On Becoming Evolved

I find myself curious about the idea that suffering some type of trauma or pain makes you stronger, like an evolution. The world evolution brings a positive feeling to an otherwise dark subject matter. We tend to treat a painful past as something to whisper about, or feel ashamed of - to hide. Yet I find myself open to discussing people's worst experiences with interest, empathy, and without repulsion or fear. When someone tells me an awful thing from their past or present my impulse is that we will be closer, or somehow understand each other better. Like a club nobody wants to join, but at least a place to feel you belong and heard.

I am beginning to feel a separation in time between my loss of my daughter and the present. It had remained a current, open wound for so long. I finally received permission, from my own self I suppose, to allow myself to accept it as reality. With that acceptance it becomes part of assimilated memory, finally allowed into the vault of memories past. Can I still feel her warm little body cradled in my lap that night, like a sleeping surreal almost child? If I focus, I can still hold that feeling of her. I can still touch her curls of hair she had in my dreams during her gestation, so vivid like yesterday. But most of the time I can not bring back sensations, smells, warmth, or the sense of having a big pregnant belly anymore. Those memories live in the past now, 95-99%.

Watching the movie Split recently got me thinking about surviving trauma as a form of evolution. It has made me stronger, having survived it. Like strain-hardened steel. My child talks about wanting to evolve, into something new and better. I think he mostly wants humankind to be better, in general. But does growth come from suffering? I believe any change causes stress, even if you look at the math that describes stress, strain, and time. I wonder if pain or suffering is a requirement for growth to happen though. I also wonder if I am better. I believe I am stronger, but does that mean better? It is not what I would choose, obviously. I would rather be a bit more stupid, weaker, and have my daughter.

Regardless, my experience define the ingredients of who I am. Still, I define who I am becoming. I think evolution sounds hopeful, and I embrace the concept. I welcome my daughter to the past, and I am hopeful for my future. My heart has so much love for her, only now with more lightness and less of an exposed nerve or raw wound. I am becoming stronger still.

My Schrödinger Baby

How can you describe finding out that your baby is dead, and your baby is alive?

This complexity will always accompany my son's birth story. His deceased sister shared his womb for roughly the last 6 of 30 weeks gestation period. The first 24 weeks they got to know and grow together, two peas in a pod that looked like they were enjoying a long sleep over in bunk beds in the ultrasound pictures. Funny that he still does not like to sleep alone.

We went in for a normal ultrasound visit at 26-1/2 weeks gestation, expecting to come home with 3-D ultrasound pictures of their faces. In the waiting room I read an article about how losing a loved one at my current stage of pregnancy dramatically increased brain or developmental abnormalities like autism, or something of the sort. What a relief, I thought, that everyone close to me was in great health. Everything was going so great, I absolutely enjoyed my hard earned (IVF) pregnancy. During the ultrasound the tech suddenly got quiet, then said she was going to get the doctor and come right back. It was not like a movie. They did not rush me to an operating room for any extraordinary measures. The doctor quietly informed us there was no heart beat for our daughter, though our son appeared okay - undersized as always, but okay. Then we were sent home, out the back door of the clinic to avoid having to face people.

I knew I needed to comfort my guy, who must be so confused in there without his sister kicking him all day. I knew I needed to focus on all of my love, hope, and joy about my surviving baby. I knew I needed to grieve my deceased baby at the same time, though still hidden. My baby is alive, and my baby is dead at exactly the same time. Both things are true and it is my reality, yet my reality is completely broken by this truth. My box contains all of my joy and all of my pain simultaneously. My poor son will always have this painful entry into the world and birth story, and my daughter will have no birth story. She will have a death certificate and no official birth. My son will have a birth certificate always accompanied by death. My Schrödinger Baby.