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.     

Sitting With Grief

I sat down in her room on my meditation cushion. I turned on the YouTube guided meditation about grief and closed my eyes.  I don’t remember the words of the meditation, but I do remember the pulsating sound and hypnotic rhythm of the gentle music.  As my eyes closed and I sunk into myself I remembered being told to take three deep breaths.  I breathed in, I breathed out, I breathed in, and I breathed out. Tears started rolling down my face from both closed eyes and it felt as if light was filling my body.  The tears were shear pain and longing.  That is the only way I can describe it, my words fail as I try to capture an image of the overwhelming but comforting emotions.

As I felt the tears fall from the base of my chin down to my chest and roll down and graze my breasts a thought came to mind, “This is where she was supposed to be.  She was supposed to be there, feeding, suckling, living against my breast, but she wasn’t there.”  I let the thought go as I pulled my left hand to my heart and my right over where she used to live, my now empty uterus, her lonely home no longer in use.  I cried more deep silent tears and I inhaled and exhaled as I immersed myself in their wetness, yet warm pain.

Then as I breathed and sat with my grief, I heard a word, “Mom”, I hear it again “Mom” over and over again.  It’s Nora, she is talking to me.  All she is doing is repeating, “Mom, Mom, Mom,” but in such a comforting way that a smile moved across my tortured face.

Then my mind takes me to a beach, where Nora and I are dancing in the sand.  I hear the waves hitting the shore and see our feet in the sand as we walk hand in hand. She is a little girl, probably 4 years old.  She wears a yellow dress and I am in a maxi dress, as we are frolicking together on the beach.  There is no longing in this place, there is no pain.  Her chocolate color hair is pulled back in pig tails and she and I are laughing and giggling.  She points to things and says their name, inquisitively asking me questions.  I smile and laugh in the image, but in my reality I know that I sit on a cushion with my eyes closed, watching all this in my mind’s eye as if I were watching a home video of Nora and me.  At this realization a wail comes out of my mouth as I long for this image to be true.

Then I hear myself asking, “Why?  Why can’t I have you?” and she just responds as a wise old soul would, “No one can have anyone, mommy.”  I wail again as I know she is right, but I also marvel at the brilliant soul she is, so wise, so full of love, so special.  I hear her again when I say, “Why?” and she just repeats, “Mom, Mom, Mom.”  I ask her if I will have other children and she says yes.  I ask if I will have another girl and she says no, and I ache inside.  Then all of the sudden I have this desperate need to open up her urn that is behind me and find her.  I want to see her again, feel her, hold her; a part of me even envisions eating and consuming her ashes so that she is inside me again.  Then I hear her, I hear her child like voice say, “I am not there.  You will not find me there,” and she shows me an image of the breeze in the trees and the stars in the sky and she says I am here and here and here.  I cringe and cry more deeply again because I know this is true.

I ache for her.  But all I hear is my strong little girl say, “I love you mommy," and I can feel her leaving, the mediation music is slowing.  I don't know if she was there or if it was me, but the image is fading now and I feel scared.  I say I don’t want to forget, I don’t want to leave.  And there is no voice this time, but I am reassured from somewhere deep inside that everything is okay.  A part of me knows she is never gone, she is always here. She is always with me.

I begin to allow myself to float back to the here and now. I have one more flash of the scene of us on the beach and then my eyes open and through the puddles of water at their base I see the light of the computer in front of me on her nursery floor where I sit cross-legged on the cushion.

I grab for my computer.  I hurry to write it all down as I don’t want to forget.  I need this memory.  I need this moment.  I write, typing quickly with no attention to spelling or even coherence.  I need her essence I don’t want to lose her again.  The words come flowing out…my fingers move fast…and the tears swell up from a deep lonely place inside and pour out of my eyes and the words flood the page.

I take a deep breath.  A part of me is calmed.  A part of me is reassured.  I take a deep breath again and I sit in peace.

Her Name is "Honor"

Well her name is Nora, but it means "woman of honor" in Latin, or "light" in Arabic.  Even better in Hebrew Nora means "awesome."  I think my daughter is pretty awesome.  She is the light of my life, even if she is no longer with me, and now all I must do is "honor" her memory here on earth.  It's kind of bizzare how her name has forshadowed her future.

Before Nora's death I never much believed in fate and I'm still unclear if I do or not.  However, since she passed away I sometimes get this feeling that the concept of linear time does not exist.  That I am living my life at every age and every stage all at the same time in different parts of the universe and my reality is just the moment that I am aware of.  I know this is trippy, but I say this because I feel as if my daughter was just destined to be "Nora" because a different Lindsey had already determined it to be so and knew that I would spend the rest of my life honoring her instead of being with her.

For instance, when Nick and I were searching for baby names, we could never settle on a boy's name, we had a whole list that we liked, but when searching for girls names we never even created a list because we couldn't agree on anyone girl name that we liked.  Then one night, as I was laying in bed, I came across the name Nora and I loved the meaning.  I wanted a strong name for my daughter as she grew.  I wanted her to grow into a "woman of honor" because I believed she had great things ahead of her.  She was going to be someone special to the world.

So I turned over in bed and said to my husband, "What about Nora?  Nora Kelly?" Nora was a deriviate of Norine which is my mother's middle name, and Kelly was Nick's mom's madian name. The perfect combination for our little girl to be, if she was a little girl, we didn't know at this point. 

Nick paused for a moment as he thought about my suggestion and said, "I like that.  I like that a lot."  And in his soft, quite, reassuring voice he repeated her name out loud, "Nora. Nora Kelly." and a smile formed on his face and he said, "Yes, if it's a girl we will call her Nora." 

Then, at our 20 week ultrasound, we got to see how big our baby had gotten.  The baby was moving and rolling around and sticking it's tongue out at us.  Thirty minutes into the appointment I finally asked the ultrasound tech the gender of our baby.  I had a clue because I did not see any little manliness and with a joyful tone the ultrasound tech said, "It's a girl!"  Nick and I said "A girl?!"  And were in shock at the revelation.  Immediately I thought about the stages of raising a girl: her with pigtails in sundresses, and then her tomboy phase, and then the day Nick would walk her down the isle at her wedding.  I was overwhelemed by the responsiblity of this, but somewhere inside I knew she was going to be a girl, so I was comforted by my intuition being right.

As we left the appointment, with wonderful news that every organ of our little girl was perfect, Nick and I walked out together holding hands and looking at the first pictures of our daughter and Nick said as he stared at the picture, "So this is Nora."  I smiled and said, "Well I guess we have decided on a name."  He smiled back and leaned in to kiss me.  We were a happy family that day.

"So what's in a name?"  I believe that we name our children based on the faith and hope we have for their spirits and their journeys in this life.  I believe that we, as expecting parents, are already parents on a different universal plain.  And on this plain, our "other" selves are already parents, who are somehow speaking to us and letting us know intuitively that or children have a destiny, and their name is the first step towards defining our child's journey.

Nora is my light, and I do believe she is awesome.  Why wouldn't she be?  After all, her mom and dad are pretty cool.  And even though she does not walk beside me in this life, I will honor her everyday of mine, moving forward in whatever way I can because I believe that my little girl, in some alternate universe, got to grow up into a "woman of honor."

~Still Breathing...Lindsey