18 weeks, 1 day

We're home from vacation. I can't say I'm happy about it. We packed up this morning, said goodbye to my parents, got in the car and I burst into tears. I don't want to go back to our real life, where I'm one of the saddest most anxious people I know, with the exception of other babylost mamas and papas....where I wake up in the middle of almost every night worrying about money and whether Sunflower will survive...where the only things I have to look forward to now are Ezra's 1st birthday and my terrifying (for me at least) 20 week ultrasound. Its been a very weepy day.

Despite the waterworks, we managed as always to find some quiet peace...a walk on a beautiful beach, a delicious lunch, even a little 'retail therapy' (aka new shoes).

The approach of Ezra's first birthday is hitting me hard. I miss my little boy, and all the time we were supposed to have together. On some level, I'm revisiting the disbelief...I can't believe this happened to us, that our baby boy isn't here.

In better news, the Sunflower is growing and beginning to move more and more. I feel her kick and move several times each day. Here's a belly shot taken today:

The Things We Have Lost

We haven't been on vacation for a full year. Two months of 'disability' leave after Ezra died didn't count, particularly since I was barely leaving the house at that point.. We've had a couple beautiful weekends away which brought some peace and gentle moments. But packing up and leaving our house for a full week...that hasn't happened since this time last year. It finally happened again this week.

Heading to the shore, I felt layers of stress falling away with each mile we drove. Its been a week of no 'have tos' and no 'shoulds'. Just a beautiful house, ocean waves, evening crickets, long walks and doing as we please. A week of my nephew's giggles and my niece's snuggles. A week of afternoon naps and time to read. A week of finding peace. We both feel rejuvenated. Our only wish is that we could stay here longer. I think if I could spend the rest of my pregnancy here, I might actually make it through without losing my mind. Sadly, we go home tomorrow.

The week has also been hard at times. Listening to my dad tell my nephew he's his favorite grandson felt like a knife to the gut. Watching my niece try to nuzzle up to my breast to breastfeed broke my heart. To the extent our days had any schedule, they revolved around toddler time (lunch at 11:30am, nap at 1pm, dinner at 5pm), highlighting all that we don't have. Other than with each other, we really haven't had an adult conversation in a week.

But the hardest part has been being left alone with my own head. Although much of the usual chatter has quieted this week, I can't help but reflect on our time here at the beach last year. I was 31 weeks pregnant, already feeling like an elephant, but a very happy elephant. Our lives felt so full of hope and promise...we were weeks away from meeting our precious son, Ezra's daddy had a new job, our family members were healthy...the world felt whole and ok.

And how quickly that has all unraveled. Not only have we lost a son, a father, a job...we have lost our grounding, our faith in the future, our sense of belonging in the universe. Our hopes and dreams have been crushed and replaced with sadness, anger, and anxiety. When I fully consider all we have lost, all I can do is weep.

I've also been reflecting on what we still have. A deep deep love for each other. The ability to know what matters in life. The capacity to appreciate quiet moments of beauty and peace. A Sunflower growing inside. We may be broken, but we haven't forgotten how to hope or dream.

Samuel Marc

Today I am remembering Samuel Marc, handsome son to Monique and Norm. Wishing Sam's first birthday were so very different for his beautiful parents.

I wish so deeply that Monique and I never had to meet. That we didn't lose our firstborn sons to stillbirth within weeks of each other. That there wasn't something so eerily familiar about her post on an online babyloss board that made me feel compelled to reach out and meet her. That we didn't pour out our despair and anger in reams of emails and calls in the weeks and months that followed. I wish we didn't share this bond of having had sons who got away.

And yet I cannot for one minute imagine surviving this journey if it weren't for Monique. She is a true friend, a sister in this disorienting world of babyloss. I love her dearly and I will remember sweet baby Sam forever and always.

Tikva Ahava

Today I am remembering a sweet baby girl, Tikva Ahava, who one year ago today, slipped away from this life. Gorgeous daughter of wise Gal and Dave, sister to beautiful Dahlia, her precious life will be remembered forever.

Gal has given me the gift of so much wisdom, love and strength on this grief journey through her writing and her friendship. I am holding Gal, Dave, Dahlia and Tikva so very close today.

Guest Post By Ezra’s Daddy: What a Year!

I have this image in my mind of something that did not take place. I imagine that someone visited me a year ago. He had special powers and insights, as if he could see into the future, if not visit the future. He sat down with me and said to me: “I have some bad news to tell you. Lots of terrible things are going to happen to you over the next twelve months. You will lose your son.  You will never get to see him grow up. You will lose the father you’ve known for your entire life. And there will be other things that throw your life into a tailspin, change you fundamentally as a person, and make you question yourself and your path in life.“  

“Can I wake up from this nightmare now?” I asked him. “I’m sorry, it’s not a dream,” he responded. “Why are you telling me these things?” I asked him, in a scene eerily similar to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol or something like that. Anyway he didn’t answer, and he just moved along and left me in my state of shock and disbelief.

