Tonight I stood naked in the rain in a thunderstorm.
Because healing.
Because people with broken hearts do strange things.
Because I have a lot of inhibitions.
Because I have so many insecurities.
Because I am sad.
Because my baby died and because my marriage broke down and because I’m hurt and because I miss someone.
Because days like today the screaming comes back.
Tonight I stood naked in the rain in a thunderstorm.
And then I felt less sad.
On Christmas Day the screaming comes back. For the first few months after The Angel Princess died there was constant screaming in my head. All day, every day: MY BABY DIED. It felt like the only words I ever spoke or heard were those three. Nothing else existed except that one fact. She died. The end. It was the end of everything.
The screaming has been gone for a long time now. The hurt and grief are still there, she’s always close, but the screaming is gone. Thank god it’s gone.
It’s my third Christmas without her. And I’ve been so emotionally preoccupied with the end of my marriage, and feeling hurt and resentful about someone I cared for, that I forgot to buy her a candle. On her first christmas I had one of the vases I used at my wedding engraved for her. I intended on burning a candle in it every year on Christmas. And I only realised this morning that I forgot to get one this year. And then the screaming came back. The screaming stayed while I drove to the cemetery. The screaming stayed while I drove back.
So I sat on the bathroom floor and sobbed into a towel. Because my life is really hard right now, and on top of it all I had to go to the cemetery to visit my baby. Because I’m 26 and I have a dead daughter.
From my journal on her First Christmas.
25-12-12
It’s Christmas night, and today was all horribly wrong. Today should have been about “baby’s 1st Christmas” stockings, and bibs and onesies, but instead, not one single person in my family even said my baby’s name. Instead I cried my eyes out in the shower and when I crawled into bed still crying, my 2.5 year old asked what was wrong, I taught her the expression “broken heart”. She asked if we should go to the doctors to make it better.
I have to say I expected more of my family. I’m not sure whether I am more sad or angry. I made sure it was obvious that I wanted Paisley acknowledged.
I bought a beautiful picture of a butterfly drawn in the sand and decorated with Christmas decorations, with the words “Remembering Paisley this Christmas” and enlarged it and put it in a frame next to the tree. It was moved away. I printed smaller copies of the same picture, glued them to scrapbook card, and put one in everyone’s christmas card. They said “that’s nice” and put it back in the envelope.
I had a vase engraved “Merry Christmas Paisley Angel” and burnt a beautiful red candle in it all day. No one noticed.
I wrapped a present up to each myself, my husband and my older daughter from Paisley, paisley print clothes for The Sunshine and I and another sand butterfly just with her name for my husband. Everyone was so busy with their own present grab that it lost all meaning.
I am so sad. I want my baby here so badly and I feel so enraged at the injustice of it. I am even more sad that on her very first Christmas we couldn’t even visit her. My mother recently moved 4 hours away from the rest of her family, and her and her husband couldn’t get away from work, so all the family was going down to her. I didn’t want to go. It’s a hassle and I didn’t want to leave the only place where my daughter physically is.
Then we arrived and overlapped for one night with my mother’s husband’s son and wife and their new baby. My grandmother was looking on at the baby smiling and cooing and I felt like I had been stabbed in the heart because I seem to be the only one who noticed that my baby isn’t here.
My aunt started crying today because she misses her 21 year old daughter who has been over seas for 2 months. Everyone comforted her and was sympathetic “oh yes it’s hard to be apart on christmas” and I it took everything I have to stop myself from screaming. I know what it’s like to miss a daughter. I miss my daughter all day every day. I ache with how much I miss her. My heart is permanently hurting. But my daughter isn’t coming home. I can’t pick up the phone and call her. I won’t get 21 years with her. I won’t get a single day. I will never know what she would have grown up to be or what her laugh would have sounded like. I got robbed of the most precious thing at all, and on Christmas Day, in a house full of people who are blood related to her, no one even bothered to notice that there is one less person around the table then there should be.
My heart is bleeding.
My little Rainbow Princess! I am so sorry I haven’t written for you in so long! It’s been a huge 4 months for us with my and daddy’s separation, and the blog has been proper neglected.
The last time I wrote for you you were 13 months old and so much has changed, I hardly know where to start!
At 17 months you are in full blown Hurricane Toddler mode. You are a right little handful! You’ve been an adventurous climber for a long time now and nothing is safe! The chairs all have to be left well away from the table so you don’t climb up, the flip side of this however is that you can drag the chairs and get up anyway. You are a little princess of destruction, every toy box, every shelf, every draw, are tipped out, pulled out and strewn across the house, every day. Picking up after you is a full time job in itself!
