Still a Mother

Mother's Day.

Flowers, candy, presents. Sleeping in! This is a normal Mother's Day for the blissfully unaware. For my circle of friends it's a little different.

We still get flowers. Maybe candy. Sometimes presents. But we also get the constant reminder that our Mother's day hugs are always less than they should be. The jammy kisses are never complete. There is always part of our Mother's Day spent dreaming of what might have been.

For a few of my friends the nightmare is worse. They just want people to acknowledge that they ARE a mother. One of my friends pointed out that some people do not believe she is a mama because she never held her babies, they were delivered straight into heaven. But she IS a mother. She's perhaps the strongest mother of us all in our little circle. She has to be a mother from really far away. Mothering angels is not an easy task, and is oftentimes overlooked as a real loss.

Each life, each tiny flicker on the ultrasound screen, those moments are real and lasting. Sometimes, those moments are all a mother has.

This Mother's Day was harder for me than before. On Saturday, I was on both ends of the spectrum. I helped a friend say goodbye to their darling little girl. Shortly after that, I saw that another set of friends had brought their sweet baby into this world. That was a bittersweet day. This was a reading that the sweet baby girl's family read at the memorial. It is so fitting for this past weekend.

Can you be a Mother when your baby is not with you?

  I thought of you and closed my eyes and prayed to God today.  

I asked “What makes a mother?” and I know I heard Him say,

 “A mother has a baby.”  This we know is true.  

“But God, can you be a mother when your baby’s not with you?”  

“Yes you can,” He replied with confidence in His voice.

  “I give many women babies, when they leave is not their choice.

  Some I send for a lifetime, and others for the day and some I send to feel your womb, but there’s no need to stay.” 

“I just don’t understand this God I want my baby to be here.”  

He took a deep breath and cleared His throat, and then I saw the tear.  

“I wish I could show you, what your child is doing today.  If you could see your child’s smile, with all the other children and say:” 

 “We go to earth to learn our lessons of love and life and fear.  My mommy loved me oh so much, I got to come straight here.  I feel so lucky to have a mom who had so much love for me.  I learned my lessons very quickly, my mommy set me free.  I miss my mommy oh so much but I visit her everyday.  When she goes to sleep on her pillows where I lay.  I stroke her hair and kiss her cheek, and whisper in her ear, “mommy don’t be sad today, I’m your baby and I’m here.” 

 “So you see my dear sweet ones, your children are okay.  Your babies are born here in my home and this is where they’ll stay.  They’ll wait for you with me until your lessons through.  And on the day that you come home they’ll be at the gates for you.  So now you see what makes a mother, It’s the feeling in your heart.  It’s the love you had so much of right from the very start.  Though some on earth may not realize you are a mother until their time is done.  They’ll be up here with me one day and know that you are the best one.”

Please try to remember that a mother isn't necessarily counted by the children you can see...

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.

Watch your words, for they become actions.

Watch your actions, for they become habits.

Watch your habits, for they become your character.

Watch your character, for that will become your destiny.

Love and light. Until next time...

Oh. I get it. ha. ha.

April Fool's jokes have been around for eons, it's true. From the simple (taping the bottom of someone's optical mouse) to the extreme (replacing shampoo with a hair remover) ...

In my family we've always engaged in some sort of shenanigans. One year my brother convinced me someone drove into the stilts and my mother's house fell down. It's sometimes funny, sometimes not.

The favourite prank this year among my well-educated friends? "OMG I/MY WIFE/MY GIRLFRIEND is in pre-term labor."

It's not funny. I know far too many mothers who have gone in to pre-term labor. Do you know what they brought home? A broken heart. Empty arms. NOTHING.

I get wanting to play a prank, but that's not a prank. That's breaking the hearts of mothers on your list who HAVE lost a preemie or a micro preemie. That's a collective group of people holding their breath and praying so hard, in hopes that the baby(ies) will stay put just a few more days. It's grotesque friendship abuse.

I know, I know. There are a few of you saying "Oh, lighten up. Laugh about it."  or "What's the harm in a little prank?"

