Grief Project - Parenting My Dead Child

"I am convinced grieving a child is like mothering a child...A LIFE-LONG JOURNEY."

~ Lori Spray - Esteve

“When are you and your husband going to have kids?” A client asks me as we chat at the end of a therapy session.

My heart sinks and I quickly envision how this conversation might go with my different answers.

Situation #1 – The Drawn Out Awkward Conversation

“I have a daughter.” I reply.

“You do? How old is she?”

“She’s a baby.”

“I didn’t know you had a baby.  Is she walking yet?”

“No.”

“You must be so excited being a new mom?”

“Umm, no, not really.”

“What do you mean?”

“Umm, my daughter died.”

End of that conversation. Maybe I will try being more straight to the point. 

Situation #2 – The “Aren’t you sorry you asked?” Response

“I have a daughter, but she died.” I reply.

“Oh.”

And the person feels like a heel and I forever get eyes of pity in my direction. Or, I could try response number three.

Situation #3 – Don’t Acknowledge Your Role as a Parent or Your Child’s Existence Response

“Maybe someday.” I reply.

I choose situation #3. 

It was awful.  In that moment I consciously chose to not only deny my child’s existence, but deny my role as a parent.  I hated it.  What I want to do is shout it from the roof tops. 

“I AM A MOM!” 

I parent my daughter every day.  I parent her just like any other mom parents their child, by thinking about her first thing when I wake up in the morning and her being the last thing on my mind at night, worrying about her, wondering if she is safe where she is, and constantly questioning, “Did I do this right?” in regards to her time with us during my pregnancy.    But, I have to find other ways to parent then moms with living children.  

The other night I was irrationally upset about something with my blog and I called my sister.  After about 10 minutes of listening to me say, “I don’t know why I’m so upset?” While holding back tears she finally said, "I'm not a therapist, but do you think you are upset because your blog is your baby, it’s how you connect with Nora?" 

She was right.

 

I use my daily blogging as a way to “parent” and create a relationship with her like in my Letters to Nora section of this blog.  I realized that I find any way I can to hold onto my connection with Nora and I am also finding that the connection to her is still growing, getting deeper, even in her absence.  It's strange too because it’s as if Nora is so much more of an idea then an actual person.  She was a person, a person I will never get see grow up. I grieve that. But in some ways I parent her like I did when I was expecting her; I parent the idea of her.  

I continue to do this by trying to help others who have experienced the loss of a child like me, by creating White Signs of Grief so grieving parents can share their love, like I have for Nora on the site.  I join causes and take on membership roles within them by becoming a Local Leader for Return to Zero and a Core Staff Member for the Hope & Hearts Run in effort to bring awareness to stillbirth so others won’t have to suffer Nora’s fate and mine. 

It’s difficult though, parenting a deceased child.  But I do it all the same. I may not be able to put Nora to bed at night or hold her when she cries, but I see all my “projects” and “causes” as a way to still bond with Nora and with other parents with similar experiences.  It’s like if I were to go to Nora’s dance recital or join the PTA.  I am an involved parent in my daughter’s life.  It’s just that my daughter’s life is over and now I am creating her legacy.  

Our parenting instincts don’t stop when our children die. We still have a desire and need to be guardians to our children that are no longer with us.   I choose to listen to that need and continue to “parent” my daughter after her death.  Lots of bereaved mom and dad’s do.  They do this by starting memorial walks/runs, making movies, setting aside time to talk to their child daily, or planting and tending a garden dedicated to their child.  These acts of continued parenting are a form of attaching, grieving, and healing. I haven’t had time to find much research and resources on the idea of “parenting your deceased child” as a healing technique (sorry), but the act of doing so, I feel personally has helped me in my healing process.  I am sure there is research out there on the subject.  I will look into it.

In the meantime, I am curious, how do you still parent your deceased child?  

My Grief Project - Support Groups

 “Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Stillbirth only happens to 1% of pregnancies. So, when Nora was born dead, I felt like I was all alone, part of this unlucky 1%.  I was surrounded by the other 99% who got to have 'take home babies', a term I would later become familiar with as Nora was not one of those.   Being in the 1% was lonely.

But as we moved forward in our journey of grief, Nick and I learned that stillbirth happens more than SID's and  Downs Syndrome combined and there was a whole community out there waiting to embrace us. However, I wasn't ready to relate yet.  I wasn't ready to realize this pain happens to others and often.  I thought my pain was special and part of me wanted to keep it that way.

Then, in a couple's therapy session one afternoon, our therapist suggested that we go to a support group.  I told her how I wasn't ready.  I told her how I didn't believe that people could really relate. However, as a mental health therapist I understood the therapeutic importance of support groups.   According to Joanne Cacciatore, the founder of the MISS Foundation, support groups provide bereaved parents with benefits that include reduction of stress and depression, diminished traumatic grief reactions (particularly in women), finding meaning and purpose in death, and reduction of isolation.

So this month, in March I started to attend a support group and no matter how much I hated going, I found it to be helpful.  There were other couples there, all with deceased babies but different stories, and as I listened to one woman say, "I don't know if I can trust my body anymore?" In my head I screamed, "That's it! Yes! That's how I feel".   And then another mom later in the group said, "I would do it all over again." And I cried inside and out at this statement, because part of me said in my head, in a sad, smaller voice this time, "That's it. Yes.That's how I feel," as tears rolled down my checks and my head nodded in agreement.

Other people's stories helped Nick and I process and understand our own.  When we left group that day we realized that we do not have to carry our pain secretly and that we are not alone in this horrible feeling of grief.   Other people's stories and feelings about life after child loss validate our own emotions, no matter how difficult and ugly those emotions might be.

