Making the rainbow connection

Posted in Parenting after loss by Robyna

I am not the first loss mother to be consumed and confused by the place of a rainbow baby in her family. This beautiful gift that I have paid the highest of prices for. I think the crux is the confusion is this: you learn things in grief – precious, beautiful things. We sometimes call them the gifts of grief. But every angel mother I know would gladly give each and every one of those gifts back to hold their baby again. There is nothing you can gain in loss that tips the balance in favour of saying good-bye. And then another child comes into your life. Suddenly, there is something borne of loss that is so precious that it gives you pause to reconsider.

No one is going to knock on my door and offer my Xavier back in exchange for Elijah. I am never going to have to make that choice. And yet there is still guilt surrounding the presence of Elijah at the expense of Xavier’s absence. My love for Elijah will always be tinged with a longing for Xavier. His milestones, more so than Isaac’s, paired with wondering if Xavier’s would have looked the same, been met at the same time. And as I am granted longer and longer with Elijah, my feelings for him intensify and evolve in a way that they never had time to with Xavier.

In the weeks following Elijah’s birth I would look at him and could not fathom how I survived the loss of Xavier. Each feeling was intensified in those weeks – the joy, the love, the fear and the grief. Even now, I think I could not survive if we lost Elijah. And that thought feels traitorous – could I survive the loss of one child over another? Am I, in some way, choosing one son? Loving him more?

Of course, it would be possible to fall pregnant four months after Xavier was born had he lived. Just terribly, terribly unlikely. I was breast-feeding and two children had always been our plan. Whilst now I look at photos and think of Xavier as missing, in a way that’s disingenuous – in reality it was never the way our family would look.

And yet, how often do our families end up the way we planned? Those that had sworn to no children may end up with a family of six. How many third children are born in the hopes they might be a different gender to the first two? Accidents occur frequently. Do the mothers in those families agonise over the children they had not initially planned on and wonder at their place in the family? Or do they not even pause to think it over – just accept the beautiful gifts bestowed on them and the fluid shapes of family over time?

When I think about the shape of my family – my boys – this is what I picture: Two boys, one much littler than the other, their faces turned towards the sunshine. Rays of light gently settling around them, and both of them with an understanding that this light belongs to their middle brother.

8Nov2013

Good Mother

Posted in Parenting after loss by Robyna

There is a terrific rant currently going viral around Australian social media networks celebrating all kinds of different mothers and encouraging us to stop judging others and ourselves. Em Rusciano reminds that we are all good mothers – even if our parenting styles look different. You can read the article here.

It made me think about the judgements we place on ourselves as bereaved mothers. In general, the child loss community is fantastically supportive and kind. It would be a very small minority that would judge the way another is grieving. However, I think we often judge our own grief and the way we mother our angels. I look at those that honour their angels through setting up projects, raising incredible amounts for their chosen charity or those that have set up their own charities and wonder if my way of mothering Xavier is adequate. Should I be doing more for my little boy? When my tears don’t flow as freely, and I am having several good days in a row, I wonder, “Should I not be hurting more for my precious baby?” Yet, I have had people mention to me that they look at the creative things I do for Xavier and they wonder if they are doing enough in that space for their angel. Others long to get to a gentler place in the grief.

Figuring out how to the best mother you can be is difficult. Figuring out how to be the best mother to a child no longer in your arms is even more so. We look at those around us for inspiration and sometimes come away feeling inadequate. We put enormous strain on our already strained selves to do beautiful and wondrous things for our children. When really, breathing each day, getting up, or deciding to just stay in bed is wondrous when you have lost a piece of your heart. So, taking inspiration from Em’s new rules for motherhood, I wrote a set that apply to the bereaved mother.

