Two and three

I got a note from friend telling me she is pregnant again, due this summer. I was immediately happy for her, but, there it was again. That pang, that needle of jealously. When this baby is born, we will have three children each, six children total. When we get together, five children will play together. I'm happy for her. I just wish I could be happy without that little twinge. 

Twice in recent days, people we don't know well, upon meeting Elizabeth, have made comments about us having a third. In both cases, somebody else made a comment or asked a question, and I never set the record straight. I didn't explain that we have three children, though they can only see two with us.

I always thought I'd like to have two or three children. One seemed lonely. Four seemed like maybe too many. Three was what I knew. Three seemed right, but at least two. So two or three. Somehow it feels like I have two and three. How many kids do you have? Three total, but two here. Three in my heart, but two to raise. How many kids do you have?

Home

I very much consider where I live now home, but my parents house is still home too. I'm home at their house for the week—a week of chaos (7 adults, 5 kids, 2 dogs in a small house), staying up too late with my sisters, laughing until we almost pee our pants; a week coming home covered in salt and sand and sunscreen (nothing like a shower after a day at the beach). Tomorrow my cousins will come and we'll be at the beach from breakfast to dinner. We'll come home tired and sunburned and put the kids to bed. And then I won't go to my high school reunion.

I never committed to going or not going. There are a few people I'd really like to see, friends I've almost kept in touch with over the past twenty years. There are some people I'm curious to see and find out what they are doing. There are a couple of people I don't want to see, but mostly there are people I don't really care about either way. And I don't know who knows. Do you have kids? How old? I don't stumble over these questions as much as I used to, but I don't like answering them. I get weary thinking about it. It's easier to walk into a room full of strangers who I know don't know than a room full of people I once knew who may or may not know.

A one-time friend stopped by two years ago as we were getting ready for the parade. I was pregnant with Kathleen and just over 6 months out from Henry's death. I had walked on the beach that morning with my cousin's baby, enjoying her little body snuggling against my chest as we walked by the waves, but also lamenting that I never got Henry to the beach, that he never saw the ocean I sang to him about so many times. Mostly, I was having a good day, I was with my family. I was safe and content and I didn't want to break that by saying I had a little boy and he died. I didn't know if she knew, but I just didn't want to have that conversation right then. As she was leaving, my sister told her. I haven't seen or heard from her since. And this bothers me more than I realized.

A good friend of my sister's who had lost touch with her for a while got in touch with her back in March. They talked for a long time and they caught up on news. He emailed me after they talked and we've played Scrabble on Facebook and chatted there. He didn't shy away, but you never know who will.

There are plenty of people out there who don't know. And I don't feel like telling that story. I don't feel like agreeing that I have my daughter now but pointing out that I still miss and grieve for my baby boy. And, because I overanalyze things, I've thought about this and debated whether I should go because I should tell this story, because I shouldn't be a coward. Ten years ago, I didn't go to my reunion either. It fell on 4th of July weekend. I was here, but so were my cousins and friends who came to visit. I decided I'd rather spend the evening with them. That's what I'm doing this time too. There are kids to settle, games to play, cookies and ice cream to eat. My sisters and I will stay up too late even if we're tired; my mom will almost fall asleep playing a game with us. We'll all finally agree to go to bed saying we'll regret staying up so late when the kids are up in a few hours. And we will be tired, but we won't regret it—and we won't stop doing it.

Right now there is a cool breeze coming up from the harbor. The air is dry, the sun shining. My dad is running errands and all the others are at the playground. Kathleen went down for an early nap and I'm enjoying a little quiet and breathing deeply the ocean air.

It's good to be home.

Henry's mom

I took Kathleen to the parent center today. I was chatting with a mom I don't know. She started to say something about when they start to crawl, then paused and asked if Kathleen was my first. Oh, the dreaded question.

What she wanted to know was: Have you done this before? So I explained that Kathleen was my second child, but that my first died at 6 months, so this was my first time dealing with crawling. She expressed sympathy and then a baby, which, I don't know, distracted us, and we came back to her comment on crawling.

