july 1, 2016

Your birthday. A whole year. I worked a full day today, taking care of other people, but just one year ago people were taking care of me, of us. I kept it together and ate dinner and watched tv when I got home. Then I went to bed and let myself look at your pictures, knowing I would give myself this time tonight to grieve, when I was alone and finished with the motions of my day. I started with the time hop pictures on my phone. First thing that came up was the video we made. We just admired you, your hair, eyelashes, fingernails, your perfection. Then the photos. Then I went to sit in the closet and I opened your box, I went through all of your things. The first thing I did was smell your blanket and your hat. Your hat STILL smells like you! I couldn’t believe it! The blanket still has stains from delivery, it was the first blanket you used. The hospital ID wrist bands. The card with your measurements… 375 grams (that’s 0.826 pounds) and 12 inches long! The measuring tape that tiffaney used to measure you. Your hand prints, your foot prints, a mold of your feet. And the photo album. I just can’t believe how cute you were in these photos! We have always loved you and missed you like nobody could ever imagine. You are my first borne child and I will love you forever. Today is very special. Happy birthday, sweet Noa. I hope your Heaven is perfect. Just like you

It’s the eve of the one year anniversary of the day I found out your heart no longer beat. I want you to know today and every day just how much I love you. I can’t believe you’re gone, and I can’t believe it’s been a year. My pain is still immeasurable and I still miss you so very much. I know you’ve been watching over us and protecting us. I hope you’d be proud of how far we’ve come despite living the loneliest year a person could ever imagine. I think that’s the word I’d use to describe the experience of grieving you. Loneliness. Isolation. Nobody can understand, except that we (me and your dad) still have each other and our love for each other is stronger than ever and for that I am so grateful. You know, the pain is not less. It still pierces my heart the same, but we’ve had to find ways to make it worthwhile to go on. We’ve had no choice.

I think about how I did so many things wrong with you and I wonder if my insanity was the reason why you died. I was not mentally healthy when I was pregnant with you and I know you must have felt that. I will live with that guilt for the rest of my life. I hope you can forgive me one day. I feel as though your death was, at least partially, my fault. I was completely out of control and I know it affected you. A small part of me knows it is ridiculous to blame myself for what was a complete accident, but a very big part of me still does blame myself and I wonder how things may have been different if my mental anguish didn’t create such a hostile environment for you to grow in. I loved you, and  I hated myself, and you were a part of me, and I fear that you felt my hate inside and it ultimately led to your demise. The mentally insane have healthy babies, and the most loving of parents create monsters. So it’s not a perfect science, but I have thought often about how I may have contributed to your death and whether things could have turned out differently. Maybe this was always how it was meant to turn out, but for what reason I have no idea. Why would anyone be made to suffer to the extreme that I did this past year? I still don’t understand.

We visited your grave about a month ago, on Memorial Day, for the first time since we buried you. I relived the whole funeral day- driving up to the graveyard. Seeing my family. The car stopping. Seeing them all there, with looks of pity and sorrow like I’ve never seen. I remember all of it so clearly. I remember Lindsay opening the door and just holding me and wailing with me and daring to feel my pain with me. Some people who I never expected to show up, did. Most, didn’t. I’ll still always be grateful for those who did.

Noa, you have a sister now. I’ll be 30 weeks pregnant, tomorrow. I already know you’ve been watching over us and protecting us and I thank you for that. She is not to replace you, because we never could. You are and always will be our first borne child and when we die and make it to Heaven, I think about how we can all be a family together again, and maybe your sister can meet you. She kicks a lot and she is very active inside of me, always giving me reassurance that she is very much alive and well! I am so grateful and excited for her, we both are,  but I will still always feel like a part of me is missing until I can be reunited with you again. She hasn’t, and never could, replace you. She’s a different person and a different soul, and she will be lucky to meet you some day… Just please make sure that day is not too soon. I can’t bear the loss of another child, not now, not ever. Please keep her here, safe with us, guard our fragile hearts, like you have been. I already love her so much! Just as I still, and walks will love you! It’s nearly impossible to describe the void I felt after losing you. Nobody, nothing, can ever fill it completely. Being pregnant with her, it’s different, she is not you, and knowing you has forever altered who I am to the core. Maybe for the better in some ways, for the worse in other ways. But I chose to focus on what we have, what is to come, and to remain hopeful and grateful. I’ve wanted to tell you about her for such a long time, but I don’t let myself go deep into my grief as much lately. It’s a survival mechanism partially, because I try to remain positive and healthy for this pregnancy. But here we are, today, on the eve of your anniversary, and now I am going there. It feel so good to connect with you again. And I don’t feel like it’s bad or detrimental to this new pregnancy in any way. I actually think it’s healthy. Because you are a part of who I am.

