A Baby Loss Mama Doesn't Understand - Week 24

There is this one thing that has been on my mind more often than not lately. In my conversations with fellow Baby Loss Mamas, there is a common thread from the mamas of rainbow babies that I just can't quite grasp. Many of these mamas hold a tiny grudge against their rainbow - "I think to myself, if your sister were alive, you wouldn't be here" one mom said.
I don't want to feel this way about Clark. I don't feel this way about him. Not now and hopefully not ever. I told my husband that as devastated as I have been this last year with the loss of John and then Drew, carrying Clark has been a tormented joy. I worry, I watch every symptom, count every cramp, take every vitamin. I plan for happiness and prepare for another disaster. I lean terribly on the genetic science that soothes me, but I don't trust it at all.
But somehow that has everything to do with Clark and almost nothing to do with John and Drew. Of course I miss them. I still cry for them. I bought orange tulip bulbs to plant at their shared grave this weekend. They are front of mind, always.
But like I told my husband, as sad as I am, as much as I miss my boys, as much as they mean to me individually and together in the sense of motherhood and the sense of loss, I would not trade Clark for either one of them. I would not barter this child away to get back the most precious things I have lost.
I say this because Clark is as much my child as John or Drew. He is as much a part of me and of my husband as those lost little angels. I do not love him less. I do not love him more. This is a symptom, I suppose, of my insistence on grieving them as whole people with whole personalities and whole identities. I can honestly close my eyes and see what I think John would have looked like, or what Drew would have been like. But those somewhat assigned personalities and identities also extend to Clark.
For me, this isn't about "If your brother were alive, you wouldn't be here." It's about "Your brothers died and I am lucky to have you."
Perhaps this feeling will change when he gets here, when he is here and alive and I can think more about how his brothers never had these chances, the opportunity that comes with life.
But I never want to lose touch with the fact that this is a little person who is here not because his brothers died, but because we were brave enough and lucky enough to have him.

The Truth Hurts – 23 weeks

My husband and I have become a little bit obsessed with viability.

Now that we have hit the 23 week mark, my hubby, the king of charts and graphs and metrics, pulled out a viability calendar to scrutinize.

At 23 weeks, Clark has a 10 to 30 percent chance or survival if he were born today. The positive percentages go up exponentially with each week after this one. In a week or two he will have a 50/50 chance of survival.

The thought hit me and the words were out of my mouth before I could swallow them: “That gives him 10 to 30 percent more of a chance of survival at 23 weeks than his brothers had at full term.”

I’m right. The fact that this fact is true is an aching scar on my heart. I think I have only recently come around to the realization that my boys had no chance at life. Of course I knew this when we terminated, especially with Drew. But there is knowing something and then knowing something in your whole self. I had convinced myself that my boys had no chance and now I know that to be fact.

It makes me glad for Clark, that he has a chance, no matter how small, of survival. But it makes me want to cry and scream at the unfairness of it for John and Drew. How do you come to terms with your babies having never been given even the slimmest chance?

The Hard Leaps - 23 weeks

So here I am, 23 weeks!

I type that with a lot of enthusiasm, but not a lot of energy. There has been a lot going on and I am exhausted, mentally and physically.

Where to start?

I have had good scans since my last post – nothing about our situation has changed. I feel the baby kicking several times a day now, almost constantly throughout the course of the day, really. He seems strong. He responds to my husband’s touch and voice, which is a joy to see and feel.

I suppose that is the part of this pregnancy that is so markedly different for me than my angel pregnancies. John would actually squirm away from stimuli. Drew would ignore it. I know now that they were like this because they could not see or hear, both died before they could really feel sensations. I have the feeling John sensed vibrations – he moved when the dogs barked or if I yelled. We know now that the glycosylation meant they would have been born blind and deaf or been born with limited and steadily degenerative senses.

Clark, on the other hand, seeks out his father for activity. My husband puts his big paw on my belly and Clark squirms up to meet it and kick. It is my sign, more so than the genetic tests and ultrasounds, that this really is a different sort of pregnancy.

My daughter has taken on a mission or two of her own in the journey to big sisterhood.

