Techniques

In the last now almost 17 months of our grieving life, I've encountered many blogs and people describing ways that they've coped. Different ways of "getting on" with their lives (whatever that even means anymore), getting through a particular moment, going through their day to days, coping with a subsequent pregnancy, encountering people and their often well-meaning yet so incredibly insensitive comments.

It has everything to do with association -- I remember back in the day my college ex's mom telling me the last time she ate a mango was the day she went into labor with her son, because she associated mango-eating with pain. I thought that was silly, at 22 years old, because mangoes were so my favorite food ever since I was a chubby little girl and I would never let a silly thing like labor pains keep me from the sweet fleshy orange drippy juicy goodness. And her son turned out to be nothing to brag about anyway, the cheating scumbag who to this day is still friends with that whore.

But I digress. I've always found it interesting, and thoughtful, that there are so many different ways to grieve, and the community has been so respectful of those ways. And I've learned over the years and especially because of my grief experience to keep my judgment to inside my head because people are different, every family is different. An IRL friend who lost twins at 20 weeks came to visit last night (with lasagna, cheesecake, and caesar salad in one hand, her 2 y/o in the other - the most well behaved 2 y/o I've ever met!) and upon discussing our losses, I came to know that she and her husband didn't name their babies, didn't see or hold them, don't even know the sexes. In her heart they were boy-girl twins, and I know she loved them. They didn't want to have the visual reminder.

She said (out loud) that our situation was much worse, because our girls lived and we got to know them (although we really didn't), but I think her situation is worse because she will never know so many things (I kept that inside). I did say that they did what worked for their family. And for every decision that any family has ever made about their children, it is the right decision for their family. Hospitals are being/getting better about educating parents and giving them choices on how to deal and what to do. We were inundated with choices right up to the burial (autopsy yes or no? baptism yes or no? do you want the children to be buried during the ceremony or afterward?), and in our world upside-downedness we did what we could.

In the end, every situation is incredibly bad and awful and whatever we're dealt with, we absorb it and adjust as we need to in order to keep from jumping off the deep end.

[This just popped into my head: I regret that we didn't bathe our babies (as they were dying I noticed that Cerina pooped and it smelled like medicine and because even her preemie diaper was too big and falling off her butt, it was stuck to her leg) and try to memorize every inch of them.]

They also didn't name their babies because they were going to name them after a father and a mother and wanted to reserve those names for babies that were going to live. And I completely related to that. Once wannabe dad and I finally decided on our daughters' names, I honestly thought, what a waste of beautiful names. At the same time, I wouldn't feel right giving them names just for the hell of it, names that we didn't even care about.

I didn't ask her about when they set up a nursery or when she registered. As far as doing any of those, I can't go there just yet, not that going there would mean doom for this child. There is so much time to do those things, and if it turns out that we have 1 clean towel and a donated baby seat they will just have to do.

It was good to talk to her. I haven't spoken to an IRL person in a long time about my babies, about loss -- someone who gets it. She also went through bedrest but sans cerclage, and her gorgeous daughter was born at 38 weeks with .5cm left of her cervix for the previous 11 weeks. She gently scolded me for folding my hands on the top of my belly as we talked because it puts pressure on my cervix, which, darling that it is measured 3.5cm yesterday, 1cm less than 4 weeks ago. Still good.

At this stage of the pregnancy gamble, at 24 weeks today our son is considered viable. Keep on cooking, baby.