Raw/ cut open wounds/ healing....

Five months ago I heard the worst four words of my life..." There is no heartbeat" There is no way to prepare on how to be a bereaved parent. There is no how to manual or fix it manual on how to start breathing again. The reality of child loss compared to the thinking of what child loss could feel like are no comparison at all. 

I did what I could have to make sure Delaney was a healthy happy baby. I read the how to book, I ate the right things, went to all the dr appts, drank tons of fluids, rested, etc....all while I battled hyperemisis for 7 months straight. I didn't cheat! No coffee, no sushi, no deli meats, nothing that could harm her. I even dealt with not taking the Zofran to stop puking 27 times in a day because I was afraid the drs might be wrong that it was a safe drug. So why full term at my weekly appt just to check on dilation and normal routine things did my world crack in half? 

Five months ago I lost my daughter.... I lost my dreams... I lost the Sasha that so many loved.

People have always told me what a happy, bubbly, loving, selfless, strong person I am. The hard part of that, is that most of the people in my life have no idea about the life I have lived. The struggles I have overcome. Even with those struggles, nothing compares to losing a child.

So now I've decided at my rawest, at my weakest (or strongest however you look at it) I'm going to share with you some of my life....

Growing up my mother has always been my best friend, my support, my cheer leader. To this day that still remains. It hurts her to see me as a grieving parent because she knows all of my skeletons. I have always been the same for her. I watched her since I was a small child, try to provide for her children. She was in a terrible marriage with a man that cared more about drinking then his family. I watched her fight for money to try and pay so our electric wouldn't keep getting shut off. To be able to feed us. I watched her cry because she always felt alone. I was never close to my father, I was always "Debbie junior" to him. He never tried at a relationship with me because I was too much like my mom.

When high school came around lots of things changed. So many things I grew through. My father came home one day so trashed but I didn't hide from him because he actually wanted to talk to me as his daughter. Little did I know that he would be telling me of his new girlfriend and that he was leaving us. He packed up garbage bags and left before my mother got home leaving me to do his dirty work.... Of course I cut ties with him at this point.

I shattered her world that day... I watched my mother slip into a depression and immediately stepped up to be the man of the house an help raise my little sister...why not I was 15 and all. It was a blessing in disguise that he left because my mother needed to hit rock bottom for the drs to find a brain tumor bigger then a grape fruit that was killing her. She had a 50/50 chance of surviving. My mother is a fighter. She couldn't see or hear for a little while. She has no feeling on the right side of her face to this day but my mother is still here and she is still my rock.

15 was a tough year for me.... But 16 even worse. I came out of the closet and lost most of my friends. I mean come on, being a lesbian in high school is like having a bad case of herpes on your mouth... Don't come close to scary lesbian, you might catch the gay. Not long after I came out did a guy in high school take it upon himself to rape me. He sure did teach me what a real man was like. My brother away in army, no father and a depressed mother....guess ill deal with that alone. Toughen up that skin girl you have to strong. You have a mother and sister to take care of. I was bullied and beat down in high school. I would have "DYKE" written in my locker. I would have apples thrown at me, milk poured on me, I would get hit with lunch trays. I hated going to school. This is where I came in contact with drugs. They were a feel good place for me. A place that there was no sadness. A place where I could hear my heartbeat in my ears and a smile would come across my face. And the beat drops and the beat drops...boom boom goes the bass.

I woke up!

I did not like the drug scene. It was a scary place and luckily I was able to escape it before I let it run my life. I could have stayed there and blamed my addiction on my bad luck so far in life, instead I said " Sasha, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"

I moved to MA and my luck seemed to be ok for a bit. I made new friends, ones that didn't care that I was gay. I found a career, one that I love still to this day. I found love and will spend my whole life showing her she's my world. I moved around and saw so much that I wanted to at a young age. I was hopeful that I would continue to find happiness. Now of course in this time there has always been little struggles and little lessons, those don't define me, they have just taught me who I am. 

I've always been the type of girl to get along with everyone. The type of girl to wear my heart on my sleeve. The type of girl to always put others firsts, even if they have hurt me. I speak my mind. I am caring. I am loyal. I always have your back.

Five months ago my life was hit with the worst thing ill ever go through. I lost my child. Since then I've lost my father yet again. I've lost multiple friendships. I've lost family. I've changed jobs. We bought a house. We've cried, we've smiled. We are surviving. There are days easier then others. I don't need to show people I'm ok. I don't need to own peoples awkwardness that I want to talk about my daughter. Babies die! People die! We all at some point die! Do you want to be forgotten? Or do you want your loved ones to talk about you still? I don't even care about all the wrong we still go through or the past that has helped make me. In fact I am told how strong I am....from today on....here's my proof!!!!