I do hope I can bring this baby inside of me into the world with a strong heartbeat, crying, breathing, thriving. I know you want that for me, I know you want me to live life, love deeply, and find meaning in the day to day. I’m healthy enough now, mentally, that I want to do that, and I think that makes you happy. You’re still always with me, and that gives me peace. I love you and I miss you, Noa. I celebrate you just as much as I grieve you, you are so special to me and to your dad.

With all my love, heart, soul, tears,

your mommy

That is what I need. I have learned a lot about friendship these past few months. Some people have run so far away from us and never looked back, as if we’re diseased and contagious. It’s very painful because not only do I have to feel the pain of losing you every single day, but I do it all alone. Except your dad. He has always very consistently been there for me. My greatest support. But besides him, I feel completely alone. It’s like, it’s too painful for people to imagine my pain for even one second… so they ignore me and ignore my suffering because it’s easier. Then, imagine how I must feel? If experiencing the loss of my child makes you uncomfortable as I cry to you for 5 minutes? It’s nearly constant for me, so why can’t you bear 5 minutes of SOMEONE ELSE’S PAIN? The fact that people can’t even do that much just goes to show how deeply injurious your loss has been.

Today I was in orientation for a new job and as I sat watching the speaker for some reason I kept having such invasive thoughts of you. Specifically, the moment when the ultrasound tech asked me, “When’s the last time you felt baby move?” I heard her voice, her enunciation of each word and each syllable. Over and over and over. And I saw myself, sitting up from the ultrasound table, just leaning my elbows back to prop my upper back up, and I gasped, “Why?” But at that second I already knew, I was panicking, no, no, no, no, please G-d no. To which she responded, “I don’t see a heartbeat.” That. And over and over again. And I screamed out, “WHAT?!” Desperate. I was so desperate for her to be wrong. And then that was it.

Today, October 6, is Michael’s birthday. A day each year that my mom would remember. She’d light a candle for him. He’d have been 33 today, my older brother. And all these years, when she’d tell us, “today is Michael’s birthday,” all I could ever say was “Oh, really,” all awkwardly and dismissive. This year I can finally understand. I asked her if it’s especially hard this year because I lost you, and she asserted that yes it most definitely was. There was so much pain behind her voice. I never thought I’d be able to relate to her in this way. Today, I cry for Michael, too. I cry for all the babies in Heaven who never got a chance. I cry for all the mommies left behind on Earth to live with emptiness and heartache. I cry for all the people who couldn’t answer their phone today when I reached out to call and connect with them. People who should be there for me but who aren’t. Because life happens, people get wrapped up in their own business, they aren’t sitting around crying their brains out all night over the loss of their baby just praying that someone picks up the phone to offer a piece of comfort, as if there could be any at a time like this.

I guess that will be me, in 33 years. Left with only a private ritual to repeat each year, not that I think I’ll ever let a day go by without thinking of you, let alone a year. You’re always on my mind, Noa. I love you still and miss you and think of you every second. Love, Me, your momma.

Your due date is coming up.

I can’t believe I’ve survived the moments leading up to now. Everything is different, we moved to LA and I started working, so I’ve had some pretty big distractions. I miss you and it hurts just as much today. I was thinking today about the moment when I had to give you away to the arms of my nurse. That was when I was being discharged from the hospital, we kept you with us until the very last second. I’m so glad we did, that time we had is something I cherish and always will. For other people who have gone through this, how could they not hold and cradle their babies? I just don’t understand when I read stories of parents not wanting to hold their babies or take pictures. I guess grief and trauma do some crazy things to a person’s psyche, and those parents most likely regret that, which is horrible to think about. I don’t have much, so I hold onto the things we did right with you, and I am grateful for the time we had with you.

