I took Kai to a Valentines craft day today with moms club. It was crazyland but he did well and accomplished making several projects. A mother asked me how I was doing!!! Wow? nice, even if we were interrupted at least 10 times, she actually cared to ask. I think even the people who were really supportive in the beginning have waned in their interest, and their eyes glaze over when i talk about how sad i STILL am. I just haven't gotten over my daughter being DEAD!
We left and met my husband at Sports Aut.hority, Kai loves putting in their golf department and for a sports oriented family this store is the bomb. I USED to be really into getting new workout clothes, but today...I was walking around and just got FILLED with ANGER. There were a couple moms today who said they have finally achieved their prepregnancy weight after 2.5 years...awesome right? Well I am still 20 pounds over my prepregnancy weight. Okay so it hasn't been a priority. Trying not to have my brain melt into my heart on a daily basis has. I am looking at all these workout clothes and I just got SO FUCKING PISSED. WHY DID MY LIFE HAVE TO BLOW THE FUCK UP? I wish my biggest problems were being tired because my daughter was teething or if I still fit into my bikini. It just isn't my life anymore and I am just so exhausted from being so sad, and angry, and missing and still trying to function as a "normal" human. It just isn't the same, I will never be the same...AND I'M ANGRY that the freedom of mundane has been taken from me. The blissful middle class white woman's disease of bullshit complaints doesn't register on my radar.
Why did MY daughter have to die? why not some crack smoking McDonald's eating asshole? And as I tantrum and stomp my feet all over my blog I realize that it is also exhausting, the why me's that I figured I would be over by now. IT IS JUST SO UNFAIR. No matter how many times I say it, it is still true. I am frustrated that I don't get to have my 2 children and my great career and a loving husband. Now I am "the lady who's baby died" and I will never be the same. When will my concern about being fit and worrying about the small things matter again?
I didn't know I had anxiety...or at least it isn't always on the surface, but it rears it's head in my sleep. I dream of my family at a water park and Kai going into the water but too far for me to reach, that I haven't tightened his life jacket enough and he is flailing in the water. Of course I obsess about Kai. I know nothing is permanent and the death of my daughter has brought that vividly to the forefront of my consciousness.
Most of the time I am sad and angry that Camille died. I AM sad and angry that she is dead...but today, it was about me...about my life, about what I expected, what I lost, what I will never get back. I know it is self centered.... but FUCK my baby is dead and that is so much to be sad and angry about and I WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. I mourn my daughter, I mourn the life I lost, I mourn the family we will never be.
About Me
- Renel
- My second child and our first daughter, Camille, died and was born on June, 30 2011 when I was full term at 38 weeks pregnant. I gave birth to my rainbow baby, a second daughter, on August 31, 2012. This is me trying to figure out how to be a mother to my living son and daughter and function in society after our tragic loss.
I get it. I think one of the things I miss the most is who I used to be. Of course I miss Braedon more than anything but when I lost him I lost me. I want to just be happy again. To not feel fear and worry over everything.
ReplyDeleteI wish it was easier and there was a magic pill that would make it all be okay. I'm sorry you are having a bad day. Love to you.
Well for me I don't think it is so much a bad day as a bad couple hours. I feel like I vascilate between so many emotions in one day. The anger seems to wash over me in a way that other emotions don't. i just ride it like a wave until it breaks and turns to froth. My days lately have been a little less filled with tears although always on the verge, and just shlumping through the muck and mud. Love to you Paula.
DeleteI just found your blog thanks to a dear friend of mine. I too lost my 2nd child and first daughter at 37 weeks and 4 days on 2/27/12. Reading your blog helped me. Thank you for sharing your story of loss.
DeleteOh Marie.... I am so incredibly sorry your daughter died. It is so hard this life without our babies. I know you are in the thick of it. The desperate gasping painful pit of hell, but if you write and/or read you will find that we are here to support eachother through this pain. I am glad you found me and anyone else you connect with, because it is very lonely in dead baby land. I know you are holding desperately to your son as I do mine. If you want to email or talk, let me know. Sending love to you.
DeleteYes, I am in the empty despair place. I am so angry that I went through 22 weeks of puking around the clock, fainting spells, losing 25 lbs, and having a mental breakdown. My husband and I MADE this person. With his hair and my nose, and we don't get to keep her!!!! Where is my prize for this hell of a pregnancy. And then idiots say..."you can always try again". Really?? Way to invalidate her existence. And yes, we can, we are capable of reproducing, but I was so damn sick I am scared!! They won't be 3 years apart, and it might not be a girl. Thank you again Renel....