Thinking of my Delaney girl everyday...my daughter, my angel 5/17/13- forever

Surviving

Treading water, breathing slowly!  Wake up, survive! Taking life minute by minute is survival of the bereaving parent. 

In a world where everyone else is living day by day, a bereaved parent is simply surviving minute by minute. We don't know how or even why some days are harder than others but what we do know is to breathe in slow and out slow. We have to learn the "new" us that we have become. We have to put on masks for other people. We have to self preserve and take on what we can. We have to say NO when we can't be in certain situations. We have to look at other parents with living children and ache for our own. We have to breathe harder to survive.

Grieving is a full time job, no days off, no holidays, no vacation time, no clock to punch in and out of. It is full time everyday in conjunction with our real full time jobs, our day to day life and sometimes there just isn't enough time to survive the minutes. 

I will say my surviving time is on Wednesdays. My breath of fresh air is on Wednesdays. My smiles, tears, laughs, shared pain is on Wednesdays. On Wednesdays I get to sit with other bereaving parents. Parents whom have become my friends. Parents who know the depth of pain that we all live in. Parents that let me speak of Delaney with no judgements. Parents that smile when we smile over our daughter and cry when we cry over her too. Parents like many before us, and unfortunately many after us, miss our children with us.  We talk about our babies in an environment where we don't have to own other people awkwardness to talk about our dead babies. Parents who don't tell us things we can't hear, such as we will get over it. Parents that are raw with us and don't apologize for it.

See one of the things about being a bereaved parent is seeing how many people drop off, seeing how many people move on and forget about our children, how many people that can't handle our grief and expect us to be happy again. People who have never lost a child think that us parents who have should just try again. Another baby doesn't stop the pain of the one we lost. The truth is to be a bereaved parent you need to come to the realization that everyday for the rest of our lives we are missing a piece of ourselves. See the thing is when our babies die, part of us dies too! Some of us can continue on to have subsequent babies but still ache for the ones that are missing. Some of us can never babies again. There is even some of us that try again and lose more babies.  

Please if you love us and want to be a part of our lives, don't tell us to move on, don't tell us to get over it. Speak about our babies. Say our babies names! Let us know you miss them. Tell us you don't know what to say but don't keep adding to that statement. 

Delaney taught me that life is too short to care what others think about you. She taught me who in my life would stand by me and who wouldn't. Delaney is my reason for surviving. Delaney is in my every thought, every dream, every tear, every smile. Everything I do in my life now is for her. Delaney made me a mother and for that I'll keep her spirit alive as long as I am. 

As I sit here thinking about how it's been 12 weeks now since I gave birth to our beautiful Delaney, I feel raw...

I feel these layers strip away at certain points in my day. Some days I know that I'm surviving and that I can continue to breathe but some days I ask myself why I'm living and my daughter isn't. I realize that I am not nor will I ever be the same person. I didn't lose a limb that I can learn to live without, I didn't lose a loved one that I have memories I can cherish, I didn't lose my house that I can start to build again, I didn't lose something that can be replaced, I lost my child, I lost myself, I lost my dreams of a family. Some people have told me I'll  be me again but I think it's said more for their benefit then my own. I realize that I do not smile the way I used to, I'm not the happy loving naive person I used to be that lived in a world with rainbows and unicorns. I am now a broken woman with a dead child that I never get to make a memory with. 

12 weeks ago I delivered this beautiful little girl that had all of my heart. I, like many other women, was handed my child on my chest to hold and make my lasting memories of my first kiss of her face, but I was also only able to kiss her face for that short time. I don't get to spend my life living and breathing my child here on earth, I have to work extra hard to make it known the love I have for Delaney.

I know it must be hard to always show your children how important they are. Everyday life has so much stress, time constraints, bills that need to be paid, and many other struggles that make parenthood be overwhelming at times. These are the times that you have to talk yourself through the day...but these are the day I'll never have. Instead I have the days like today where I think to myself "how would Delaney look today? What would her smile be like? What would make her giggle? Which one of us would be more wrapped around her little finger? Would she be loving her own noises yet?

