Guest Post: Right where I am - 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days

Veronica sent me a beautiful email describing the birth of her first son and about what her life has been like since Alexander was stillborn February 27, 2012. She was 41 weeks and two days pregnant. So much rang true to me in her words, helped me connect with Lucia's birth, again. That is what is so beautiful about this community--someone else's story helps you grieve your own story. I was so humbled and honored to bear witness to her experience. (Kind of keeping my fingers crossed that Veronica starts her own blog.) She also included a guest post for Right Where I Am. She describes herself this way, "I'm Veronica. I turned 28 this past December while I was pregnant.  I was thrilled to be having a baby before my big 3-0.  I live in southern Ontario, Canada, and have worked meaningless, well paying jobs for the majority of my adulthood.  I own a home with my ..boyfriend, or no…partner, or ahhum… MAN who I spend my life with who I’ve been with since...forever..." 

Wherever it is, I am exactly there.  And with every day that has passed and with every day that will come, I will be right where I am.  I have often mulled over where I could be or should be, but in looking at this process, I with all my heart accept myself right where I am, all the time. 

I think about him – my son who died – every day, every second of every minute.  I feel like he exists alongside me in exactly where he is supposed to be and where he actually is – sometimes in life, and sometimes in death.  He is here, as the growing infant he was supposed to be and simultaneously he is here, always dead and only almost born alive.  Sometimes I feel him nowhere, as my missing him takes his place.  If I let it, the missing lives heavily in my heart, and throughout my day.

My emotions on a page seem microscopic in comparison to what they really are.  They are enormous and uncontainable.  I have wicked day dreams of jarring them all up, and sorting them all out, and placing them in the proper place in my life… one day I’ll label them when I figure out what they’re all called.  But instead, they whirl around me, sometimes causing havoc, and other times letting me sleep soundly.

Today, three months, three weeks and three days after he died – it doesn’t seem too heavy.  Today, it seems more a part of me than something that was done to me.  My observant self can attest that this feeling is fleeting.  But myself that sits here in front of this computer tells me it is how I feel today.  I’ve never known of someone who has the ability to take part in my every waking thought – but he does.  I didn't know someone was able to be the life behind every emotion, every smile and every tear – but he is.

We just picked up his ashes last weekend.  Horrible, I know.  Three months to pick out an infant urn.  I’d say if I had to do it again… but then I stop and hope that I won’t.  So three months to pick out my first born dead child’s urn is exactly right.

We got the full autopsy results back the week before the urn was ready.  Seemed fitting how the timing worked out.  From the outside looking in, it could seem comforting to have his remains knowing why he died.  Closure if you will.  Nah, still just shitty “to-do” aftermath.

A love note slips out of my subconscious…


My heart belongs to you.  You have it without my will.  You have me in true love with you.  I long for the time where we’re together at last, but I’ll try to enjoy this in between.  I’ll love you to my death, as I loved you to yours, and forever and ever after that.


I’ll meet you on the other side.  I promise I’ll be there, but we’ll both have to wait patiently.  I love your mid night visits in my dreams, as you rest on my chest.  I’ll see you soon my baby boy.


Love Mommy

I am light-as-a-feather… floating … floating … curling in the light wind.  I am a speck of something mixed with nothing all wrapped up in mystery and clarity for all except everyone to see.  My extensions are followed by glowing dust… I didn’t know I was so magical.  If I touch it, it will sparkle … so go on, turn the moss into emerald green.  Do anything you want.  He must be here with me now, because I could not be doing this on my own.  I didn’t posses this power before.  I thought, one day maybe I would, maybe I could, but now I truly can, and I truly am.  I had magic in my belly, all that time.  Why should I be sad?  It was only the human expectation that got let down.  But not me, not now… now, I can finally fly.

Who was that?  My spirit talking?  Or just a childlike emotion bubbling to the surface who wants out?  I don’t know.  But who ever that is, she is right where I am too.

