Two Weeks

It’s now 2 weeks until Vivienne’s birthday. Two weeks until we mark the day when our lives changed forever. I feel conflicted because I want that day to get here quickly, because then I won’t want to think about where I was a year ago. At the same time, I don’t want that day to come because right now, I can sit here and think about how a year ago I was happy. A year ago, I was hopeful. A year ago, it felt like our best times were still ahead of us.

Today marks the last ultrasound we had with Vivienne. It was the big 20 week ultrasound. Generally, it would be the time when parents find out if it’s a boy or a girl, but we already knew that. All we wanted to hear was that she was healthy. She was stubborn in that ultrasound, but she was healthy. She refused to show her face to the doctor, and he wouldn’t let us go until she did. She burrowed deep back around my spine and would not come out or turn around no matter how much I lay on my side or poked at her. After a little walk, she finally showed her face. The doctor proclaimed her perfect. We went on our way thinking we had passed all of the tests. We were halfway there.

That last ultrasound makes me smile, because it’s one of the few events where we got a peek at Vivienne’s personality. We wondered whether she would be shy (which she’d get honestly from her mother) or really stubborn (which she’d get honestly from both of her parents). We got to see a glimpse of who she would be. This tiny little person who we loved (and still love) beyond words, and who we will never get to know in this lifetime. We’ll never know what her personality would be. All that we have are these little clues she left us while we had her.

That last ultrasound is also source of pain for us. Because the doctor had difficulty seeing her face, we don’t have any good pictures from that last ultrasound. At the time, we commented on that making us sad, but we assumed (as we all do) that we would get another chance. We had 20 weeks to go – there would be more ultrasounds, and we would get more pictures. We did get pictures after she was born, but I find myself still wanting better pictures of that last perfect moment. That last moment we would see of her alive and healthy.

These next 2 weeks represent our last perfect days. Planning for Vivienne went into full swing. A baby shower started to come together. We started to do research for the baby registry and made our plans to register for everything she would need. We’d planned to go register on August 20^th – I went into labor the day before. We celebrated my birthday – my last birthday before I would have my first child. The last 2 weeks of hopes and dreams before our world completely shattered.

I’m not quite ready to let go of those happy and hopeful feelings of a year ago. But time doesn’t care if I’m ready or not. In 2 weeks, I won’t be able to look back on a year ago and remember a happy time. I will have to do my best to look forward, but somewhere inside, I’ll think about a year ago being the darkest time of my life. I’ll have to acknowledge that a year ago, it really felt possible to die from a broken heart.  A year ago, I did not know how I could possibly survive what had happened to us.

Maybe, on some level, I’ll be able to give myself some credit for how far I’ve come. I’ve spent the better part of the last year forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other and to keep going, even when I didn’t want to. Maybe passing the 1 year mark can be the start of just putting one foot in front of the other without feeling forced. I will never be able to put the past year behind me – it is a part of me and has made me who I am today. My daughter and the loss of my daughter is not something to move past or get over. But I hold out hope that this will mark the time when I can feel myself moving forward with a focus on all that this last year has taught me. I guess time will tell.

Father's Day

A couple of days ago, it was Father’s Day. I wanted to write a post about it, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wasn’t really sure why, and it took me some time to realize that Father’s Day was a lot more complicated this year.

For me, it’s been a sad holiday for years now. My Dad died on July 13, 1999. I remember that it was about a month after Father’s Day, and as was typical for me, I was late in getting his Father’s Day card to him. I never got to give it to him and instead had to put it in his casket to be buried with him. I’ll always wish I’d given him that last card, and so the holiday has represented sadness and regret ever since.

This year, I felt differently about it. I still miss him, still wonder what he’d think of my life today, and I still regret not giving him his last Father’s Day card in time. But this year, I felt some measure of relief, which was a strange feeling. It gives me comfort to know that my Dad went ahead so that he could greet Vivienne, hold her hand, and tell her about our family. It was this weird feeling of not exactly being happy that he’s gone, but being happy that there was someone with her who I was so close with. When I was pregnant with Vivienne, it made me so sad to think about how my Dad would never get to meet her. Now, it gives me so much comfort to know that she’s with him. It changed my perspective on Father’s Day this year. I miss them both like crazy, but it gives me some peace to know they have each other.