Working in retail I see so many different families all the time. This week I seen a little girl that resembled what Delaney would look like. She had the staple outfit we would have her dressed in; pig tails, converse and a tutu. My heart broke, I broke, I couldn't even hold me tears in on the sales floor. I wanted to hug her and tell her how cute she was. She loved her Mommy so much. She was such a happy girl. Would Delaney be a happy girl? Would she know she was and still is our everything?

I wanted so much! I wanted the baby photo shoots with lots of pictures, I wanted the cute birthday with fingers in the cake, I wanted the first word,  i wanted the first step, I wanted her funny faces with trying new foods, I wanted her pulling the dogs tail and giving them the gross open mouth kisses, I wanted her first boat, snow mobile and 4 wheeler ride with her aunts and uncles, I wanted her little cousins to paint her nails and teach her how to read, I wanted to take off every first day of school to take pictures and scrapbook her growing up. I wanted to do her hair with all the fun ways there is out there, I wanted family days, I wanted family vacations, I wanted to have secrets with her that only we knew, I wanted to see her make friends, I wanted to see her ride a bike, I wanted to see her and Rach make the biggest mess they could making cookies for the holidays, I wanted to play Santa and watch her face light up being rewarded for being a good girl all year long. I wanted all the firsts, first book that she loved, first movie that she would watch over and over and over until we all knew every single word to it, I wanted to take long car rides and sing songs, I wanted to have cheat nights that she could stay up past her bedtime for extra cuddles and extra books, I wanted to make her smile everyday, I wanted to kiss her every night before bed and every morning when she woke up, I wanted  to see what sports she liked to play, or if she wanted to do dance or theatre instead, I wanted to see her go to school dances, I wanted to watch her graduate high school, I wanted to watch her get married and tell her that no matter how old she got she would always be my little girl, I wanted to see her fall in love, I wanted to see her become a mom, I wanted everything there is to want for a child, I wanted her, I WANT HER! She is my everything. 

12 weeks...84 days... How am I going to survive the rest of my life without her? How do I make the people that love me realize that I will never be the same person. Half of me died when I lost Delaney. I am half living and most days half living isn't even worth it but I continue to do it for her.  I continue to live my life everyday for the past 84 days because its hopefully one day closer until I have her again...

Delaney 2 month birthday

Today she would be two months old if she survived... Not a minute of the day goes by that I don't think about our sweet Delaney.I do not miss her any more today then I did yesterday or any more then I will tomorrow but today is a day that I can't stop thinking about how much she would have changed within the month. How much hair would she have? How much would she look like me? Would she have dimples? Would she have chubby little legs? Would she already have Racheal wrapped around her little fingers? How often would she wake up in the middle of the night? How am I going to leave this beautiful girl when I go back to work? I hate that I don't get to hold her, kiss her,hear her first giggle, be mad at her for not letting us sleep, grow with her in her everyday life. We were robbed and will never get these moments back. Every day I still feel like I'm waiting for her to be here. I look at her room and wonder how I'm going to dismantle it with all the love that was put into it. Each thing I take down I feel a new layer of skin peeled back and my flesh feels like raw open wounds. Her room doesn't smell like baby laundry soap anymore. All her stuff is just stuff now. I hate this! I saved her coming home outfit and while I held it to stick in a box I lost it. That little outfit does not have her scent in it, it doesn't have the memories of her first pictures coming home to complete our family. All that this little outfit holds now is a failed dream. I hate how I hurt! I want my daughter here. I don't want an angel, I want her here in our arms!! I just want to breathe again and actually feel my heart beating. I wish I could hold her again, the hours that we had weren't even a fraction of what we waited for. I want to see her eyes look up at me and know my face as her mommy. I want to hear Rach read her stories in the middle of the night while I keep my eyes closed, pretending I'm asleep so I can fall in love with her just by how amazing she is as a mom to our little Delaney girl. Babies aren't supposed to just die...when is my heart going to stop bleeding? When will the constant emptiness dissipate? When will I stop feeling angry with my body for just letting her die? I want to be dressing Delaney in her two month old onsie to post pictures of how cute and lovable our baby girl is. I don't want this new life that was laid out for us. I want my old boring life back...I want myself back...I want my smile back...but most of all I want Delaney back.

getting on the bike

Grief. Why is there the expression "good grief" what about grief is good? I hate everything about it.... Don't get me wrong we need to grieve, it's the natural reaction to have grief when losing something. Humans and animals both know what grief is. No one grieves the same, no one person has the same "definition" of grief. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. There is no manual of the step you have to take. Grief comes in different forms...it can be sadness, tears, anger, frustration, self pity, depression, hiding etc. I can't tell someone to go through the grief process the way that I am and no one can tell me how I'm supposed to be going through it. Grieving sucks! However avoiding the process of grieving is even worse. We've been told that if we do not handle grief then grief will handle us. Some people think it's awful that I'm still grieving. Yes I am and guess what, ill grieve everyday for the rest of my new life. Grief is a full time job. You may not ever know when someone is going through it because grief is as quiet or as loud as people let it be.

