move on, to be happy, and know that I honor Wendell's life and death in that way, I hate to feel I'm leaving him behind.

The same dear friend who read the words I texted her reminded me of what I said after having to leave Wendell's body with the nurses in the hospital -- that when I was pregnant, looking forward to being Wendell's mother, I never thought I would leave my baby. I never should have had to leave him. And the passing of time hurts in a similar way. I have to move on because I have no choice, in the same way that I had no choice but to leave his tiny body in the arms of the labor and delivery nurse at the hospital. I move on because it's what I have to do and I do it simply by doing it.  That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, though, and that I don't miss Wendell awfully.

With that said, I look back on 2014 and am grateful for it all -- the joy, the pain, the deepening appreciation for what I have and what I have lost. I am a better person because of the life of my small son. Last year is one I'll treasure always and as I move forward into this new year I have faith that it will be filled with beauty and tears of both joy and sadness. I welcome it all.

Due Date

Tomorrow is Wendell's due date. I have it penciled in to my daily planner. Maggie wrote on her Littlest Petshop calendar, for the month of December, "WENDELL'S FRST BRTHDAY." 

But it won't be.

I'm in that strange place now where mostly, I'm ok. Really, I am functioning close to normalcy. No more nights of waking up sobbing or days of walking through an exhausted fog. The new difficulty to tackle is that it all seems normal - and this normal everyday life makes me question things. Did Wendell really exist? His birth seems like it was long ago, maybe even something that happened to someone else. Am I forgetting my baby? Already I don't think of him every minute or every hour. Will it eventually be that there are days at a time when I forget that I even had a beautiful little son who didn't survive?

I had rather a perfect encounter this week that showed me otherwise. I had been referred by a friend to a lady she said had been through a similar experience. When I called that lady, she told me about her son who she had lost two days after birth -- twenty-six years ago. In fact, this week was his birth day anniversary. As she spoke of her baby, she wept. Twenty-six years later, she wept remembering her long-gone son.

That was what I needed. Reassurance that never would I ever forget Wendell. 

He was a part of my body for seven months, fused together with my flesh. He will be a part of me always.

We haven't yet picked out a headstone for Wendell's tiny grave, which is just a few miles away in a community cemetery. That stone seems so final - a last hurdle to jump, one more time that I know I will cry in public in front of strangers, just as I sobbed in front of the kindly wheelchair-bound funeral director at the funeral home as he showed us the tiny, tiny white plastic coffin that would be Wendell's last resting place. 

How do you decide the words that will be carved into stone to tell the world what you felt about this tiny being who was there then gone? The words that keep coming back to me are "Always loved, never forgotten." Because that is the truest truth there is. I won't forget my son. Even if I'm not prostrate on the floor with grief every day, I will always be sad he isn't here with us, where he belongs.

Fears Cast to the Wind

Here's what I think every mama does: looks at those comforting statistics that say hey, once you get past about 20 weeks your chances of miscarrying drop drastically to about 2%. But that statistic becomes a huge anvil coming at your head when you realize, wait - two percent means that two mamas out of every hundred lose their baby. Then the odds seem much more real and less on your side. In fact, the odds weren't in my favor or in Wendell's favor and that is a hard thing. 

We are on the verge of trying for our second baby, our third child. It is exciting and confusing and I feel a little mixed up but then again not really because I know, I know, I know in my heart that Wendell will always be with me. He'll always be my firstborn son and I will always love him and wanting another baby doesn't change any of that one iota, any more than creating Wendell and loving him changed my love for Maggie. Each of my children are individual and precious and that's set in stone.

We are barging ahead, full speed, fears cast to the wind because the alternative is to be bogged down in terror and that's not what I want. And the alternative, for me, would be to negate the joy of Wendell's existence. I'd conceive and carry him all over again a thousand times, even if I knew that every time would have the same outcome, that he'd never get to come home with us. Even though he didn't survive, he still existed. He was still part of our family. He still grew inside me and I got to hold him closer than I've ever held anyone besides Maggie. We still got to meet him, hold him in our arms, see his sweet face, tell him we loved him. The honor of all those things, the honor of knowing Wendell, that made all the pain worth it. 