We are going to honor you on your due date in the most sacred way possible. We are going to marry each other on that day. Privately, no guests, nobody has even been told of our plans. That day is only about us, and you, our beautiful little family. We will exchange personally written vows at a city court house that day, or maybe later on the beach, we haven’t decided that yet. We will take photographs later on the beach at sunset so that we have something tangible to remember that day with. And then we will celebrate our love for you and for each other over dinner at one of the most romantic restaurants in LA.

We want you to know that our love is stronger for having created your brief life. There was nothing easy about my pregnancy with you, and certainly nothing easy in the days and weeks following your death, but the pain we’ve experienced has brought us closer together and we are so ready to make the ultimate commitment in your honor.

Please come down from Heaven to us that day. Please give a sign on that day that you are there with us, watching over us. Let me feel your presence. Wrap your warm angel wings around us and bless us with your presence in any possibly way. That day is going to be so hard, but so beautiful, just like the day I delivered you sleeping. I will need to know that you are with us. I want us to always celebrate our wedding anniversary in a way that is intertwined with our memories of you, and now, I will always get to do that. I feel so lucky that I will get to celebrate my two greatest loves together on one day.

Anniversaries for us will not just be remembered as some weekend day when a trendy wedding venue had an opening and we spent thousands of dollars trying to make it special by inviting a whole bunch of people and their dates watch us get married, and then spending all our money trying to feed them, get them drunk, entertain them with music that half of them hate, and decorate it in such a way to convince people that yes, this wedding really is special, look how we used purple flowers and silver china. We’ve both already had that type of wedding, and it’s not what we want as we celebrate our love for each other. Our wedding day will only be about us, the three of us. We are a family struck by tragedy, but we are mending one day at a time and learning how to love in the deepest way that anyone could ever know. I’ve come to realize that we won’t ever fully mend, we’ll just go on living and loving and pain just going to be a big part of it, but maybe not always the heaviest part.

I opened it today and cried, cried, cried. Today my grief feels so heavy. I had a few weeks where things seemed to be getting better. [“Getting better” – I use those words carefully because how could things ever really get better when I’ll never get to see you or hold you again? At least, not in this lifetime. Maybe when I pass. For that I pray. When I say “getting better,” what I mean is that I have been more functional and less consumed by my grief.]

And then last night and today it hit me like a ton of bricks again. I’ve been moving things around in preparation for our move move back to LA, and I ended up going through your memory box that Tiffaney the nurse gave us in the hospital. Your feet Noa. They were so tiny! And your hat, still smells like your precious little head. You are my firstborn, my daughter, you always will be. I would give anything for things to have ended differently.

So many questions remain. Why were you taken from me? Why did I not deserve you? Why do other moms get to keep their baby and I could not? Did G-d decide that I wasn’t fit to be your mother? Was I not worthy? You were perfect, and me, I am a mess. Maybe I really didn’t deserve you. Maybe I was too ungrateful during pregnancy. I had no concept of what it meant to be your mom. I was so messed up Noa and I still am. I did many things wrong and sometimes I feel I am being punished. But what kind of G-d punishes a woman in this way? It’s too cruel. There has to be something more. Another explanation. Something bigger than me. I just can’t make sense of it yet.

All I know for sure is that I miss you so much that my longing for you reverberates throughout my bones. It’s a dull, ringing pain that never leaves, and sometimes something triggers a much sharper piercing pain within. I guess from now on, I’ll never know what kind of day I’m going to have. Just the slightest innocent thing can set me off. Last night it was that your dad spent time with an old friend who happened to be 26 weeks pregnant. I was 26 weeks pregnant when I found out you were gone. Gone are those days of pregnancy bliss. Gone is my innocence, and gone is my sense of safety and security. Gone is my wholeness of a person. I really feel as though I am broken now, I have trouble seeing the bright side of things at all. I go through the motions, but I don’t feel true joy anymore. I just keep going because people tell me to. They tell me to get through the days, because one day the pain won’t be so all-consuming, one day I will feel true joy again.

