The reality is, one in four women will have (or has) experienced pregnancy or infant loss. Obviously, that statistic goes for male partners too.
Here’s another reality:
Dads in the NICU often look like this
Most of the time, you can’t hold your own baby in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). At best, Dad gets to open a little porthole on a humidicrib (or isolette, or whatever your hospital refers to them as) and chat to his fragile newborn about sweet nothings. Steve had to do this sparingly with Ellanor. She used to go nuts at the sound of his voice.
Side-note: medical caregivers (particularly trainee registrars) seem to get a bit antsy about family exciting the bebe’s too much. As if it’s not a good thing… it’s not energy-conserving, I suppose. I just thought it was marvellous, that she responded to him so differently, further proving how HUMAN and REAL she was!, compared to the way she cooed and relaxed when she heard me. It was almost as though she wanted to get up and get outta there right then, the way she practically levitated off the bed at the sound of her Dad’s voice.
Another touch of reality for you: This is the face of a man who has just heard the little miracle in his arms, who has his fingers and toes and half of his genes and made it all the way here just to meet him, has a life-threatening congenital heart condition.
Be very gentle with the glassy-eyed among us – you don't know what news they have just learned
Of course, mums look pretty similar. When they’re there more often, they probably get a better chance of a hold outside of the isolette. But not much more frequently. In four weeks, I held my daughter about the same number of times as I have fingers on one hand. Not much to last me a lifetime, is it?
"There'll be plenty of time for real cuddles," I continually consoled myself.
And where machines and tubes and needles rule the order of the day, mums have to step aside. A lot. Willingly, mostly. For without the intervention, the brief and rare cuddles would not even be a reality.
Recently, the memoir I have painstakingly tended as it has grown over all the months and years that my daughter has not, was called out for being “voyeuristic at best” and “like sitting in a psychoanalyst’s chair at worst”. I wondered, as I read the review from a gentleman in his latter years, whether he had ever known one of the 1 in 4. I bet he has known them. I gather he either doesn’t realise he has known them or he hasn’t been brave enough to stay with their story long enough to learn something new (perhaps even learn something about himself), otherwise he would have reconsidered his approach to me. I’ve long since grown enough within myself to ensure those sorts of opinions don’t hurt. Not so much as they might have once, anyway.
But I am mostly saddened to realise just how many people think that way. That there are people who hear/read a mother or father explaining their story about losing their child and think they are doing nothing more than treating the listener/reader as a counsellor.
The main reason I wrote the book is to give voice and validation to the people behind the statistics. It’s easier to shun numbers and overlook them. It’s much harder (obviously, like it was for that reader) to stand alongside a bereaved parent and say, “I don’t fully get it because it hasn’t happened to me, but I do understand that so many are like you – they have the same pain to overcome that you have known. Thank you for showing me.”
Have a heart. Before you click away from here, take a moment to remember: Someone you know has, or will, experience the worst pain a parent could ever know. No matter how brief their grief, or how they traverse through it and come out the other side to their new sense of “normal”, please don’t be so quick to flick it away. If you are in the position of never having known this pain, don’t be so sure you know how you’d cope with it.
Compassion, and consideration that no one way is the only way through anything in this life, is so very important to remember.
Please comment responsibly when communicating with a loved one (or stranger!) about something you don’t fully understand.
And because it’s Friday (and also because I haven’t done this in a while) I’m linking up with Grace for FYBF
What an absolutely beautiful post, K. Heart-rending. You know, I didn’t even notice that man’s comment. Probably because it was lost in the sea of positive, affirming comments left by people who read your story and were deeply moved. x
Kristin, it was in another section of the site. One utilised by many of the authors there to put forth their work and have it constructively(!) critiqued. So I had my pragmatic armour on anyway. But still… a rather short-sighted and unhelpful opinion. Can you believe, he actually said it was written “coldly”?? I cannot fathom how I could let the reader in any more. Thank you, though, I will continue to bask in the affirming comments of the more connected readers. They are my true audience, although I’d love the chance to change the mind of readers like that man.
Beautiful post.
I wish others around me had known at the time to meter their comments after I lost my identical twin girls halfway through.