Over the holiday weekend, we took her to the toy store and let her choose any toy she wanted. She chose a doll that wets itself.

“I have to practice,” she insisted. “I have to learn how to burp a baby and how to change diapers. I have to practice now.”

No arguments there. Every week, on our shopping trips, we buy something for the baby. I have worked it out that, mathematically, we should need about 100 packages of wipes in Clark’s first year. So we buy wipes now to prepare. Yesterday I bought a fuzzy little snowsuit for his December arrival. We have chosen binkies and bottles and lotions and toys and little but fun needs for the baby. This is good for my nesting and for Emily’s planning. It keeps us all in the right frame of mind – the place where we are preparing for a baby to come home, not preparing in case we have a live baby.

As for me, I am a lot bigger than I had anticipated I’d be at six months, which means I pretty much need to go clothes shopping again pretty soon. I’m exhausted a lot of the time and that makes me mad because the second trimester is supposed to be about feeling better and more energetic. All I want to do is sleep.

We had a real hold up with our nursery planning this month as a floor joist in the attic broke and sent a chunk of plaster crashing to the floor in our bedroom. All that blow-in insulation EVERYWHERE. So now me and Hubby are bunking in Clark’s room, so it feels a lot like we are camping in our own house. Not fun.

Emotionally, my thoughts are all over the place. On one hand, I miss my Drew and John so much. Taking Emily to Chuck E. Cheese over the weekend was hard for me – babies of all ages are always there. My mind never fails to jump from one lost son to the other – John would have been just big enough to sit on the rides. Drew would be just about as big as that little baby there.

I am constantly reminded that as blessed as I am to have this life and this possibility of Clark, this is not the life that I was meant to live. Something – two things – are missing and they will always be missing.  My arms will always ache for those lost boys. The emotional leaps from happy and blessed to genetically victimized are not big, but they are incredibly hard.

Did It Again - Week 19

So we skipped week 18. Life is busy and crazy with me working about one and a half jobs right now. Do I need to work so much? No. Do I want to work so much? No.

So why do I feel the need to work my pregnant self to death? Who knows. I just want to get financially ahead before this baby comes.

Baby, baby, baby. Thank goodness for this wiggly baby! I feel him every single day, multiple times each day. He gets especially wiggly for Mallo Cups right now. It's the most fantastic thing to be able to let go of my deep fear because I can FEEL him. Just about the time not-so-irrational "Dead Baby Girl" gets scared, Clark knees me in the bladder and it hurts and I am happy and soothed. Listen - Baby Loss Mamas know - we take comfort in the strange, small things.

Part of our busy life of crazy includes getting our house ready for Clark. We took all the furniture and junk out of the guest room last weekend. (We have been using this room for "storage" since John died. By "storage" I mean we were hoarders in one room).

We sorted the stuff and got rid of most of the furniture. Then my husband vacuumed and spot cleaned the carpet, vacuumed again and then used a borrowed Hoover carpet cleaner to deep clean it. OH. MY. GOD the stuff that came out of that carpet! So we stood in the doorway of the little bedroom and decided to go ahead and replace the carpet anyway because we hate the color, it was in the house when we bought it, and the stuff that came out of it was gross.

So now we will scrub down the walls and let them dry. Then we will paint and then have the new carpet installed and THEN we can put the baby furniture in there.

In the middle of all of this we painted and redecorated our daughter's room and transformed it into "The Big Sister Room."

The 7-year-old is very excited about Clark, but she has been an only child for a long, long time. The concern is that she won't feel special when he comes, that she will begin to resent him. So we are transforming her room (and her, to some degree) into "The Big Sister." So now her room is Tiffany blue instead of baby pink. Big Sister.

As for symptoms, my feet still hurt and I am MOST CERTAINLY in my maternity clothes (especially pants!) now. I need to buy bigger underwear and that's never fun. As I mentioned before, I feel the little one kicking and wiggling all the time now. Cravings are gone, but now I just eat everything all the time. I'm almost always hungry. I drink a lot of orange juice.