Hi Baby. It’s been 5 weeks and a day since I delivered and met you. Today I’d be 32 weeks 1 day pregnant with you. Unbelievable.  Lately, as in the past week or maybe even two, I have felt numb most of the time, and also in shock and utter disbelief. My grief is definitely changing, though not in the way I expected. I have moved from a very deep sadness and emptiness to a strangely familiar feeling, almost as if I am looking at myself from outside my body, like I am an outsider to my own soul. I can’t help but think that the change is a direct result of the increase in medication. It certainly has made coping with your loss easier in the sense that I am no longer paralyzed by my sadness, but it is also disturbingly numbing. Now, I can get through a day and function, and I’m not sure if that’s because I have moved through some of my grief, or if the medication is just literally numbing my pain, thereby allowing me to function as a human in society again. I can get out and go for walks. I can make myself meals. I can clean up after myself. I can get out of bed. These are big changes. But with them comes a different kind of emptiness, because I truly feel numb. I honestly do miss the days when I would cry all day, deep and gutteral, for you. In those moments, I felt you close to me. Now, it seems like it was all just a crazy, horribly cruel nightmare. There is nothing like meeting your firstborn baby, having been previously a stranger to the unique love that forms between mom and baby, then knowing this for the first time, and not being able to take you home? Empty arms.

I just feel a distance now, and often I can’t believe what happened. It just seems unreal that I held you inside me for 26 weeks and 6 days without even the slightest notion that something so horrific could happen. I had an innocence then that I will never get back. There will never be anything that even remotely comes close to what it was like to be pregnant with you. Pregnant with you I was mostly care-free. My biggest fears were getting sick after finishing breakfast. Pregnancy now evokes feelings of fear and dread. I can’t imagine doing it again, and yet, I feel such a long to do it again. I miss carrying you so much. I am such a different person now, and maybe that is where part of the distance I feel between my former self and myself now lies. Maybe I am just trying to figure out who I am now, after. Now, there is only before and after. Two completely different lives, two completely different people.

Dad and I put together your photo album yesterday. You are so beautiful. Then we watched a very sad movie last night about a woman who has a stillbirth at full term. I could barely handle some of the scenes, it was almost like an exact snapshot of my life. Everything, from the doctor appointment during which there’s no heartbeat detected, to the emotional agony of the delivery, to the silence right at birth (where was your cry?), the photos and the tears afterward, and then the after struggle with all the grief and hollow feelings…. the rest of our lives. The times when everyone else seems to forget and move on, except for us. When others will catch me laugh or smile, and hold onto that and take it for a sign that I am better, that everything is ok, when it’s not at all.

We have to keep going, mostly for each other. I say and think often that if it wasn’t for your dad I would not be here, alive today. The times when he is gone at work at the hardest times for me. I feel like nobody else understands me right now. It’s the grief, but it’s also so much more than that. We are going through what is undoubtedly the hardest time in either of our lives up until this point. Life has been a complete wreck for both of us this year, and I was looking forward to meeting you and being your mommy. I did meet you, and I will always be your mommy, just not in the way I’d like. It’s a very hard time for us, and we miss you so much. My heart is broken, and it’s hard to feel hopeful about anything anymore without you to look forward to. I pray for better days ahead. I know you’re watching over us.

I remember going to Walmart a week after they released me from the hospital. I needed sports bras, Kleenex, and a new journal. And I remember walking through the aisles and thinking as I dodged a little old lady, these people have no fucking idea what I’m going through right now. I’m not sobbing uncontrollably, and I’m responding to all of the social cues. I said hi back to the greeter, excused myself when I accidentally bumped into a shelf, and I remembered to look both ways before stepping into the hazardous crosswalk. I even smile occasionally. Yet every part of my body throbs with the pain of losing her. And these people have no clue. They don’t know that I gave birth a week ago, that my daughter was silent and beautiful. They don’t know that my breasts leak through these pitiful bras. They don’t know that I cry when I step in the shower, blood running down my legs, my arms cradling the empty skin of my stomach. No one in the store has access to these intimate moments. My grief is my own, to bear privately. -CM

Oh, how strongly I relate to this from the book I sit here reading. I had the same thoughts at Target when I had to go buy tight sports bras to minimize swelling, nursing pads to soak up the milk leaking from my breasts, and pads for all the bleeding. This, just days after I delivered you. And I especially relate to sobbing alone in the shower and cradling my empty stomach, aching for you.

