Pregnancy is supposed to be such a beautiful experience. Spending time picking out cute baby names and marveling at the tiniest onesies and outfits that you envision the little human growing in your womb to wear one day. Envisioning how your labor & delivery will go and what life will be like when you return home from the hospital. While this may be the reality for many women, my reality was far from it. Just a few days prior to my due date, a part of me died and my life was forever changed. The child that I carried for nine whole months...was stillborn.
I remember waking up that morning and something felt off. I was 38 weeks; my water didn’t break nor was I experiencing any contractions at the time. There were no signs of labor however, there was also no movement. As a precaution, I went to the hospital and I will never forget the words that were spoken to me…my baby had no heartbeat. So many emotions running through my mind. Despite trying to process the information at hand, I was also faced with the harsh reality that I would have to undergo a c-section to deliver my stillborn baby. Man. After the c-section procedure, the doctor confirmed that the cause of her death was an umbilical cord accident. Her umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around her neck not once, not twice, but three times. How could the very thing that was meant to sustain the life of my child, be the same thing that took it away? How? I did everything right throughout my pregnancy, yet I had no control over the very thing that took her life. I had so many questions for God. Though I never actually questioned God Himself or my faith, I did find myself questioning Him about how and why me?
No amount of preparation in this world could have made me ready to deal with what I would have to face for the rest of my life. Burying my baby was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to experience. Was it my fault? What could I have done differently? What could my doctor have done better? I went through a period of blaming myself and even blaming the doctor. I had no idea that stillbirths were even a thing nowadays. When going to your monthly checkups, doctors don’t really talk about how 1 in 4 women experience pregnancy/infant loss. They prepare you for childbirth and what to expect during your pregnancy, but not how to prepare to deliver a stillborn child. And honestly, how could they?
The amount of grief I’ve experienced has been indescribable. I’m so grateful to have such a strong support system that has been there for me when I needed to cry, scream or even just talk through my feelings. And although I always have a shoulder to cry on, no one can understand my pain, my hurt, or my sorrow. Grief is not a straight line, which is something I had to learn the hard way. I had never lost any close relatives prior to my baby, so I was completely blindsided by what was to come. I remember going to counseling and asking the therapist, “So how long am I going to feel like this?” There I sat waiting for her to provide me with a definitive time frame and the reality hit me like a ton of bricks...there is no time frame. There is no cutoff period for grief. Grief cannot be measured, nor predicted. In fact, grief can hit you in the middle of the concert of your favorite artist; at your favorite niece’s birthday party; on the first day of your dream job; or even during the best workout of your life at the gym. There is no rhyme or reason with grief, and it can literally hit you anywhere and at any given time. While it sounds odd to say, I can’t feel anything, but I feel everything at the same time. My arms ache to hold her. Holidays used to remind me about everything I have, and after she died... holidays remind me of everything I had lost.
Losing a child brings on so many triggers. I had no idea that a Pampers commercial would literally bring me to my knees and in a puddle of tears. Things you’ve never paid attention to don’t seem to affect you until you’ve experienced a traumatic situation. I’ve missed out on so many birthday parties, baby showers and other functions that had to do with babies/kids for so long because I was dealing with PTSD, Anxiety, and Postpartum Depression all at once. I had to avoid being around my triggers, otherwise, I would completely fall apart at these functions. No matter how much time may or may not have passed, these triggers did not go away overnight. And even throughout the avoidance of these triggers, grief still had the power to set in whenever it deemed fit.
One would think that working through this traumatic experience alone is more than enough to bear however, the aftermath that’s come along with it is a whole other beast. I’ve come across people who say things that have made my grieving process even worse. Many people don’t know the “right” thing to say to someone who’s grieving and yes, I get it...people mean well. Telling a grieving mother things like “thank God it wasn’t you instead”; or “good thing the child wasn’t older, that would be a lot harder to deal with”; or the most horrid comment of all, “maybe the child would have been a horrible person”, isn’t an effective way to help us feel better. And yes, these are things that have actually been said to me by people who “mean well”. So, what do you say or do when you come across people like that? It’s been nearly three years and honestly, I still don’t know how to handle it. All I can do is respond in a way that helps them realize that they were probably better off keeping their thoughts/comments to themselves, rather than trying to “help” me with what I am dealing with. When interacting with people who are dealing with grief, sometimes saying what you think may be the “right” thing is worse than simply saying nothing at all, so just be mindful.
Throughout it all, this entire process has been such a learning experience. I have learned to be more sensitive to everyone’s story. It has exposed me and others around me whether good or bad, and most importantly, my faith has increased exponentially. I guess you can say I’m in the stage of the process where I am accepting that my baby isn’t coming back. All the memories I thought and planned to create, are buried with my baby girl. Despite it all, I will love her forever and she will always be remembered.
My advice to those who do not fully understand grief... let that person feel what they need to feel, when they need to feel it. No one’s healing or grieving process is the same. Some people heal from the loss of a loved one and some people don’t, and that is perfectly okay either way. Your job isn’t to help people “get over” their grief, but rather loving that person through their pain because that pain just may never go away.