The kitchen bin hasn’t been safe for a long time and has taken permanent residency on the bench, much to my dismay. You don’t stop moving, and the ensuring that every inch of the floor is covered in toys, clothes and stuffed teddies is your daily personal vendetta against me. It’s ok though, I’m sure one day I’ll be able to walk through the house without it seeming like a minefield.
You are a busy little bee my sweet girl, you’re always playing with something or trotting about the house, a look of in-depth thought on your face. You are quite happy to play independently for good long amounts of time, and that really does make life easier for mummy.
You are an excellent conversationist, and although I can’t understand a word you are saying, I love our little chats. Your favourite words are mum, dad, bear, Leo (the lion your companion teddy) and no. You babble all day long, but the intense conversations you have with your daddy on the phone are by far the cutest to witness.
Your verbal comprehension is excellent, you understand so much of what is being said to you, and respond appropriately and it amazes me. You are quite good at non verbally communicating what you want or need as well. You will walk to the sink holding your cup to ask for a drink of water, or lay down on your nappy for a nappy change. You like to do things for yourself, as always, especially washing yourself, with a face-washer after meals, or rubbing the soap bubbles on in the bath.
You love to play in the backyard on the deck, and in the splash pool. Pouring water over the grass keeps you entertained for fabulous amounts of time, so I often find myself sending you outside when I need to get something done at home. You have loved the trampoline for a long time now, and can easily get yourself on and off using the slide we have against it. You have excellent gross motor coordination, and the gymnast in me was superbly impressed with your 2 foot bouncing at 14 months. (Don’t tell the very athletic Sunshine Princess, but even she couldn’t do that at that age, so well done baby girl!)
You are loving playing with dolls at the moment, cuddling them, giving them bottles and food, and changing their nappies. Stacking, building blocks and any kind or sorting sorting also keep you busy, you are really into categorising things at the moment, like bringing me all the thongs from the shoe box, or putting allof the pairs together.
Action songs are a big hit at the moment, and it is super cute watching you copy and act out the songs, especially your favourite “The Old Grey Cat”, although sometimes I feel like I’m on repeat all day.
For the better part of the last 6 weeks or so you have been sleeping through 11-12 hours straight most nights, without waking, which has been a more than welcome change to your usual night wakings. Your day nap is usually 2 hours, but if you wake too late in the day, or if you sleep too long you have trouble falling asleep at bedtime. You definitely don’t fall asleep as easily as The Sunshine Princess, but you often put yourself to sleep at nighttime now too. The rest of the time we bounce, although it’s getting hard as you get bigger, 9kgs doesn’t sound like much, until you’ve tried holding it on one arm for half an hour on a fit ball!
You are still breastfeeding, just once a day before bed, although you happily go to bed without it when you’re with your daddy. I’ve spent 4 whole nights away from you now, the first two times I put you to bed and then left, and daddy slept over with you, the next two, a few weeks later, daddy had you the whole time. It was incredibly difficult to be away from you, I miss you so much, and it’s difficult to let go, but I know you are in excellent hands, and coming home to you after some time on my own feels spectacularly rewarding.
You have learnt to throw some outstanding tantrums. Which is age appropriate and normal, but yours can be fairly extreme, and difficult to contain. You have gotten into the terrifying habit of slamming your head on the ground when you are angry or frustrated, and then you end up screaming because you’ve hurt yourself. We had about 2 weeks where it was particularly bad, but I’ll admit I wasn’t very available to your emotional needs at that time, and since things have gotten better for me, the frequency and intensity of the tantrums have significantly decreased. It’s been a startling reminder of exactly how much my mood and emotional well being affects yours. I’m relieved to say that things are definitely improving though, for all of us.
You are becoming more bossy, possessive and headstrong, much like your big sister (and your mummy, if we’re being really honest) so there can sometimes be a lot of tension in the house. This is where I tell you that you, my little friend, have taken to pushing, biting and hitting to get what you want, and I am not impressed. It has also seems to have lessened over the last week or so, but I cannot wait until this phase is over, or when my reprimands have a little more effect. Bullying is not on little lady. Not on at all.
You are starting to really trust in the adults around you, and willingly accept, and even seek, comfort from people other than me. Your godmother babysat you a few weeks ago and had you in bed with no problems. You played up a little more for my cousin the following week, but overall, you are pretty accepting of the people who are caring for you more regularly now.
You are growing so fast baby girl, I’ve missed documenting your changes month to month and will hopefully be a little more on my game in the New Year. I love you so so SO very much Rainbow Princess.
My last post about grief anger received mixed responses. I often find it difficult to be told that I need to accept what happened to my daughter, especially from people who have never experienced baby loss grief in particular.
I have taken a break from my blog for several months while some big events have been happening in my family, I often find that the baby loss world becomes too much for me, and I need to take a step back to regain perspective. Instead I have been journaling privately, by hand, which is something I don’t do very often. The first entry in the particular diary I am using is from a bit over a year ago, about 16 months after The Angel Princess died, and when The Rainbow Princess was around 2.5 months old.
