Confessions

I have a long list of blogs that I look at quite frequently and others where I just pop in from time to time. All are by women, and most of them are women who have faced tragedy and/or exceptional challenges — women who have lost babies or children, have or have had cancer, have children with special needs. I go to these blogs to lend support if I can, to remind myself of what I've been through or what I could be going through, to learn about what other people are faced with.

Today I went to a blog of someone I don't quite know how to categorize: she and I worked at our college newspaper together for a year and chatted but weren't what I would call friends; later she ended up working for the same institution I do, doing the same thing but in a different, "sister" office. So every once in awhile we would have work interactions but not frequently.

In October 2004, she gave birth to a son at 24 weeks gestation due to preeclampsia. He lived for almost three months before finally succumbing to an infection. Today, they have another son who is almost a year old. She has a blog for him, too, and they look so incredibly happy.

I went back to the posts she and her husband put up shortly before and after their son's death. I thought about the memorial service I attended for him, and how I had pledged to her and to myself that I would be there for her--that I would check on her and see how she was doing. I called her a few times, and sent her a few emails, but that was about it. I don't know why I didn't do more. I wish I had. At the time, Bubba was four months old. I had what I thought was postpartum depression but now I wonder. I wonder because I often still feel the same way I did then, and Bubba is well over two years old now. I felt awkward because I had a new baby and she'd lost hers; I worried that Bubba would cry when I was on the phone with her and she'd hear it; I thought it might be more hurt than help to talk to someone who was "through it" already while she was just starting. And maybe all those things are true; I'll likely never know.

Reading her posts from almost two years ago brought back all the anguish I felt when I lost Hope. It feels like dark, heavy, stifling blanket of grief coming down on top of me all over again--but I do it because I need to remember. She feels so far away from me now.

This year I forgot to hang her little hat on the Christmas tree. I bought the present that we donate every year in her memory at the very last possible minute. Earlier this year, I moved her box with all of her little things in it from "the baby room," which had become Bubba's room, to my own room. Each month, each year, seems more removed from that time of my life. I barely remember being pregnant with her, and some details from my pregnancy with her and my pregnancy with Bubba blend together and I can't quite remember what happened when. I can hardly remember holding her, and my only real memory of her face is now found only in photographs.

The grief, the searing, horrific grief and pain of losing her remains easy to access if not express. I won't and can't break down at any moment thinking about it, but I can feel it, deep in the pit of my stomach, the ache of emptiness, the ache of too much quiet, the physical need to hold her and the knowledge that I never would again.

I have regrets that haunt me. I have moved beyond the thoughts of "if only I'd gone to the hospital sooner" and forgiven myself for those kinds of regrets because I know I did the very best I possibly could with the information I had. But I regret not having a memorial service. I regret not having an obituary. I regret not calling in my entire family to see and hold her. I regret not taking more photos, not holding her longer. I regret not doing something, anything, beyond what I did to hold the hospital accountable. I understand now why a lawsuit probably would have caused more pain than vindication and probably would have been unsuccessful anyway; but why didn't I go back and see the bitch who is the head of the ob/gyn department and demand that she listen to me and answer my questions? Why didn't I write that letter to the CEO of the hospital? Why didn't I try to do something to make sure other people got better care, to make sure other people's babies might live while my daughter died?

Next June it will be four years since Hope was born and died. If I'd kept her in my uterus for just one and a half more weeks, she might be here now, and I'd have a three-year-old. When I had Bubba, my cervix started dilating at 3o weeks, with the cerclage still in. Once it fell out, I dilated to 8 cm and stayed that way for a week, and could probably have stayed that way a few days longer had I accepted the terbutaline shots they wanted to give me (I refused because I felt sure my baby was safer outside of me than in). What if I had refused to be induced with Hope? What if I had laid there still and waited for whatever outcome there might be? Why didn't I refuse it and insist, insist, that they give me some tocolytics to stop the contractions I started having? Why didn't they insist on that before chalking me and my baby up as a lost cause?

There are days when I feel that Hope's birth and death--her life--have enriched my life and taught me important lessons. There are other days, like today, when I feel that there was no greater purpose, no greater meaning. She was my baby and my baby alone, and she died, and it was tragic and painful, and I'm the only one who experienced the full force of that pain. It didn't make my subsequent pregnancy "a miracle" -- it made it heartwrenchingly frightening. It didn't make me a better mother -- it made me a bitter mother.

Last night I almost smacked my son. After a long and trying evening of Bubba's "challenging" behavior and my short-temper, we were trying to put him to bed, and the evening battle began. He completely overreacted and resisted every action involved in going to bed--putting the book away, rocking, laying down in the dark. He finally went into hysterics when I took away the dinosaur book that was distracting him from going to sleep. It was beyond my capabilities to deal with it. I would have left him in his room to cry but he wouldn't stay there, and we have no way to keep him in unless we lock the door, which I refuse to do. I yelled at him, ragefully. Then I left the room and told J. to take over, literally grabbing handfuls of my hair and holding my head in my hands. I sat on the couch and cried as J. calmed Bubba down, Mr. Patient Parent, SuperDad to the rescue again.

The fact is, Bubba wouldn't have let me hold him and comfort him. I've read things about how for the first year, a baby's whole world is his mother--but that wasn't the case for Bubba, because to a large degree, I didn't want to have anything to do with him. And last night, I didn't want to have anything to do with him, and the feeling was mutual. "Why on earth did we do this?" I asked J., and not in one of those exasperated-but-bemused ways but as a serious question. I could not think of one good reason to have a child. I still really can't, to tell you the truth.

Before J. took Bubba back into the bedroom, he said, "Go give your mama a hug and tell her you love her." And Bubba came over, hugged me, said "Luh you" and laid his head on my leg. And I couldn't even bring myself to say I love you back. I patted his head and sent him on his way with a goodnight.

I am a shitty mother. The universe was trying to tell me that when it showed me that I could not naturally conceive a child, when it took Hope away from me, when it proved to me that I could not naturally carry a child. I should have listened, but I was too busy trying, trying, trying to have a child. So focused on it that I never really thought about what it might be like. So sure that it would never happen for me that the only thoughts I was capable of were thoughts of envy and bitterness toward everyone who had managed to pop one out. I never got any further than that. I never got beyond the "having a baby" part to the "raising a child" part.

If it wasn't for the time in which I live, I would have had no choice but to listen to those signs from the universe. I don't understand why we were given Bubba and other people, like Tingle and her husband, who really would be good parents, still struggle.

I love the ghost of a child who will never be here, who will never require discipline, diaper changes, or effort of any sort, and I dread the work and pain and worry and frustration involved in raising my living child. How much more ungrateful can a person be? It frightens me to think about this, to admit this, because it's almost like an invitation to the universe to steal Bubba from me like it did Hope. And yet, I could hardly blame it if it did. Bubba doesn't deserve to have me as a mother--and I don't deserve to have a child.