This year was also the first Father’s Day for my husband. I know the world doesn’t see us as parents in the traditional sense, and that comes down harder on the Dads than the Moms. If you only knew how much he does to guard and defend his daughter’s memory, you could see what an amazing Dad he is. But that’s hard for people outside of our little world to see. So he’s left, much like I was, to find ways to celebrate a holiday that doesn’t feel like it’s meant for him.

I know it was a hard day for him. I did what I could, but I also know that I can’t give him the one thing he wants on that day – to hold his baby girl. I think it was just as hard watching him on Sunday and wanting to make it better as it was living through Mother’s Day myself.

It was a complicated day. Comfort in knowing that my Dad is with my daughter. Sadness that this isn’t a happy celebration for my husband. And regret for so much that I wish could be different.

Meaningless Milestones

Over the past few months, my life has been a series of “one year ago today. . .” It never ceases to amaze me how much can change in the course of a year—how a life can go from hopeful anticipation to I’m-not-sure-how-to-go-on in just 12 months.

Right now, I’m remembering the first trimester mark. A year ago, it was a very big deal. Today, I recognize it for the meaningless milestone that it was. The statistics will tell you it’s a major one—if you’ve heard a heartbeat and made it past week 12, you have less than a 3% chance of losing your child. But who really knows whether they fall on the good or bad side of those odds?

One year ago this week, we moved into the 2^nd trimester. This was the time we started telling everyone the good news. We were still worried, of course—that’s what we do. We were worried that there would be something wrong with the baby—that we’d get bad news from our screens and anatomy checks. It never occurred to us to be worried that we’d lose her because we’d passed that magical milestone of the first trimester.

It’s hard for me to remember that happy time. Not in the sense that it’s difficult for me to think about, more that I can’t remember what it felt like. I cannot summon those happy memories in my brain—it’s like August 19^th erased them. I can remember telling people that we were expecting, and I can see their happy faces, excitement, and tears. But I can’t remember the excitement that I felt. I look back on that person (and let’s face it, that’s a different person than I am today) with a bit of pity—look at how excited she is, and she has no idea that the rug will be pulled out from under her in the cruelest way possible.

My husband and I did our reading and our research, and we knew the odds. We planned nothing until we moved into the 2^nd trimester. We knew that the risk of miscarriage in the 1^st trimester was high, especially considering my age. One year ago this week, we moved into planning mode. We discussed how we’d rearrange the house to accommodate a nursery. We tossed around names for boys and girls. We started picking out colors for the nursery and researching car seats, strollers, and cribs. This meaningless milestone pushed us to make plans that we’d never get to live out.

I have to admit, I hold my breath (figuratively, of course) when I hear that someone is pregnant. I see their excitement and hope. I even hear women talk about moving into the 2^nd trimester as being out of the “danger zone.” I know I felt that way once. I also know how foolish I feel now for thinking it then. I’ve come to recognize that pregnancy, all of pregnancy, is a miracle. It’s not just those first 12 weeks, it’s the entire 40. There are no guarantees in this life, and no assurance that passing some meaningless milestone means it’s smooth sailing for the rest of the time.

I don’t want this post to be about the boogie man—that you should always worry about what lurks behind the corner. It’s more that I want people to appreciate these miracles and recognize their good fortune in them. I’ve seen so many people take the end of the first trimester as a foregone conclusion that they’ll get to bring a baby home. Those last 28 weeks are just as much of a miracle as the first 12. Trust me, you don’t want to assume anything based on a meaningless milestone.

