Subsequent Pregnancy Guilt

Survivor, survivor's, or survivors guilt or syndrome is a mental condition that occurs when a person perceives himself or herself to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event. It may be found among survivors of combat and natural disaster, among the friends and family of those who have committed suicide, and in non-mortal situations among those whose colleagues are laid off. The experience and manifestation of survivor's guilt will depend on an individual's psychological profile.

(from Wiki.ped.ia)

Lately, I've been dealing quite a lot with what I can only really describe as "Subsequent pregnancy" guilt. I love this community. I have no doubt that my path through grief has been a little smoother, a little less lonely because of my involvement in various online communities. But, it is strange to actually cry tears of anger, frustration, joy for people I have never met face to face. There is a large degree of trust going on here. You have to trust that I am truly a bereaved mother, just as I do for you. And I do ...

To digress for a moment: my husband and I are big fans of a cult, terribly British, sci-fi show from the seventies (sounds great, doesn't it !?) called Blake's 7. I remember, in particular, an episode when an idealist, alien, freedom fighter tells a far more cynical character: "My people have a saying. One who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken." I can't quite decide if that is profound or just terribly cheesy. Maybe it's both. But I think of that quote often when I'm meandering around in cyberspace, especially this babylost portion. I choose to believe the blogs I read - usually because there is something in them that strikes me as real or honest, something I recognise from my own experience of losing a child. As a result, I do invest a lot of emotional energy in what I read. I quite often dwell on posts throughout my day. I quite often feel frustration at my inability to do more than simply post an (often inane) comment.

So, back to the pregnancy guilt. There are a lot of us here who are navigating our ways through pregnancy after loss. But, I am so very aware at the moment, there are many other blogging parents who are hoping and longing for another pregnancy. And I feel so tremendously guilty that I already have 2 living children and I've been able to conceive with relative ease again. I feel a little ashamed of having broadcast my very straightforward, average PAL when other pregnancies after loss are not straightforward and have risks of complications and difficulties attached.

I suppose all I can do is to say that I do not take the blessing of my living children for granted. I do not, ever - not for one minute - take the blessing of this little life within for granted. In the midst of fears about losing again and grieving again, I do acknowledge the awesome privilege that this pregnancy has been and is. And to say that I long for each and every babylost mother or father who wants it to be able to walk this path too is an understatement.

Anger revisited.

Approximately 24 hours out from losing our precious girl, I got myself on the computer and ordered up a stash of grief literature. It's what I do. Need to know something? Find a book. So I did - and I read them cover to cover in the days that followed. But I really didn't read them as though they had any relevance to me: I had a sort of anthropological detachment as I read the stories of other grieving parents. "Oh. Those poor parents. How sad. How horrible. How do they cope?" It wasn't "forgetting" exactly, more a complicated form of denial that I was and am one of those parents now. I read about the grief cycle and how anger can be a BIG part of it. "Not for me", I thought breezily. I'm from a cold, damp region of the world and my constitution is, at best, described as phlegmatic. My idea of a blazing row with D. is to sulk for several hours until he asks what's wrong. I'm just not an angry person really.

Correction - I WASN'T an angry person. It was around Christmas time when I was surprised by the blazing rage that took hold of me - around 2 months out. It really, really scared me. Rage is such an out-of-control emotion and I don't like to be out of control. But, as it persisted over the next few months, I got used to it and I (almost) grew comfortable with feeling so close to boiling point all the time. It felt like an "active" emotion. Feeling angry at my daughter's death made me feel like I was actually parenting her in some way. It felt like expressing my disgust at whoever thought they could take her away from me, at the universe, at randomness, at God, at whatever it was that caused this foul chain of events that ended in my daughter's heart stopping, was productive. Maybe it was. I decided from the outset that whatever I felt was what I needed to feel, even if the emotion was downright ugly. I certainly think it's been healthier for me to feel these emotions than to repress them.

All the same, I was relieved when the anger just naturally dissipated over the summer. Nothing in particular happened to move me along. It was just a gentle summer with lots of fun things happening and it was healing for us all in lots of ways. There were days when I actually didn't mind the version of normal that I have now - it was okay. I learned how to laugh and not feel guilty. I discovered that I could be pregnant and scared but also excited and hopeful.

Since Emma's birthday, the anger is back - but it's mutated. This is cold. It's not passionate or helpful, it's my version of a pity party. I try not to think "Why me?", because really, what's the point? It was me and that's not going to change. But it's the refrain that underlies everything I do at the moment. Some of it is fear - the end of this pregnancy feels close and yet so far. I have started to have very vivid dreams about stillborn babies which I try to shake off but which linger in the shadows through my days.

It's more diffuse now too. I have spent a year in this little corner of the internet now and I have "met" some amazing women (and men). Whenever I read about another stillborn child, another baby born too soon; whenever I read about mothers who are grieving for their precious children and yet also face battles to conceive again or who lose again I feel SO angry. I want to stamp my feet and scream about the unfairness of it. Not just "why me?" but "why us?"