Capture Your Grief, Day Twelve: Article

uneek1323 · October 2013

https://facetsoflifeafterloss.blogspot.com/2013/08/dear-non-bereaved-mama-with-love.html?spref=fb

I know I'm preaching to the choir with this explanation but here it is anyway....

Most of my peers are pregnant or have children. Most of my peers who have children are finished adding to their families. Every day I am hit with their happy family moments and reminded of what I'm missing. There are many articles that are well-written and speak to my heart but this one helped make me feel that I'm not alone in feeling like it's us vs them. (The photo is mine, but the words belong to Lori Weatherly.)

Tomorrow: Book

https://carlymarieprojectheal.com/2013/09/capture-your-grief-october-2013.html

blackbird818 · October 2013

Thank you for posting this @uneek1323. It says everything. (((Hugs))) to everyone

HeyMrsPotter · October 2013

I recently ran across this post written by a blogger named fionalynne. It captures what I would want people to know about early pregnancy loss. I'm not very public about this part of my life, though, so I haven't been able to share this with anyone in real life.

(edited wording for clarity)

I've pasted a short excerpt below but you can find the full piece here:

https://fionalynne.com/blog/what-i-want-you-to-know-about-having-a-miscarriage/

...Miscarriage is very common, but each one is unique. I was touched and strengthened by the many women who chose to tell me about their miscarriage(s) after we told our story publicly. It’s a comfort to know that there is nothing I could have done, that it is a relatively “normal” thing. At the same time, it was never helpful to have people use the “it’s so common” line to try and minimize my pain. It may happen to many many women, but the grief is still real, my pain is still legitimate...

I've edited this post to use a different excerpt; one I think is more likely to be relate-able for all. My other excerpt focused on religious beliefs in a way that could have been a distraction.

jbasore1123 · October 2013

HeyMrsPotter said:

I recently ran across this post written by a blogger named fionalynne. It captures what I would want people to know about early pregnancy loss. I'm not very public about this part of my life, though, so I haven't been able to share this with anyone in real life.

(edited wording for clarity)

I've pasted a short excerpt below but you can find the full piece here:
https://fionalynne.com/blog/what-i-want-you-to-know-about-having-a-miscarriage/

...Miscarriage is very common, but each one is unique. I was touched and strengthened by the many women who chose to tell me about their miscarriage(s) after we told our story publicly. It’s a comfort to know that there is nothing I could have done, that it is a relatively “normal” thing. At the same time, it was never helpful to have people use the “it’s so common” line to try and minimize my pain. It may happen to many many women, but the grief is still real, my pain is still legitimate...

I've edited this post to use a different excerpt; one I think is more likely to be relate-able for all. My other excerpt focused on religious beliefs in a way that could have been a distraction.

I literally LOL'd at the Heaven is For Real post... My MIL gave me this exact book after our first loss.

jenkellen · October 2013

https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/fafaf462f20a

This is an article that really resonated with me. I also lost a parent quite a bit back, but many of the things she discusses also applies to any loss.

"I was unprepared for the sleepless nights and the feeling of wanting to walk around in a protective bubble. For someone who’s spent an entire life proud of the strong facade I could switch on should I need to, I wanted people to know what had happened to me, so it would excuse my quietness at times. I didn’t want them to make a fuss, just hold the knowledge. The biggest security blanket I’ve craved for is for people to not expect too much of me."

"The biggest fallacy statement that gets bounded around is “time heals” – while I’m left in no doubt, you don’t. You learn to live with it. It’s very different. One of the worst pressures was thinking that by a certain date, I should have been healed. "

jbasore1123 · October 2013

After our first loss (and before I found this board) I stumbled across this website. I had only known very few (or so I thought) people that had suffered a loss, but all 3 of them immediately got pregnant after they did, so they didn't go through the grief the way I did (I'm not saying that one who gets pregnant immediately after doesn't grieve, but in the cases of these 3 women, they admittedly did not) so they didn't understand how I was feeling. It helped me to read the stories of other women who took the words right out of my mouth.
It has since stopped updating, unfortunately.

https://facesofloss.com/

carlsonbaby2014 · October 2013

jenkellen said:
https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/fafaf462f20a

This is an article that really resonated with me. I also lost a parent quite a bit back, but many of the things she discusses also applies to any loss.

"I was unprepared for the sleepless nights and the feeling of wanting to walk around in a protective bubble. For someone who’s spent an entire life proud of the strong facade I could switch on should I need to, I wanted people to know what had happened to me, so it would excuse my quietness at times. I didn’t want them to make a fuss, just hold the knowledge. The biggest security blanket I’ve craved for is for people to not expect too much of me."
"The biggest fallacy statement that gets bounded around is “time heals” – while I’m left in no doubt, you don’t. You learn to live with it. It’s very different. One of the worst pressures was thinking that by a certain date, I should have been healed. "

Wow..... This speaks to me 100%. I also lost a parent a few years ago Jen. (((Hugs))).

jbasore1123 · October 2013

I want to share this also. It's a list of events on Oct 15 around the country

https://www.october15th.com/activities-walks/

E&B0811 · October 2013

@heymrspotter - that entire blog is amazing. It's like she is writing down all of the thoughts in my head.