We are blessed—or cursed, depending on your point of view— because most of us mere mortals cannot see into the future. What would I have done in that situation, how would I have reacted, with the knowledge of the tempestuous journey to come? I keep asking myself this, and I have no answers. Indeed, it has been quite a year for the family, with Dad and Peanut Boy leaving us, not to mention that my sister-in-law’s mother passed away just a few months before Dad. And Peanut Boy’s other grandfather had open-heart surgery, which was a big scare, and thankfully he recovered. Throw in the personal impact of a severe recession, and you have, well, quite a year.

To be sure, there is still ample time to cry, and cry we will—and often. And yet, there is also happiness. There is still time to laugh and to joke, to look forward to what the future brings, to savor those small morsels of joy, and to enjoy the sunflowers as they grow. I’m still here, I say!

What I take from the experiences of the past year is that it is important to enjoy the ones you have while you have them. Appreciate the good things and the good people in your life. Help those you know, and help those you don’t know. Maybe you can give them a leg up, or fill in some of the potholes in the road of their life’s journey. That’s all I have for now.

Unspeakable

I have a cousin who was due the same week as me last year. I'm not especially close with this cousin, although our dads are first cousins, and they are very close -- so we've spent a lot of family time together over the years. She and her brother are close in age to my brother and I, and when we discovered our babies would be born so close together, everyone rejoiced that the cousins would once again be able to grow up together. Sadly it was not meant to be.

My cousin gave birth to a healthy baby girl in October, right around when Ezra should have been born. She (and her brother) never called or sent a card after Ezra died. She never called or sent a card after her baby girl safely arrived. There has been radio silence ever since.

Until this past week. In anticipation of our families getting together at the beach next week, and unable to take the conflict anymore, my dad finally said something to his cousin. This shouldn't have needed to happen - we're all adults now. And honestly, the damage is done...nothing my cousins could say would rewind this past year of silence.

But of course it prompted my cousins to call me immediately, leaving overly-hysterical messages congratulating me on my new pregnancy. I took my time calling back...waited until I was in the right mental space. I didn't want to hear their explanations - it doesn't matter why anymore, it just is.

I called each of them back and tempered the hyper excitement about my new pregnancy with a dose of realism - its awfully scary this time round and there are no guarantees. My cousin who was due the same week as me immediately blurted out an apology. She told me she felt so guilty having a healthy live baby that she couldn't call. I didn't tell her that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. I never expected the explanation to make sense. I don't expect her to understand that I'm happy her baby is healthy and alive. I just wish mine was too.

Her brother was a bit more tongue-tied. There was no apology. He just said, 'I haven't talked to you since...since...well I don't even know how to talk about what happened to you. How do you say what happened?'

My son died, I said. His name is Ezra and he died when I was 8 months pregnant.

To his credit, he plunged ahead: How did he die? What happened? And so I explained.

I know he was just being a boy, a very uncomfortable boy whose parents had caught him in a breach of etiquette so brash that they forced him to make this call. Having two beautiful daughters of his own, he probably knew 'miscarriage' wasn't the right term, but didn't quite know what was. But does my son's death make him so uncomfortable that he can't even say the word 'death'?

Mulling this over this afternoon, I realized he had spoken the truth. What happened to Ezra and so many of our babies is unspeakable. An unspeakable truth that makes people so uncomfortable that their only response is silence. It isn't what we grieving mamas and papas need...its not an excuse at all. I'll never fully forgive those who were silent and disappeared when tragedy struck our family...but at this point it just is what it is, a part of this journey...and all we can do is limp forward.

16 weeks

Time feels like it's standing still. Not that I want to rush this pregnancy, but for all of the emotions I've experienced so far, it feels like I should be 36 weeks not 16. Everything remains healthy and good...at least as far as I know. The real fun begins once I'm 20 weeks and onward, which will be the riskiest time for me given my "history".

The anxiety seems to have settled into my being, a constant presence that doesn't even surprise me anymore. It's settled into my GI system, and also keeps me from sleeping through the night. I'm trying to address this with accupuncture and prenatal massage, and hopefully will start doing prenatal pilates soon (if I can ever wake up in time!)

But I also feel a little more assured in this pregnancy. At least some days I'm more able to tell people about the Sunflower, more able to talk in vague terms about my plans for maternity leave in January. I just can't wrap my mind around too many of the specifics, like birth plans (anything that results in a live baby is fine!), length of leave or what we'll do for child care. I wouldn't be surprised if I don't buy a single item in advance for this baby.

It does feel like many people are way more excited or way more sure all will work out than I possibly can be right now. I think people's discomfort with the death and loss that have defined my year causes them to be more hyper excited than necessary. I'm constantly reminding people, 'yes it's exciting, but it's also scary.' I feel like a broken record.

My relationship to my grief for Ezra has changed drastically during this pregnancy. I can't fully be present in the depths of sadness that were there before. But being pregnant has also brought out new layers of the sadness - I'm grieving the pregnancy, all the hope and expectation and excitement.

In one week we leave for a week at the beach with my family, the very same beach where we stayed for a week just weeks before Ezra died. Some of my last distinct happy memories of having Ezra with me are from that trip...waddling down the beach enormously pregnant, feeling him kick and move as I stretched out in the sun. It's also the same beach where we went on our own for a weekend in October to get through his due date...some of the few moments of peace we found in those early months. I know this trip will be emotional...but I also know that I can't help but find peace at the beach.

Ezra's first birthday is less than a month away. I can't really fathom that it's almost been a full year without my baby boy.