I have found it interesting to reflect on how angry I was, the darkness I felt, and how much things have changed over the last 12 months. It also gave me an interesting perspective on who I was as a person when a friendship that would change everything really started. And perhaps why that friendship became as significant as it did.
I find this entry really confronting to read, it is so filled with anger and hate and bitterness. I remember writing it. It was the middle of the night, and after putting The Rainbow Princess back to bed after a feed I went downstairs and scribbled this. I remembering feeling that I was going to burst with anger. Here was my rainbow baby, she was perfect and everything I could have hoped for, and yet, I didn’t feel remotely healed. I didn’t feel any better about the death of my baby. And so many people seemed to have forgotten about her now that The Rainbow had arrived. Everyone else had closed the book on that chapter of my life, but it was still very very real for me, and I was losing touch with outlets for my pain. It was writing this entry that made me seek help. I started seeing a psychologist for the first time since her death, and have continued to see her this entire year. Reading entries like this makes me realise just how much emotional work I have done over the last 15 months. It does make me proud that I no longer feel as dark as I did when I originally wrote this, but there is sadness too at how some of the ways I achieved healing for myself irreparably hurt people I love.
I have transcribed the entry as it is written. Grammar errors are from the original. Please excuse the explicits.
24-9-13.
My biggest secret is probably that I still cry for you everyday. I cry because I am sad, I cry because I am angry that I’m sad, then because I am sad to that I feel angry to be sad. I wish I could feel like it’s ok to be sad, I miss you, my heart aches for you, but I don’t want to be sad forever. Sometimes I wonder how much I am grieving for you and how much I am grieving for me. For the loss of such a huge part of me. For the fact that I feel like I will never be completely happy, or whole, because I could never possibly get over what happened to me, being put in the position where the only reasonable decision was to kill my child. I had to purposely take action to end a life I had willingly and lovingly created. How do I find a way to be ok with that? How do I find a way to be a new self living with that? Most people don’t know the circumstance of your death because I can’t tell them because they will judge me. I don’t lie, I say “she passed away” if they ask why I say “she had a very rare genetic disorder”. Very rarely do I get to say “we chose to end our pregnancy before our baby was born into a world that would be come a medical battle that she had slim to none chance of beating”.
I feel so robbed. Sometimes I get angry at you for ruining my life. I know that sounds really melodramatic, my life is good, but for the rest of it I have to live with the grief for you. At 24 years old, with 75% of my life ahead of me, my daughter died. She died. My daughter is dead. DEAD. Not coming back. Not ever. I held a dead body. A corpse. And I kissed it and cuddled it. Bathed it. Dressed it. Loved it. Because it was my BABY. How fucked is my life that I held my dead baby? No one should have to do that and I am so so angry. I feel like I could explode I am so so angry. I am so angry I shake. I don’t know how I get through the days without screaming. I have never felt rage like this. I am angry that no one else has to do this? Ok, so other people have lost babies, I know, it’s common, but why do so many of my friends get to have the good years? I don’t. I don’t get a happy fairy tale. 6 months after I married my dream man we buried our baby. Our relationship will forever be marred by the decision we had to make together, by grief we feel so differently, by unspoken hate and anger and bitterness, not at each other but at the whole situation, which changes us as people and we can only hope doesn’t come between us.
I feel so alone in missing her. I am her mother, I’m the only one who knows what she feels like alive. I breathed for her and I would have done anything to keep breathing for her.
I have 3 girls and the only way they can ever be together is if I take the other 2 to the cemetery at the place where my baby rots in the ground. I feel sick in my stomach every time I think of her.
Sometimes I think back to those first few months and I just don’t know how I did it. How did I carry a baby for 9 days knowing she would die soon? How did I find someone to make her clothes? How did I chose what flowers to wear at her funeral? How did I give birth to her, take her to the morgue, come home without her and get up and look after a 2 year old the next day? Why was it me? Why didn’t it happen to someone else? Is it because I don’t believe in God? Is there a god somewhere who is punishing me for not believing? Have I done something so awful in my life that I deserved this? What? What did I do? What did I do? Has my life been too easy? Have I been to selfish? Am I not a good mother? Did I not deserve a baby? What? Can someone please tell me why this happened to me?
How do I distinguish between wanting to be whole again and not wanting to forget you? How can I do both? There is a part of me that is just gaping, wanting to be filled by you, but you never can, how do I recover? How do I get over you without forgetting you? Why did such a big part of me get taken away?
Will I ever be ok? How do I make your death something I can be ok with? It hurts too much.
I. Miss. You.
Your Mummy.
Painting The House Pink 