Milestones

I’ve had to pass a few milestones since Vivienne died. The 19^th of every month is a bit like a milestone—each one representing one month further from the time I held my daughter. We passed Thanksgiving, which was difficult because of its family focus. Then we hit our due date, which began the time we thought we’d have her with us. Immediately after that was Christmas. We did everything we could to incorporate her into our Christmas traditions, as did our families. The day was hard, but it was easier because she was a part of it. But of all of the milestones we’ve passed, the hardest so far was Mother’s Day.

The day alone was actually not so bad. Gordon and I made an agreement to shut ourselves off from the world. I knew it would be too hard to be around all of the happy mothers celebrating with their living children. I didn’t go to church, where I’m all too familiar with the ritual of having the mothers stand up to be recognized. What do you do when you can neither sit nor stand? So, we stayed home for the day. We did some work in the yard where I was visited by a butterfly that sat by me while I did my work. I never doubted for a second that this was a message from my little girl in heaven—flying by to wish me a happy Mother’s Day. I made Gordon come look at the butterfly, watched it fly from plant to plant and around me, took pictures of it, and yes, I talked to it (I’m sure my neighbors think I’ve lost it). It was as close as I’ll get to my daughter paying me a visit, and it made Mother’s Day a little easier.

While I can tell you that the day of Mother’s Day wasn’t so bad, I cannot say the same for the build up to that day. I’ve heard many loss moms warn me that the build up to a big day is often worse than the actual day, and for Mother’s Day this year, that couldn’t be more true.

It started on Monday. I was in a really bad mood—no good reason why, and no explanation for it. I was just grouchy. On Tuesday, I could not stop crying. This was when I realized that Mother’s Day was affecting me more than I knew. I felt this way for the rest of the week. The week leading up to Mother’s Day felt like I’d taken a hundred steps back. I felt like I was right back to the day we lost her—the grief and the sadness felt just as raw and just as fresh. Once again, I laid in bed, crying and telling God that I couldn’t do it. I was back into the feeling of not knowing how I would ever survive losing her.

On Sunday, that feeling lifted a bit, and things have gotten a little easier each day since. But, I have to admit, I’m a bit haunted by last week. It was a reminder of how far I’ve come in the last 9 months, and how far a milestone can make me fall. Knowing that the anticipation of a day can send me right back to the weeks immediately after August 19^th and that I can feel those feelings just like I did in those early days is something that was a bit unexpected. If Mother’s Day can cause those feelings, I can only imagine what her birthday will do. It’s 3 months away. That’s an anticipation that’s been building for a while, and I know it will last longer than a week.

And So It Begins. . .

I’ve been preparing for this for a while, and here we are—the time when we’ll start to hit all of the 1 year marks for Vivienne. It all starts today. One year ago today, we found out we were pregnant.

I cannot begin to explain how painful it is to think about where we were just one year ago. All of the hope, anticipation, anxiety, and preparation. During this early time, we were so afraid we would lose her—worrying about miscarriage and test results. In cruel irony, we actually got over the miscarriage fears just a few weeks before we lost Vivienne. We feel kind of foolish to think that our greatest fear was that she would have Down’s Syndrome. How silly that seems now, and what we wouldn’t give for her to be alive and have Down’s—that seems like a dream these days.

One of the hardest things for me is that I feel like things should be getting better right now, and instead, they are getting harder. It’s been just shy of 8 months, and I was starting to feel like I had my feet back under me again. But now, I come to the time where one year ago, I had her with me, and I’m right back into the pain.

These milestones make it all so fresh again. And because so much time has passed, there isn’t much leeway for having a bad day. In the days and weeks after she died, people understood that I was having a hard time. But eight months later, I appear fully functioning (it’s all an illusion), and I hide the bad days a little better. Today is a hard bad day to try to hide, but it’s not like I can walk around announcing that a year ago, I found out I was pregnant.

So I guess this is my announcement. There are countless milestones over the coming months that will create some very painful days. I will think about a year ago and seeing her for the first time on an ultrasound, hearing her heart beat for the first time, feeling her move, finding out she’s a “she.” All happy moments that one year later are so bittersweet and make the pain of losing her all the more difficult.