I made the mistake of looking at my social media accounts today and truly every other post was about young children, enjoying time together, or being pregnant, the joyful anticipation of one day soon meeting the love of your life. I remember that. Now I live a life of emptiness, surrounded by people with healthy babies, healthy pregnancies, no worries. WHY???!!!!!!!

Noa, my pregnancy with you went perfectly! I remember the first ultrasound confirming that there was a live, moving, baby with a beating heart! Your dad was there with me. The first time I saw you on that ultrasound screen, I cried. I finally at that moment believed it to be true and real. Actually, from the moment I saw the 2 pink lines on my pregnancy test, I knew it was real and I was so so so excited. But there was something about seeing on the screen that you were actually in there.

I actually knew I was pregnant before I took the test. I was in NYC visiting 2 of my best friends and one night when I laid down to sleep, I noticed my breasts were tender. Could be PMS, but this time was a little different, they hurt very badly. They hurt each night I laid down to sleep and I thought quietly to myself with so much happiness, I must be pregnant. I told nobody. It was our little secret, you and I. And I kept it that way for many days. There was one night in NYC, several nights into my stay, that I stayed with my other friend. I actually was up for several hours that night with breast pain. It had gotten so bad that I couldn’t even sleep. That was the night I really knew it. I had never felt breast pain like this before, this was definitely not PMS. On top of that, where was my period? Wasn’t that supposed to start soon? Hmmm…

You see, I had surprised your dad not too long before this, by taking out my IUD. He was already wanting to conceive with me since basically the first night we spent together (not an exaggeration). It was kind of always up to me, as to when we would actually start “trying.” We had just returned from the most fabulous, adventure-of-a-lifetime, 3 1/2 week vacation in Nepal, where we spent 15 of those days hiking to Mt. Everest Base Camp! I thought, I just conquered the Himalayas (and believe me, Noa, this was no easy feat for me. I struggled! I thought I was in good shape until the Himalayas kicked my butt!), I’m 31 years old, I am with the absolute love of my life soul mate, he wants my children, I have always wanted children “some day,” I definitely want children with him (oh how beautiful they would be! Your dad is gorgeous!), maybe I will never feel totally ready, so why not now? And that was it. At my next doctor’s appointment, I was feeling spontaneous and happy and hopeful, so I just asked them to take the IUD out. Just like that. So they did.

At that point, we still weren’t actively trying to get pregnant, but we were definitely not preventing. We knew it could happen at any time, but I honestly thought it would take a while – several months, a year at least. I was 31. Not old, but not young. And like I said, we weren’t specifically trying to have sex on fertile days. I have friends who’d been actively trying to get pregnant for years — yes, years — calculating ovulation days, and doing who knows what else to maximize their chances of conceiving during each cycle, and month after month with no success, I knew, it’s actually not that easy to get pregnant. But just a few cycles later – (2, I think?) I found myself in NYC with aching breasts, lying awake at night, mind racing, heart pounding, I was pregnant. I knew it. I felt it.

The morning after the night when I returned home, I took a test very early. 2 pink lines. I knew it! And just like that, there you were, inside my belly, growing away.

Your dad was so excited when I told him! He gave me a big hug and we couldn’t stop smiling at each other. He ran upstairs to look at the pregnancy tests (I’d actually taken 2, as if I needed any more proof that there was a baby growing inside of me). I’d waited until he came home from work that day to tell him. At first, I wanted to go to the hospital and meet him on a lunch break because I was about to explode from the excitement I felt at knowing this secret. The anticipation of telling him was killing me! But as I was getting ready to leave to go meet him, I couldn’t find my car keys. Turns out he had them and I was left stranded at home with no vehicle. Whoops. The news would wait until he got home that night. But it was worth the wait. It was such a special moment for us.

