little packages.

My table piles high with items in small packages. Little oatmeal packs. Small shampoo. Teeny maple syrup containers and Bisquick in a pourable container. I keep small packets of toilet paper and wipes.

We like to camp. We have a wee little pop-up with a propane stove and a sink that leaks. A king size foam cushion, a double, and a table that folds down into a bed. We have a propane stove, and a sink that leaks if you fill it too high. We have a drawer filled with card games and backgammon, teas and non-perishable items.

I fantasize about homesteading, living on a large swath of land without plumbing. No one knows us there. I'm tired of all this civilization. A burbling stream runs through our land and the children stop wearing shoes. They run silently through the trees and high grasses, and deer don't notice them because they are woodland creatures. Sprites or fairies or gnomes. No one can find us. We are a family, working together, raising a house and growing vegetables and homeschooling and wearing long skirts.

We meet TracyOC's family at the campsite. My lone homesteading family turns into a commune. Maybe we can make it work. Maybe no one will annoy each other. Their skill set can complement ours. We sit quietly together, and I wonder if I could ever leave our creature comforts. I checked Facebook in the camper, uploaded a picture. It is terrible. Tracy and her husband actually know a thing or two about communes and living outdoors. I have a camper with a space heater, and I complain if it gets too cold and my husband seems too contented in the freezing temperatures.

POLAR BEAR! I accuse him. YOU ARE A POLAR BEAR! I AM A HUMMINGBIRD!

My wings are frozen in place. I am too small to fly here.

Grrrrrrr...

We like to camp. We hike over rocky terrain and I listen to TracyOC tell the kids about fearsome creatures like Splintercats who tear the treetops into deep spikes and Hugags, the kneeless creature who knocks over whole barns or trees, just for a respite from the endless standing. Beezus giggles. She has never heard of these creatures. She looks at me wondering if it is true. I nod and smile and wonder if it is true. In these woods, it looks true.

The girls skip on the rocky terrain. They are tough cookies until they aren't tough anymore. Then we are tough cookies, carrying gangling arms and long, stretching legs. They become wiggly creatures brought back to life our concession to carry forty plus pounds of girl. I imagine never coming back to New Jersey. Our house would become part of the environment, covered in moss and ivy no one was around to pluck from the flowerbeds.

Even in the woods, there is civilization everywhere. Large RVs with televisions. Bi-planes, and orienteering ranges. There are paved paths and boat launches. Yet still I crave the stillness of the woods, the endless stars, the rustling of other things moving besides us. I crave quiet in my head, but when we are out here hiking, I keep talking--about this about that about here about there.

I am a FAKE! My meditations are amidst plane noise and the garbage truck and grass cutting. You found out! They are suburban meditations! They come with a soundtrack! This place is so profane that any quiet seems sacred!

It helps the quiet to grumble about the noise. I fill the quiet again and again. As I warm myself against the fire, I feel the cramping in my belly. It tightens and releases. I wonder what next year will look like. Will there be another baby? Or will this little package in my uterus become a woodland creature too?

I am eleven weeks pregnant. Eleven weeks of being almost okay. I'm not nauseated or sick. I'm not frightened. I am just waiting for my belly to grow and a baby to move and a doctor to tell me she is okay, or she is not.

I haven't seen a doctor yet. It is why I am not frightened. I cannot control anything. Even if she dies now, there is nothing they can do. There is a kind of liberation in that thought. Next week, I meet our new midwife. Until then, I live on this stretch of land with wildflowers and feral children able to hunt and build barns for the neighbors miles away. I walk through the woods barefoot and pregnant collecting wildberries for our breakfast. I manage to handle the cold without electricity. The children talk like yearlings to the animals, clucking and yelping and howling into the night. When the children come home to me, wrapping themselves in my skirts, I hold them and feed them wild honey, blackberries, and root vegetables. After harvesting all morning, I tell them the baby is coming, and the children fetch the water from the spring down the meadow. They boil it for me, and my husband runs into town to tell the womenfolk. I do the hard work of finding a place to birth. I imagine birthing alone in the cabin we built. No heartbeat checks. No monitors. No blood pressure. No weight checks. No ultrasounds. The women stand around and wait, watching for too much blood. But mostly it is just me, knowing there could be a chance she dies and another chance that she lives. Just like in history when the chance of your baby living seemed fifty/fifty, just like it still does to all of us who lost children.

