Life Outside The Lines

The Power of One Small Life {Mourning a Miscarriage}

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I’ve always seen life as an adventure and discovering that I had a little, precious life growing within me made the journey even more thrilling. What an honor to be carrying another person, another soul within me. Dave and I had gotten married in early November of 2013 and our first pregnancy was officially confirmed on Christmas Day of that same year. The holiday season was made even more joyous and special with the news of our first child. Every wave of morning sickness and tiny sufferings of my changing body was nothing compared to the gift of life that I was given. Dave and I were so happy to see our family growing ever so quickly.

Then it happened:
The sonogram with no heartbeat.
The drive home and the tears, stunned and shaken.
The D & C.
The empty womb and broken heart.

Our second miscarriage occurred just last week (end of October 2018) and ended in yet another D&C. Before I had my own miscarriage, I never knew a single person who had one. My own mother never had a complication giving birth to seven children, so losing a child was never even on my radar. Miscarriage was a reality that I had heard of but happened to “other” people. How shocking it is when one goes from being “untouchable” to being punched in the gut with the most heart-shattering news. When the doctor told me that our baby had no heartbeat, I didn’t even know how to react. What?!? You mean some babies die? You mean MY baby died? Dave and I had just been confronted face to face with a nightmare that only happened to “other” people and we were in complete and utter shock. [Read more…]

Moving from Grief to Mourning: A Reflection on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

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October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. When that month rolls around, I feel myself breathing a sigh of relief. It’s like this month gives me permission to feel and express my grief more publicly. I am grateful for that. Although I know I have permission to share my daughter and my grief journey whenever I please, it’s just not that easy. Of course I think about her every day. She is woven into my thoughts, all my dreams, and into everything I do. She is part of me; she is part of who I am. That’s why when people don’t know about Gianna, I feel that they don’t know ME. But not everyone understands what it’s like to lose a child and that makes the topic difficult to bring up. Death isn’t so easily woven into our everyday conversations and dealings with others, so Gianna is most of the time left unmentioned. My hope is that this month makes it easier for people to talk about their deceased children and make the honoring of their children more public. And in turn, may they receive the support and love they need as they walk this life without their child by their side. This is precisely what it means to move from grief to mourning. And once we allow ourselves to mourn, we allow ourselves to become deeply touched and transformed by our loss. [Read more…]

Braving the Wilderness: My Return to Zero Bereavement Retreat Experience

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Beautiful. Graceful. Strong. Resilient. Courageous. Soulful. These are just a few words I would use to describe the mothers I met on a retreat over Mother’s Day weekend. We met on a little Island off the coast of Seattle, called Whidbey Island, where we were surrounded by the healing power of the ocean and God’s creation in nature. The majestic trees of the Pacific Northwest towered over us, in a sense protecting our hearts from the outside world so we could turn inward. Life was in bloom all around us while we were, in our minds and emotions, letting ourselves touch death again by talking about our deceased children. They sky was bright blue and seemed to open up the heavens, sending the spirits of our children down making them palpable in the hearts of their wounded mamas, who miss them so. We needed this. We ventured from all corners of the United States, from different walks of life, all carrying our different stories of loss and trauma. But there are a few things we did have in common: the need to talk about our children, the desire for our children to be recognized and remembered, and the yearning to feel accompanied in this loss. And that is exactly what this retreat accomplished, among many other things. [Read more…]

I’ll Find My Way Back To You {Child loss, PTSD, and EMDR}

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I think one of the strongest desires of those of us who lost a child is to feel them again, in some way. To perceive their presence again, somehow. To notice the signs they might send, images or symbols that are reminders of their life, or messages they want to deliver. They are no longer in our arms but we so desperately want to feel or remember them again, which is a confirmation of their existence, however short it was. Ever since her passing, I have felt that there was a veil between Gianna and I. There is the obvious veil that her death brings: she is not physically with me anymore. But there is another veil. A veil that took time to understand and one that is still clearing away. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was initially. But after some time and numerous therapy appointments, I now understand. And my life is now a journey to pull away that veil, constantly searching for Gianna’s light amidst the shadows that her traumatic death brought to my life.

For some (if not most) bereaved parents, the death of their child is tied to deep shock, sadness, and trauma. Whether is be the shock of finding out your child has no heartbeat at an ultrasound appointment, having to endure a D & C, delivering a lifeless baby, or watching your child die in your arms, there is virtually no human being that comes out of these experiences unscathed. These experiences leave an indelible mark on the human heart and most of the time leave a gaping scar. Like many other baby loss parents, my daughter’s traumatic birth and death left me mentally and emotionally wrecked. My labor was deathly long and excruciatingly painful. The emergency C-section ended in silence, as Gianna was delivered brain dead and unable to breathe on her own. After four days in the NICU, Dave and I watched her die in our arms. We then drove home with an empty car seat, only to come home to an empty nursery. The following week, I had to dry up my breast milk, plan her funeral, and lay her to rest forever. It was beyond our worst nightmare. [Read more…]

Grief and Identity

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Life is full of challenges. There has never been anyone who could say that they did not suffer or experience setbacks. We struggle to move forward but sometimes experience more retrograde motion. What makes some people able to cope and overcome the vicissitudes of their existence and others to crumble beneath them is still somewhat of a mystery for psychology. May was dedicated to increasing awareness of mental health issues, and though this post is not quite in time technically, it is still a good opportunity to reflect more on the challenges that we all experience in life, and grow in appreciation for those who suffer psychologically.

Grief is a reality that touches so many of us along our voyage. Loss is inevitable, and all losses touch us in a deep way that leaves us changed for the rest of our lives. My and Amy’s experience of losing Gianna Rose certainly matches that description. If you’ve followed Amy’s writings on this blog you certainly have a sense of the earth- shattering effects of losing an infant. We were just watching a TV show that depicts a prisoner who has been given hope of receiving a crucial medication she had been deprived of, only to have that hope dashed. It was a good example of psychological torture – building up an artificial hope just to smash it to pieces. The end result is worse than never having had the hope in the first place. That is a shadow of what it was like to experience Gianna getting bigger, bonding with her as she developed throughout the 10 months of pregnancy, only to have her stolen from us when she was a mere 4 days old.

We all have a picture of ourselves in our mind. It’s a complex one, involving our strengths, weaknesses, virtues and flaws, how we see humanity and God, good and evil, and whole host of other things that are woven into a single tapestry that is what we call our identity. You look in the mirror and you see one image staring back at you. Sure, we all have incongruities and disintegrated parts: that is the work of personal growth that always lies ahead of us. But we see ourselves as one and it makes sense to us most of the time. This sense of who we are informs much of our behavior and provides us with a sense of stability that supports what we do in our day-to-day lives. We aren’t usually aware of the role that our sense of self plays, and it can certainly be taken for granted. [Read more…]

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