I heard comments of “if it happened to me, I’d jump off the roof and kill myself”. Hmmm rather callous comment (and there were others, still are in fact sometimes nearly four years on). I can assure you in my darkest days and moments I wished for the grim reaper to take me too. These days it’s a different story with the birth of a son after my girls loss, two further losses after my son then the birth of my daughter. We talk about our heavenly babies all the time, but it’s still burning how sometimes people can be callous and disregarding of our experiences because we now have two earthbound children……..that should mean squat every child we’ve lost is stil our child. X
Trudie, yes. So true. It’s amazing how often people are quick to say they would end their own life if it happened to them. A fair enough point, in some respects, but when it comes down to it (like you said, for I felt it too in the first months – really didn’t want to live any more without her, and with the pain I didn’t know what to do with) nobody really knows what they would do if faced with the news that their baby/ies have died. Really inappropriate to say out loud to a grieving parent, that’s for sure xox
Unfortunately there will always be those who walk amongst us who will just never “get it” and I both envy them and feel a form of anger towards them that only comes out when they feel the need to pass comment [and judgement] on something that they have never [thankfully] personally experienced.
I have always maintained that, if you do not know what to say, say nothing. A hug, be it virtual or real, requires no words and yet conveys more than most words ever could. A ear or a shoulder costs nothing and yet means so much.
Your words have never and will never, be cold when you talk about your daughters Kirrily and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. You speak from the heart, you speak a truth that not everyone can speak or want to hear but you must continue to speak truthfully, your daughter, ELLANOR, deserves to be spoken about, acknowledged and remembered.
xx
Rach, you’re so right. Slowly, slowly, slowly, SURELY, compassion can grow in this world.
Thankyou so much for your beautiful post. Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for sharing your story because there are so many Mums and Dads who need to hear it, to know that they are not alone. I’m so very sorry for your loss. xxx
Renay, and thank you so much for commenting here today. You get it. You get why I post
thank you for bringing me back to my heart. I have just started full-time work after 4 years of being a stay-at-home mum, the last two of which were spent so hard trying to conceive a second child and failing miserably with two miscarriages. While I always knew that going back to work would be hard in terms of missing my 4 year old, it’s caught me by surprise just how much my issues of loss and abandonment have come up along with frustration and anger – and then I remember – the road I have travelled to get here has been littered with a big broken dream for the last few years…I am still grieving those losses. It never goes away. Your words and wisdom makes my grief a little bit less lonely – thank you.
What a beautiful thing to say, Joanna. It is the main (the only, really) I write about these things here. To reach out. I know I was so alone and isolated in my struggle to conceive and retain a viable pregnancy that I couldn’t not speak out about it on the chance that it could reach the ears and eyes of someone like you. Thank you so much for the validation and for leaving your message here today xxxx
I don’t know what exactly to say… But I wanted you to know that this post moved me, it really did. Broke my heart a little actually. Every single minute of every day I’m thankful for the miracle that is my children. My family is riddled with miscarriage and infertility. But the loss of a child? …
xx
Thanks for your comment, Kelly. I agree with you, I can’t deny the miracle that is our two daughters either. I am so very grateful and lucky to have had them (and to share my life with one of them). IF and miscarriage have been our biggest hurdles, but it doesn’t seem to be throughout our family (not that we’ve been made aware, anyway) and I have suffered 11 myself. I’m sorry to hear your family have this to deal with too.
Well, you know how I feel about you, your story and your book. I feel a better person and much more enriched for having contact with all three.
Taking it on the chin and moving forward. Thank you, Steve. I know you get it. Kind of smarts that all that could be assumed from just the first 600 words of the story of my whole journey. Still, it’s an illustration of the kind of dismiss without a second thought that I can expect from most, if not all, agents out there. An interesting exercise….
beautiful words once more Kirrily xxx
but then I suppose many people dont want to hear or see others sadness – but regardless, you are telling a story not only for you, but for all those before and after you that have experienced loss and sadness and you tell it beautifully!
I find it hard to fathom that someone could use those words to describe your story
I really, really hope so anyway, Carissa! Thanks so much, kind heart.
A really beautiful post Kirrily. People are quick to dismiss and judge without even considering walking in the shoes of another.
I’m with Steve above. I’m better for knowing you and your story.
And therein lies the big disappointment: people are quick to dismiss people. Some more than others. Which then falls into the category of creating hierarchies (of grief, of status/wealth, of importance….etc.) The feeling is mutual, by the way xxx (no, you cannot cash those kisses in, they’re virtual only).
how beautifully written. I am formally introduced now. I think it is really sad that many people just lack compassion and empathy. But apart from saying negative things back at them, i just want to say i applaud you for your bravery to even pen your feelings n thoughts down and even braver again to share such an intimate side with others. My mom gave birth to a little boy in between me and my other younger brother. He was born too early at 5 mths and my parents got to hold him for a few hours before he passed. They didnt even get to take a pic as it didnt occur to them. My mum still talks abt it and i can only imagine the pain. Thanks for sharing, there are people who appreciate it. Mandy xx
Mandy, it’s an absolute honour to hear a little about your family’s story. What a synchronistic thing that we have met through a chance blog-hop. Welcome! I hope we can learn a bit more about each other as time passes. Your mum is more than welcome to come visit too.