Here's the thing. IT'S NOT FUNNY. Your 20 week baby? Would not survive pre-term labor.  Your 30 weeker? Might survive. Might spend three months in the NICU. Might get NEC (necrotizing  enterecolitis) and suffer and then die. Pulmonary hemorrhage, intra-cranial bleeding. Both likely fatal.

All of these scenarios have happened to people I know personally. They're not made-up, not from a book or a medical journal.

So forgive me if I say "Oh my God! I will pray for you!" and then you say "haha, got you! April Fools!" and I get very angry. It's part of being the mother to a dead baby. It's never going to be funny. So when you're thinking of "awesome" ways to "get your friends" ... take other people into consideration.

Because it's not a joke to some of us out in the world.

How to remember...

My friend has her twins angelversary coming up this week. So, I started thinking.

How do you remember? 

It's easy when it's your own loss. You curl up and cry, or look through scrapbooks and photos. You spend the day reflecting on your heart, and the missing pieces.

But what do you do when it's not your baby? Do you send a card? Do you call and say "Hey, what can I do for you today?" Do you just simply offer to listen to their story? Is any of this acceptable?

Quite simply, the answer is yes.

It's better to acknowledge their loss, than to ignore it. Ignoring it can send the wrong message, even if the intentions are good. Ignoring it might say "hey, you should just get over this."

If you can't do anything other than have a cup of tea and listen to your friend tell you about her baby or babies, then do that. That will be just what your friend needs.

I do have to say, though, I haven't really had any friends that suffered a loss until this past year. I guess all of my "wisdom" comes from what I wish people would have said and done with me. I suffered in silence, year after year. Even my best friend told me I should be "past this" by now. Some years, I could get out of bed and act completely fine. Other years, all I could do was lay there and wish I was dead, because at least then I'd get to hold her, to see my Emily one more time.

No one ever acknowledged it, unless I mentioned it first.  Sometimes, friends would call me up and be all cheerful and ask to do something fun. That usually made me angry. I didn't allow myself to fall deep into despair all the time ... but I did allow myself two days a year to just be heartbroken. I thought that was reasonable.

These past few weeks, I've gotten involved with an organisation called Molly Bears. At first it was just to donate, then to order a bear, then to donate and sponsor a friend so she could have her bears... then I talked to the creator of Molly Bears and that's when I knew that this was a gift. This was a gift I could give to other women, other babyloss moms, so they would NOT have to suffer alone. I have only made four bears, working on ten more presently. But every bear has a story. So far, every story has made me cry. My heart breaks that there are women who need bears.

I made a bear just this past week for a woman who knew her baby was not going to make it. My heart broke over and over making her bear. I cried many tears for this precious baby and her family. But the result was a grateful mom who, just maybe, gained a small amount of comfort from my labor of love.

But my heart is uplifted because *I* have a purpose. My GRIEF has a purpose. My grief can be channeled to help these women hold their angels and heal. It can help them remember. It can help people who come to their house see that it's OK to talk about it.

It's OKAY to remember.


So I sent my friend a card to let her know that I will remember. I was not able to know James and Sophia, but they were very loved and very wanted. So I will remember their day and I will let my friend know that I am here. Here for whatever she might need. Tea? I'm there. Tissues? I've a pocketful.

I won't forget them.

"Safe Zone"

I had lunch with my friend the other day, another baby loss mom. We started talking about pregnancy and the elusive safe zone, you know the spot in your pregnancy where you can relax and know that everything will be alright.

8 week appointment: You get the confirmation ultrasound, see the heartbeat - receive a small amount of relief, right? Your chance of miscarriage "drops" to around 4%.

12 weeks! whew, right? Out of the first trimester, the risk of loss is less than 1%.

20 weeks, perhaps you have found out the gender and you're halfway there! Nothing could go wrong, could it?

But for baby loss moms, we discovered, there is NEVER a safe zone. You never let your guard down. No amount of weeks passed will allow you to relax. Sure, you tell yourself that there are milestones, and there are. In our world, there are more stark terms and phrases, like viability outside the womb, NICU, pre-term labor, micro-preemie, incompetent cervix, the list goes on and on.