Hmmmm lets see how many times I've said grief in the paragraph...now multiple that by say...a billion....that's how many times in a day the feelings or thoughts of grieving go through my mind. I've been told that people miss my smile, I've been told ill get through this but right now I can't smile. And if I do well it's about 75% fake. I can't do fake. I won't do fake. I can not hide the pain that lives inside of me. I wear my heart on my sleeve, always have. So my broken heart is now on my sleeve and the people in my life have had to see my pain. The pain is in my eyes, the pain is in my breath, the pain is in my voice, the pain is in my thoughts. The pain and grieving is all I seem to know right now and I will not sugar coat that for anyone.

I feel like a child learning how to ride a bike for the first time. This bike is on a very rocky road with lots of potholes. I keep falling off the bike and I am covered in all these bruises. Every morning  I get up and back on the bike to see how far I can get today. Some days ,in the past 7 weeks and 5 days, I get a bit further, where some days I can barely turn the peddles. I am so raw. I am so broken. I know that I will learn to cope, I will learn to live again, and maybe one day ill peddle down a new road. A road that may have a lot less bumps, a lot less rocks. A road that has sunshine and rainbows. A road that leads me to a happy place.

In our support group we talk over and over about self preservation. This is something I've never known. I have always been the care taker in my life. I tend to always think about myself last and everyone else before me. I am learning to take care of me, myself and I right now. This may come off as selfish, this may make people who don't know what we have gone through think that I'm a bitch, this may make friends and family give up on me but I don't care. I can't care. Because if I care I won't be taking care of me. I need to survive this grief. I need to get on my bike every morning and see how far down the road I can make it. At the end of each night when I speak to my beautiful Delaney I want to be able to say " today I made it again, I did it for you baby girl, I pushed on" and when I say it I need for it to be real. I need to know I've done everything in that day that I can to self preserve and take care of myself through this grieving process of a mother that lost her biggest dreams.

Letter to Delaney

Dearest Delaney Ann-

Mommy doesn't even know where to start. I wake up every morning baby girl and I hold your blankie in my arms. It doesn't smell like you anymore which makes mommy so sad. I hurt inside knowing that it will never smell like you again.

I have been starting to go thru your nursery and see what I can give to other babies. Mommy isn't doing this to erase you. Part of me is doing it in hopes that I will see other babies in your beautiful things and part of me hopes that it will make other mommies think of you when using your things.

I've been looking at the things I couldn't wait to see you in, the toys i couldn't wait for you to play with and your mobile that sings songs. I held your first stuffed animal that your Uncle Ant gave to you and cried until my eyes felt as though they could bleed. I know you don't want mommy to cry baby girl but mommies arms ache so bad to hold you again that I just can't hold these tears in.

I have held a couple of babies Delaney. I wasn't ready yet but I did it for you. I didn't want you to be upset with how sad mommy is. I hope that you know the reason I am so sad is because I don't have you here with me. See Delaney, you are the best thing that mommy had ever done. You are the one thing that mommy is most proud of. I have learned so much from you. I have learned what love is...don't get me wrong I love your other mommy to the moon and back but what I feel for you outweighs even that kind of love.

Your Auntie Chelsi and your Grandmama used to try to tell me that I won't know what a mothers love is like until I have my own baby and let me tell you they are so right! Your cousins are mad at me Delaney. I know they are only 5 and 4 but they think I lied to them and they made sure I knew it. Areyah told me I promised her I would have you the next time we saw them and she said it isn't fair that god took you away when she wanted you to be her cousin instead. I tried to explain it to her baby girl. I tried to tell her we didn't get to make this choice.

Oh my sweet Delaney, how much I think of you...everyday I wonder how much you would've changed. I can't believe in a week it will be your two month birthday on the 17th. I feel like time is standing still for me but moving on for everyone else. I hope you know that mommies will never forget you. We will never let you be forgotten amongst our families either sweetheart.

