Exploring the Birth Story - Hair

As a mom to a first child who was stillborn, at times I feel as if people don't want to hear Nora's birth story, as it is also a story of death.  People don't want to talk about death or be reminded that life holds no promises, even in the happy times of pregnancy.  But in order for me to grieve and heal properly, I believe my story, like any other mother's, must be heard.  That is why when Anna from The Birth Story Project published a version of Nora's birth story on her blog, tears flooded my eyes.  By posting Nora's birth story with other mother's stories of live successful births, Anna validated my experience.  She had shown me that even though Nora is not with me, that my birth story was an initiation into motherhood just like other women whose babies lived.  I thank Anna for that.

For a few posts this week I plan on exploring my experience with birth, both in my dreams and in my life, in different ways.  Re-shaping and discovering what it is like to frame the story with different words and a different lens to see if the words I chose to use change my emotions about it. Stories have power and when we tell our story over and over again we not only processes it more deeply but we also subconsciously change parts of it and reshape the story to fit our reality. I look forward to reshaping my story in an effort to heal and integrate the emotional pain and beauty of Nora's birth into my life.

Below is the story I submitted to The Birth Story Project.  It is a different version of her birth but told from a place of beauty and joy. 


Hair

At first there was hair.  I could not believe there was hair!  It was fine, like cobweb silk, and dark, the color of chocolate, like her father’s.  Her head was coned shaped from passing through my birth canal after 12 hours of labor, with 3 hours of arduous contractions and painstaking pushing.  How I worked so hard to meet her, not just this day, her day of delivery, but also the 9 months leading up to this moment.  I had sacrificed my youthful figure and moments of comfort for her. I had suffered through moments of anxiety and the long 9 month journey that was a test of my patience.  I would do it again in an instant. I would do it again for this day, when she entered into my arms and the cold cruel breath of this world brushed against her skin.

Her skin.  Oh, her skin.  Never have I felt such softness, as if my fingertips were passing through a gentle cloud from the heavens that one could fall asleep on.  As they laid her on my chest for the very first time, her skin to my skin, felt like such pure joy. Even being cold to the touch, her skin was gentle, smooth, supple, divine.  As the tears of joy and fear wept down my face, I touch my lips to hers. 

Lips.  Luscious, voluminous lips that caught a tear of mine as it rolled down my face and onto hers.  I couldn’t believe it.  I had created her.  We had created her.  The sweet chocolate hair, the silky skin, the stunning lips, the button nose, perfectly shaped as it curved out from her forehead to gently point up perfectly protruding from the center of her round, heart, shaped face. The previous hours of unbearable moments of pain, radiating like fire trapped in my loins, circling and roaring through my body as she sat, shoulder stuck between this world and that of the womb, caught on my pubic bone, keeping her in limbo, with her eyes waiting to open to meet the world.     

                 

Those eyes, framed by perfectly arched brows on top with dark, long, flowing eyelashes on the bottom.  Her eyelashes encapsulated what whispers in the breeze should materialize as. The physical agony and pain I had experienced moments before had melted away as I stared at her eyelashes and took in her full beauty.  Never have I experienced love like this.  How could I.  A millisecond ago I was staring Hades in the eyes and in the next I was at heaven’s door, floating on a cloud that, little did I know, would soon dissipate beneath my feet and I would fall oh so far back down to earth.  But in that moment I just stared at her strikingly gorgeous eyelashes and eyes behind them.

  

Her eyes.  The moment I had dreamed about, when my eyes were to meet mine, here it had come and here it shall never be.  For I never saw the color of my baby girl’s eyes, and my dream of our eyes meeting each other in our bodily forms, never came to be.   My daughter’s eyes never opened to see the light of this world, because she was gone before she was ever to be born.  

My daughter was never born, not how you and I are born.  She lived her whole life inside of me.  I was her life.  Not metaphorically or symbolically.  No, I can really say, that I was her whole life, without trying to be self-centered or egotistical.  That was the extent of her existence and my only memories of her outside of me, were the short minutes that I held her in the hospital room where she was delivered into this cruel, cruel world.  

