Rising and Setting

Charlotte would be four today. Amazing.

So, so much has changed in the past four years. I really don't recognize the life that was prior. I am now one semester away from my nursing degree; I am almost finished this term (only 2 finals to go) and then I have a summer full of full-time clinical experience, then the national licensing exam, then done.

I get a lot of comments from my clinical instructors, usually about 1) my "excellent" verbal communication skills, 2) my calmness, even in stress, and 3) my empathy for patients. Number 1 I can attribute to years of teaching and dealing with parents and students, but numbers 2 and 3 are all Charlotte. Little everyday stressors seem light when you have watched your baby die, and if the world can keep spinning after that, then surely I can be calm through a class presentation or with a challenging patient. After being the patient in the bed, looking eagerly up at a nurse for words or comfort, a smile, anything that would have made me feel human in those horrible post-partum days, it's easy to empathize with a patient or family member who's undergoing their own version of hell in the hospital.

So, sweet Charlotte, I thank you for those gifts.
(although I would trade them all for you in a heartbeat)

M and I usually go out for dinner to mark Charlotte's birthday, but he's been sick with the flu so a few days ago we decided to wait until he's better and my exams are over before going out. So, today is an ordinary rainy day, and I am home alone as Bee is at daycare, and M at work. I should be studying, but I find myself pensive.

4 years is a long time. A long, long time. Miss you baby girl.

Almost three years ago, I had one of my darkest of darkest days. Shadow baby had arrived, all pink and healthy, a baby girl of close friends. We had shared the pregnancy. Mine had ended far too soon, and hers was full-term. My baby girl was gone, and hers was chubby and healthy.

I think I went to bed for 2 days, maybe 3. It was agonizing.

Fast forward to yesterday. A phone call came at a similar time in the morning: It's a girl. 7lbs 10oz. She's perfect, mom is amazing. Their #2 had arrived, uncomplicated vag delivery, like the first. Everyone is great.

Yesterday, I did not need to go to bed. I did lose my breath a little bit, almost like someone had hit me in the stomach. I'm not sure if I was still uneasy because it was a little girl (I have had so many encounters with baby girls to this point I should be getting immune), or if it was a flashback to those dark dark days of three years ago. Probably a little bit of both.

I called M at work to tell him the news. We debated going up to visit in the afternoon, but decided that she was likely exhausted, would probably be discharged the next day and it was better to wait. A convenient excuse as neither of us was particularly excited about going. Horrible people, we are.

At any rate, I am nearly done my obstetrics rotation at school. I have given newborn baths, postpartum checks and helped moms breastfeed. I have witnessed births from a few feet away. I have watched excited grandparents fawn over babies, help new moms dress their baby for the first time and passed tissues to emotional dads. It has all been a whirlwind. I have coped and come home emotionally exhausted. I have two clinical days left and then I can say I survived.

How much can change in three years. Yet, the core is still the same.

Today has been a rough day.

Nursing school has been busy, to say the least. The program, condensed into 2 yrs instead of 4 for us "previously degreed" folk is known as being notoriously difficult. The reputation was not misleading. Over the past 7 months I have studied more than I ever have before. I have made new friends and rolled my eyes at others. It has been a roller coaster.

The fact that I also have been working part-time to pay for Bee's childcare etc just complicates matters.

In a few weeks our semester changes, and I find myself in the next block of courses: maternity and peds. This is the dream semester of most of my classmates- people are very excited, eager, and fighting over the coveted NICU placements because "babies are so cute". Babies are very cute, of course. Little do they know how bad the NICU can get; how much more there is than "cuteness".

Anyway, today was our last anatomy lab for the semester. Reproduction. I didn't know the topic until I arrived, and I dutifully examined specimens of ovaries, even a placenta. The prof brought out plastic models of babies in various gestations. There was one about Charlotte's size. I winced.

We were paraded to another room to look at the "wet specimens".