Research has also shown that bereaved parents use support groups as a way to connect with parents like themselves outside of the group, providing them with a community, like any other to share their journey with.  I know the ladies in my group developed a closed Facebook group and arranged outings to spend time together outside of group to build stronger relationships and integrate each other into their lives because these were the people that really "got it."  These were the people that understood.

When I asked other group members what they found most beneficial about the group, answers included, "It gives us a place to remember our babies even after our family and friends have stopped asking how we are doing."  Another women responded that there is something different from all other support, such as blogs and counseling, "That being in a room face-to-face with people that get it...helps us heal."   Other women talked about how they are able to express their grief openly and not be judged.  Overall, the other group members shared about how being face-to-face with others who truly know your pain, makes your own a little easier to bare.

So, do I like support groups?  No, I do not like taking 2 hours out of my week, twice a month to talk about babies dying, especially my baby dying, but it's helpful.  Not just for the time spent in group honoring our children or talking about our grief, but for the connections it forms. Maybe now being in the 1% won't be so lonely after all. 

If you are looking to find a support group in your area below are some great resources.

Resources

The Compassionate Friends - Chapter Locator

The MISS Foundation - Support Groups

Missing G.R.A.C.E. - Has links to International and UK support groups as well as local

Finley's Foot Prints - is a UK organization that will help you find a local support group in the UK

Psychotherapy & Healing Associates - This is a local Twin Cities psychotherapy clinic specalizing in support around pregnancy and child loss.


  

The Man Beside Me, The Man I Failed.

 

I was scared to become a mom. I didn't know what to expect.  I was worried about how it would change my body.  How it would change my identity as a woman. How it would fit in with my career.  If I would be good at it.  Mostly, I was afraid about how it would effect the relationship with my husband.  I love him and us more then anything in the world.   I feel now that it is selfish for me to even admit to feeling these things in the past.  To admit to my fear about the change that comes with being a parent, but my husband wasn't afraid.

Nick was ecstatic.  He wanted to be a dad more than anything!  Watching his excitement throughout my pregnancy helped calm my nerves and diminish my fears about becoming a mom.  His enthusiasm provided me with strength and created a sense of well being and anticipation within me as well. Nick read all the baby books, while I was reading all the pregnancy books. He would highlight passages in books about child development and share with me ways we were going to parent Nora when she was 6 months-old to 10 years-old. Nick researched baby products and sent in all the recall notification cards after we bought an item. He watched "The Happiest Baby on the Block" DVD with me and took notes about how to calm your screaming baby.  He took the car seat to the police station as her due date drew near to make sure it was properly and safely fastened in the back seat of the small SUV he had traded in his two-door sporty bachelor car for.  As I was quietly shaking with fear inside about becoming a mom, he was already a dad.

The man I had chosen to stand beside me as a husband, was already a devoted and loving father.  I had chosen wisely when it came to picking a loving and caring husband and father to my future children and I was proud that I was the woman able to make this man's dream of becoming a father come true. So, when the moment came when we left the hospital without our little baby girl Nora, I felt like I had failed this man. His dream of being a father, of his little girl walking towards him as she took her first steps, or hearing her first word be daddy, or walking her down the isle at her wedding someday had all been shattered.  They were shattered because of me, because I failed him. I failed her. I failed us.

I kept saying I was sorry in the days after her delivery to Nick.  (I don't like to call it her birth, because I don't believe she was ever really born into this world, since she never took a breath outside of the womb).  I was sorry for not being a good mom.  I had failed in keeping my child safe.  I had failed at giving my child life.   She was delivered into this world dead.  She never even had a chance and neither did he.  My husband never had a chance to hold his screaming, breathing, and kicking daughter.  He never got to experience her movement the way I did, he never got to see her eyes open and stare back at him.  He never got the opportunity to be the dad to Nora that he had so lovingly prepared for.  And this was because of me.

Did I cause the infection that killed her?  No.  Was there anything I could have done to save her?  The doctors say no.  I believe the answer in my own heart to be no.  But, I still feel like I have failed my husband.  In my guilt and blame of myself, I feared that it was my fault that she died not because of something I did, but because of something I didn't do.  I didn't want her enough because I was too scared.  I didn't get excited enough for her, so that must be why she was taken from me, from him, from us.  I wasn't a good enough mom.  I wasn't good enough to bring her into this world and keep her safe, and wasn't good enough because I had been selfish when thinking about my future.  My worries had not been about her safety or her well being, but about my own.  Was this why we weren't allowed to have a single moment with her outside of my body with her alive?

I know this is all what is called "magical thinking".  I know that her death was some cosmic random act of the universe with no purpose, no meaning, and with me not having any control or hand in it. I know that it wasn't my fault.  I know and am lucky that my husband doesn't blame me.  He actually loves me more and more each day.  As I do him in return.  We have been brought closer by the lose of our daughter.  He doesn't believe I have failed him.  This makes me feel proud to be his wife.

The question is, do I believe I have failed him.  Part of me does, yes. But mostly that part of me just wishes that things could be different.  That instead of causing the man beside me to cry from horror on the day his daughter was born, I wanted him to cry from joy.  I wanted to be the woman that brought his beautiful daughter into the world and bestowed on him that gift of true unconditional love that is between a daughter and her father.  I know in my hearts of hearts my husband would make a great "girl" dad.  I also know that Nora will be forever "daddy's little girl", but as a wish and a memory.

I know I didn't fail him.  I know that I didn't fail her.  I know part of me will always feel as if I failed myself.  I know that most of all, I just wish it could have been different for Nora, for me, and mostly, for the man beside me.

~ Still Breathing...Lindsey