    

My daughter’s birth story might not be one of success.  She did not thrive in this world. She didn’t get the chance to.  But, my daughter’s story is still full of beauty and love.  Maybe, even more so, because her moments were fleeting and love was all she ever knew. 

She was stillborn and I was still proud.     

Book Review - After Finley

The first Saturday of every month I will review a book about stillbirth, grief, or child loss.  If you have a book that you would like reviewed, please feel free to e-mail me and I will link my review of your book back to your blog and list it on the "Book" page of this blog.

This month I will feature After Finely, by Mel Scott, Finley's Mom.  I was honored to have Mel reach out to me and ask to review her book.  It is with courage, honesty, and bravery that she shares her story about her journey through grief after the stillbirth of her son Finley in August of 2009. Thank you, Mel, for sharing your story with the world in effort to help others heal and learn from your strength and honest words.

After Finely Book Review

After Finely is an honest account of the thoughts and emotions that a newly bereaved mother goes through in the first few months after child loss.  Mel experiences the stillbirth of her son Finely at 40 weeks and 5 days pregnant.  Minutes before Finley was about to enter this world his heart beat stopped and that is where Mel's journey through grief and towards healing begins.

Her book starts five days after the birth and death of her son.  From there she walks you through her candid story, told in the form of her journal entries, about the grief experienced after such a tragedy.  She writes boldly about the intimacies of her grieving process in the first days after Finley's death, where she spends three full days in the hospital mothering him by bathing him, rocking him, celebrating him, even in death.  She then describes the time she spends with Finley as she decides to bring his body home to introduce him to his room, his clothes, and his toys that his parents so lovingly created for him in joyful anticipation of his arrival. In her book Mel shares about how she used this time with Finley to fulfill her needs to parent, even in the wake of her son's death.

Health professionals, nurses, doctors, midwives, funeral directors and psychotherapists, like myself, can learn from this woman's courageous account of how she chose to grieve her loss in a different way than most parents, by spending precious time with her son after his death. Parents who experience pregnancy loss, stillbirth, or infant death, who do not have surviving children, grieve two losses, that of their child and that of their dreams of being a parent.  Mel Scott teaches us how even in the dark moments, right after a stillbirth or infant death, we can and need to bond with our deceased child's body in order to find acceptance of the death.  This will help bereaved parents move towards their grief, setting a healthy framework in which their healing journey can begin.

Through her journal entries, Mel continues to write about her journey of questioning her faith, creating meaning out of her loss and her son's existence, recreating her identity as a parent and a person, as well as sharing the skills she found helpful in quieting her grief.  From a mental health perspective, Mel grieves the loss of her son in a profound and incredibly healing way.  Showing us through her words how she continues to form a relationship and mother her son by writing letters, caring for her son's grave on a regular basis, and honoring his memory by inspiring and helping others in their grief journey after stillbirth.

Mel Scott's book ends three months after the loss of Finley, but his legacy has lived on through her efforts to help others.  Mel started two wonderful organizations in the United Kingdom to aid other bereaved parents in their time of darkness.  Finley's Footprints is an organization and online resource focused on improving the consistency of care parents receive following neonatal death, miscarriage, and stillbirth.  Towards Tomorrow Together is an organization that raises funds to support parents who have lost a baby or child at any age or stage of pregnancy in order to help guide them in taking steps towards tomorrow through providing acknowledgement packs, cold cots/cooling plates, and financial assistance to family's experience pregnancy loss.
 

Mel Scott is a mom of two angels and an Occupational Therapist located in the U.K.  She has worked for many years in the mental health field and hopes to help other bereaved parents like herself through providing them with resources and healing techniques she found helpful during her intense time of grief.  To purchase Mel Scott's Book After Finley click on her book below. 