We go to the high risk OB on Friday for the "anatomy scan." This is the scan everyone gets - the "gender scan" for Live Baby Mamas who are too naive to know that doctors are looking for mostly disaster - and the gender to shut them up and/or keep them coming to the doctor for pre-natal care. I'm not worried about this scan because of all the good scans that have come before it.

So next week is the halfway point and we are ever-closer to viability. As Little Miss Emily always says "It takes a long time to grow a baby."

Easy Peasy - Week 17

Today I heard Clark's heartbeat and the doctor says my cervix is "long and closed."
One of the interesting things about going to the usual OB instead of the high risk OB are the techs and nurses. At the high risk OB, everyone kind of assumes that disaster or at least something that looks like disaster has brought you there. Questions about the children you have at home are asked in hushed tones or not at all.
At the doctor's office, chipper ladies in colorful scrubs quiz you about gender hopes and nursery themes and if your daughter is ready to be a big sister. They see so many average pregnancies with no complications...it's the norm.
Oh how I wish that was my norm.
But the good news is that the baby is fine with a strong heartbeat. I can't ask for more than that.

Skipping Ahead to Now - Week 17

It looks like I missed my Week 16 post. We have so much going on right now that I often eat my dinner in bed and fall asleep before my husband takes the dishes downstairs to the kitchen for me.
I go Friday for a cervix check. I'm less and less worked up about these appointments because I can feel Clark wiggling in there, especially at night, so I know he's alive. I think I will feel better and better - or at east more confident - when I can really feel him in there every single day without the question of "was that the baby or just digestion?"
My only real pregnancy complaint right now are my poor, poor feet! They are swollen and they HURT so much - the ache is sometimes unbearable. My husband is a dear and often rubs them for me, but they hurt when I am sitting, when I am standing up - really they just hurt all the time.
I have also made the decision to hire a counselor for my daughter. This isn't easy for me, and I'm not sure why. She has lost a lot in the last two years - to both death and divorce. She even had what I can only describe as a panic attack. It scared the crap out of me. Of all the things she can take from my personality, why does panic have to be one of those things?
After a long, teary discussion where she told me she feels responsible for her biological dad abandoning her, I made the call and we go for her first session on Thursday. Cross your fingers that it helps.

Early Anatomy Scan - Week 15

I walked into the doctor's office like I was going to my own hanging.

The mothers of dead babies know what I mean: there is no dread like scan dread, when your heart and your head know that this was the day the last time when you got the bad news. This was the week last time when they found the hygroma. This was the very ultrasound room when the tech said she couldn't find kidneys.

This was the week for me - 14. By 10 weeks we knew "something" might be wrong with Drew. His NT was high - 5 mm. But his growth looked good and though there was some hygroma, that could resolve itself, right?

But all was lost at that 14 week early anatomy scan. There it was - more hygroma than brain, a neural tube defect, an anterior heart, a diaphragmatic hernia, ASD, VSD, a two vessel cord. Any hope that we had, and we had so very little hope at that point, was just gone.

So now it was little Clark's turn on the screen. We were riding a high of a normal NT scan, clear genetics test and safe CVS, but I couldn't shake it...that feeling. That Goddamn feeling of terror and love that makes you want to run out of the room screaming for help. I had learned the hard way, twice, that NOTHING good can come of scans.

Except nothing bad came of this one. No joke. I know far, far, far too much about ultrasounds. I know what the measurements should be and how much white you should see in the brain and what a four-chamber heart doesn't look like. But Laura the Tech showed me Clark's brain and it has two hemispheres. No white line where the "water on the brain" usually is. His stomach was in his belly, his bladder filling with pee pee. His heart has four chambers, his cord has three vessels. He wiggles his toes and sucks on his hand. "Hi mom."

So the headline today is: Had Ultrasound, World Did Not End.

IN FACT, our OB even said, "I think we are at a place where I can say with confidence that this pregnancy is no more high risk than any other 'normal' pregnancy."

What, say what?!

So I post my good news with excitement, barely contained.


This could really happen. Now, we do have the normal anatomy scan (the scan that all the Live Baby Mamas call "the gender scan," as if that is all the doctor is really looking for) in five weeks, with a cervical and Doppler check in three weeks.

Such good news yesterday and I'm still dreading each and every appointment. Ugh.