I know how simultaneously liberating and captive losing a child can make you feel.  I walk along side both all the time.  Right where I am now is looking to have this inactive state transform.  Looking to have all of my everything finally channeled into something that means something to me, and maybe to someone else.

I am sad.  I am sad he is not here.  But everything that’s been said about the feeling getting lighter, and softer… I can concur.  I do face plant every now and again into really hard emotions, and sometimes the turnaround feels harder than it did in the early days.  But when the turnaround comes, it feels less foreign.  And staying in the turnaround feels, dare I say, normal.   It’s ok to DO things I like, and not just go through the motions.  My creative side is budding up again.  I don’t know when it was originally planted (at my conception I assume), but I haven’t seen it in bloom since long before I was even pregnant.  Even if my release these days is ignited by grief, and my will to create is steamed in losing a child, I’ll take it.  Because I love her blossom, and I haven’t seen her in a while.  And it’s been a real shitty road to get to her again, but right where I am, I’m glad to have her back.

I’ve made a promise to myself to not do the things I know are not worth my while.  When you know better, you do better, right?  I’ve always known that – but it’s time for me to start acting like it.  I know what kind of work makes me happy – so I’ll do that.  I know what kind of social life is empty and pointless, so I’m not going to take part anymore.  I know what kind of emotions are not healthy to dwell on, so I’m just going to feel from now on… no more dwelling.

I don’t look ahead these days, right where I am.  I don’t plan.  I let go of timing things in my life according to the way I’m supposed to live.  I’m not going to live recklessly!! (Even though sometimes the urge is there) But it seems exhausting to plan out what I’m going to be doing in the years to come after my baby died.  My plans got pretty turned around a few months ago, and I didn’t have a back up.  So maybe it’s better to just NOT HAVE A PLAN at all.  Today is Wednesday, in the month of June, the year is 2012, and I’ll probably have dinner later, and would like to do some more writing tomorrow, and I’d like to see D when he comes home tonight, and maybe I’ll go back to school one day, and I look forward to when I’ll be spending more time with kids when they’re at a cool interactive age telling me about what they like about school and baseball games, and man wouldn’t I love to have Alexander here while I think all these things… but right where I am right now, that’s about it – and I don’t consider any of it a plan.

I didn’t plan to become pregnant, and there I was.  I didn’t plan to have a baby boy named Alexander, and there he was.  I didn’t plan to have him die while I was 41 weeks and two days pregnant, but there it all was.  And I didn’t have the slightest plan as to how the hell I’m going to come out of all this, but here I am, right where I am at that.

Guest Post: Right Where I Am - 4 months, 2 weeks

Fliss and her husband found out following the 20 week scan that their daughter had Edwards syndrome and was destined not to stay with us. "It felt like it was presumed we would go down the alternative route, which for some is the right option, but my husband and I could not be the ones to stop her heart and we both felt we had to give her a chance. The rest of the pregnancy was hard to say the least but I don't regret it," shares Fliss. Ayla Hope was born 40+6 on 1st February 2012. As she goes on to say, "We were able to spend time with her and bring her home, she took her last breath in my arms on 4th February at 9:10pm. My heart broke never to be mended. We have a son who is 2 1/2 and he is the only reason I have managed to get up every morning, him and my husband, my rock. "

Where am I now? I don’t know, to be honest.  A state of confusion, loneliness and fear, occasionally hope and positivism.  Desperately trying to maintain the positive persona that I often feel I am.  The person who has energy, wants to make a difference in the world because of our beautiful daughter, who can play with my son without a wedge of unhappiness stopping me from connecting with him completely.  Does he know I’m not completely there when we play? Can he sense that Mummy’s heart is not completely in it? I don’t know, I hope not.  I feel like I’m a worse mother because of my loss, not a better one.  A more grateful, less naïve mother but my patience isn’t what it was, my energy levels shocking and my ability to cry at the drop of a hat quite immense.  My boy wipes my tears away for me now and fetches a tissue, he’s so used to Mummy crying he knows what to do, normally a little dance or something that will make me smile or laugh again.  My heart bursts with love when I think of him and screams in agony when I think of my girl. She should be here with us.