DeleteI remember grieving as much for my old self as I did for my baby. I read Elizabeth McCracken's book An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination (Tell me you've read it? If not, you MUST. It was one of the most helpful things I read in the early months). In her book, she talks about how the frivolous parts of yourself slowly begin to re-emerge, even though you thought they'd been lost forever. The first time it happened for me, I was flipping through a fashion magazine a friend had brought over to me, and I dog-eared a page. It seems like nothing, but I had just--without thinking about it--made note of an eyeshadow I might want to try. And after Eliza died, I really thought I'd never have the luxury of caring about eyeshadow (or anything superficial) again.
ReplyDeleteSo I can tell you, it will get easier. I still flinch when certain people bitch about their first-world-white-girl problems, but I also find that sometimes I can bitch (and laugh, even) about those problems, too. It's a recent development, but I know you'll get there, too. Be patient with yourself. You'll never be the same, but you won't always feel like a ruined wasteland of yourself, either.
Brooke~ I read that book really early after my loss and it was truly amazing. I couldn't believe how much it felt like my story. I am currently reading Pregnancy After Loss(have you read it?), and I am glad to find that there are women who share my emotions and ups and downs. My blog friends really do that for me. It is the rush of anger that seem to knock me sideways. I don't always know what to do with those feelings. I expect the sadness and the jealousy but the anger always throws me off kilter.
DeleteI can relate to every word and my heart goes out to you... the words "AND I'M ANGRY that the freedom of mundane has been taken from me. The blissful middle class white woman's disease of bullshit complaints doesn't register on my radar."... I've often thought that when listening to stupid conversations obsessing over where to go for school holidays, which cafe to go to... blah blah blah... I can't seem to join in anymore either.
ReplyDeleteI also worry about our daughter... I try not to wrap her in cotton wool and let her explore/have fun... but in my mind, I worry so much...
Thinking of you my dear blogging friend with all my heart xoxo
My grief also transitions often into a feel sorry for myself mode and while I don't like feeling so self absorbed, I know it is because I trust that Bear is just fine. I miss him. I miss the life I had and the one envisioned for the future. I miss our intact family. I also hate that my life blew the fuck up--what a true statement.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it is all about us, because our babies are safe and perfect and taken care of. I don't know anything worth getting angry over if not our babies dying!
Three and a half years out, I still have bouts of anger. I think I always will. Because what's not to be angry about? She's dead and she shouldn't be and that will never make sense to me. So, I get angry. Doesn't help things I know, but I think it is unavoidable now and in a way, healthy as well. We need to process it, work through and get it out of systems from time to time.
ReplyDeletexo
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ReplyDeleteRenel, I really feel you on this post. I have felt a lot of anger since Georgie died last March. I think the intensity of my anger, especially early on (probably right around the time I got my first period after I gave birth) even scared my husband. I may or may not have thrown a box of maxi pads at him.
ReplyDeleteAnyway.
You may find a few broken dishes to be therapeutic. Make sure to pick some that don't really matter much to you, or even better grab a few at a garage sale. I made the mistake of throwing a beautiful piece of stoneware against a wall.
I know some mamas break dishes, then glue the pieces back together. Power to them. I don't have the patience for it. I've just broken some stuff and walked away feeling fairly satisfied and like the anger went somewhere.
You might try it. There's only so much journaling, painting, etc...I want to do. Then I just want to break a bowl.
Renel, I cried at my mommy group valentine's day party today. I wasn't expecting so many people, all with their second babies, to attend today. I tried so hard to hold it in, as I always do, day after day. But today it was too much. It felt like trying to stop a tidal wave. Somehow I didn't scream and sob at the top of my lungs but that is what I felt like doing. That was what my body wanted to do. You are so right, it is so exhausting and the anger doesn't seem to lessen. It has been just over 5 months for me. Sending you so much love.
ReplyDeleteI've returned to work this week and really feel like I am just "the lady who's baby died" - the knowing looks and the silence so prominent. I am angry because most people at work will not acknowledge that I had a baby, they say "welcome back" but all I want them to say is something like "Di, it really sucks what happened to your daughter" to acknowledge it, so yeah, I'm kinda angry in fits and spurts this week. At least here we can be angry together.