A beautiful post. Xx
Much appreciated, Clarinda. Thank you as always for dropping by xox
Today I remember my sister-in-law Ginny who lost her cancer battle on Friday. And especially I remember her son Frances who would have been a teenager by now – a cousin for my two living girls, and for my firstborn girl who’d have been 12 this year – perhaps they are together now. I like to believe that.
Stef, I am very sorry to read of the passing of your sister-in-law. Very sad and far too early to leave.
Thanks to you and others in your family who may remember with you, I have no doubt you will keep your nephew and your dear baby girl and, indeed, your Ginny, alive in memories and in hearts. At the end of the day, I prefer to draw comfort from the knowledge that once anyone has gone (whether they be a baby or elderly or any age in between), it is up to the living to keep them alive in that same manner. We are all merely someone’s memory…. aren’t we?
Gorgeous Kirrily. Thank you for writing both this and the book although as yet I haven’t been able to read it because I’m not strong enough right now. But I’ve read enough of your writing to know it is amazing.
From my own experience, the desire for the child to be acknowledged as real is so strong. In the scheme of things, the time one spends with an infant they lose is quite small and it can begin to feel, even to ourselves sometimes, like maybe it didn’t happen. To have them spoken of, to see pictures of them, whilst can be painful also cements that yes, they were real, that was my child, my grief is “legitimate”.
At my Nan’s funeral the other day my sister was in one of the pictures, at my mother’s request. Of course we cried to see her on the screen looking so gorgeous, but most of the congregation had no idea who she was. They’d forgotten already that she had ever existed and assumed the baby was me. I was surprised at how much it hurt.
Glow, I admit to reading your comment and accidentally, automatically finding my mouth gape open. I’m not surprised, for I don’t think I ever really am any more, but it is so sad that people do forget so easily. And it is too impacting for it not to hurt (you, the loved one/s of that daughter, sister, son, brother…). I’m very sorry it hit you between the eyes somewhere so public when the family was already shrouded in grief over your Nan’s passing. And yes, you are so right: the desire for the child to be acknowledged as real. That’s pretty much all that is left, years and years later, for even myself – ‘only’ 9 years down the track – I am beginning to doubt all the things that happened. All the realities I went through. The touch of her tiny fragile fingers, all of those senses that made her real and whole to me. They are so hard to retain all by myself. Why do you think I captured it all in a book?
xxxx
Oh, Kirrily. I have very few words. I just wish I could reach through the computer screen and give you a big hug. I’m thinking of you today and your beautiful Ellanor xxx
I’m horrified by that comment, can hardly believe that someone could be so lacking in empathy to comment that dismissively.
I sadly know far too many people who have lost their babies and the common thread among them is that they don’t want their babies to be forgotten, no matter how short a time they were here. I’ve always gone out of my way to send love to my friends on the birth days of their angels for that reason – their babies were here, they were born and held and so very much loved and it’s important that people think to remember them.
Thinking of you.
Hi Kyla, I am certain your gentle and natural acknowledgement brings so much comfort and peace to your friends.
I lost my baby boy 3 months ago & I am shocked that someone would describe the experience of losing a baby as “voyeuristic”! It saddens me that your reviewer could be so flippant of something that happens to 17 new parents every single day in the United Kingdom. I’m not sure why people feel its ok to say awful things or inappropriate things. Even though we lost our baby boy in horrific circumstances, a mere 12 weeks ago, a “friend” told us we were becoming addicted to the grief!!! Yes, seriously! Someone really DID say that. This was someone who has a newborn of their own. I think the lesson for everyone should be if you dont know or cant say something that will help or heal then PLEASE just smile and keep your mouth shut.
Much love to you
[...] October is Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness month While care and consideration is especially important in the first weeks, months and even several years after a loss such as Dani’s, the acknowledgement of the long-reaching impact of such a loss is so important for all who have lost a child. ~Lest we forget~ Although they could not stay, these tiny lives were here and they’ve made their mark forever on their parents and loved ones. Please be mindful of the hearts and memories you move amongst, always. You just never know who has been touched in this way nor where they are in their own inner personal journey of recovery. [...]
Hi Kirrily, my best friend just lost her baby. I’m sure your book will help many women. I linked your post to mine here:
http://thecraftyexpat.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/goodbye-little-angel/
Dear Rita, thank you so much for taking the time to comment. My thoughts and condolences to your friend, their son was about the same age as our daughter. I’m so sorry you are so far away from each other. Thank you also for the comments about the book! It is my sincere hope that it does help.
[...] received the following submission during October – Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness month. Due to posting constraints with a few things I had to run, I didn’t get to deliver this [...]