People have told me how ‘brave’ I am, what an ‘inspiration’, so ‘strong’.  Like I’ve chosen to walk this path, suffer this pain and forever have a hole in our family where Ayla should be.  I’m not any of these things, I have no intention of inspiring others, I often hide from the world; that’s not brave or strong.  I am simply a Mummy.  A Mummy who loves her children more than words can ever describe.  I remember when I was pregnant and we knew our daughter was destined to leave us I had to go into hospital with a suspected blood clot (I knew it wasn’t, funny how carrying a baby destined to die but not knowing when can leave you a little breathless at times) a paediatrician saying to me what a brave thing I was doing, I simply looked at her and said ‘I don’t really have a choice do I?’ and she replied ‘There’s always a choice’.  How was there? A choice on how soon she leaves us or how she leaves us, maybe, but the outcome would be the same.  For me, giving her a chance was all I could do; we have memories, photographs and videos of her, mementoes that have to last us forever now, they are all we have.

I feel like a kite, attached to the world by a string. I float above everyone, watching them carrying on with their lives, moving forward and I’m there, watching, I’ll sometimes swoop forward, looking like I’m going somewhere and then a gust of wind grabs me and pushes me back, sometimes I let it, sometimes I try and fight it and I can push against it for so long and it may ease or it can slam me down so hard, so fast I can barely catch my breath.  Then I have to get back up again but I’m not allowed to find my feet, I’m back up into the air to watch and continue my slow, painful, spiralling journey.  What of the people on the ground? Some are desperately clinging to my string so I don’t go too far, keeping me as lifted as they can, calling messages of love and support, but not truly understanding.  Others scuttle by, their heads bowed low so they can’t see me, they don’t want to look up, face the pain, it’s too much for them.  There are other kites too.  Some just bob past, on their own journeys, others become entangled with me and we are bonded through our tragedy, our heartache, our children.  All of them bring comfort for just being there, as much as I hate that any of us are here it is always a comfort knowing we are not alone.  The strength, understanding and support gained from baby loss Mummies is a force so truly immense I often find myself in awe of it all.  How can so much love, friendship, understanding and support come from such pain? How? Our children, that’s how.  Their love for us is all consuming, just as much as if they were in our arms like they should be. As is our love for them.  That love has to continue somehow and we humans have to do something practical, so we extend our love for our babies, our children into other baby loss parents, to reassure they are not alone, what they are feeling is ok and that we are there to support each other whenever that wind of grief slams us so hard we struggle to get back up.  My daughter has taught me so much and brought so many wonderful people into my life, it is an honour to be her Mummy, I just wish she were here with me.

Guest Post: Right where I am: 9 months and 4 weeks

Nicole describes herself as "a thirty-something charity worker from the North East of England. Xander was our first baby, conceived after years of trying, and just when we were about to give up. After an uneventful 'text book' pregnancy, I was nearly 2 weeks overdue when I went to the hospital thinking I was in labour, only to be told he'd died in the 10 hours since we'd last heard his heartbeat. He was born silently on Tuesday 16th August 2011, just before midnight." 

 Where am I now? Not where I should be. My son should be nearly 10 months old. He should be here in my arms, not existing only as ashes in a tiny box. It’s a funny word, ‘should’. I often catch myself using it - it’s when I temporarily exist in the make believe land where my boy is alive and my life is whole and complete. Where our house is full of noise, and smells, and Jim stubs his toe on the baby things left on the floor. Where the cats run away from our little lovely boy, to avoid getting their tails pulled. Where we’ve had to move things off the bottom shelves and fit stair gates, to keep him safe. This land doesn’t exist. Our house is quiet. The cats undisturbed. Our lives are much the same as before, but forever changed.