ReplyDeleteThoughts and love.
I've been dealing with a lot of jealousy and it's not fair lately. Not sure where it came from, but here it is. I'm just so tired of being that lady who's baby died. But life doesn't have a rewind button. So that's who I am.
ReplyDeleteThe challenge now is to figure out how to live and move forward. You'll get there in time, and so will I.
I look back and I feel angry at my old self for not realising how lucky I was, before all this happened. I wish I could go back and shake the shoulders of my old self and make her cherish every single second of life without loss, because from this side - it is hell. Everything is different, and it's hard to find pleasure in little things I cared about before. I can't muster up any excitement for silly things like clothes shopping, and I just don't really care about my appearance anymore, I can't be bothered to go out to dinner, or see other people unless I really have to.
ReplyDeleteI miss the old me, but she'll never come back.
About the anger - I'm right there with you... It has definitely lessened as time has passed, but it's still there. I still have moments of wanting to punch someone. It is so f-ing unfair. Yet there's no on to blame...
I used to listen to people going on about their blessed lives and the 'problems' they're dealing with and in my head I was smashing them in the face with an iron pan, then throttling them screaming in thier face to 'wake the fuck up to yourself'. Those days are fewer, but certainly still there. The thing that scares me the most is feeling such raging anger around my boys. They feel it for sure. It's not healthy for them, or me. But how do I stop it when it's a shitty shitty part of 'the grieving process'.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Get some old stuff you can smash up. Have it at the ready. My niece just happened to call me right at a moment when I was RAGING with anger and I knew I shouldn't be in the house with the kids (D was home). She said she had some old plates and an old printer and how would I like to go somewhere and smash the shit out of it all? That we did, and then some. I was screaming, stomping, yelling, crying and smashing these things to pieces. I was throwing the plates to the ground and taking to the printer with a baseball bat (she brought that too!). It was one of the most catharitc and theraputic things I've done (other than yoga). It felt soooooo good.
It's not fair. She should be here. Most people just don't get it and there's no better explanation that our lives have blown the fuck up. I wish it were all so very different Renel. xxx
The old me loved horror movies and haunted houses, the old me loved hollidays and like a child woke up early Christmas morning to break into my stocking ( my hubs still fills one for me), the old me would be mesmerized by sparkly things and loved lots of makeup. I have certainly lost my excitment for things, my innocence, my inner child. I wish I could get that excitment back as life seems so dull now.
ReplyDeleteIts so hard to think of the future we have lost, I get angry just thinking about the future I was suppossed to have with Jack and now will never get back.
I wish Camille was still with you, I'll be thinking of her.xo
Hugs to you....
ReplyDeleteI just returned back to work in January and only a handful of co-workers have acknowledged my loss. In those first weeks I was ready to up and quit. I would call J crying from the bathroom stall. I felt like a number, I didn't feel like my co-workers cared. Liam was a person, he counted yet nobody said a peep. Co-workers who touched my growing belly and told me how cute I was and congratulated me and gave me parenting and daycare advise, all said nothing, just a "welcome back". Ugh. It was as if I were on some type of extended vacation or something. Like I was doing my nails in a hospital bed for a month. But i'm done with caring what others think and trying to make them understand my loss and what I went through. At the end of the day it doesn't change anything. As long as the people closest to me think of Liam and remember us is all that counts. It will be 7 months on Saturday since he died and I feel like you do. Grieving my son, the old me, the future that I had envisioned for our family, for Liam. There are so many layers to our loss and they come in waves.
ReplyDeleteI'm here Renel, riding the waves with you from a far. I'm sending gentleness your way as you grieve the life you were supposed to have with Camille.
x
I feel the same way. Makes me furious to know the 1/4 is me, and there's nothing I can do about it. I hate being the one whose baby died. I hate being the "string" one who pulled through despite this agonizing life... And the frivolous things do come back, but I don't know that I necessarily "care" as I might have before. I
ReplyDeleteI feel so much of this anger too Renel. Just yesterday I was saying how I wish I could go back to my old life where I thought I had problems. Sending you lots of love, mama. XO
ReplyDeleteI completely get this. Fuck.
ReplyDeleteThe other morning in yoga there was, OF COURSE, a cute thin pregnant girl talking about how she was due in July, and oh, she hoped the baby would be born then so he's a Cancer and not, heavens forbid, a Gemini.