And here, there were babies, in all gestations, preserved in formaldehyde in large glass containers. Babies with hair, babies full term, babies with various birth defects.

I did the only thing I could do. I turned and walked out. They were not "wet specimens", these were somebody's children. Each baby represented a grieving family, lost potential, all of the anguish we've seen firsthand.

My classmates didn't say anything; neither did my prof. Perhaps they thought I needed to use the bathroom or the smell of formaldehyde was too strong for me. As far as I know, none of them know about Charlotte. It's not the type of thing that comes up in casual conversation and I know them so well by this point that I almost feel like a traitor for holding onto this huge part of my life like a secret. Over lunch, over a study table, as much as I would like to tell her story, there doesn't seem to be an appropriate time.

Sigh.

There have been many times when something pregnancy related has come up in class and up until today it was fine. Today was the first time that I had to leave. Now I'm worried, so very worried, about my mental state through the summer semester. I will help deliver babies, in the same hospital and same rooms where I had Charlotte and Adam. I will care for sick children, maybe sick babies. I will have flashbacks and emotional moments and somehow, hopefully, get through the day because I need this course to graduate.

In a week and a half, it will be three years. Three years. Feels like forever. Everything, everything has changed since then.

To say I don't share my classmates' enthusiasm about the "cute babies" is an understatement.

It has been a long, long time.

It's late here. M and Bee are sound asleep, and I've been up late studying. I started nursing school last month. It's ok. A lot of typical first-year hoop jumping, lots of busywork- quizzes worth next to nothing, group projects and the like. The material is interesting but shallow at this point- lots of introductory courses. The meat comes later.

Death has come up often. We have addressed the topic of how to handle a dying client. We have discussed pastoral care and referrals and the importance of learning to sit quietly and hold a patient's hand. There was even one entire power point slide on "when an infant dies". We were told in a sentence or two about mementos and helping the family say goodbye.

There is so much I can comment on, so many things I could add to the conversation. So much experience I've gained in my short life. More than I wish I had. I tend to stay quiet.

I am known to my class as a mom to an almost-one-year old baby boy. They know I had a complicated pregnancy; I have often offered hospital anecdotes in class. I have not shared about Charlotte.

***

How many lives do you live anyway? It certainly seems more than one, at least for me. The last two and a half years have been an entirely different lifetime than the years before. Everything, absolutely everything, changed. I kind of like the new me- I owe so much of my current personality to my sweet baby girl- and it's so hard to remember the old Heather. It's hard to remember much of anything, really, even still.

I was on GITW tonight, for the first time in a long time. I was scrolling down the page and the links to past posts were on the left, organized monthly, like they are on all blogs. The months scrolled by, and there were so many of them. You see, GITW was launched in Charlotte's month. I found it a few weeks later, and have followed ever since. All those months. I have been changed for all of those months. It is a long time. An entire new generation of dbm's are posting now. There are new members to our club, all the time. Still.

***

Adam turns one next week. He's happy and well-adjusted. He's learning to walk; he can take two steps. He's a beautiful little boy. Really is. I love him so and I still miss his sister. I want them both, but can't have it that way.

It's such a long road. It never really ends.

So, yesterday was Charlotte's 2nd birthday.

It was a crappy day. A crappy week actually. I find the days leading up to her birthday are the hardest- memories of hospital stays and bad ultrasounds, quiet-spoken doctors, hopeful moments and tragic moments. The day itself isn't as bad. Of course, yesterday was Easter Sunday so I had to be on my best behaviour at church. There was much difficult, celebratory music to lead, the most important service of the year for me.

There was a small vase of flowers on the organ bench. Little yellow tulips in a vase covered in butterflies. No card. I don't know who they were from, but I was touched that someone remembered. Whoever it was the only person who acknowledged the day.

Anyway, I made it through the service, and came home to a Bee sound asleep in his swing and M outside digging a hole for a new tree. After the tree planting we headed to the cemetery for a visit and brought balloons, like we did last year.