 I think of him a million times a day. Everything reminds me of him. Sometimes that’s comforting. I can remember the love I felt when he was growing inside me and the joy I felt every day, and I feel warm and content in the memory. Sometimes it’s as far from comforting as it can possibly be. I miss him so much. I ache to hold him and I rush round the house trying to find something of his. But I’m thwarted at every turn. I have nothing that was his – nothing he touched. We bought a soft toy for him after the 20 week scan, and I sat with a couple of times on my bump, telling Jim I was letting them bond. This is the nearest thing I have to something of his and sometimes I sit with it, to try and be close to him. But it’s a poor substitute for a living boy. Sometimes I take the glass off the frame that holds his footprints, and run my fingers over the marks his feet made, desperate to touch something he touched. Nothing quite does it. Nothing can ever satisfy the need to see him, hold him, to mother him.

 I keep having to remind myself I am a mother. It’s hard to feel like one when the object of my affection has ceased to exist. I am a different mother to all of my friends. I can’t possible understand their reality, and they can’t ever understand mine. I feel separate, different. I am a freak in a world full of normals. The sense of isolation is enormous.

 I would love another baby. I hope that one day it’ll happen for us, but I’m not so sure. It took so many years before we had Xander. Sometimes I think he was our only chance at having a family, and I swear I can almost feel my heart breaking all over again. The road ahead is filled with danger – if we ever conceive again, will I miscarry? Will the baby be stillborn again? Will they die of SIDS? Will they die at age 2, or 5, or 15? The innocence of pregnancy is gone, and I can never feel it again. Sometimes I wish I could see the future, other times I’m glad I can’t – because if I knew more loss of this magnitude was coming my way I think I’d fall down dead. I worry about everyone in my life, especially my husband. If he has a headache, or a cough, or comes home a little late, I’ve half convinced myself he’s gone. I know that having one loss doesn’t protect you from another – there’s an unlimited amount of bad in the world, as there is of good.

 People ask me how I am and I say ‘okay’. I’m coping. And I am. I’m not staying in bed, not avoiding the world, I’ve not lost my mind and I’m not trying to kill myself. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about all of those things, many times. But I get on with life. Hell, sometimes I even enjoy it. I go out, see friends and family - sometimes I enjoy things so much, or I laugh so hard, that life feels wonderful. Other times I am so sad I can’t stop crying. I want to sit very, very still and hope the world goes away, or spontaneously ends without me having to do anything about it. Apocalypse? Deadly virus? Gigantic asteroid on a collision course with earth – bring it on! Sometimes I’m so mad, so filled with rage at the world that I want to kick things over, shout at people, punch god in the face, or scream until I have no voice left.

 So where am I now? I am coping. I get by. Sometimes I’m even living. But my reality is forever changed. Nothing and nobody can bring my boy back. I read somewhere that life goes on, but so does death. I know this to be true. I’ll carry the strength of his memory, and the weight of his loss, with me until the end of my days

Guest Post - Right where I am – 10 months 23 days or 328 days.

Gemma sent me a lovely email a few days ago, asking me to share her Right Where I Am post. I am always incredibly grateful for emails and connections and to share stories about this experience. Gemma lost her son Isaac to a cord around his neck. As she shares, "It's been a hard and lonely road, I must say." Hopefully, this experience will help ease that loneliness. I know it does for me. 

I had no idea where I was until I sat down and started to write; my son should be approaching his year birthday and instead he is still gone.

I’m not in a very good place at the moment – I have lived through the last year getting through; I keep thinking to myself – I’ll just make it to the funeral and it will get easier, I’ll make it through to the post mortem results, and Christmas, and new year and my birthday and now the next event to live through is next month – the date I found out Isaac had died; literally my life changed forever. At the moment I am questioning the relationship parents have with their children – it takes up lots of my energy wondering about how much is written, how much is an unbreakable bond.