1. Do you raise money, create, write, dream or paint in your child’s memory? – Good Mother

2. Are your tears the greatest testament to your love? – Good Mother

3. Do you get up and face the day even with your broken heart? – Good Mother

4. Do you stay in bed and cry for your lost love? – Good Mother

5. Do you embrace the things you have learned in your grief and find peace? – Good Mother

6. Do you rage each day at the unfairness of a universe that stole your child? – Good Mother

7. Do you love, grieve and miss them each and every day, no matter when they last were in your arms and make no apologies for doing so? – Good Mother

28Oct2013

Welcome to the world little rainbows

Posted in Parenting after loss, Pregnancy after loss by Robyna

All over the world, new parents are gazing with untold love, adoration and awe at their newborn children. Of these, a small percentage are filled with just a little more wonder, just a touch more disbelief, slightly more gratitude that their sweet little baby has arrived and done so safely. They are the ones who do not sleep, but watch over each breath. The ones who marvel at the sound of little cries, not quite believing they are real. The ones that have to pinch themselves that so much joy has finally come into their lives. When a midwife assures them that babies are less fragile than they look, they are the ones that regard that advice with suspicion. Experience has taught them differently.

They are not first time parents but the baby they held first was without breath. And at painful times, without recognition. Midwives, doctors and friends might refer to them as first time parents, as new mums and dads. Not necessarily because they are ignoring the baby who came before – the baby that didn’t take a breath or only snatched the smallest amount of life. But because our language has no word for a parent that loses a child, let alone to describe a parent who has lost a child and then welcomed a living baby into the world. These mothers and fathers have had to parent in the hardest of situations. They have had to find ways to love and connect with a child that they cannot see. They have had to nurse aching, empty arms. They have had to find strength they never knew possible. They have had to fight for their motherhood, for their fatherhood. They have kept memories alive. Their hearts have been broken and yet swelled to accommodate the most amazing of loves.

And now these parents face a new and alien set of challenges. How to bathe this little one. How often to feed. How to soothe cries. How to tell if he’s too hot, is she’s too cold. But there are other things they already know. That the love for your child is all consuming. That you love them a little more dearly each day. That being a mother or father is such an awesome and beautiful responsibility. They know the full precious weight of their baby. They know every breath is a treasure. And they know that this little one has a big brother or sister, looking over them. Keeping them safe. They know that their family looks a little different from others, but their first child or children will always have a place within it. They have loved and loved and loved. And now they get to love a baby that demonstrably loves them back.

With much love to all the parents who have recently welcomed rainbow* babies into their families, but particularly those who are welcoming a child after losing their first.

*A rainbow baby is the term used by the loss community to describe a child conceived after loss. It refers to the hopeful rainbow that appears after a storm. The storm does not refer to the child that did not live. But rather the very dark place that inevitably follows after loss. Nor does a rainbow signify the end of grief. A rainbow baby brings hope and light into a shattered family, whilst they still miss and grieve for the child they hold in their hearts rather than their arms.

24Oct2013

The spaces that define you

Posted in Grief over child loss, Parenting after loss by Robyna

“Is he your first?” “How many children do you have?” “Does he have any brothers or sisters?”. Innocuous questions. Until you are grieving mother. Then they become the questions you dread. The questions that can leave you gasping, even when you have a well rehearsed answer.

“He is my third son,” I answer with confidence and hope and pray no more questions follow. But of course they do. Because the natural thing to ask is how old. To comment on the chaos three little boys would inevitably bring. And then I have to share Xavier’s story. And suddenly a superficial exchange has been thrown somewhere entirely different. Somewhere uncomfortable. They make apologies. I make apologies. I have shifted in their eyes. I have exposed a tender wound. I have become to object of pity.

Before losing Xavier and learning a great deal about myself, I used to think I had come to a place in my life where I was no longer jealous. In my early twenties, as I watched friend after friend get engaged, jealousy consumed me in an entirely unhealthy way. I believed that by the time I was thirty, I had let that go. I watched dear friends build the houses of their dreams and I was so happy for them and surprised at my own lack of envy. After Xavier’s death I learned some things about who I truly was. I was not jealous, until they had something that I truly wanted and didn’t have – two living sons. I did not tend towards jealousy, but I didn’t mind one bit if people were jealous of me. In fact, I believe I courted it. And to be object of the flip-side of that – to have people pity me. To have people think “Thank God that wasn’t me”, was foreign and uncomfortable. I am still not comfortable with it. And, at least in my mind, it is a natural reaction to Xavier’s story.

