The Stork's Impending Visit (not to me)

My great niece is going to be born any day now.  On one hand, I celebrate inside because it means I get to hold a baby in pink and play with baby toes.  On the other hand, I will be praying inside, nervous the whole time leading to the birth, the time of birth, and even after baby is here.  Most people sigh with relief when a baby is here safely.  Having lost a babies in and out of the womb, I know babies are fragile in all their stages.  I'd be paralyzed with fear if it were my own baby.  Even watching my nephew and his wife, with whom I have been close for several years, bringing a baby to this earth scares me.

Babies are just scary to me for their sake.  They're scary for me for my sake, too, because I have lost too many times before.  I can't help it.  Babies equal loss to me.  I know most babies live.  This little princess will probably outlive me by many years. But just thinking about a baby makes me cry.  There was a time I envied women who called themselves "expecting" because they were pregnant.  It's been years since I've expected anything but loss, even when I was pregnant.  There was also a time I envied those with babies.  Now, I realize I don't envy any of it because babies mean fear to me.  I'm much more at peace letting other people deal with the stress.  I'll be grateful for my older kids and the chance to hold other people's babies. 

Ongoing Damage

                                                               (Tummy time for three)

I'm no psychologist, but I'm pretty sure my kids' emotional fragility is somehow connected with wounds from losing their little sister early in life.  My girl was three, and my boy was five when their little sister was just gone.  But I'm pretty sure the insecurities created then still play into their subconscious.  The damage festers on, whether they know it or not. 

(A boy and his baby sister)

My boy never really bonded.  They would do tummy time, but he was upset from the beginning he was getting yet another sister instead of his longed-for brother.  He wished her away...then she was gone.  He had been asking for a pacman frog just before we lost Alli, then the YouTube videos of pacman frogs eating just about everything small and weak figured heavily in his dreams after my angel died.  He no longer wanted one.  His own bed terrified him.  We had to get a new one, one he's had ever since.  He woke at 5 every morning for weeks and couldn't get enough sleep.  He finally got settled into better sleep patterns with the help of his doctor, but it was rough.  I think the bigger damage was guilt and fear became part of him, deep down inside.  Guilt that he had somehow caused her loss.  Fear that he could be next. 

(A girl and her baby sister)

For my girl, the damage was catastrophic.  She adored her little sister.  Her whole life circled around the little bundle of pink, the little sister she'd dreamed of, hoped for, and felt a bond with long before Alli came.  The day before I even knew I was pregnant, my little girl came and said, "My sister is coming," and nothing could shake her conviction because she just KNEW.  Then, for all of Alli's life, she wanted to be right there with her, comparing toes and fingers, asking about what "me-baby" was like.  Then, her heart was ripped out when her sister was just gone.  She knew without us telling her how Alli had died.  We were vague with the kids because we didn't want them afraid to go to sleep, but Alli had told her before she left.  Their bond was strong to the end. 

(Mourning)

Now, she doesn't remember her sister, really.  Neither of them do.  We look at Alli's picture book and talk about her sometimes, at least on her birthday and Angelversary.  But every time I cried, the kids would get scared and upset.  My girl would never want to talk about her sister, even at the time, claiming anytime she cried, it was for her cat that died a short time later.  I shared with them my sadness as openly as they would let me.  They worked hard to distance themselves from my mourning and from their own.  We took them to therapy, but the therapist had ulterior motives for all she did and really did not interact with the kids much.  She was eager to fish for evidence against us for the state's fraudulent case, so anything we said or did would show up as "evidence," even objecting to an early morning appointment so the kids could get enough sleep.  Despite our best efforts, they got no real therapy.  Due to this bad experience, I am in no hurry to subject any of us to more "therapy." 

(Fragile peace.)

But I see it in their fragility, especially my girl's.  Her immune system is terrible.  Part of that was she caught mono over a year ago, but part of that is she's always been that way.  It's almost like she feels guilty deep down inside that she lived, while Alli did not.  While her brother, the preemie-born child, was going strong, rarely sick, she's caught everything from strep to several colds and flus a year to that case of mono.  Emotionally, she's just as fragile.  She acts strong, confident, like she's healed, but since Alli's loss, she's wanted me there every night to watch over her as she went to sleep.  When she's sick or tired, she reaches for mommy to comfort her even during her preteen years.  She can't stand being around those in pain and in mourning because she has the kind of empathy where she senses others' emotions and is often strongly influenced by them.  She's gone from being an extrovert, eager to interact with others, to being an introvert, unwilling to let most people in.  Losing her sister broke her, and she's still trying to put the pieces back together.  She had a bullying situation and a teacher that was overbearing that damaged her further, but it all started when her world was shattered on one bright day in late June almost 8 years ago. 

(Healing hearts)

I'm thankful for the healing both kids have undergone.  I'm grateful for the times they have been willing to share their pain, when we could cry together.  I'm thankful for the cat that Alli sent her at the time my girl was most fragile, a cat that has helped her through much of her healing process.  I'm thankful for the healing power of the Lord in all of our lives.  Overall, both kids are doing well, are mostly happy.  But deep inside, I can still see broken hearts struggling to heal the rest of the way. I will continue to pray that their loss and healing makes them stronger than they otherwise may have been. 

Healing in Fiction

This week, I read a book by Rachel Ann Nunes: Ariana The Making of a Queen.  It was a sweet LDS romance novel that reminded me somewhat of my own.  It was recommended to me by a friend because of the resemblance.  It's clearly a first book.  I see some of the missteps I read about in novice writers like excess of adverbs and flashbacks and an ending that is too perfect to be very believable.  But it has a power that I like in its telling of tragedy.  Spoiler alert:  when the main character's baby dies, I feel it.  I know how loss feels, especially loss of a baby that one has held near to her heart as the center of her existence for the first several months of life.  There's a potency and power that gives the reader a sense that the writer understands such loss.  I wept for Ariana's pain.  It was a therapeutic kind of thing, like what I want to do with my writing.

So many writers feature a miscarriage or a child loss as something bad or painful but pretty much gloss over the experience.  It's like they're afraid an audience can't handle the pain or don't want to go there.  But without showing the depth of agony, the author is betraying the people who have lost like that.  They're showing loss as less cataclysmic and life-shaking than it really is.  While reading about her loss, I felt I could weep about mine without necessarily reliving it.  This is the kind of therapy I think comes from reading fiction that mirrors one's own sadness and trauma.  For those who have lost and can handle reading stories about other's loss, I highly recommend it.