You kept me sick for practically the whole pregnancy, Noa. I had nausea from the second I woke up, and it lasted all day long. I would wake up to take a sip of water, and immediately get sick. Soon I began eating saltines in bed before I even got up to settle my stomach. It was the only thing that worked. And eventually I moved on to oyster crackers. We always had crumbs in the bed. Dad ate them with me every morning and yelled at me for getting crumbs in our bed. It was pretty comical. Every morning, the same. And sometimes I would still throw up my breakfast. It took me a half hour to get breakfast down and I was often late to work because of it. Oh, and coffee. It made me so sick. But I had to have it because I was having exhaustion like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Just one cup in the mornings to get me going.

Mornings I had to work were the absolute worst. The dread of knowing I had to get through 13 hours of work that day with no energy and the constant urge to throw up was awful. And that was on top of the daily struggle it was for me to even get out of bed and put some food in my body, throw up, and then eat a little more.

I would give anything now to be so sick and so exhausted if it meant you were still growing inside my belly. I should be 29 weeks and 1 day pregnant with you today. Third trimester! Home stretch. But I’m empty, in every sense of the word. All I have left are my memories. I have your pictures, your memory box from the hospital with your birth announcement, your footprints, your hospital bracelet that you never wore because you were too small, the tiniest clothes and hat I’ve ever seen, and your blankets, which we sleep with every night. Meanwhile, the rest of the world got to take their babies home from the hospital.

I know that I am not alone, because I spend the majority of my days reading about other people’s stories of stillbirth, infant loss, miscarriage, neonatal death. It is a morbid way to spend my time, but it helps me feel a little bit less alone, knowing that there are others out there who have gone through what we are going through. I read stories on the internet and books about death and babies ALL. DAY. LONG. I am becoming obsessed with this. I don’t know what else to do with myself, I feel like I’m slowly dying inside.

There was a light inside me and it’s gone. Losing you has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with in my life. It’s not getting easier. I fear it never will. There was life before, and now this is my life after. I wouldn’t even call it a life, I am merely existing. Waiting. For what? The pain to lessen? Will it ever?

And it feels like a lifetime ago, but some parts feel like yesterday. Sometimes it feels like a nightmare that I’ve yet to wake up from. Is this real? Is this my new normal? Am I a mother? Where is my baby?

My new normal is hardly normal at all. I am a stranger to myself these days. I don’t feel joy anymore and I don’t look forward to much. The only thing I look forward to is seeing your dad because he is my greatest source of comfort in all this. I love him very much and he is the reason why I get out of bed and push myself to attempt to function as a fraction of the normal human being I once was.

I still wake up in a panic. You’re still my first thought when I wake up, I think of you and then I remember you’re gone and I feel the pain all over again. Actually, I never stop feeling the pain. Though sometimes I feel numb and I don’t cry, that’s been happening more often lately. Like yesterday.

Your daddy and I went to see a therapist together to help us cope with the grief. I told her your story, and for the first time talking about you, I didn’t cry. I feel guilty and sad for that because I want to cry, because crying makes me feel close and connected with you. If I’m not crying over you, I can’t feel you as close to me in my heart and that makes me very sad. My greatest fear is that one day I’ll just be talking about you as if you were another person’s sad story, and that’s not who you are to me at all. You are the most special part of me and I want to keep your memory alive forever. I want to always remember our time together like it was just yesterday. I never want you to become a distant memory even though there is so much pain that comes with remembering you. The pain is worth it because I love you so much. They say numbness is part of the grieving process, maybe that is what I was experiencing yesterday.

But most of the time, I find that I am re-living moments from our time together, and the times before that, like when I was pregnant with you. I still can’t believe I held you for just 18 hours, it felt like only minutes, it went by way too fast. I wish I could focus on my memories of our time together, but sometimes I have intrusive flashbacks of the moment when I found out your heart wasn’t beating anymore. I try to work through those difficult memories and I try not to push them out when they invade my thoughts. I don’t want to live in fear of those memories because they are never going to go away, I will always have them and I know I need to accept them. So I let them in, and I deal with them, and then I move on to the memories I have of you after you were delivered. Those memories are painful too, but they also bring me immense joy. How could they not? Remembering the details of your cute little face, remembering the bond I felt to you, oh it’s priceless!

I love you, Noa.