You can mourn a loss while celebrating a gift -- Guest post

Okay, so I'm going to talk about something sad. You don't have to read it; I won't feel badly if you don't. But I deserve to be able to talk about it. I don't ever deserve to hear the words "why can't you take the feelings of the rest of us into consideration?" again when I am having a moment of mourning. I do take the feelings of other women - friends, family, acquaintances - into consideration. I invite them to talk and mourn with me. But I will never again sit quietly as I am told I am being selfish for hurting, for being sad, for grieving.

I came across www.donttalkaboutthebaby.com and ‪#‎aboutthebaby‬ a few mornings ago, and it got me thinking.

Late in August of 2014, my then-boyfriend Chris and I found out we were expecting. We were blown away and scared as fuck, and generally running around like chickens with our heads cut off, but we were excited. We were happy.

We spent the next weeks planning, talking about where our future should go. How we had put off a real relationship for 16 years, and how this was the sign we finally needed to move forward with that. How we would become a family with my two other children, and how this was what we had both longed for for such a great period of time. And, most importantly, how foolish we both were for thinking that we would find this happiness in others.

October 7th dawned bloody and crampy and devastating. I went home empty, when I was once a sacred vessel that housed what was supposed to go on to be a life that shared the best of both of us. The devastation was tremendous. I won't talk about how I coped --- or, rather, how I didn't cope. That's a side of myself many of you can guess at but have no confirmation of, and I'm not ready to provide it.

Chris was my rock, but his devastation was tremendous, as well. However, it is his own, and it is not mine to tell you about.

As my body recovered from the loss and my mind and heart cracked further, a sneaking suspicion overtook me. I woke up one morning and could smell the neighbor's breakfast.

Sure enough, there were two lines, there was a digital "pregnant," there was confirmation after confirmation. This was October 30th. Not a full month later. Not a period between the two. This wee bit of life was delivered on the wings of the one that left us far too soon.

Chris and I again mustered our combined faith and considered this a sign that things were truly meant to be. Our family was meant to soldier on through the hard times and the easy ones. We had finally come home to each other.

We weren't out of the woods yet. Another three weeks, another morning woken with blood and pain and heartache. Only, there was still hope. There was still a small miracle in there, fighting the entire time. Our son, born on June 24th, 2015, who we joyously named Felix, had a twin who was not meant to be. But Felix was strong enough to go on for both of them. He hung out through the thick and the thin of the perilous nine months to come.

I miss my angels, I won’t lie. I refer often to only one of them, but I never forget there are two. Someday, maybe I'll see them when this life comes to a close and a new chapter in our universal existence begins. Until then, my little loves, fly high and free for mommy. Fly on the currents of my love, and know that you will always be cherished. And for the other loss mothers out there reading my words, take heart. We will encounter them again either in this life, as they are brought back to us at a time when they are better suited for this world, or again in the next, when none of us are plagued by heartache and pain.

...

Jackie Monck-Homan is a happily married mother of three beautiful children. She blogs at accidentallymommy.blogspot.com

A Day

Today is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Day - an incredibly hard and painful day for millions.  The loss of a little one, born or unborn, is something I hope never to experience.  Having never experienced it, I feel I have no right to write about it.  I will not speculate about how those women feel, where their babies are, what they look like.  I will not tell those women that everything will be okay.  I will not give them an acceptable way to mourn or tell them the way they are mourning is unacceptable.  This is a personal day, not for me or anyone else to encroach upon.  And it's not just this day.  It's every day.

A website devoted to the commemoration of this day states its mission as follows: "To diligently work with local, state and national leaders to obtain a National Day of Remembrance recognizing the need for community education and awareness when a family loses a child to miscarriage, stillbirth, and/or neonatal death. While promoting the need for openness, understanding and compassion during a family's time of grief and most importantly, allowing those who wish, to remember these children who we now hold dear." [sic]

This is a mission statement I cannot argue - until its end.  For whether or not a day was ever designated to commemorate these experiences, those children and those fetuses were always held dear. 

Whether you believe they are waiting in heaven or hold no hope of ever seeing them, if you lost a child - planned or unplanned, during pregnancy or after birth - you are the only one who knows how you feel about it.  Your pain is not less or more than anyone else's.  It's simply more personal.  It is a day set aside for women and families to mourn, but many of those women and families mourn everyday.  There is no way to quantify a sadness such as this, for it is different for everybody, and everybody is entitled to remember today in their own way, even if that way is not remembering.  As we all take a moment today to recognize the bravery of those who have lost a little one, we must remember not to intrude on their personal feelings, mourning style, or loss.

There is no competition here for whose story is saddest.  There is no requirement to imagine a lost baby as an angel any more than there is to remember him or her as a heartbeat on an ultrasound.

To everyone who has lost a child in any way, I am so sorry for your loss, but not just today, everyday.  And I will never claim to understand.

There is very little we know about these children, but we know they are loved.  And that is more powerful than any candle.