When someone learns for the first time that we lost a son to SIDS, I am thrown right back to the beginning again. As they absorb what I have said, I watch their face change. They have not accompanied me in the past year’s journey. They don’t know where I am in this grief. It has hit them anew, and I am taken back there with them.

I am proud to be Xavier’s mother. I always will be. I am happy to be defined as his mother. I sometimes struggle to be defined as his grieving mother. It feels like a terrible betrayal, but I am yearning for spaces in my life where I am not recognised as a grieving mother. Spaces where I can pretend, even for a short while, that I am just as everyone else is. People ask me how many children, and I find I am now being more evasive – “I have a four year old at home”.

But this presents me with a challenge. Am I betraying a greater truth by not always proudly owning the mourning mamma persona? Do I add to the taboo around talking about child loss? Am I blindly perpetuating the myth that we are all happy, shiny people? So often when I do open up about Xavier, people tell me something they are struggling with. That window of opportunity would not exist without my first revealing my greatest hurt.

What is my responsibility to Xavier? To the community of grieving hearts? To the wider community? To my own soul and what I need? How much do I always need to reveal? I am still working through these questions.

But this I know – even as mother to living children, I need spaces aside from the mummy persona. Spaces to create, to think, to be. Recuperative space where I am nothing more or less than the bare bones version of myself. And perhaps, this is what I yearn for when I say I need space away from being a grieving mother.

13Oct2013

The Narrow

Posted in Parenting after loss by Robyna

Have you ever noticed how often we use words associated with death and dying when we describe how babies sleep? Dead asleep, dead to the world, sleeping like an angel, out like a light, in another place, dead weight, gone, out to it, passed out. People sometimes say these things when describing Elijah sleeping. Then they realise and look at me with momentary horror as they register the meaning of their words. It’s okay. It doesn’t worry me too much. But there is a reason we use those descriptors. The space between a baby sleeping and a baby never waking is narrow. Narrow in a way that terrifies me.

When Elijah is deeply asleep, his body still and his breathing almost undectably shallow, I panic. I place my hand against his stomach until I feel sure that he is okay. Even though I know what a baby without breath looks like, I am still terrified. That moment that severs them from life is instant in most SIDS cases. One moment of this earth and the next beyond it. I imagine two lines branching out from single one. Two lines travelling in very different directions, but at their origin, separated by only the slightest of degrees. When Elijah is deeply asleep, it’s not a stretch to imagine him taking the darker of those two paths.

I used to say “babies bounce” and be part of the confident parenting brigade that espoused the deceptive toughness of newborns. It’s conventional parental wisdom – you are afraid of breaking your firstborn and treat them like china. You realise that they are tougher than they seem and relax on your second. And it’s true – babies survive so much. It’s hard to hear tales of babies surviving starvation, abuse, tragic accidents and medical difficulties when your own baby couldn’t even survive a nap. I love a miracle story as much as the next person, but there will always be that lingering thought “where was my miracle?” Why was Xavier the antithesis of a miracle? He had a 999 in 1000 chance of living and he did not.

When my first son, Isaac, was born I expected to feel an immense love. I had read enough to know that would happen. I was surprised by the ferocity of that love. That feeling that I would not only take a bullet for my son, but that I would have no problem pulling the trigger if I needed to, to protect him. That there was absolutely nothing I would not do for him. A lioness with her cub. When Xavier was stolen by SIDS, I had no chance to fight for Xavier. We were given a day in hospital, which is so much more than so many SIDS families, but it was immediately clear that this was a chance to say goodbye. There was to be no fight. There was no rollercoaster of “will he make it or not”. There was just a little life snuffed out. He had no chance to change his world whilst he was a part of it. He was here and then no longer here. The space between those realities too narrow. No space for me to squeeze between and save my son. Two weeks. A sliver of time, too short to seem of consequence. And yet his impact is indelible. He changed lives. Mostly for the better, but now fear is written on my heart.

The chances of Elijah dying are narrow. So close to zero that it would seem impossible. But Xavier fell into that narrow crack, beyond all reason and sense.
As Elijah gets older, the smiles and gurgles more frequent, he feels more of this earth. It feels as though his place is permanent. And every time he wakes again in the morning, the gap between him and the unthinkable narrows.