It seems irresponsible, even to me, but that seems perfect and magical right now. A place to not worry, a land of freedom from fear.

I don't know if this baby is a she, but I keep calling her a she. And because she is in there, I will be prodded and poked and let them draw blood every time they ask. In nine weeks, if she is still alive, they will tell me if she is a he or she really is a she. I will watch her in the monitor and cry. I will drink some sweet liquid and pee into a cup. I will go into the city and birth her. Horns will honk. Machines will beep and whirl and they will make sure every single moment that she is not dead.

I adore small things. Packages that tuck into corners. The baby is balled up in a tiny little package right now tied up with yarn. She fits in my belly, as big as a lime. So small, no one notices her. I carry her in my pocket. A little package of hope and fear that smells exactly like love.

deer

My daughter asks me for a sister. One that is alive and plays.

She begs me for another.

"OH, pppppleeeeeeease, Mama. Please. Lucy is dead. You can't bring her back, Mommy. But we can still have a little sister who is cute."

My husband agrees. He nods and points his thumb at her. "Getta load of the girl. She is making a decent argument," he seems to say, smirking and devilish. I tell her that she may get a brother. There is no guarantee it would be a sister.

"That is okay. I will play with a brother too. I promise. "

She wears the deer antlers we made and sings a reindeer song. That is what she calls it. It sounds like shrieks and gurgles and whinnies. She gallops through the house. She looks like a woodland creature, some kind of fairy nymph that pops out of a knot in a tree and blows a forgetting dust into your face.

I want to try for another fawn. I do. Sometimes, particularly after baby showers and holding newborns, the idea seems incredibly good. They smell like vanilla and breastmilk and malted milk balls. Their feet are as tiny and soft as mosses under our favorite tree and their voices are bells, clear and fine reminding us of something bigger. But even the fairy dust can't help me forget the anxiety of Thor's pregnancy and the raw pain of Lucy's death. And I said I was done, dammit. Done. Yet this doesn't feel done. They cry for another fawn. I wonder if I feel that tug to have more babies because Lucia died. I wonder if we will always feel like there should be just one more baby, because there should be one more baby. Or rather there was one more baby. It is a riddle I cannot figure out. A Chinese handcuff--one idea goes in this side, and the other on the opposite side, and struggling only makes them tight and claustrophobic, inescapable.

I am too grounded in my comfort for a newborn. It is different when the bottoms of your feet hurt in the morning, and you have grey hair. I am already the oldest mom in the line waiting. The crow's feet and the paunch.

I ache, sometimes. I yearn. My uterus reaches up and opens its hands and moans, "Just. One. More."

She says a sister would play deer with her. Her brother wants to rip the antlers to pieces. Chew them and bury them and transform them into the trees. He is the Trickster, hiding and ripping and causing a beautiful chaos.  I try to explain to her the myth. He is playing a different role than deer. He is something else entirely.

I admit that the boy seems completely uninterested in having to share me with anyone. He wants to be on me. All night. All day. He grabs each cheek and stares into my face when I am talking to Beezus. If she climbs on my lap, he pushes, like a linebacker, all shoulders squaring off. And she screams, "She's my mommy too, Thor." He tries to move her off me. I find it so endearing and lovely to be wanted. I am wanted. I can't believe these children want me, and then I remember that I am their mother.

I am a mother!
I am thirty-eight!
I have three kids and a house and two trucks!
I clean the house every day and make dinner every night and listen to NPR!
I spend 24 hours a day with the kids and I'm not sick of them!

These things surprise me. Constantly. Do they surprise everyone?

My husband woke late this morning. We had a rough night with the kids. He was kicked in the neck, and went to sleep in the bunk bed with the little magical deer fairy who had a nightmare. I woke up with Thor sitting on my shoulder, repeating the word DOWN!  and pointing to the stairs. In the morning, after the neck kicks, my husband whispered, as the children ran with juice toward the fire.