It was all I could do to not jump out the window. Oh, to have those problems back again.
Lots of love to you, my friend.
xo
I still feel angry and jealous. I'm not sure those emotions will ever fully go away. And you know what? I don't think they should. While I don't want to be "that girl whose baby died", I do want people to acknowledge that he existed (and died) and that I deserve to mourn him. If I wasn't angry, then I would not feel like I was properly handling his death. I mean, OUR CHILDREN ARE DEAD. There's not much worse. We should be angry that they didn't have that chance at life and that we lost our chance to parent them and have the families we all deserve.
ReplyDeleteYou are fine in your emotions, despite how nutso you probably feel. We are all feeling you and totally in understanding.
It is completely normal to mourn as you are and to feel the anger that you feel.
ReplyDeleteThere is another book out there that I have to recommend.. it will not 'fix' anything but it offers perspectives that can really help with the psychological aspect of losing a child.
It's called "Finding Hope When a Child Dies: What Other Cultures Can Teach Us' by Sukie Miller
Sending love and light...
I absolutely get this. Although I'm somewhat ashamed to admit whiny and jealousy are my more prominant emotions. 2 that I loathe of course. I get the body issues too, in fact they play off each other nicely; it's totally not fair I have baby fat with NO BABY!!
ReplyDeleteLight and love to us all.
::Hugs::
ReplyDeleteI totally get this. I can't say more or less than that.
ReplyDeletexoxoxo
"and I am just so exhausted from being so sad, and angry, and missing and still trying to function as a "normal" human. It just isn't the same, I will never be the same...AND I'M ANGRY that the freedom of mundane has been taken from me"
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly how I feel. A brick wall was dropped on our life. I'm sorry you're having a terrible time. I get it.
Sending love.
Oh Renel - be Angry, be furious! How could you not? Your baby is dead and that's the worst then in the world. It's been almost 20 months (WTF!?) since we lost our son and I still have times (days/moments/etc) where I'm just angry and pissed and upset with what I've lost. With what I'll never have. BUT it does get easier. I can also want to go to Target and buy random crap I don't need, laugh at a stupid movie, worry about matching my shoes to my outfit . . . .things I never thought would be a part of my "new" life ever again - the mundane. It's just that now, when I'm bothering with all those little, not-so-important things, I'm also carrying around this intense and fierce love for my son - sometimes that love manifests itself through happiness, sometimes anger, sometimes sadness. But it's there - just as your love for Camille is, forever ingrained in everything that matters (and doesn't) from here on out.
ReplyDeleteSo so much love to you sweet friend. Hope today was better.
Oooo, I so get this. So get this. What I wouldn't give for my middle class white woman complaints. Who the fuck cares if the appliances are not perfect?! Middle class white babies don't fucking die! This is NOT what I signed up for!
ReplyDeleteI may try breaking dishes or something else. I've heard that a few times from a few different people. I haven't broken anything, but I did take a class on slaughtering goats. There is a part of me that wants blood - that wants to rip the world apart with my bare hands and fingers. And that is a scary edge of rage.
Sending you love
xoxoxo
Came across your blog. Thanks for this post. My second son was stillborn 4/21/11 at 33 weeks. I forgot that I don't go to parties anymore and went to a brunch for V day. Went through just what you are talking about. "The lady who's baby died! I know who you are! HOW ARE YOU!" Ack! With all the expectation and discomfort that goes with it. Came home and took an ativan and slept for several hours.The anger can threaten to eat you alive.
ReplyDeleteGut wrenching. I get this. Sometimes I sing the Fuck song, which is really just me spinning the word fuck around a few ways. At Christmas I sang the fuck song to the jingle bells tune. Some days it just feels like absolute shit.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad we have this wonderful community to throw all of this anger on, especially since they all take it so well.
Peace to you.
Just popping back to add that Josh's Fuck-song to jingle bells made me burst out laughing... I'm going to start doing that, perhaps to 'happy birthday to you" etc...
ReplyDeleteYou all totally rock. Thanks for being so supportive and understanding. It helps me feel like I'm not loosing my mind!
ReplyDeleteOh honey, I feel it too. This resonates with me:
ReplyDelete"The blissful middle class white woman's disease of bullshit complaints doesn't register on my radar.". I still feel it, 2 1/2 years later, I still have that hate. Love to you.