Tuesday, March 26, 2013

The Abyss

Sometimes during the grieving and healing process we have revelations and realizations that help us to better understand and express how we feel.  I had one of these "ah-ha" moments the other day and am sharing in hopes it might help others understand, too.

People ask what the pain feels like, when it really hits.  This is the best I can explain it...

Labor and delivery is an experience like no other. There are emotional phases of the process that occur in sync with the physical process.

While laboring there is such an intensity. Anxiety and anticipation fuel adrenaline and drive the whole process.  There is excitement and nervousness.  A whole new world is approaching.  A new life is joining the family, a new challenge, a new reward.  A new hope, a new fear. 

The delivery process is surreal.  The pain is intense, the desire to hurry through and meet the baby fuels every second and every push and every pain.  The reward at the end is worth it, drives it, generates an energy that's immeasurable.

Then the baby arrives.  At that point it doesn't matter if you've been in labor two days, two hours, not at all ... doesn't matter if you pushed for hours, minutes, or are delivering via c-section.  The moment the baby escapes your body is surreal.

In that moment everything shifts.

You're left in the anticipation and anxiety of the long awaited arrival of your child.  All the anticipation intensifies.  Your heart is beating so hard in your chest it may burst.  Time stops. 

You can literally hear every sound.  The tick of the clock reverberates.  Everyone is holding their breath.  Everyone is watching a listening for the baby to welt out their first cry and announce "I am here!".  Seconds feel like minutes, minutes like hours...

When that first cry happens the rush of love and joy brings the room to tears.  All the anticipation, fear, nervousness flees and pure bliss fills every soul.  The sound of the cries is the sweetest of all sounds, the reassurance of new life, new hope, new love.  Life paused for just a moment, and restarted with an intensity and renewed life inside you that you never knew could exist.

So imagine that suspension of time never being broken. Imagine that cry never comes.  You're trapped in that abyss between the excitement and anticipation of labor and that release and joy of new life.  You're just stuck.

When labor hit hard with Colton and it was time to push I actually forgot for a moment that my son was already gone.  The adrenaline kicked in, the anticipation of seeing him overwhelmed my heart, and my only focus was meeting him.

So he came out and my doctor held him up for me to see and I started at him, waiting.  I honestly looked at him in dumbfounded wonder.  Why wasn't he crying?? Why wasn't he moving?? I was perplexed.  It took what felt like minutes, but was probably seconds, for it to settle in that he was dead.  That I would never hear his cry.  That I'd never see him move.  I'd never feel his breath.  I'd never  nurse him or change his diaper ...

When that cry never comes the release, the joy, never comes.  All that is left is the tick of the clock. The silence of the abyss.  The silence.  The gap between what was and what was supposed to be.

When it finally settled in he wasn't going to cry I just thought "what now".  I still haven't figured that out. 

Life does go on. But living doesn't.  While one foot goes in front of the other, and work and parenting and day-to-day continues, part of you is stuck.  Still stuck in that abyss.  A part of you is left there, in that lost space. 

People sometimes say "a part of you died" when you lose a child.  I believe it's in that moment, in that space, where that part stays. Where part of you is lost and will never rejoin you.  Part of your soul is forever sucked in the abyss between labor and love.  Lost in loss.  Never to breath again, never to exist ... just like the child that never cried and broke the abyss.

The Truth

The truth is I'm scared shitless.

Being pregnant again isn't full of joy and happiness.  It's not healing a single ache or pain of losing Colton.  If anything, it's magnifying so many feelings I've blocked for so long.  I'm facing demons and pains that I didn't even know existed.  And I cannot escape them, and therefore I'm being forced to face them. 

I feel absolutely neurotic.  Here are some of my off-the-rocker-losing-my-mind thoughts::

I sometimes want to beg my doctor to take her out now.  Yes, she'd be in the NICU but she'd have a better chance there than in me.  I already failed one baby.

I have the number to the cemetery written on a pad at work.  I have more than once started to dial there number to offer a deposit on a plot next to Colton.  God forbid she die and not be buried next to her brother.

Every ache and pain I know that her placenta is separating, that I'm going into preterm labor, that I'm losing her too.  I even rushed to the doctor once already.  They confirmed ... nothings wrong.

I poke my stomach. A lot. If she's not moving, I'm panicking.

I'm terrified of birth.  Terrified.  What if she doesn't breath? What if she doesn't cry? What if she DOES??

Does Colton feel like I'm replacing him?? I only just moved all his clothes out of the dresser and I cannot adequately explain the level of GUILT I feel for it. 

Every day I feel like I'm losing my mind a little more. I find myself consumed many times by the what-if's and the what-did's. 

I know that I'm my own worst enemy right now.  I know I'm living in fear, not faith.  I just don't know how to not to ...

I am in counseling ... a lot of counseling.  And I'm comitting to blogging more about how I feel.  To help myself, maybe to help others, mostly to help this little girl.  I have three months to fix this.  She needs me, 100% of me.

If God allows me to keep her, that is...