Madeline

Tomorrow will be 5 weeks since Oliver was stillborn. In the 5 weeks, I’ve kept a running note in my phone of all the things I want to talk about, all the ideas I have to share with others, all the moments I want to capture. Usually, these thoughts come to me in half asleep ramblings or when I’m awake in the middle of the night crying on my bathroom floor so I don’t disturb my husband.

Not all of the lessons I’ve learned are good or insightful. A lot of them are uncomfortable and ugly and difficult to admit. But I am nothing if not honest to a fault, so I’m going to share everything I’ve learned in the last 5 weeks about myself, grief, and my relationship with the world and other people. Bear with me; some of these things are hard to talk about, but I’m going to do it anyway.

1. Sometimes I feel strong, and sometimes I feel like the weakest person alive. I know I survived something awful, something most people would say is their worst nightmare. In a way, it’s comforting to know that I have lived through the unimaginable, to know that nothing can ever compare to this pain, but at the same time it makes me sick to my stomach. I shouldn’t have to live through this. I don’t want to be the “strongest person you know.” I just want my son back.
2. I wake up nauseous and full of dread every day. It feels like there is a constant weight on my chest, a burning behind my eyes.
3. I’ve had several people tell me that I’m brave or strong for telling mine and Oliver’s story and talking about him loudly. Truthfully, I don’t think it makes me any of those things. I don’t feel like I deserve praise or recognition for talking about my son. I feel like it’s the least I can do. I feel like I’m not doing enough, honestly.
4. I get angry when I see people moving on with their lives. I know this isn’t a fair feeling to have, but I find it is always at the forefront of my mind. I see people in my life who grieved with me when everything first happened, who showed up to support me, just going on as if nothing happened. Their lives were able to go back to normal. They can move on. And I can’t. I am eternally stuck in the Maternal Fetal Medicine ultrasound room where I learned Oliver didn’t have a heartbeat anymore. I’m the one left with a hole in my chest that aches every time I breathe, every time I think about Oliver.
5. My family and friends have kept my head above water, but that doesn’t mean I don’t notice who hasn’t reached out. I am incredibly aware of who supported me when tragedy hit, who showed up when I needed it most, and who reaches out still to this day. Grief and child loss has changed the way I view my relationship with a lot of people. Of course, no one owes you anything. Grief highlights that. Grief shows you how you can be surrounded by people who say they love and care about you, but at the end of the day, you’re alone, because the relationships are surface level at best. I’d like to add a side note to this: If you think reaching out when the tragedy hits but not after counts, it doesn’t. It is so easy to tell whose efforts to reach out are disingenuous and are looking to pry rather than truly show up for you.
6. The postpartum stuff still happens. The hormones make me feel like I’ve lost my mind. If not for my SSRIs, I truthfully am afraid of how deeply into PPD I might’ve slipped. I still gave birth to Oliver, which means I still had the postpartum bleeding and had to wear diapers. I had a c section, so I had to go through the unbearable pain at the incision site. It was hard to ride in the car, to wash my hair, to get dressed, to do anything that required an ounce of muscle. The most traumatic part of postpartum after your baby dies, in my opinion, is that your milk supply comes in. I’ve tried so many things to get it to stop, and 5 weeks later it’s almost there, but it has been one of the things I struggle with the most. It is a constant reminder that while my mind knows I don’t have my son, my body doesn’t. I’ve already told Jordan that any future children we have will have to be formula fed, because there’s no way I can have my supply come in again without thinking of this time and how mentally painful it has been.
7. I feel like my body failed me. I hate looking in the mirror. I am my own worst trigger, seeing myself and knowing that I was once Oliver’s home. I remember telling Jordan shortly after I delivered him that I felt like a failure, because I had one job, to keep Oliver alive for 9 months, and I couldn’t do that.
8. The guilt slowly eats away at me. I can’t elaborate on this one too much right now. I’m still having a very hard time with the guilt, and it is the emotion at the forefront of my grief lately. Guilt has been the hardest emotion to work through for me. Writing this is making me consider that I probably need to go to therapy.
9. I absolutely crash after I have fun. If I have a really high high and do something I enjoy or smile or laugh, I inevitably will crash and hit a very low low. This comes back to the guilt I feel. I don’t feel like I deserve to have fun or laugh or smile or enjoy myself when I failed Oliver. When I’m having a good day and all of a sudden think about him, I hate myself, because I know during that time I wan’t thinking about him — I was thinking about myself. And I feel like I should always be thinking of him. I feel like I deserve to feel the constant pain of remembering him.
10. No one really understands what I’m going through. Stillbirth isn’t something that, in my opinion, can be understood unless you’ve experienced it firsthand, unless you’re the mom who had to deliver their baby knowing they didn’t have a heartbeat anymore, knowing they would never grow up. People can reach out and sympathize, people can compare it to their own losses and grief, but no one really understands. And while I’m grateful that no one in my life really understands the pain, it is also such a lonely feeling.
11. I’m not the same person I was. I truly feel like I have changed more in the last 5 weeks than I have in the last 27 years. So much of me and how I look at the world is different. Things that used to make me excited and happy don’t anymore. Leaving the bed feels like I have to exert the same amount of energy that I would if I were running a marathon. In some ways, I feel like I’ve gotten more patient and gentle with others. I try to extend grace and empathy wherever I can. In other ways, I feel like I’m more angry and cruel. I’ve always been a short tempered and snarky. But now, I find myself mentally invalidating other people’s pain. I am fully aware that isn’t fair, but I just can’t help it. I have a hard time taking other people and their problems seriously. I want to scream at them, “But my son died! My pain is worse!”
12. I guess the good thing is, I don’t care about the little things anymore. But the bad thing is, I don’t care about the little things anymore. I don’t care about much anymore, to be quite honest.
13. Thinking of Oliver isn’t what makes me sad. Not really. Thinking about him being gone is what breaks my heart. I love to think about my little boy and talk about him and see pictures of him. That brings me joy. But knowing I don’t have him here with me and I never will again is the painful part.
14. I’m not the same day to day, and I’m trying to be okay with that. Some days I hardly speak and stare at the wall and keep the blinds closed. Other days, like today, I can force myself to leave the house and join society. I can’t tell what my day will be like when I wake up. It’s a very unfortunate surprise I look forward to every day.
15. I’m afraid of going back to work. I’m a 2nd grade teacher, and I love my students and my job. I truly can see myself doing this for the rest of my life. It is hard and so rewarding, but the closer I get to going back to work, the more afraid I get. I’m learning new triggers every day, and I have this deep fear that surrounding myself with children all day is going to prove to be an unbearable trigger. It scares me, because I don’t want to lose the job I love in a district I love with the most incredible coworkers. But I’m more anxious to go back to work than I thought I would be.

When I lost Oliver, my heart shattered into thousands of jagged pieces. As time goes on, I’ve started to slowly put the pieces back together, but my heart will never be the same. The pieces will never come back together completely. It’s like putting together a puzzle and realizing you’re missing the last piece you need to complete it. There will always be a gap, a hole, where that piece was supposed to be. Oliver is that gap. He has a piece of my heart with him in heaven that, as painful as life has been, I don’t want back. I wouldn’t trade the time I spent with him for anything, not even to escape the pain of missing him. Grief is real, because love is real. That is the thought that keeps me going.