    

Giving Birth to Death

I wrote this piece a few days ago and wasn't planning on posting it until a later date.  But, due to the death of my 19 year old cousin yesterday, in a motorcycle accident, I thought it was more appropriate to talk about death.  Death is here, she is making herself known to me and my family this year, more than in the years before and in a different way.  She does not warn us with illness or old age as she did before, but takes our young suddenly, and without notice.   

Today, I will listen to her, and let her be heard.  I will try to understand what she is here to teach us and tell me, no matter how difficult that maybe. 

I did not write this piece for my cousin, but may you rest in peace Brian.  Another young soul taken too soon.

 
Giving Birth to Death
 
Most people give birth to life, to a new beginning.  I gave birth to death, to an end.  My daughter was stillborn, living her whole life cycle of birth and death inside of me, never seeing the world beyond the womb.  My womb was no longer a place of birth, of life, of being, but became a place of demise, of darkness, of Death.

Death no longer lives inside as she did with my daughter.  I have given birth not to life, but to her, Death.  Death is my child now.  Death is my daily companion.  Death, she walks beside me, is connected to me, like a shadow in the afternoon sun, stretching long and tall from the tiny base of my foot.  She, like a shadow, changes form; sometimes she is large and apparent, like on a sunny day.  While, other times she hides in the dark, not being able to be seen, but sitting there, lying in wait for those who she might welcome soon into her dark abyss.

I am not afraid of her, of Death.  At times she walks beside me as a friend, reminding me that my time here is not to be taken for granted.  That my life is short, and ultimately she is the only guarantee in this world.  She is my only certainty.  My last friend in life, reliable and consistent, until the end.  Death keeps her promises.  Death keeps her word.   

At other times she is a foe. I do not welcome her into my home eagerly, even though she sits next to me in my chair or at the dining table.  She is not a welcomed guest, but more like an unwanted visitor of the authorities, that you must entertain to do you duty, to be polite, to not get caught.  I humor her, I am honest with her, but I do not welcome her with open arms, for her day is not yet for me.  I am guarded and cautious around her.  She has already taken so much from me. 

I know that she comes and goes as she chooses.  I know that she will violate you and take advantage of you, like a rapist without empathy or concern.  This is how she most recently found me.  She raped me with infection and entered my being, not to take my life, but that of my child, where she took my daughter’s place in this world and I gave birth to her instead.  I gave birth to Death.  And Death is my child now. 

And one day Death will bury me, as my child was supposed to.  Death will sleep in between me and my husband at night. Death will follow me around the house as I do chores.  Death will ride in the car in my future, as I drive my teenage child to basketball practice.  Death will dance at my nieces wedding. Death will happily blow out my birthday candles for me, year, after year, with a smile on her face.  Until finally, Death will one day, when I am old and gray, hopefully, gingerly and not forcefully, she will kiss my lips and gently take me with her into the dark abyss. 

And she will say, “do not be scared my mother.  For I have walked with you all this way not as your friend, but as your daughter.  I did not take your child on that day to punish you.  It was just her time, and now is yours.  When you gave birth to me, instead of her on that day, you were giving birth to a reminder, me.  I was born to remind you of the fragility of your existence”. 

“You were lucky until then; we had only known each other in passing.  We had only seen each other as I walked with your extended loved ones, your Aunt and Grandfather those many years before.  But, when I was born to you, I was not just reminding you of the darkness in the world, but the greatness of its beauty and love.  I was a reminder that time is short, and love is what’s important”. 

“And as you lay here in my arms mother, I take you into the abyss, knowing that you have lived your life to the fullest. You have learned to embrace the time you have had in this life. You have filled your heart with as much love and opened yourself to the possibilities of this world because I was always by your side, as a reminder of how precious this life is.  If it was not for my daily presence, you would not be as rich with love as you have been.  You would not have known the true meaning of love or how to appreciate each moment, because I mother am only born to those who are ready to experience love in its grandest form.  A love that is balanced with loss.  There is no loss without love”.      

That is when I will take her, my child, Death, into my arms.  She will no longer walk beside me.  I will be ready, and she will once again enter my being.  We will be one again.  This time, she will not come for my child, but for me. And this time, I will be at peace.