I have no idea if this will be sad, self pitying, whiny or not. It might. It certainly started out that way but it has taken me a while to get it up. My mood has shifted and I'm reflecting, I think, rather than complaining. If you think otherwise, feel free to give me a kick in the virtual pants.
D is for ....
Depression
I am frightened of depression - not, I stress, people with depression but of the illness. Of finding myself wrapped in anguish. I have relatives who have faced that particular demon and it's not one I want. (Yeah, like I have a choice).
I read and I read when Emma was first born - looking for the perfect formula for grieving so I could do it, do it right and make it not hurt anymore ... mmmm, so that was going to work.
Of course, I was introduced to the grief cycle, with it's generous promise of acceptance at the end of neatly demarcated set of emotions, but uh-oh, one was depression. Well that's not going to fly.
But, I was pretty well already stuck into numb disbelief and denial so it seemed like my path was already set out, I just needed to step out there and get on with it. Except I procrastinated. I made it to anger, okay. More than okay actually - I arrived there blazing, screaming and kicking and HATING that my baby was dead. Every post I ever read from a dbm, every blog I ever encountered was more fuel to the anger. I HATED that your babies died too. I was not an angry person before Emma died and the strength of the emotion really, really took my breath away.
Sometimes, I would literally feel winded by all the pent up rage that churned my belly and made my head hurt. It was directed at God (see multiple posts where I skirt round the issues of religion and faith), at me - especially my crappy, failed reproductive system that didn't keep 2 of my 5 babies alive and failed to eject the other three in the normal manner, at women who dared to be pregnant with living children or who had living babies when I did not. I must have been an attractive person to be around.
And yet, I credit my anger with the fact that I don't think I became depressed in the first year after Emma died. I know distinctions are difficult, diagnoses imprecise and the line between grief and depression a nebulous, shadowy one. But, on the whole, I'm sure I stayed grief-side-up.
Fifteen months out, I got my rainbow. And people who don't know breathed a sigh of relief but my husband, bless him, made sure he knew the signs of incipient post natal depression. Because we suspected (we didn't want to, but we couldn't help ourselves) that bringing home a real life, bona fide, breathing little person might stir up more emotions than simple joy. We were right. Oh, there is joy, joy in such an abundance I feel wanton with the excess of it. But, there is sleeplessness and anxiety and heartsickness for our precious girl right there amongst the lovin' too.
I still don't know if I have experienced depression. Maybe that's the definition - if it wasn't bad enough for me to label is such, then it wasn't. Maybe the power of the thing is in the naming of it. I do know that Emma's second birthday came and slapped me upside my head. I know that for a little while there, between her birthday and Christmas, I was hanging by my fingernails, tiptoes on that ledge above the pit. I don't know how I got out but I feel like I'm back on firmer ground once more, skirting the edge of the pit and picking my path.
***
D is for ...
Disgust/Disorder/Desperation
I hate New Year's resolutions. Probably because mine only ever last until ... ooh ...12.02am before being broken. So, I don't make any. But, my son is one in a few days. I think claiming my flab is unshifted baby weight is no longer an option. In truth, I'm not really carrying baby weight, I'm carrying grief weight - an equally stubborn and difficult to remove type of poundage. I may not have used anti-depressants but, by golly, I self medicated with wine and chocolate. This period of ridiculous excess was book-ended by two full pregnancies. The end result - I disgust myself. I weigh more than I have ever weighed, unpregnant (And I have a worrying suspicion that I may even weigh more than I did pregnant. My refusal to step on scales during gestating at least spares me the indignity of knowing if this is true.)
I have an eating disorder - I've been coming to a realisation of this for a while. Not anorexia or bulimia but simply that - my eating is disordered, completely divorced from any real feelings of hunger. Our family meals are healthy, nutritious, well balanced. I take pleasure in trying to feed those I love good things. But I don't love me so there's no impetus to nurture my body. I am sure that the opposite is true - somewhere inside, I'm eating to excess to punish my body for being a failure. I eat to encase difficult emotions in a pie crust of feather-light pastry (served with a generous dollop of cream). I'm not sure what the next step is but there has to be one - I'm desperate. Desperate to be here for my living children - they have grieved a sister too soon, I don't want them to do the same for their mother, not if I can prevent it.
***
D is for ...
Disappointment
A couple I care about very much told me they'd had a positive pregnancy test this week.
I still, even two years out and after-baby here, categorise pregnancies. Some I can celebrate whole-heartedly, without reserve - any BLM falls into this category or anyone who has waited a long time for their parenthood. Others are more of the "pleased for you, sad for me" variety. Still others I dread hearing about (people expecting third babies, people who have a living child the same age as Emma, especially if they have a daughter). This couple is one I am truly, unalloyedly happy for. They will make fabulous parents. I hope, hope, hope it will work out for them.
It was only after we had talked that I realised how unusual it was - the way they told us. They didn't say, "We're having a baby" or "We're pregnant". They said they'd had a positive test. I know some of that was sensitivity for us - they're kind and thoughtful and compassionate people. But some of it was because they know, in a way that most first time parents-to-be don't, that pregnancy does not always equal a live child to raise. And I feel profound disappointment for them. I enjoyed almost every last second of my first pregnancy. I felt alive and excited and it never occurred to me that it would end any other way than happily. They don't have that. It might be a good thing - if it ensures that they are more vigilant and more informed about potential problems but it is a shame that, because of me, they have lost some of their blissful innocence.
On the flip side of this, is the fact that they are just beginning their journey towards parenthood. They don't know how their pregnancy will unfold or how their baby will arrive here or what their little one will be like. A beginning. For me, all that is at an end. I am content for it to end here, I truly am. I have spent the last few years creating a family, always hoping for another pregnancy, another child. My family feels ... complete ... sort of. I have four beautiful children. I'd like to be raising all of them but I'm not. But I love raising the three I do have here with me and I hold Emma in my heart. The twinge of disappointment I feel is silly really - to do with the ways in which my children came into the world. I understand fully that a good birth begins and ends with a living child but I will also feel a small degree of sadness that my only experience of "normal" birth was the birth that ended my daughter's life, making it anything but normal. In the scheme of things, it doesn't matter. My grief over Emma overshadows it but it is something that will always sting just a little.