It's not getting easier to say my baby died, but I think I'm getting better at it.

Shortly after that exchange, another mom, one who looked familiar though I couldn't place her, said to me, "Are you Henry's mom?" I told her I was and she said she knew me from the baby group at the hospital. She had a brand-new baby in arms and her 2+ year old, the one I had known only as a tiny baby.

When I go out in places where children are plentiful, I can't help but look for familiar faces chasing the 2-year-olds, but until today, I hadn't seen any. I thought it would be harder (as I am wont to do). Instead, I found it nice to be known, to be recognized, by somebody as Henry's mom.

Patterns

The other night, I sat down and read through my blog posts. I do this occasionally, the same way I read through old journals. I do it to see where I was, who I was, and how far I've come, and to find the patterns that emerge over months and years.

Earlier this month:
Sometimes talking about him seems so hard.
"And you have a son, Henry."
"Yes, we do."
It's that simple.

It's a theme I found repeated. Back in March, I wrote about talking about Henry at two baby groups:
I don't purposefully hide Henry. I don't avoid talking about him, because I do like to talk about him. But perhaps sometimes I think too much about talking about him.

[The group leader] also said that whenever I say his name she pictures his beautiful little face. Somebody thought of my baby yesterday—and all I had to say was his name.


I described getting together with somebody I had met when I took Henry to babygroup, how hard I expected it to be. How natural it was.

In July, there was the surprise of people willing to talk beyond platitudes and glossing over:
It is nice when people aren't afraid to talk about my baby and my loss and the wonder of his life and my sadness. I'm always surprised when I find them. 


And in August, there was my Facebook fiasco cleared up.

It's clear: I get anxious about talking about Henry, even though I've seen again and again that it can be a good experience. So why is it still so hard?

Maybe it's this:
It still hurts, still feels like a little piece of me dies when I say, "He died."

Or the memory of what it felt like when somebody just walked away stands out more strongly than any other.

Or I don't know what to say when somebody says, "I'm sorry" and there is a space that I feel like I need to fill.

Or  sometimes I feel like Henry is still buried under all the tubes and wires and procedures and anxiety and fear and to get to talking about him I need to tell about all that.  And sometimes that's exhausting.

Sometimes people have opened the door. They have asked a question about him or have given space to talk about him. Other times I need to open the door, especially with new people I meet. Each time I have to choose to open it and wonder what I will find behind it. And that's the scary part, the unknown outside the door each time. So that's what I'm working on: talking about Henry, saying I have two children, I have a baby who died—and figuring out what I want to say next, if I have the chance. I've been working on it for a while. You've seen me working on it for nine months now, and doubtless you will see me working on it for many more. Forgive me if I repeat myself, if I learn this lesson over and over and over again. Maybe someday it will stick.

Have you found patterns, things you keep coming back to, as you write about your baby or loss?

What I Expected

I walked down to the café at the end of the street the other day with Kathleen. A woman there smiled at me, asked me how old Kathleen was, and then asked "the question": Is she your first? I said that no, she was my second and took a deep breath in preparation for the follow up question that never came. Instead the woman said, "You can tell. You're too relaxed." I smiled at her and thought, "You have no idea."

I suppose it could have gone either way. After what we went through with Henry, I could have been a nervous wreck. I could right now be paralyzed with the fear that gripped me during much of my pregnancy. But I'm not. Maybe I'm relaxed with Kathleen because she is my second baby. I have done this before, at least this part of it, though it was so different. Maybe I'm relaxed because I know I only have so much control over the situation. I think I'm relaxed with Kathleen because in so many ways this is easy, normal, expected.