The doctor who delivered Wendell told us that he doesn't know why our baby died. In something like 60% of stillbirths the cause is unknown, so parents usually don't ever get a conclusive answer. Thankfully, the OB who delivered Wendell has no reservations with us trying to make another baby. I've got a point in my favor that I've carried a healthy pregnancy already - Maggie Mae is living proof - so I don't have to fear a blood clotting disorder or other issues that some mamas of stillborn babies have to tackle. I'm thankful that my body was up to the task of carrying and delivering Wendell, that it was not due to any known mechanical error on my body's side that we lost him. That gives me faith in hoping for another baby.

But I'm sure the truth is that I will have fears whenever my next pregnancy happens. I trust it will be when my body is ready, whenever that is. I'm hoping for sooner rather than later. There is still an ache in me to carry a child, to feel kicks inside me, to give birth in a home environment with my husband and midwife cheering me on, to nurse my little one, to be sleep deprived and gobsmacked in love with a tiny new creature that I created with Josh. I know fear will come with pregnancy, but doesn't it always, anyways? What I'm hoping for and praying for is to not be paralyzed with it -- and to approach that new experience, when it comes, with open hands.

When I carried Wendell in my body, I was learning the art of being present. I have such a slippery, meager grasp on that art but it began to grow as Wendell grew inside me. He was my sidekick in that venture, as my most frequent practice time was when I would finally settle into bed after a long day on my feet, with Josh sleeping soundly beside me. Without fail, the moment my body came to rest, Wendell would begin to kick my belly. I'd sit and breathe. Sometimes silent, sometimes repeating a mantra of love and gratitude and peace.

More of that, a deeper understanding of serenity and being present in the moment, is all I can hope for in my next pregnancy. I do pray I will get to meet my next child while he or she is alive and healthy. I hope for longer than just seven short months in utero. I hope I get to bring my next baby home with me. But even if seven months in utero that is all I get, even if I get less than that, I want to rejoice over that time and live it fully and love my baby even if I only get to do so from outside my body. I read a beautiful story of a woman who lost multiple babies through miscarriage and stillbirth. Rather than shutting down during her subsequent pregnancies, clamming up with fear and hoping to squash her feelings so she wouldn't feel attached to her baby, she dove in head first to making each pregnancy a beautiful time with her baby. She embraced the time she had, knowing that although she had no guarantee that she'd get to bring her baby home, at least she'd have this time with it to cherish and make the most of.

That's what I want -- to love my next baby with all I've got, just like I loved Wendell. With my whole heart and without reservations. I want to walk in gratitude rather than fear. To love hard and strong without regret, because any baby I bear is my child to love regardless of how long or short his or her days may be numbered.

Wendell

I had dreams of a deliciously fat baby boy, with ponderous drooping cheeks and legs like the Michelin man. Maggie had the chunkiest cheeks even in her skinny-old-man preemie days; they were gloriously paunchy and sagged beneath her gigantic luminous eyes that are so like her dad's. I dreamed that Wendell would have those same cheeks, but that he'd be chunkier at birth than his big sister.

Instead his body was small and floppy, already broken by the time he exited the womb. He was so unsubstantial, so fallen apart, and the brokenness of his body didn't make me love him any less but it did break me. Because that wasn't my dream, to hold the broken, still, silent body of my firstborn son. I hated that his tiny body never had a chance to even take one single breath out in this big beautiful terrifying wonderful world.

Last night I unearthed a treasure trove of photos and videos from Maggie's infancy. As I scrolled through them, I couldn't help hollering out to Josh to come look at just one more, because my baby girl was so sweet and lovely and crinkly and bug-eyed and perfect. And as she grew up, six months then nine months then a year, the short video clips showed her emerging personality, this beam of sunshine and joy even at that tiny age.

And I had such joy remembering that little Maggie baby, but also such devastation -- because I wanted all that with Wendell, too. I wanted his first episode of crazy baby sleep with eyes rolled back in his head and a fluttery half-smile, his first attempts at crawling, his first time recoiling at the touch of grass on his tender hands. I wanted all that with him, just like I had had it with Maggie. I wanted him to be my baby through all the stages of babyhood, to get to bear witness to the miracle of his discovery of life and love and sunshine and grass and sky.

But he only got to be my baby in utero. He won't ever be older than 28 weeks 6 days gestation. He won't ever see the sky or sun or his mama's face. And as much as I do have peace, and I still have joy, and I am not broken or despairing, and I still have hope, and I am glad I got those seven months with him growing inside me -- even with all that being true, it will never be an okay thing that I don't get to have Wendell as my baby for the rest of my life.