Benjamin died a month ago today. I am not ready to be bleeding again, but I am.

Last night as I was getting ready for bed, I found myself staring at another toilet bowl full of blood. My post-partum bleeding stopped just over a week ago. I didn’t know if it was too early for me to get my period. I didn’t know what was happening. My body trembling, images of those other nights flashing through my mind, I once again called my doctor’s exchange.

I explained my situation, asking her to excuse my tears. The operator put me through to Labor and Delivery at the hospital. I wondered if I’d get Sally, the Irish nurse who was there my second and third visits. The one who told me the IV was the size they would need for a blood transfusion and had me sign the papers for the emergency surgery, just in case. Another nurse answered, I explained my situation again. I’m sorry, let me get the doctor. I waited, trying to hold back the sobs.

The doctor came to the phone. It was the same one who saw me the night before I lost Benjamin. I really liked her. She was calm, reassuring. She gave me hope. I don’t know if you’ll remember me, I was in a month ago with heavy bleeding at 23 weeks. She remembered. Yes, you were Dr. C’s patient and he did the surgery. I’m so sorry. She must have asked about me. She was gone by the time I was wheeled into the operating room. Maybe she saw the flowers I sent.

I explained what was happening, asking if I needed to be concerned. She said no, they don’t call it a period until after 6 weeks because the hormones aren’t regulated until then but the bleeding wasn’t abnormal and could last four or five days. She shared the danger signs and reassured me that if I’d reopened my incision, I’d be in too much pain to move. I thanked her, hung up the phone and lost it.

I cried until I gagged, stopped, cried again and again and again. Images of my bleeding, the fear, the trips to the hospital, the letting go, the nurses, the doctors, the operating room, the news that he was gone, stillborn, no signs of life – all of it a disjointed movie in my mind’s eye. Steve held me as I sobbed that I missed him, missed Benjamin. I would have given anything to feel his little weight on my chest again, to see my son and trace the lines of his tiny limbs lightly with my finger, careful not to pull his paper thin skin. I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore. Then I went to bed and lay awake, waiting to see what the bleeding would do. Finally at 3am I took some ibuprofen to dull the cramps and fell asleep.

I am not ready to be bleeding again. I wanted some time for my body and my soul to stitch themselves back together before another toll was exacted. I am exhausted from grief and the sight of bright red, the feel of it. I keep having to remind myself there is no baby to be lost and that I will be fine.

Living life after Benjamin is by far the hardest thing I have ever done.

I miss you my son. I love you, always.

Mama

I’ve been reading Elizabeth McCracken‘s book about her first child, her son, who was stillborn. There is so much that rings true although our situations, our experiences, our points of view in many cases are different. I read the following section right after I wrote my open letter to friends and family. I wanted to share this piece of Elizabeth’s writing because it so eloquently explains how much the cards, emails, and phone calls mean.

*****

I don’t know what to say, people wrote, or, Words fail.

What amazed me about all the notes I got – mostly through e-mail, because who knew how to find me? – was how people did know what to say, how words didn’t fail. Even the words words fail comforted me. Before Pudding died, I’d thought condolence notes were simply small bits of old-fashioned etiquette, important but universally acknowledged as inadequate gestures. Now they felt like oxygen, and only now do I fully understand why: to know that other people were sad made Pudding more real. My friend Rob e-mailed me first, a beautiful and straightforward vow to do anything he could to help  me. Some people apologized for sending sympathy through the ether; some overnighted notes; it made no difference to me. I read them, and reread them. They made me cry, which helped. They moved me, that is to say, they felt physical, they budged me from the sodden self-disintegrating lump I otherwise was. As I was going mad from grief, the worst of it was that sometimes I believed I was making it all up. Here was some proof that I wasn’t.

– Elizabeth McCracken, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

*****

P.S. Thanks Dian for pointing me in the direction of this book.

Today Ada and I made cupcakes for my dad’s birthday. I cleared piles of paper off the desk while she watched Sesame Street on the computer. It all feels too normal. It seems too soon to feel this way, to feel okay. I wonder how long it will last?

*****

It didn’t last long. I got angry for the first time since all of this happened. I got angry because someone else gets to have a baby and I don’t. The anger cracked me open and the grief poured in. While Ada wrote a story and my dad worked on his computer I quietly sobbed in the office, then in the bathroom and finally in the shower. I hardly made a sound. Ada came in to use the toilet, asked me what I was doing and then said “I think you were crying Mom”. I heard her talking, how could she hear me? How did she know? “You’re right Ada, I was crying.” My sweet sensitive child with the great big heart, how will this all affect you? I am so sorry you have two grieving parents instead of a little brother. I wish it were different.

*****

An earlier conversation:

I am talking to my dad, clearly upset. Ada comes in, tries to talk over me, get my attention. I stop what I’m saying to my father and turn to her.
Mama is upset sweetheart but I’m okay. It’s not your job to make me feel better.
More song and dance.
It’s my job to make me feel better sweet pea, it’s not your job. I brush her bangs aside so I can look into her troubled blue eyes. It’s my job and I’m going to be okay.
I want to help you Mama.
You do Ada. I smile. You have no idea how much you do.

*****

I found my copy of Pema Chodron‘s When Things Fall Apart last night. I bought it on a recommendation when Steve and I separated six years ago but never really read it. I have been seeing Pema quotes everywhere and I knew it was time to pick the book back up. Things have clearly fallen apart – although I realized today I’m doing a good job of appearing like I’m holding it together. Maybe that’s why it hurts when I breathe.

*****

Fear is a universal experience….It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth. – Pema Chodron

Sitting in front of the computer feeling grief on my heart like it’s a physical presence, making it hard to breathe. Today is 4 weeks.

*****

Tears are streaming down my face. Ada turns from her book to look at me.

My brother lives in our hearts mama.

Yes sweetheart he does.

Your heart too mama.

Yes. My heart too.

*****

I almost collapsed in the tea aisle at Lassen’s today. Mother’s Milk Tea, Pregnancy Tea, Morning Wellness Tea, Raspberry Leaf Tea – they were all I could see.

*****

Periodically since Ben’s death, Ada has picked up one of our books about pregnancy “Mama, What’s In There?”. She reads it and lifts the flaps, looking at the babies in their mamas’ tummies. Today I found her quietly and methodically licking her finger and rubbing it on the flaps. She was trying to “tape them closed”.

*****

Another friend is pregnant. I knew they were trying and the last time I saw her I had a feeling there would be news soon. Call it mama-spidey-sense. I wonder if I will ever hear someone’s joyful “we made it to 14 weeks” news again without thinking of the thousands of babies who made it through the first trimester but not the second, or the third, or the first day, or week, or month of life. Before Benjamin died I had no idea. No idea. The world looks different to me now.