10Oct2013

Exercise and Happiness

Posted in Parenting after loss, Uncategorized by Robyna

I was never a particularly co-ordinated child and therefore my sporting and exercise involvement was limited. But I remained slender, having inherited my father’s insanely speedy metabolism. Throughout university I was truly skinny, subsisting on a diet mostly proffered by the vending machine and the cafeteria. I took it as a source of personal pride that I could make a $3 potato scallop into a meal by the addition of salt and a free lemon wedge. But my lack of any exercise meant I was “skinny fat” – slender with no tone. As the years progressed I learnt, like many of us do, that I could no longer eat a whole pizza and expect none of it to stick. A few years before Isaac was born, I discovered Pilates. It was my kind of exercise – a focus on stretching and flexibility without any of that annoying sweating. Whilst I was pregnant with Isaac, I did Pilates every second day and credited his easy birth to it. I delivered Xavier just as easily, without the benefit of Pilates, and had to concede something to good genes and dumb luck. After we lost Xavier, I decided to get fit. Properly fit. I had to channel my restless energy and there were a million reasons why fitness was the best option. I invested in a personal trainer. I learned how to do a proper squat, lunge, sit-up, push-up. I did weights. I did cardio. I did not give up. I pushed past a barrier I didn’t know existed. As the repetitions got harder, I would dedicate the next one to Xavier, the next to Teddy, the next to Charlie, the next to Harry. Sadly, there were no shortage of angelic motivators.

I started to feel strong. In body and in mind. I would often visit Xavier’s grave after a PT session – it was when I was emotionally the strongest. I look back at photos of me in December of last year, I can see the difference fitness made – I see a tough kind of sadness in those photos. A determined look of “I won’t let this beat me”. When I fell pregnant I continued to exercise for a while, but it got too hard and my true end goal had been reached. I never set a weight target. My goal was to be healthy and pregnant.

Now, my mind turns to exercise again. Elijah is nearly 11 weeks old and I have no more excuses. My friends with babies are going through similar motivation – perhaps the spaces in our minds are freeing themselves up to allow the possibility of exercise. Something for ourselves. Most likely the abrupt advent of bikini season has spurned us on.

I live in a city that values the outdoors and exercise. Our council has provided free exercise programs through their active parks program – Active Parks. I have attended two of the baby boot camp programs now.

Yesterday I attended one at a nearby park with Isaac and Elijah. As my first foray into exercise after Elijah’s birth, I was hoping for some gentle stretches, some yoga perhaps. I was instead treated to burpees, squats, lunges, sprints, push-ups, planks, mountain climbs and sprints. Isaac adored the sprinting, making each one a race that he graciously allowed me a head start (and I needed it). Elijah was also a stellar exercise partner, waking only once at a point that I may have intentionally woken him in any case. “More lunges? I’d love to but, oh dear, baby’s awake and needs me”. That was before one show-off started lunging whilst holding her baby. The class culminated in a final jog, some stretches and the promise of being sore the next day. I certainly felt the steps in our house last night.

Today I headed off for another session, just with Elijah this time. It was a little easier – perhaps the content, perhaps my body had suffered it’s shock yesterday, perhaps I had a less intense work-out partner than Isaac. With the sun at my back, my baby sleeping in his pram, I could feel both Elijah and Xavier present. As I jogged past trees, dappled with sunlight, I thought of Xavier dancing beside me. I could still dedicate this work out to him, but not in the grim determined way I did last year. Instead, I can feel him near, whispering in the breeze, and feel a happiness that I thought had long escaped my life. Because at the end of the day exercise does that – it makes you happy.

5Oct2013

The burden of gratitude

Posted in Parenting after loss, Uncategorized by Robyna

Elijah, like all babies, goes through periods of not sleeping, crying jags and general grumpiness. On the whole, he truly is a “good” baby, but even good babies have their off days. Good mothers have them too.

But I won’t tell you about those days. Not because I am trying to hide behind the image of a perfect baby and mother. But because it would seem too close to ingratitude. When you are robbed of your child, you feel robbed of your right to complain about anything other than that loss. How can I complain about transient things? Everything becomes insignificant in the face of such giant loss. All other problems dwarfed. And to complain about a child, the very thing that I lost, that would be an ingratitude too great.