Keep watching down on mommies and ill see you in my dreams tonight.
Love always,
Mommy and Momma

New life...standing still

I am going to start writing again. It was my outlet before whenever I needed to get thoughts out, feelings out...to just purge and well now I have lots to purge, every second of every hour of everyday for the past 7 weeks and 3 days.

Hmmm 7 weeks and 3 days already! I still feel like it was just yesterday that I was sitting in the waiting room at my 38 week appt. It feels like just yesterday I was rubbing my belly telling my daughter Delaney how much I couldn't wait to kiss her little nose but 7 weeks and 3 days ago all that changed.

I still here the crack that was made when my world broke in half. It was so quiet and loud all at the same time.

How do I tell my story and know that it really happened this way....how do I tell people my daughter is dead? Babies don't die...babies are cry, babies poop, babies eat, babies sleep, babies get oooo'd and awed but babies definitely don't die. Or so I thought. How naive I used to live. How naive I was as I read what to expect and thought the worst part about 38 weeks was lack of sleep, swollen ankles, heartburn, waddling...what I would give for those things back. What I would give for being naive again instead of living this hell... Well let me give it a try at telling "my story".

Racheal and I had finally decided to stop talking about having kids and actually make it happen. We met with a fertility Dr and learned it wasn't just as easy as buying sperm and getting injected, along with doing lots of blood tests, tubal exam, pelvic exams, ovulation monitoring etc WE needed to be healthy and 100% mentally and emotionally ready. So we spent the next year doing just that, getting everything to where it needed to be, all my testing done and heads totally in it. We decided to pick our donor and how easily that was. We both picked our top 3 choices using a very strict criteria. All we wanted was our baby to look like the two of us. We had 2 of the very same donors out of 184 that fell into our criteria choice. It was destined that we had the right donor picked. And so there is was in September of 2012 we had a positive pregnancy!!! Could it be!!! We were pregnant!!!

In October I was throwing up daily and like crazy...well there is that morning sickness. Little did I know that November 4th I would end up in the ER with severe dehydration due to throwing up 26 times. I was diagnosed with Hyperemesis Gravendaruim...say what? We had to of course look this up to learn in English what it meant outside of the medical terminology. So it looked like maybe after going on Zofran I'd be able to eat some food and still vomit at least 4 times a day...little did I know December 4th there I would be hooked up to those damn IV's again.

My baby was growing into such a little spunky girl. She was always moving around, always making me smile even while in agony. This sickness continued and how I tried not to complain, not to be upset that I was missing out on things. Missing out on work, missing out on quality time with family and friends, missing my sister in laws wedding. But the Dr's kept saying " don't worry Sasha... The sicker the Mom the Healthier the baby" so I just dealt with it.

Finally in Early March I started truly enjoying being pregnant. Holding my belly every chance I got. I was rarely sick anymore. She was responding more and more to our voices. The nursery was coming together, we were getting ready for our showers, all the fun stuff was happening.

Then something changed....on On my 37 weeks appt on May 10th I told one of our OBs that I was sick all over again (after 6 weeks of Almost no puking) and that I didn't like the decreased movement that Delaney was having. She told me she was head down in my pelvis and ready to come any day now, she had a heartbeat and not to worry. One week later on my 38 week appt May 16th, I had lost 8 pounds since the prior week and I told the nurse practitioner I didn't like the decrease in movement or how the OB made me feel when I tried to ask her the wk prior. She asked me if she monitored me and seemed alarmed when I told her that she only listened to the HB on the Doppler. So she tried to pull up my sweet daughter and didn't find a HB, after an ultrasound we found that our between little girl was gone. How did this happen? Babies aren't supposed to die! I then started induction and 27 hours later gave birth to Delaney 5 pounds 9 ounces 19 1/2 inches long. Right after i delivered we got to hold her for a couple hours and our families got to hold her and say their goodbyes. i went into critical condition and my Bp went up to 189/111. The Dr's thru me on my left side and pumped me full of magnesium to stop me from stroking out and dying. My wife was watching in fear, trying to hold her eyes open after days of no sleep, living a nightmare, afraid she was losing me right after we had to say goodbye to our Delaney.

So now 7 weeks and 3 days later I sit here and I replay every minute of this new life and nothing seems the same. Everything keeps moving around me, the days are changing but my life is standing still. This new life of grief is a full time job. This new life of grief is a terrible journey that the me 7 weeks and 4 days ago had no idea that such a thing existed. 

sakoh1113@gmail.com