I’ve been feeling much removed from my grief lately. I’m not sure if it’s because being sad all the time is tiresome and I’m tired of being tired, if I’ve somehow grasped some small amount of control of living in grief or if deciding to take antidepressants has blocked the pain in my heart to reaching my brain. I’m just unsure.
As I sit with Sam at his grave I can’t help but wonder if pregnant women who have been touched by a baby like Sam ever reach thirty six weeks and think, this could be it. Or even more, this is the moment Sam died, and think to themselves what they’d do if their baby died, too.
I’d venture to say my friends with kids have thought a time or two what they’d do if they lost their living children, having watched me navigate through grief over the last two years.
Two years. I sit with Sam and I’m unsure how two years have passed. Holding him, while only for four hours, was the most intense four hours of my life. It simultaneously feels like moments ago and like a lifetime has passed.
I’ve been watching so many of my mama sisters become pregnant and deliver beautiful, thriving rainbow babies and I feel removed and somewhat left alone. What now?
Was I ever met to mother a living child? Will I ever? Can my heart handle another pregnancy? Would that baby die, too? Is my heart numb? It feels numb sometime.
Then I wonder if maybe, the numbness is my spirit protecting itself from my reality because maybe, it’s really hard.
It’s hard to sit at your child’s grave. It’s hard to decorate it for the holidays. It’s hard to wonder how big he’d be or what type of personality he’d have. It’s hard to watch the seasons pass and find anything at a cemetery that will live. Even the flowers, they die.
I’ve been reading John Krakauer’s Into The Wild about Chris McCandless, a college graduate who sold all of his things, left his life behind and forged alone into nature. He ends up dying but I know what he’s chasing. He’s chasing life. Real life. Authentic life. Something for himself.
When I sit outside with Sam, I feel like Chris, connected to what’s real. I see beauty surrounding me and I just want to experience it; if even for a moment.
We will all die. It’s something true for each of us. But it’s in the moments where we let our hearts go into the wild, that we really live.
Thinking of Sam 
I went through my pregnancy with chizik freaking out about cord accident. After I had the baby, I, for awhile, thought myself silly for not trusting my body to grow and birth the baby. Later on I realized that I just managed to dodge the bullet, and that’s just one of them. I am pregnant again, and yes, I very much think that any day it could be it because there are no guarantees of any kind.
I feel there’s strong message that because pregnancy and giving birth are natural, therefore it will always work. There’s also steadfast refusal to acknowledge that shit happens and things go wrong on regular basis. Case in point, I posed questions about stillbirth and cord accident to my doctor just last week. He said something along “we don’t want to have fetus demise.” I asked him if it wasn’t a bit fucked up that just few minutes ago while he was listening to the heartbeat, it was a baby, but the second I brought up crappy, but plausible situation, baby became fetal demise?
I also think that cultural experience are in play here. I was born and raised in Uzbekistan. My great grandmother was one of the two siblings who survived out of total number of 13. I grew up knowing all kind of different stories about what can and does goes wrong.
Ruth all that said (or rather written), I know that knowing something versus living it are two different things. I am so very sorry for your loss. I am sorry your baby didn’t get the life here on Earth. I hope you have a child soon. A child would be blessed to exurbs kind of love you have in you.
Many hugs
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