Grief teaches you things. Teaches you to to appreciate each moment. You begin to understand the enormous privilege it is to bear and bring up a child. You start to glimpse the compete preciousness of it all. You meet those that are desperate to have a baby to hold in their arms, not just in their hearts. And you realise, even though you have had the most horrible thing to occur, how truly blessed you are to have children. You cannot help but wonder if you needed to lose in order to learn that lesson. You hang onto appreciation as a kind of insurance. If I am grateful for each moment, then Elijah can stay. If I consciously appreciate every single second of him, I can protect him. Conversely, if, for even a moment I lose sight of that, maybe he will be taken from me. I must not complain.

After Xavier died I would see Facebook posts or hear whinges about babies that wouldn’t sleep or were fussy. I would wish, wish that were me. I would wonder how people could be so blind. I would vow never to be so unthinking. But does the pendulum swing both ways? Is all this thoughtful gratitude and gushing presenting an unrealistic image of life? Am I expecting too much of myself and pressuring others? Is it just as unthoughtful of me to be posting photos of a picture perfect, content baby all the time?

After all life does goes on and it continues to be challenging. I wish that Xavier’s death had solved all my problems. All the problems of my friends and family. But it didn’t. Perhaps it offered some perspective, but it didn’t eradicate all other pain and it didn’t magically make our lives easy.

After Xavier’s death it took a little while before friends and family would once again discuss their problems with me. I was glad when they did. Glad that they thought my perspective would be useful. Glad that they thought I could cope. But I know even then they were careful not to complain, not to give any inference that they weren’t completely grateful for their blessings.

Perhaps the answer lies in living with grace, rather than finding limitless gratitude for every moment and a moratorium on complaints. Living with the grace that I know no matter what life throws at me, I will handle it. Living with the grace that I know I can see beauty, even in the darkness. Living with the grace that problems still occur, to me and to others, and that listening and talking about those things doesn’t make me ungrateful. It just makes me human.

26Sep2013

The Inside and the Outside

Posted in Parenting after loss by Robyna

Every Saturday my little family heads down to the local coffee shop and I wonder what we look like to other people. Beautiful four year old running at the front of the pram, cute little Hugo, our cavalier puppy, on his heels. N or I pushing the pram, lightly touching each other around the waist. It must look idyllic. It must look like the perfect family. What it looks like and what it is are so very different.

I felt similarly when pregnant. I wondered if people who had recently suffered loss or infertility looked jealously at my growing bump.

I know in the weeks after Xavier died I wanted to rush up to mothers of newborns and say “Do you know? Do you know how utterly privileged you are?” I wanted to talk to those heavily pregnant and ask “Do you know? Do you know the precious weight of what you carry?” I didn’t of course. But what if I had and she had returned the pain in my own eyes. If she would have said, with a heaviness another loss mother would recognise, “Yes”.

We go about our daily battles and it seems like everyone else’s battles are being easily won. But we don’t know. We don’t know how much pain lies before apparent happiness. Each of us are icebergs, only revealing the tip of our lives. Carefully constructing the image we allow the world to see. We know this of ourselves – why do we presume that everyone around us does any differently?

My personal Facebook feed is filled with photos of Elijah on different outings – parks, various beaches, numerous cafes. As my parents are currently overseas, I am posting daily pictures so they can watch him grow. This no doubt gives the impression of a terribly confident mother – happily out and about with a perfectly behaved newborn. This would be a generous assumption. In truth, I am not a homebody and will always prefer out to in. When I am at home alone with Elijah, the darker thoughts creep in. It’s when I hold him close and beg him not to die. Do I prefer the facade of a mother breezing through parenthood? Of course, but it masks a darker truth.

I never want to be defined by my loss – although I am happy to be shaped by it. But sometimes, I want to scream “Getting here wasn’t easy – the road to this seeming perfection was paved with tears and still, always, there is someone missing”.