I try not to focus on the bad and instead look at the good things I do have;  I have tried to embrace the spiritual side of life because it means there is a chance that Isaac is still with me in some part, it means the feathers I see are really little signs from him , each day I work on my positive thinking, and I try to be a better person. For example my father told me yesterday to be good to my husband as if anyone loved me more than he did it was my husband – and he really is my rock; I have a lovely family and some really cracking friends – the sort I can really rely on and hope will still listen to me in years to come when I am still grief stricken; and I have my horse who is my delight – I am immensely proud of him as I bred him myself, when I am with him the pain is dampened for a while – it never goes away but it lifts the fog for a time. This is important to me – it fits in with everyone’s wise advise of “Just stop trying/worrying about it and you will get pregnant again” well-meaning people who have never had a child die inside of them and have no experience in what that would mean – how forgetting about it would simply be impossible. However I am working hard to attract positive things to my life, its taking more work than I had hoped to think about good things, I’m finding it very tiring but I know it’s what I need to do. My life hasn’t changed too dramatically which means I have attracted the right sort of friend into my life – that’s a positive a massive positive and one I am grateful for each day. In hindsight those who have been the best for me  have been friends I haven’t been as good to as I should have – I hope to make this up to them when I’m feeling more together.

I am finding the stages of arrive as and when they feel like it and at the moment I’m sitting next to anger, sadness and despair – they are like a dealer I guess  always hiding and waiting to rear their head when I am feeling weak, they visit me often these days and it makes me sad to see them but yet I welcome them in like an old friend calling, I know for me these emotions are all linked to the fact I have been unable to get pregnant again; have discovered un expected fertility issues and these weigh heavily on my mind. Isaac was a miracle baby, he was my personal miracle – its having loved and carried him that picks me up and makes me smile – I did that; I made a perfect little man and yet each day that goes by that I don’t get pregnant I am a day further away from being a mother with a living child.

Much of the time my grief for Isaac is tied into my sadness about not being a mother to a living child, I know that I would cope better if I was pregnant – not that it would replace him but I miss hope – I wish she would visit me again.

I can put on my outfit and get by most of the time, I don’t like to look in the mirror since he died – when I catch a glimpse of myself I feel like I’m looking at a stranger – I just look normal and this always amazes me; to all intents and purposes I can pass 99% of the time for a normal person following my daily routine – no one would know that my child died unless they asked; and they should know, because Isaac – well Isaac was everything to us. I feel quite out of place amongst smiling happy people.

I am a survivor – I have always been one of these people that breezed through life, oh yes I had some disasters along the way but they never really stuck; I was convinced therefore that I would survive this – I would do this the right way – I embraced all the stages of grief and I have grieved openly and fully; it has since come as a shock to me that I’m still struggling – this wasn’t part of the plan and then I’m angry again. I want to grab grief and shake her (grief must be a woman; she is simply too clever and manipulative to be a man) and tell her “look lady, I’ve done everything that was expected of me – I took time off, I read books on grief, I sought support from other baby loss mothers, I’ve publically grieved, I am not afraid to cry or mourn; I accepted that my son has gone and won’t be coming back and I accepted it wasn’t anyone’s fault – not even mine. So cut me some slack and let me get on and heal” but she just waves the caveat that grief has no rules and can raise her head at any time and opens the door to let anger, and sadness and despair in again.

As I mentioned before I am currently fascinated with my relationship with my father who left us when I was very little; I’ve never minded too much about this and I have a wonderful step Dad who I just think of as my Dad; and I never blamed him for not calling as often as he should – I just seemed to accept him for who he was – oh yes my relationship with my father has been a tad tempestuous at times – and yet he has been so insightful since Isaac died – saying to me only yesterday to stop trying so damn hard to be better and that “Only I could imagine that I could get through my grief in Guinness book of records time” and “I spout the right things but I need to believe in them” and I wonder how he knows exactly what I’m feeling even when I pretend to myself ? I wonder if Isaac and I would have had that, or Isaac and his Daddy perhaps?

