too precious to forget…
once or twice a year I allow myself a brief moment to remember the pregnancies— the babies that were and then were not. I usually keep them to myself. like a lot of us do. in my work we call this type of loss a disenfranchised grief. one we don’t feel we have the right to grieve, mourn, talk about. no matter the circumstances, our grief (if we carry it) around these losses is valid. real. lasting. complex. heavy. painful.
I have never written about my babies. I say their names in October, because the organization I work for allows me that time, space, opportunity. but that’s generally as far as it goes. my living child and I do a craft and light a candle and acknowledge they existed and we move on. until the next october. this post is for them. they deserve to be known and my heart deserves to share them. for christian and peanut lemen. my two babies who didn’t get to be. this is for you. xox - mom
my beloved christian conceived in Ord, NE in a church parsonage (hence the name). I just wanted to know you. to be your mama. I’m sorry I wasn’t brave enough to fight harder. to prove them wrong. my sweet angel.
— mom and babe torn apart on 12/15/95.
I was 19 and been living with my soulmate at his mom’s church parsonage in tiny Ord, NE after getting evicted from our first apartment together. His mom and I were struggling to get along, and I left Ord to stay with my mom, step-dad and sister in Plattsmouth to help with my beautiful 3 month old twin niece and nephew (Alex and Dillon). when my period was late the following month, I told a friend my age, who had a child of her own, and she took me to get a pregnancy test. my hands shook as I held the stick. my boyfriend still in Ord, not knowing what was happening 4+ hours from him as he worked his evening coffee shop shift in that tiny NE town. I can’t remember whether my friend stayed in the bathroom with me or waited outside with her fella and their little one. . . but I remember the shared explosion of excitement when I announced “we were in the pink”. I remember falling in love with that tiny babe, and starting to dream in rose colored glasses about our beautiful future together. my partner was rendered speechless and left in the middle of his barista shift to drive to be with me (long before the existence of smartphones). in the meantime, I broke the news to my sister who shared my naive optimism. she watched as I flipped through her “1000 baby names” book, underlining my favorites. my mom was next to know. she came into the room and I handed her the test. fury (fear & experience having had my sister at 16) and threats about how my life would be ruined. tearing the proverbial glasses off my face and stomping them to tiny bits. she made it VERY clear that I would do NOTHING. have NOTHING. BE NOTHING. I. RUINED. IT. ALL. my love finally arrived. terrified. supportive. dazed and confused. (he did look like slater). he held my hand in the freezing cold - we were kicked out of my mom’s house and banished to the “crx-dx-Highplanesdrifter” (our shit car with only one working door the other had a bungee cord which ran across to keep it closed). not to return until we “made the right decision”. the heater didn’t work. the cold got colder. the silence got louder. and the pressure got heavier. the voices got scarier. the answers didn’t sound the way I needed them to sound. I didn’t understand. it wasn’t making sense. why were people not getting it? No, I didn’t know how we’d do it. I didn’t need to. I never doubted we’d figure it out. we had to. this was my baby. Love would carry us through. Love was all we needed. why didn’t they understand? WHY WAS NO ONE COMING TO OUR RESCUE?!
I was wrong. Love wasn’t enough. and a piece of me died with you that day. I’m sorry love alone couldn’t save you. I’m so very sorry.
I poured all of that love into my niece and nephew, instead.
sweet peanut. conceived in Feb 2006 after a drunken night at the gay bar. I thought maybe you were christian coming back- to me. it seemed so serendipitous, you and me. but you didn’t stay. and I believed I absolutely. deserved. that. crushing. pain.
almost 10 years after losing christian, I found myself unexpectedly pregnant with little “peanut”. I was almost 30. peanut’s dad and I had been dating sort of off and on for several months. when he learned I was pregnant, he suggested marriage. because we had been more “off” than “on”, I said, “mmm…let’s coparent, instead”. I moved into the top part of a house just a few blocks from peanut’s dad so we could be close to one another. I had just started a brand new job (the first non-service industry) my first “real job” and it was in the wedding (and baby) industry. my supervisor/trainer was 8 months pregnant. she was the first work person I told. when we went for an ultrasound at 11.5 weeks, we learned that peanut had stopped developing at some point pretty early on, but my body didn’t want to let go. I didn’t want to let go either. looking back, I remembered a moment, that I believe was the moment peanut stopped thriving. I’d been asleep (or that space between awake and asleep) and I sat straight up, in a panic - I remember gasping. the wind pulled out of me. something was very wrong. I convinced myself it was a panic attack (something I’d grown very familiar with) and eventually settled myself back to sleep. [I’d go on to experience that feeling the exact moment my aunt “charlie” died. I think that was my soul’s knowing that peanut was gone.] No heartbeat. I was shattered. I couldn’t breathe and I hated that doctor for telling me my baby wasn’t living. I wanted to stay there longer, looking at that screen. studying every inch. searching again and again to make sure they just missed it. the heartbeat. I needed to be a million percent certain there was no chance peanut could actually be alive, so I went to another doctor at a different clinic for an ultrasound. praying and wishing and hoping against hope they were wrong. upon the second confirmation that peanut had died, I vehemently flipped off the heavens, picked up a pack of menthols and a 6 pack of good beer and went home alone, to punish my body for breaking my heart. I smoked every last cigarette and drank every one of those beers as a big F&#@ You to my body for its betrayal. I had to have a d&c because my body didn’t recognize the loss, but they couldn’t get it scheduled until the next week. a week I spent in a daze carrying my dead child inside of me. one I wanted to bring back to life more than anything in the world. I begged for a miracle. when it didn’t come, I was broken. peanut’s dad was grieving, too. that was the last of any “us”. the day I returned to work to a vase of condolence flowers, I listened to that supervisor on speaker phone as she was in labor. the gaggle of female coworkers huddled in the cube next to me, cheering her on. exploding in excitement. as I sobbed as quietly as I could. until I could get home and drink and smoke the pain away. I was angry and broken. full of shame and guilt. surely I had brought this on somehow, and deserved it. but peanut didn’t. I didn’t stop crying (or self-medicating. or hating my body) for a very long time.
I had asked the second doctor for an ultrasound picture. he said “oh, you don’t want to hold onto that.” I wish I had pushed back. it was the only thing I could have held besides these memories. I did want that photo. I remember the first screen. those tiny fingers. toes. “is that my baby?” ….and the sonographer’s LONG, painful silence. my sweet, sweet peanut. I’m sorry we didn’t get more time.
“you lived [if only for a moment]. my womb was your home and your presence there was my everything. may we recognize each other when we meet again. and may you forgive me for not being able to save you. ”