frumiousb

This post started life as a book review, and then ended up going a million different directions.

The book in question is Creative Acts of Healing After a Baby Dies, by Judith van Praag. There is also another backdrop here. We have some dear friends who have suffered a membrane rupture at 23 weeks who are currently in hospital in Utrecht.

I've still always got my own experience to get angry about as well. And questions, always questions.

( or why I do not like midwives )

Today would have been my due date.

B. and I have taken the day off work, to try to make something decent out of it. I wish that I felt more.

The thing is, April 2 just feels so arbitrary. I never thought that I would get this far. I did not believe it for one second. Call it intuition or fatalism or whatever you like.

All the same, I know that eventually I am going to need a day to remember her that isn't 26 December. That day will be impossible to remember with anything except preeclampsia, dropping platelet count, ragged rusty contractions and pain of every possible kind. It seems fairer to her to remember her in the Spring, when the flowers are here and there is a chance to remember some of the lessons of Whitman and love of the world.

Maybe that's why it still feels distant today. I'm not trying to be happy at the moment. I'm just striving for "not sad". And I'm pretty pleased with myself that I sometimes manage to reach that goal. It seems impossible that I should ever be happy again, let alone be able to celebrate her short life.

I know, I know-- time wounds all heals, or something like that.

I have recently been reading A Stone for a Pillow, one of L'Engle's books on the basic concepts of Christianity. It fit in fairly well with my train of thoughts, and gave B. and I lot to discuss at the dinner table.

Since we lost Sophie, there's been a phrase that keeps coming back to me. It returns in things I read and things I think and things people send to me. It feels really important to the experience of the loss: "God is not a respecter of persons."

And there those words were again with the L'Engle. There is no easy meaning to look for in loss. You have a desire to understand and to gain control by trying to puzzle out the meaning in disaster. I lost my baby because I was once unfaithful to someone who loved me. I lost my baby because I am somehow offensive to God. I lost my baby because this isn't the life that God wanted for me. I lost my baby because I didn't deserve to have her-- my sin was too great. I realize that this kind of thinking is a kind of bargaining. If I can understand what was the real reason behind her death, then I can prevent it again. But it doesn't work that way. You can't make bargains with God, and somehow you are supposed to love Him, even knowing that.

I find it hard. I find it difficult that God could be all powerful and not support a notion of fairness in this life. That he couldn't look down and say-- that woman has been through enough. That Christ could raise the dead in general, but cannot raise mine. I can accept that God suffers with me, but that somehow makes it worse-- to have the will and ability to do something and to stand by and do nothing. If God wasn't supposed to care, then the non action would be much easier to accept. We are here, and simply supposed to trust that there's a meaning to all the sorrow in the world that is larger than our understanding. To bless and forgive and love even in the midst of the mad grief and the senselessness. I find that I am not always able to do that right now.

Anyhow, comfort where we may. I'm going to go eat yoghurt and finish watching a film with B. Little steps back into a bigger life.

From the L'Engle:

In a fair world, that tornado which devastated our trees would have gone to some place where people didn't lovingly tend the land. But tornadoes don't have anything to do with fairness. It is easier to understand that the “natural” world operates on principles where fairness plays no part than it is to understand that we cannot dwell overmuch on fairness with human nature, either. In a fair world no child would be struck down by a drunken driver; no family would have to grieve; no one would have to carry the burden of killing. In a fair world there would be no crime, no violence in the streets, no body cells growing out of control with cancer. Fairness is devoutly to be desired, but it is not the way things are. In this world the wicked flourish and the innocent suffer, and the Lord of all is no respecter of persons, and may sometimes speak through the wicked even more clearly than through the innocent.
pg.48

( more reading notes )

I went to the gym yesterday morning. Actually, I've been going every day since I arrived. They have a deal with a gym across the plaza.

Yesterday, I decided to try a "cardio fusion" class. I was feeling brave.

(Sidenote: I know that classes get a bad name, but I have reluctantly had to admit that if you want to get back into shape, there is no better way to do it. Regular cardio mixed with the occasional class gets every major muscle group back into some resemblance of shape.)

The class started with abdominals, which I can't do yet, so I didn't try. I waited on the side with a young pretty girl who worked at the gym. She was about 24, tiny, with long golden blonde hair. We chatted while the class started.

"Are you at the Hyatt? Where are you from?"

"Well, I'm from the US eventually, but I live in Amsterdam."

"Wow, Europe. That's so prestigious!"

I assured her that it wasn't really anything of the kind. It turned out that she is currently studying dance.