I wonder about the kind of mother I would have been had I had the chance; I look at my husband and I know that he would have been a wonderful father – a little too soft and easily wrapped around the finger with cute eyes but it would have been the making of him – it has been. I wonder if I would be been short tempered after a million “why” questions and know that next time I will be a better mother because I know what it is like to lose the chance.
Now I just want the chance again

Guest Post: Right where I am - 1 year and 2months followed by 1 month and 10 days

I always offer my blog as a place to share your Right Where I Am for those without blogs. Claire emailed me the other day, asking if I would oblige. Happily. Claire describes herself as a "wife, angel mummy and teacher from Scotland with four losses. Molly born sleeping April 2011, Grace born sleeping May 2012 and two little stars lost at 6 weeks." So grateful to welcome Claire to still life with circles. 

At this moment, I don't know where I am anymore. Back at the beginning of a nightmare and doing it all over again I guess.

We faced Molly's first birthday in April knowing that her baby brother or sister was fighting a losing battle inside me against the same condition that took Molly from us. Four weeks later, we buried Grace alongside her big sister. I have now lost 4 babies. Molly, Grace and 2 little stars lost in early pregnancy.

So I am back in the early days of grief. Once again, my confidence is gone (although I don't think it ever properly came back after losing Molly). I am afraid to leave the house. I am afraid to face people - they'd rather not be faced with me anyway. A stark, sad reminder of something they would rather not think about. The guilt is overwhelming - I feel like such a failure. I feel that I have let everyone down, especially my husband. He would be a wonderful father. I watch him with my niece, who adores the ground he walks on, and it breaks my heart. Even amongst friends I have met on this journey who have also lost, some of them don't know what to say to me as they just cannot imagine having to life through the nightmare again.

I sometimes feel I am living an out of body experience. I do things, go places but I am not really there. I tune out, I can't always cope. I still don't think I have fully let myself realise that I am going through this again. If I stopped to think, I don't think I would start again. I have become so good at putting on a face. People tell me I am doing so well, that I am strong and brave. I don't feel it.

I try hard to count my blessings every day now. My wonderful husband, our supportive family, my friends, new friends met on this journey of loss, my sands group... I am lucky to have these things. I have met so many brave and inspirational women on this journey who have lost children in many different circumstances and who, instead of drowning in their grief, have used it to support and reach out to other women. This inspires me. Supporting other women in this situation has helped me. I was sent a poem last week written by a mother who lost her child recently and who I had reached out to. Instead of thanking me, she thanked my girls - because of them their mummy was able to offer empathy, support and advice to another bereaved mother. I loved this. It meant my girls had meaning to someone else. Last week also, a fellow bereaved mummy and wonderful friend, wrote my girls' names on the beach in Costa Rica. I love it when someone thinks of my girls, I love to see their names, to hear their names. These things mean so much to me.

My hope is still flickering somewhere and I really don't want to give up but I think another loss would destroy me. Nobody can say to me anymore that 'it'll be alright next time', we lost our next time. I can't give up though, I want so much to be an earth mummy. I don't want my girls to have died for nothing. Without them, we would not have met such inspirational people. People who have now given us access to research which shows a way forward for us. Strong women who, after many losses, now have healthy rainbow children in their lives or are pushing forward with the strong belief that their rainbow is on the horizon. I am trying to cling to this, desperately.

I look out for my girls and I see them... in rainbows, sunshine, stars, little coincidences. I feel them still and, though I miss them dreadfully, I find comfort in knowing that they are still with me in my heart.

A friend once said to me that losing your child was like walking in mud. Some days the mud is thinner and you somehow manage to drag yourself through it. Other days, the mud is so thick that you are stuck and can't move...... the thick mud days hurt your heart even more.

Right where I am... stuck in the thick mud and looking for a way forward.