It was sad, but not as sad as last year. More wistful now. Easier to turn off, if that makes any sense.

We've kept ourselves busy this week. M has been his usual self: painting and gardening, little home projects here and there. I cooked. A lot. I baked cinnamon rolls and bread, a birthday cake for Charlotte. Made some yummy pork recipes and a few new soups. This is a new mechanism for me- before I was paralyzed, incapable of doing anything through the grief. Now, it's easier to keep busy. Keeps my mind off things. I'm amazed that I can turn my mind off now- I never ever thought that would be possible. I guess that's what happens over time.

I also gained three pounds. Oh well.

I feel so very far from Charlotte now. The last two years have felt like a separate lifetime. I can't imagine her as a toddler or even a chubby baby like Adam. I can't imagine our lives with her present, here, on earth, without the grief and anguish and everything that has reshaped us as people over the past two years. She changed us infinitely, likely more than we would have changed had she lived.

Happy Birthday, baby girl. We love you.

After Charlotte, I wanted everything to change. I quit my job. We contemplated moving (but instead just repainted and rearranged furniture). I lost touch with friends and moved into different circles. Everything did change, over time.

I remember reading (somewhere?) that you should wait for at least a year after a loss before making any drastic changes in your life. I had been planning to quit my job anyway, so I figured that was ok. We didn't move. I found another job in the same field. Time passed.

Then Adam came. Everyone told us, over and over, what a change that would bring into our lives. I was surprised how little things actually did change. Sure, it takes me longer to get out of the house than it used to and our living room is taken over by large plastic apparatuses, but I feel a lot less changed now than I did before/after Charlotte. Perhaps I already knew the biggest lesson of parenthood: how it feels to have a child be the center of your life. It's a lot easier when that child is alive.

Now that the 2-year mark is looming, I feel like I have some perspective. I don't think my decisions now are made out of grief, but are real, true decisions. I have decided to go back to school. I actually decided this early last summer, while still pregnant, and have been taking a couple of prerequisites this year. Starting in September, I'll be taking a full-time program in nursing.

If three years ago someone had told me I would be doing this, I would never, ever have believed them. I was (am) a musician- as artsy as it gets. I make a living by doing what all musicians do- a little teaching, a little gigging, a bit of everything. It's a labor of love, and requires so much passion to do it well. After Charlotte, I lost the passion.

When she died, my love for music died too. That didn't come out right. I still love music, but in not the same way. I no longer have the patience to sit and work through one phrase of Beethoven for hours at a time to get every note exactly right, to find the hidden meaning behind the notes. Before, it was worthwhile. Now, there are so many more important things in life. I need a change.

So, nursing it is. I don't know what discipline of nursing I want to explore, but I do know from a patient's perspective how important a nurse can be. Like you all, I had great, wonderful nurses and also horrible ones. I hope to be one of those wonderful ones.

So, a new chapter for me. We'll see where I go.

I had no intentions of fading into blog oblivion. Time came and went, and now it's been almost three months (!!!) since my last post.

Things are well. Bee is growing like a weed, is about 17 lbs now. He giggles and reaches for things, twists and turns. He's a joy, really is.

I still miss Charlotte. So, so much now. The two year anniversary is less than a month away. It falls on Easter Sunday this year, which means I have to actually face the world that day. Go to church, conduct the Hallelujah chorus, smile and focus. I'm sure it will be ok, although not what I would choose.

Two years. Really? Where did the time go? It seems like forever and nothing all at once. There aren't a lot of memories from that time. The first-year fog, then the months of bedrest and stress with the pregnancy, and now he's here. It all rolls into one really, and it's hard to believe that I've only had Adam for four and a half months. He was always present, it seems.

As he grows and starts to really develop a little personality, I find myself thinking, more and more, if Charlotte would have done this or that; would she have had the funny little head shake or if she would have been a redhead too. I'll never know.

I will post more frequently, I promise.