"I always wanted to live in Europe to dance. But then, my plans kinda got changed. I got pregnant last year and now I've got a little boy. Just two and a half months old. That's why I can't do abs."

I have to admit that I couldn't help sneaking a look at her in jealous admiration. She showed absolutely no sign of recent childbirth.

We talked for a while about Microsoft.

Then she turned to me. "Why can't you do your abs?"

I should say that I don't like lying, particularly about loss. It helps keep it hidden, which is good for nobody. It was a policy that developed after my mother died-- that I was never going to lie about how she died. Anyhow, I said, "I just gave birth myself at the end of December". I held up a hand to temper her enthusiasm. "She was stillborn."

"Oh," she looked away, then looked at me. "You know," she said. "I'm not together with the father, and in the beginning everyone said that maybe I should...you know... And I just couldn't. Partly because I know that things like what happened to you could happen to anyone. Children should be loved, and they die no matter what you do. I just didn't want to add to it. Does that make any sense?"

It did. But then her face lit up. "Was it a girl or a boy? Was she beautiful? I bet she was. Didn't you hate being pregnant?"

I was floored. Nobody talks to me like that about my loss. Nobody asks me questions like I was a normal mother. No one asks me what she looked like, or which one of us she took after or how long my labor took. It was so nice. It made me feel as though I really had been a mother, even it it was brief.

The class started. She smiled at me. "I'm sure you'll find what you want," she said. "You made it that far, and I'm sure that it can happen again. God has his plans." It was just that simple. And she might even be right.

She went to take her place in the class. "What kind of dance do you study?" I asked.

Big sunny smile. "Ballroom dancing," she said.

*****

By the way, the class turned out to be a dancercize class. It was fun, although I'm sure that I resembled a clutzy cow trying to do the ballet. I wasn't even the worse person in the class.

I'm getting my strength back slowly. It's frustrating, because I don't even feel fat-- but things feel as though they changed structurally. Which, of course, they did. Nothing fits right at all and buying clothes is impossible right now. One day at a time.

Our daughter, Sophie Eleanor Bogaerts, was born dead on December 26th after 36 hours of labor. She was beautiful and perfect except for the terrible disease which killed her.

The preeclampsia struck us in its most aggressive and severe form. By the time that they moved us to AMC, it was clear that my condition was destabilizing rapidly. I developed HELLP syndrome, my kidneys and liver were losing function and my blood platelet level was dangerously low.

Sophie, unfortunately, was in much worse condition than I was. Although at first still very active, she had hardly grown since the 22 week ultrasound. Even though she was theoretically over the line for viability, her weight was impossibly small. The disease had damaged the placenta and the umbilical cord, so that her own reserves were almost all that were keeping her alive. We tried desperately to keep me pregnant as long as possible so that she had some chance at life, but after two days it was clear it was a battle that we were going to lose.

I can say nothing but wonderful things about AMC as a hospital. If I had wanted them to try, they would have taken her out and fought for her, even as they believed that it was hopeless. However, after extended consultation with the neonatal specialists and our doctors, Bart and I decided that the best thing that we could do as parents was to let her go. She died peacefully in utero on December 22. We are so grateful that her last memory was simply going to sleep as opposed to eking out a few painful hours in the NICU. As much as I wanted to save her, there was simply no way that she could have survived. Any further intervention would have been an exercise in cruelty.

It is also important to say that even though it is now painfully obvious that we were sick earlier, nothing would have changed the outcome. When preeclampsia happens in this way, then nothing can be done to save the baby. No amount of early diagnosis would have made the slightest bit of difference. I am not at peace with what has happened to me and to my daughter, but I do believe that absolutely everything that could have been done to save both of us was done.

Once the pregnancy was over, the poisoning began to recede, and I stabilized enough so that I could give birth. Sophie will be cremated next week in a small private ceremony for immediate family only.

Today I was discharged from the hospital, with some conditions and some care arranged at home. It will be a long road back to full physical and mental health. I have all the after effects of both the disease itself and the need to recover from a difficult labor/birth.

On the emotional side, I am sure that you can appreciate that this is a severe blow for both Bart and I. Since the preeclampsia was so unusually early and serious, we have a higher than normal chance of having this happen in another pregnancy. Over the next few months, we are both going to be undergoing a great deal of physical testing and soul-searching to try to help us understand what our future will bring us. We also need to find a place for our oldest child in our hearts and our lives and try to come to peace with the fact that we have lost her.

We are both doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. Which is, honestly enough, not well at all. But with support, we are managing.

Thank you very much for your kind thoughts and notes over the last few weeks. Please know that even though I cannot possibly answer most of them right now, I appreciate every one of them. We are not going to make it through this on our own.