Guest Post: Right Where I Am- Three Years, Six Months, Twenty-Seven Days and Two Years, Four Months, Four Days

It is my honor to welcome a guest post for Right Where I Am from Danielle. [Remember if you do not have a blog and want to contribute, you are welcome to post right here. Send me an email at uberangie(at)gmail(dot)com.] My dear friend Danielle's first son Kai died a month and a half before Lucia. Danielle lost her second son a year and two months later. This year, Leap Day to be exact, Danielle gave birth to her third son, an incredible little Monkey full of contented joy and love. This week, Danielle emailed me with her contribution to the Right Where I Am project. Her insights into grief and her journey last year are right here.  --Angie

My son is three months old.  He wriggles. He coos.  He smiles at us all the time.  He smiles so much that when he eats, milk dribbles from his laughing mouth and wets us both.  He loves it when I sing- ridiculous, composed-in-the-moment songs about Mickey Mouse socks and poo.  At least once a day I sing through a throat choked with tears, because he is here.

When my grandmother, made Great-Grandma at long last, came to meet him in the hospital, she brought me a baby book to record my first memories of our time together.  It sat on a shelf for the first few weeks, all but forgotten in the sleep-deprived haze of new parenthood.  When I finally opened it,  his brothers were there on every page.  What we thought when we found out we were having a baby: Please don’t die. Who we told first, and what they thought: I didn’t use the word pregnant until the third trimester.  Everyone was terrified, but too polite to say so. What we thought when we were waiting for you to be born: Please don’t die.  Siblings waiting to welcome you home:… Suddenly, I could not write.

Our grief is very quiet these days – overshadowed by the newness and the unbelievable, heart-expanding joy of having this amazing little boy to love. Right now, in this moment, I am happier than I can remember being in years, or maybe ever.  I am falling in love with my husband all over again, as he asks me daily if I think this boy will ever be too old to let Daddy hug and kiss him.  My heart is light as I dance around in circles with my son in my arms.  My son.  Right now I have everything I have ever wanted.

Except them.

The other day I asked my husband if he felt healed, now that Monkey is here.  He didn’t hesitate.

“No.  No.  I just don’t have time to think about it as much.”

And yet we do think about it. It’s in the way we introduce ourselves to the other new parents in the neighborhood, where one or the other of us mentions every time that we had a long, long road to get here.  It’s in our daily conversations about whether we have it in us to risk trying for another living child- ridiculous conversations to be having 13 weeks in, but conversations that feel so urgent, so necessary.  It’s in our amazement that friends, expecting a son in July, are willing to decorate their nursery and take our hand-me-down onesies, believing without question that their child will come home.

He is here.  His brothers are not.  He is here.  We went to hell and back to get him here safely.  To get him here at all.  He is here.  There will likely be no others.  He is here.

For the first time in a long time, so am I.

Guest post: Right Where I Am: 2 Years, 6 Months, 28 Days & 1 Year, 4 Months, 5 Days

It is my great honor to welcome my first guest post on still life with circles. Very early in my grief, Danielle and I began exchanging emails. She was and still is a frequent commenter on my blog and several others in the community. Her insights, wit, compassion and kindness instantly drew me, and many of my friends, to her. Her first son Kai died a month and a half before Lucia, and we quickly began writing long emails to each other about where we were in our grief. There is a respect and love between us that makes it easy to be friends even in the hardest of times. And there have been hard times. Danielle lost her second son a year and two months later.  Sometimes, in our friendship, when those moments get too hard and things are too sucky, we just read a book together, and that helps me more than anything I could imagine. I feel privileged to call her my friend.

Despite many of our urgings, Danielle does not have a blog. I definitely understand her reasons for needing that privacy. On more than one occasion, I have extended my blog to her to write about where she is and to process things. But she never bit. This week, however, she emailed me with her contribution to the Right Where I Am project. Her insights into grief and her journey in particular are touching, hard and important. So, I thank her from the bottom of my heart for sharing right where she is with us all.

