grief- what to do

mommamorris

so... there have been several recent losses in my general orbit.. and it's really hitting me hard. (on top of general blog surfing, and coming across things like that.)

i just cried and cried for baby aidan and his family. that is so hard.

and i've recently seen a story of a baby lost to shaken baby by a daycare worker...  

and then today, i got a call from a friend who asked me about a girl from highschool.. she was wanting to know what to do because the girl's 3 month old just died of a heart attack. (after a late term m/c, and another m/c and a year+ of ttc, then a terrible almost fatal delivery experience.) WOW. most of you know we lost our son max to APS when he was 20 weeks along. it was terribly difficult.. but it did give me the experience i need to offer some decent advice. (having had one type of loss.)

anyway.. i've also been getting emails, and phone calls from other people in other areas of my life, asking me how to deal with people's losses or their own. (particularly losses of children.) i guess since i have the blog- i'm fair game. (which i don't mind.)

i'm looking for ladies who have had losses to share their stories, to offer advice, and offer hope. if you're interested please feel free to email me, or comment here or whatever. i have asked several ladies i know personally who have lost children at different ages (one at 1, one at 12 etc.) to write their stories for publication on the blog. but if you're more private, or not ready for something like that, any advice you have i can post anonymously.

all of this is just re-hashing our loss, and the stress of the nicu... i'd just like to be able to offer better advice, and provide a resource for those looking for help during their time of loss...

let me know if you're interested. 

punkrockabye

I don't have any personal stories or advice, unfortunately (or fortunately)... everything can be so sad sometimes. I've been thinking about a fire just outside of Chicago yesterday that took the lives of a three day old baby boy as well as his mother and father (19 and 20), 3 year old brother, 16 year old aunt and uncle (twins), and an 18 year old family friend. Some people are focusing on "oh, too young to be parents" as well as how the building was over-rented and their unit may have had some-20 people living in it. I can't focus on that (well, maybe the safety issue) because all I see is that a THREE DAY OLD baby lost his life, as did his entire family. A loss of that magnitude is just unimaginable.

Anyway, I was told on my first post over at high-risk that I should get in touch with you. I am not yet pregnant or TTC, but it's around the corner for us, we hope, but I have some concerns. My mom had APS and had several miscarriages and a stillbirth before I came along in 1986. She was diagnosed with lupus before they determined it was actually APS and she was strongly advised to not have a child, but she wanted one so badly that she tried for me. She did the shots and somehow, miraculously, she and I were fine in the end. However, she suffered several blood clots and had both legs amputated, and there was a fast decline before she died of a stroke in 1996. 

I'll be seeing a rheumatologist tomorrow, actually, due to a "weak positive" for the lupus anticoagulant on a recent blood test. I'm the one asking for tests; I am showing no symptoms that I know of, but given my mom's history, I want to be tested. I've asked for and received tests twice before (age... ~18 and ~22) and I was told that they were negative. Since TTC is (hopefully) so close for us, I'm just scared. My mom thought she had control of her disorder with coumadin/etc, but in the end, everything went downhill anyway. I'm afraid to be perfectly healthy now as she was before TTC, but ending up triggering something inside me and starting the ticking time bomb that cannot be put under control.

I'd have sent you a PM but I thought what I have to say could be somewhat related to the loss issue. My sister Stephanie was the stillbirth 2 years before me, and I was always aware of her life and death when I was little. My parents had a Christmas ornament with her name that I'd put on the tree every year, and on a couple occasions, they showed me her pictures. To my parents, she was most certainly a child who they had lost, and to me, she was my older sister who I never got to meet. From what I remember she was pretty close to full term, if not full term. Several years ago they had her moved to be buried next to my mom and that was a very surreal experience for me... in a sense, I loved it, because it was some closure for me to this situation that I had been born into. I was an only child otherwise and I always felt sad over the fact that I got life and she did not. To this day I still wonder what she'd be doing and what she'd be like. 

I personally do not know how I would ever handle this kind of stress and loss. Even the (very real) fear of an early, early miscarriage makes me incredibly sad, let alone a late term loss or a baby who doesn't make it. I have such huge respect for women who "keep going" after these things... I am so afraid I'd just shut down.