The question has already been asked. You think people ask you about the next one too fast after having a baby that lives, but they ask even sooner if that baby didn't live. I understand it in a world where we are so open, myself being the most brutally honest open book on social media. It's a valid question and one that lifted the biggest weight off me, when Brandon and I immediately agreed on. When trauma happens, you go into shock and become so emotionally raw that there is NO filter. Thoughts escape your mouth before you have any time to think about them. And holding a child in your arms that you expected to live, and are now told is gone before you got to meet them brings the most crazy and wild thoughts.
Brandon was holding Anna when he looked at me, reading the pain on my face because I couldn't speak, and knew. He said "This isn't the last baby of ours that you will hold." I had previously posted about the day we found out the gender and thinking the most beautiful thing he would ever say to me was, "You are going to have a daughter." Because I knew, that he knew, it was my biggest dream coming true and he was validating that emotion and love for me in that moment. But speaking the assurance that he as a father, understood my pain as a mother, holding a child who wasn't given the life to live, is LOVE in the purest form.
I will never forget that moment as we sat in that room and tried to take in every second of time with her, knowing it was the last seconds. And still feeling immense love because someone was going through it with me, and he knew the only thing that could comfort me, and though wildly outrageous to speak of if you haven't lived it, he said it courageously to me when I needed it most.
For me in baby loss, a lot of the people I reach to are other moms that have also lost a baby. Obviously because they are the only ones who understand this pain level. Something that even though my husband also went through, is different for him because men & women are different and he would never be able to fathom the bond that is a mother and child. Literally creating a life inside you. I KNEW her. He knew of her. And that's a sad reality that breaks my heart that he will never get to know her as I did. But it is the foundation of life. Mothers are life's soul.
These other moms I am relating to are in all stages of life after loss. The first ones to reach out where the ones who had been there, and been there a long time. They are in the stage where they can tell you it is possible for a future because they are living it. Notice I do not say they told me "it gets better" because they know it doesn't. But they have lived beyond the first year and all the punch you in the face milestones that come with it. Many have gone on to have their "rainbow baby," a term used by only the ones who have felt the darkest side of lifes storms, persevered through it and found healing in another life, not to replace the former child lost, but to celebrate the pain you have lived through and conquered together. A literal rainbow in the world of your darkness. I thought the term was very well put before this experience. Constantly looking for a way to explain something unexplainable comes with a lot of metaphors. But understanding that metaphor is a whole other level. I often called Anna my sunshine after the storm. Because I experienced loss, and even in her pregnancy I found a lot of healing, but she wasn't a rainbow baby because I didn't want to diminish the term for those who had experienced the loss of a child instead. Now my rainbow baby will come after I thought the sunshine was peeking through those clouds of grief, but it was false, it was the eye of the storm instead. Something worse. But with deep darkness you can truly appreciate the joys os simple life that many others will never experience.
I look to those rainbow babies of these moms, who have walked before me. I am stepping into their well made footmarks on the rocky road ahead of me. They are too well worn. I wonder how I didnt know about it before when I can see their deep marks now. Its Staggering to know, Each year in the United States about 25,000 babies, or 68 babies every day, are born still. This is about 1 stillbirth in every 115 births. And about 30 babies each day are brought into the world living, and die within the first 24 hours. 98 other mothers on May 20 2018 felt my pain. Are still feeling my pain. I did not know existed until that day. These moms felt it too and have continued to what Im calling the other side. They didn't get over it, they got through it, and continue to carry it even though they have found the tiniest healing in another life created. Never to replace but only to try in vain to find some semblance of returning to normal life.
I told a friend today that for me it feels like my life story was going along, and even in grief it continued and I learned lessons and was finding joy again, and suddenly the book was closed. And I feel stuck in this chapter of child loss, and for myself, not for everyone, because we all grieve differently, I feel that the only way to reopen this book and unpause my life, is to have another baby. My body needs it as a mother to live the things I felt at my core were about to happen and suddenly are missing.
Having another baby is the only thing I feel at peace about right now. Its a hope for the future when I have no hope left at all. And we need hope the most when you are this low. Its what brings you forward each day when you are ready to die instead. Having another baby is also the biggest fear I have. Its a double edged sword. I almost died, and thats not just a phrase I am using lightly. I SHOULD have died. People who fell to their death and miraculously lived don't tend to jump out of a plane without a parachute to test fate for a second chance. Yet here I am wanting it the MOST. And now I know that babies do die, all the time, every day, and I am just the lucky one that got to have 2 healthy babies before this. Nothing is promised in life, even though I thought things like healthy pregnancies = a baby. I am so very aware of what could go wrong another time. Yet I am going to walk in willingly because its also what I feel I need to find healing in this life.
So not in short, yes we are going to have more children. I don't know how many more, even though I was sure Anna was going to be our last. Maybe. Brandon was sure, but I never was. I have wanted to be a mother since I was little. I never wanted to be anything else when I grew up, except a mother. There wasn't another option. Now I have 3 but you can only see 2. What the future holds I don't know. My sweet husband knowing how much I wanted a daughter, and thus losing the only daughter, already made a joke about how one day we will have 15 children. 14 boys and 1 girl at the end. Humor is his way of dealing. Mine is reaching for that future baby. I will have to find physical and mental health to get there, so I must find healing in so many ways, and having another baby will bring all of that together.
Sawyer and I had a conversation 1 week before we lost Anna. He was so deadset on the idea that we would have 5 children in our family. He had their carseat arrangement all laid out. He was prepared. And 5 weeks after that conversation I daydream about the idea that maybe children, always closer to innocence and purity, can sense things. Not that he knew she would die. But that maybe in some way, he knew she wasn't the last. And she won't be.
With love, lissa