I am on an airplane with my husband. In my carry-on are two books, a candy bar, the work I will not do, alcohol wipes, a syringe, and medication wrapped in an ice pack. In a minute, I will have to wake up the sleeping guy with the headphones so I can go to the bathroom and inject myself in the leg. I can’t quite believe I am doing this again, doing this still. Though I am pretty adept at the whole shot thing, I don’t quite trust my aim if there’s turbulence.

It’s been over three years since our first appointment with the reproductive endocrinologist, followed two weeks later by the minor surgery that I thought of then as the hardest thing I would ever have to do for us to become a family. In total I was under anesthesia six times in two years, landing in the emergency room or reeling dizzily for weeks afterwards each time. Counting acupuncture, blood draws, and the four rounds of DIY injections at home, I have been stuck with hundreds of needles. We have spent close to a college tuition for the child we do not have on fertility treatments, herbal supplements, therapy for me, therapy for Alan, therapy for us. We have conceived, lost, and mourned two sons. We are still not a family.

Right after we lost Kai, the fact that the world kept going while my own life had gone off the cliff was more than I could get my head around. I developed an intense, personal hatred of people carrying coffee cups from Starbucks, because they were FUCKING DRINKING COFFEE while I was standing next to them, shredded, on the subway platform. I stopped answering the phone, because questions like “How are you?” and “What’s new?” were impossible for me to answer except through the lens of grief. I developed a one-shouldered shrug, which I used to respond to any question about what I wanted to eat, do, talk about. I screamed and cried myself hoarse in the shower. And on the day we were told that we would never know what happened to Kai- that there was no answer except “likely sublinical infection” (read: black magic)- I wanted to die.

I could tell you the story of how it slowly got better, because it did. I could tell you that while I was in the very hardest and ugliest phase of my grief, I also went to work every day, formed new friendships, went on vacation. I could tell you how possibility came back, a little at a time, and carried us through a whole new set of fertility issues and straight through to IVF. But then I would also have to tell you the story of Chip. He brought light and hope back into our home from the day we knew he was coming until the day we knew he wasn’t. Chip was diagnosed with trisomy 13- a 100% fatal genetic disorder. We said goodbye at 13 weeks, and I went immediately from numbness and shock to white-hot anger. I am married to an extraordinarily kind and patient man. If I weren’t, that anger would have burned our marriage to the ground.

Some days the grief about our children and the grief about our infertility are one and the same. Some days I miss them separately and specifically, for different reasons- our two sons, and the embryo we fell in love with too soon who never turned into our daughter. Some days that missing feels like rage, or fear, or disgust with myself. Sometimes it feels like compassion for Alan, who didn’t get to be the wonderful father he was made to be, or for my mother, who keeps Kai’s ultrasound photo in a frame at her bedside. But mostly I just wish they were here, and I am sad to realize as I write this that I have no real idea what my life would be like if they were.

There are other things now, things that are not grief and anger. There is gratitude- for health insurance, for extraordinary women from different parts of my life who have offered to serve as egg donors or gestational surrogates, for friends who actually seem to like me this way. There is wonder- at big things like waterfalls and small things like figuring out the trick in the Sunday Times crossword. There is wistfulness- for once-cherished friendships that didn’t make it, for the part of me that used to care passionately about supporting Latino playwrights and visiting my grandmother, for a time when I truly felt like a part of this community in a way that I no longer do. There is release- in near-hysterical laughter, in dancing, in the love of my husband. But there are no children. There is no family.

I am OK most of the time. I care about people other than myself again. There are things I want to do, and when I don’t do them it’s because I don’t have enough time or enough money, and not because they don’t matter. If you had asked me at any point along the way, I would have said that I could never feel this OK again. I was wrong. That said, OK is not happy, and I don’t think I will ever be truly happy without a living child. I hope I’m wrong about that, too. I hope I don’t have to find out.

--Danielle