"The middle of the night makes parenting so challenging," he said. His voice weary, defeated. "I wish I were twenty-five."
"If you were twenty-five, you wouldn't have the patience for the middle of the night."
"Very true, but at least I would be 25."

I am tired. I am not 25.
And I am thinking about deer.

What are you thinking about? What do you think? Will we always want one more when we are missing one?

A Chapter Closed.

Monday, I closed a chapter of this life.

We finally met with the Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) doctor to go over all my test results, the autopsy, the bloodwork...Of course, my midwife had called to talk me through what she knew when she got the preliminary autopsy results, and we had a copy of all our records, which I poured over trying to find anything to explain why Lucy died. As my midwife put it, "There was no smoking gun." No infections. No chromosonal issues. No placenta incidents. Nothing. But this cycle of tests, waiting, results, repeat, was growing old. I felt nauseated from the roller coaster ride. One day, the midwife told me there was a placental infarction of 8%, consistent with the car accident we were involved in in October, and then the next week, my friend (a high-risk OB) would tell me that placental infarctions don't affect the baby until it is 70%, and death would be over 80%. So, I would prepare myself for the next result, the possibility they could tell me something so I could prevent another dead baby, and then I would come crashing down...nothing. She simply ceased.

Still, having known and been mentally preparing myself for the diagnosis that my perfect baby just died, I was still incredibly anxious about walking into the MFM office for further information. I had known people to get different information. More in-depth reasons for their baby's death. I just wasn't strong enough to learn anything new. And well, when I really examined why I was so very anxious, it wasn't that I didn't want to learn new information about Lucy's death. I did. I wanted to know why this happened. It was simply I didn't want to learn information that indicted me. I had the fear that I would sit down and he would say, "Sorry, Angie, but it was your fault." I mean, how could I not realize I was harboring this deep guilt? I was afraid he might tell me that my weight gain caused her death. Like he would sit down and say, "Yes, pasta killed your baby." Or maybe he would say it was my inability to give up sushi for most of my pregnancy (there I said it!), or the glass of wine I allowed myself every so often.

But he didn't say that. He said he was so so sorry. He said that these cases are most frustrating. He called me "healthy" five times. Me? Healthy? Before December 22,2008, I would have said, "Yeah, so?" But now, I didn't realize how much I needed someone to call me healthy. All these tests and a dead baby, and I thought I was unhealthy, diseased...I wanted to kiss him, and lay my head on his shoulder and cry, "Thank you for calling me healthy." He said I did everything right. He said my chances of having another stillborn baby were the same as before. (Actually, that part wasn't comforting at all.) and when he was talking about what would happen if we got pregnant again, it was the first time since Lucy died that I remembered the excitement of having a baby, of trying to conceive, of going through labor...but I am still not exactly there yet. I just realized that I entertained an idea I also thought was dead.

I walked out of there feeling lighter, like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I am honest when I say I didn't consciously ever think I could have done anything differently in my pregnancy. The closest I got to blaming myself outright is that I often thought that stress took its toll on my baby. I blamed the stress of a car accident, a falling out with one of closest friends this fall, and a broken collarbone which all happened at the same time while my father-in-law was battling lung cancer and I was trying to care for my 20 month old, and prepare for Christmas...it very quickly darkened the happiest time in my life. I felt so alone during that time...I thought maybe my stress caused her to suffer too. But I didn't realize I was blaming myself for specific things I did in my pregnancy. As I virtually skipped out of the MFM appointment, it was clear that I had.

Now, I just need to really work on wrapping my brain around her death. I have tried to come to peace with this place of no resolution. But honestly, this will remain my biggest challenge. As a science-loving, non-religious mama, I am trying to come to terms with the death of my child for no discernible reason. Adults don't just die for no reason. Why do we tolerate this? I have tried to equate it to SIDS in my brain. In fact, in my quest to make sense of it, I came across this term: Sudden Antenatal Death Syndrome or SADS. Still, finding a term doesn't bring a sense of peace. It just doesn't. Someone named a no-reason. But hey, sometimes I'm up for grasping at straws too. But whatever you name it, it still remains the same--My girl is gone. She just died. In me. For no apparent reason.

Geesh.