Summer 2007—Same café, same corner, me, my mom, and Henry. He was roughly Kathleen's age now. We had walked down, pushing Henry in the stroller, and when we got there my mom helped me juggle Henry, his oxygen tank, the monitor, and his diaper bag. I don't know that I enjoyed being there, but I was satisfied. Proud that we made it out, that I had accomplished one of the things I had expected to do with my new baby. Relaxed? Not at all. Surgery was looming. We had a better handle on keeping the oxymeter from driving us crazy than we did in the first week or so, but we were constantly on guard for signs. How is his color? Is he struggling to breathe? Does it look like he's retracting? What are his numbers? It isn't that I did not enjoy any of that time, but I was constantly vigilant—and waiting. I counted the days until he'd have his surgery and life would be "normal."

With Henry nothing went as expected and Brian and I did so many things to lend some sense of normalcy to our life which seemed any but normal. With Kathleen, I tried not to expect anything, but things went smoothly and life seems normal.

In fact, life is quite mundane lately, and I’m not complaining. Our days have fallen into something of a routine of waking early, changing diapers, feeding, smiles and play, changing diapers, feeding, sleeping, changing diapers, feeding, fussing, . . . We take walks when the weather cooperates, entertain visitors, and make the occasional outing. I wash bottles and diapers and tiny, cute outfits. This is what I expected having a new baby at home would be like, what I expected the first time around—except it's not, not quite, because I have done this before and I am missing Henry.

I hate the idea that losing somebody helps us sort out our priorities. I like to think mine were in order before and not much has changed. Family has always been high on the list. Surely even if I hadn't lost Henry, I'd take the time to trace Kathleen's tiny ear and stare deep into her eyes and have my heart melted by the warmth of her tiny hand on my chest as she sucks. I'd hold her tight and enjoy her warm body snuggling into mine. Yes, surely I would. But perhaps I wouldn't caress her cheek quite so often or keep her in my lap when she could surely be transferred to her bed or recognize the wonder of her being quite as deeply. Perhaps I would be distracted more easily from her smile or take the time to hold her less. Perhaps I would find the repetition, the very ordinariness of our days to be dull. But I relish every smile, I hold her knowing that this simple act is not a given, and I delight in our day-to-day, normal life. I will mark milestones with Kathleen, but in between them, I marvel in the miracle of the mundane—the weight of her warm body curled on mine, the quiet coos, and sweet smiles.

Music, Memories, and Meetings

Music and memories
Saturday I took Kathleen to see Elizabeth Mitchell (our morning music in the afternoon!). I enjoyed it (Kathleen slept through it in her sling), though some moments made me sad. Two songs almost brought me to tears.

When they played "Three Little Birds," a montage of Henry images played through my head: sitting on the end of our couch feeding him a bottle with his surgery approaching, me singing along almost desperate to believe that "every little thing's gonna be alright"; smiling at him in the bright morning light of his room in the CICU, scared, but hopeful; standing with Brian's brother and sister next to Henry's bed, the night he almost died in October, when we still weren't quite sure he was going to make it . . .

They ended with "Peace Like a River." This is one of the songs I sang to Henry all the time. It was the only song I picked for his funeral. I felt like I should choose music and readings that were meaningful, but I couldn't think. I think Brian suggested something from the CD, and that was the first thing that came to mind. Henry did bring me peace and love and joy, though so often during his life I felt fear and anger and frustration.
***

Vanishing act
At the show, another mama came over, noticing I had a very little one. Both our babies were two months old. We chatted about front carriers and neck strength and when they could face forward. Before I could ask her name or where she was from, she posed "the question." Is she your first?

I don't have trouble with this one. No, our second. It's the follow up that gets me every time. Oh, how old is your first? I took a deep breath. He passed away just over a year ago. He was 6 1/2 months old. I had a chance to say that he spent half his life in the hospital, but not that I played Elizabeth Mitchell for him every morning. She murmured an I'm sorry. And then she was gone. No nice to meet you, no enjoy the show. Just gone.
***

Finally we meet
When the show ended, I went over to talk to Birdie's Mama. We have been emailing and talking and not quite managing to get together, so it was good to finally see her and especially to meet her sweet Holdyn. We stood there after the show, both teary, recognizing each other's happy and sad, meeting each other's second baby for the first time and honoring the ones we were missing.