In another post - https://fionalynne.com/blog/whats-saving-me-right-now/ - she says this: "....they are saving me right now. These women who share my story, share my loss, share my uncertainty as I figure out the way forward. They understand and they know and they keep going too." This so beautifully sums up what I think about when I think of TB and the blessing it and you all have been to me. The last line in particular. We all keep going.

Poppy715 · October 2013

Warning*** This article is a bit graphic an raw. It's honest and powerful. I just wanted to put a warning before reading since the phrases she uses are brutally honest.

https://stillstandingmag.com/2013/04/what-i-mean-when-i-say-my-daughter-was-stillborn/

I don't think most people understand me when I say that my daughter was stillborn.

That phrasing makes it sounds passive, like it was something that just happened to me, externally.

But that's not what a stillbirth is, and I imagine that's not what a miscarriage is either.

A still birth isn't something that happened to me, or my daughter, or my family.

It's something that happened inside me.That I was forced to participate in.

I keep trying to think of an analogy to explain how devastatingly non-passive enduring a stillbirth or miscarriage is, but nothing seems adequate. Perhaps it comes close to say that it's like having cancer or another horrible, soul-draining, body-emaciating disease... only that the cancer that is within you is slowly killing someone else. Someone precious to you. And you are forced to come along for the ride, to participate in the killing.

But then, I've never had cancer or watched a loved one go through cancer, so maybe that's way off, too.

The simple fact is- there is nothing like stillbirth. There is nothing like going to the hospital to check on you baby, only to have the incredibly sweet joy of pregnancy replaced in an instant with the dull, moaning emptiness of knowing that you are still going to have to endure labor and birth and filling breasts and the weeks of bleeding.

Only your baby will be dead. Your labor pains will produce nothing but a shell of this most precious person. Your arms will be empty, and there will be no way to soothe your aching breasts.

And that doesn't even factor in grief, or the guilt, or the wondering of who or what in this wide world you are no that death has crept into you life, into your body, in such an insidious way.

I think it's the not-understanding that enables people to tell me, not even a year and a half after my daughter's stillbirth as I write this, to get over it. To move on.

But my question to those people is- how long did it take you to "get over" the death of a loved one, if you've ever had to endure such a thing? How long did it take you to "move on" (whatever that means)?

Now ask yourself: what if you had to participate in the death of your loved one, to help bring their ending of breath into being? Then how long would it take you to heal?

Stillbirth didn't just happen to me. It doesn't just happen to anyone. Your baby dies, and then you give birth... to your dead child.

It's not passive. You participate, even though you don't want to. Even though it makes you want to scream and scream and scream in horror.

You participate, and it keeps you up at night for weeks and months and years.

I'ts been one year and four months since I birthed my daughters's dead body, and that is still what blooms large in my mine every night as I wait for sleep to descend. I don't ask for the memories to come- they are just there. I can't escape. I birth her again and again in my mind, holding her again and again for the first and last time, feel the lingering ache of afterbirth that prevents me forgetting even for a moment the nauseating reality of what just took place.

Stillbirth does not just happen. It's not clean and surgical. Instead, it is messy and active, and it opens a wound whose pain throbs on long past you wish it would. And it changes you.

So when I say, "My daughter was stillborn," please know that I am not describing something that happened to me. I am describing a traumatic and pivotal even in which I was an active, unwilling participant, and even that I participate in the echoes of still.

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Capture Your Grief, Day Twelve: Article

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Began trying for a baby January 2012
BFP 4.25.2013 EDD 1.3.2014 MMC 6.3.2013 D&C 6.19.2013
BFP 11.3.2013 CP 11.6.2013
BFP 3.31.2014 EDD 12.10.2014 Baby boy Carlson born 12.19.2014

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Capture Your Grief, Day Twelve: Article

Re: Capture Your Grief, Day Twelve: Article

Began trying for a baby January 2012BFP 4.25.2013 EDD 1.3.2014 MMC 6.3.2013 D&C 6.19.2013BFP 11.3.2013 CP 11.6.2013BFP 3.31.2014 EDD 12.10.2014 Baby boy Carlson born 12.19.2014

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Began trying for a baby January 2012
BFP 4.25.2013 EDD 1.3.2014 MMC 6.3.2013 D&C 6.19.2013
BFP 11.3.2013 CP 11.6.2013
BFP 3.31.2014 EDD 12.10.2014 Baby boy Carlson born 12.19.2014