But that’s not the image I have chosen to present to the world. There is a large element of choice here. Could I fall apart? Of course I could, in a heartbeat, in an instant. But I hold myself and my family together. Is this a form of lying? Would it be truer to myself to let more of the pain show? Would it ease the pressure on those around me if I was to be more “real”? I am not sure. So much of how I coped with Xavier’s death was “fake it until you feel it”. When faced with something that cleaves your heart in two, people really don’t want to see the full ugliness of it. I didn’t want to be the full ugliness of it. For all our talk of being real, there comes a point of too real. And so I have been play-acting for some time now. Not just for those around me, but for me. I have been play-acting for so long that it might be difficult to tell where the reality and where the acting meet. And perhaps this simply is my new reality.

Being grateful for each and every moment, striving to live in the now and taking advantage of every possibility can seem unbearably Pollyanna-ish. It can seem fake and impossible. But my alternative is impossible and so I take this path and I will smile through the pain.

24Sep2013

Dear Mummy

Posted in Grief over child loss, Parenting after loss by Robyna

I have had a rough week. Plagued by doubts about my ability as a mother. Many episodes of being convinced that Elijah will die. Watching each breath as though its his last. Missing Xavier more acutely as I am reminded exactly of what I missed and time takes Elijah further away from Xavier’s little life.

When it all gets too much, I imagine what Xavier might tell me if he could.

Dearest Mummy,
I have seen you struggle these last few days. Seen the tears fall and wished I could wipe them away.

When you watch over Elijah, so convinced this breath will be his last, I am watching over him too. I promised to keep him safe. Trust.

Why do you think yourself a poor mother? You have been told so many times you could not save me. You have been told so many times you are a good mother. Those that you know that have suffered loss, those you have cried with, do you judge them poor parents? Do you think them anything but beautiful and wonderful parents? Turn some of that kindness to yourself. You are a good mother. Believe.

I know you hold him in your arms and ache for me. I know that having a newborn has made what we missed so much more real. I know that connecting on a spiritual level comes a poor second to touching, kissing, breathing in sweet baby scent. I wish things could have been different too. But this is what we have. And I need you to still nurture it. I still need you. Love.

These days shall pass. Too quickly. Enjoy them. Enjoy the moments that will eventually draw us together again. Cherish.

I love you mummy.

15Sep2013

Reclaiming Motherhood

Posted in Parenting after loss by Robyna

The other day I was enjoying a beautiful brunch outing with some other mothers. They had their first children in their laps – from newborn to 18 months. We talked about the things mothers talk about. Sleeping, eating, toilet training, breast feeding, weaning, husbands, careers, having more children, facing bikini season. As the only one with more than one child, I fell into advice giving. It’s not something I am very comfortable with. No-one likes a mummy-know-it-all. Besides, I have always, always believed that mothers who trust their own instincts never go too far wrong.

Until one does. I trusted every instinct with Xavier and he didn’t survive. You know those Facebook memes where the mother hails her day a success because she’s kept all the children alive? You can’t imagine how much they hurt. The old adage that you don’t need to be a perfect mum, you just need to be enough, that stings as well.

And so sitting and dispensing advice makes me feel fraudulent. I can’t help but wonder, why would these women want advice from me? They have their beautiful children surrounding them, loving them, touching them. Do they nod politely and inside think “at least I can keep my child alive.” I know my friends, and I am sure that this thought wouldn’t pass into their heads, but it could and I would understand if it did.

When I expressed these feelings to N, he hugged me gently and said “What happened to Xavier and your abilities as a mother have absolutely nothing to do with one another. You are the best mother I know.” Coming from the best father I know – that did restore my faith somewhat.

Isaac is a beautiful boy of nearly five. Boisterous but as well-behaved as you can expect any five year old boy to be. He is full of life and colour and imagination. He is fun to be around. He cares for those around him. He is a credit to his father and I. He is proof that I can mother.

Elijah is adorable and wonderful. Every moment I spend with him is precious. I love everything about taking care of him. Even at 4am in the morning, I cannot help but be filled with excitement that this precious little baby is mine! He is proof that I can mother.

Xavier remains an integral part of our family. I talk about him fearlessly. I love him through space and time. I try to make his memory accessible to other people in a positive way. He is proof that I can mother in the most extraordinarily difficult of circumstances.

I lost my baby to SIDS and I am still a good mother.