My friend said she didn't think she'd relax until she brought the baby home. But then, she said, there's a whole new set of fears. There are. I have an 18 year old and sometimes my mind goes crazy with worry. It just never goes away. It seems to trade itself in for a new load of worries.

I think as baby loss moms, we sometimes lie to ourselves. We rationalize and tell ourselves what we need to do to get by, to get through a single day. We've lost so much already, that maybe we say, "Surely I've suffered enough. Surely God would not allow me to suffer again."

I have said this to myself, several times. When the fear would swell up and threaten to consume me, I would say things like this to quell the choking terror.

It worked for 17 years. Then I met women, strong and courageous women, who have suffered loss two times over. Three times over. FIVE TIMES OVER. The first time I heard Linda Colletti speak was during the Forever in Our Hearts Remembrance Day. Hearing her story made me truly see that I am NOT alone. I don't have to suffer in solitude anymore.

Slowly I am learning that the only way out is through.

Death.

Death.

Death is something we all become familiar with at some point in our lives. Sometimes it's sudden: You're 5 and you walk into your bedroom and your goldfish is floating in the bowl. Sometimes there is preparation, although I don't believe one can ever be fully prepared for the emptiness and sadness that follows a death.

I think my first real experience with death was when my great-grandmother, Lucille, (Grandma Lucy) passed away. I was roughly 13 years old. It was pretty hard on me. I was always a "sensitive child." I used to think that was just a nice way of saying cry-baby. Now I know differently. I am an Empath. It doesn't mean I'm psychic. I can't tell you where you lost your keys or cell phone (I lose mine a LOT!)

What it means is that I feel the emotions of others. In a big way. Sometimes it even manifests as physical pain. I think that first experience was what prompted my parents to shield me from death. Not only death, but suffering in general. When my maternal grandmother died. It was so sudden, but only to me. It turned out, my whole family knew my grandmother had been battling cancer for the better part of ten years. Everyone but me. I was shellshocked, to be sure.

My next close encounter was one my family never saw coming. Nothing predicted this, I was there looking at a goldfish bowl. Only the goldfish was way more precious. No one could have protected me.

My daughter died.

Suddenly, without warning, she got very ill when she was a month old. She went to Children's Mercy Hospital on August 4th, 1994. Less than 24 hours later, she was gone. Gone.

My family helped me get through the funerals and burial. Sometimes, with harsh words. When I clung to the stairs, wailing and sobbing, during the first funeral, my mother sternly told me to stop causing a scene. She didn't know, she was trying to get me to pull myself up by my bootstraps and carry on with life, because that's just what we did. That's how we dealt with things. We simply carried on. "Do you want people to notice?!" she whispered to me..

Yes. YES, I wanted people to notice. I wanted people to know that I was hurt. Broken. Suffering. Inconsolable.

There are seven stages of grief, they say:

1. Shock and Denial

2. Pain and Guilt

3. Anger and Bargaining

4. Depression, Reflection and Loneliness

-This is wehere I have been. for 17 years. SEVENTEEN. That's not a typo. I haven't really talked about Emily for 17 years, I mean, I'd post about her on her birthday and angelversary. I'd tell close friends about my loss. But I never just -talked- about it. No one asked about her, or said that they were thinking about her. My sister didn't include her on a "Grandma's so aweomse - check out all my grandkids" sweatshirt that she gifted to my mother the Christmas after Emily died. She was, in essence, forgotten.

But not by me. I carried the guilt, the pain, the "no one knows what I feel" feelings. I carried it all, bottling it up and shoving it way down deep inside. Ignoring it all. No one wanted to hear it, I thought. No one wants to read that depressing story year after year, right?

This is where I was stuck. Now I'm slowly becoming unstuck. Last year, I became involved with two organizations, Mikayla's Grace and MollyBears. I met some wonderful people, people that share my pain. These people are helping me, just as much as I am helping them...

So, I'm inviting you in to share these last three stages of grief. and hope. and healing. Maybe we can learn from each other.