Photographing the babies who didn't make it

Heartfelt is an amazing volunteer organisation of professional photographers who help create photographic memories for families that have experienced stillbirths, premature and ill infants, and children with serious and terminal illnesses. It has been in the media quite a bit lately, which is a wonderful thing. The more people that have heard of Heartfelt, the greater chance there is that some one of your family and friends will be able to point you in their direction should you, or someone you know, ever experience the death of a child. 

Unfortunately, Leslie and I had not heard of Heartfelt when Max died, and despite the fact that the organisation does a lot of work with hospitals to increase information about their services, the hospital did not tell us about them. Since I have seen the kinds of beautiful images that Heartfelt photographers so generously take, this has been one of my biggest regrets. How I wish I'd known someone, anyone, who could have told me about this service at the time when it really mattered. And time does matter. You can't get the time with your baby back to make better decisions. Once it has gone, it has gone. There can be no more photos.

I can't remember how I first heard of Heartfelt after we got home from the hospital. It may have been from one of the thousands of Google searches I did about neonatal death and dying babies, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened to us. Then, when I went back to work, I found myself working with a new staff member who is a family friend of Gavin Blue, the director and founder of Heartfelt. If only I'd met her a few months before.

I know, however, that we are fortunate to have any photos at all. Some people don't have any. It shouldn't be that way. As we lay with our brand new baby boy after he was delivered, shell shocked, the midwives who had brought him into the world sat with us for what seemed like a very long time. Just talking to us and stroking Max and telling us how beautiful he was. One of them was a brand new midwife, only 22 or 23 years old, who'd been there with us the whole time. She was amazing, but didn't seem very happy with the photographs she had tried to take of Max for us. The other was an older, very experienced midwife, who'd come in only when Max was very close to being born, and who stayed with us for a long time throughout the night. 

This woman had seen many, many babies die. I remember asking her about it. 'Is your heart heavy?' I asked her, and she said that it most certainly was; that she carried the memories of every single one of those babies with her every day. But, she said, one of the 'benefits', if you could call it that, of having experienced so many babies die, that she had become very good at taking photos of them and their families, and that this is something she enjoyed doing for them. She went and got a camera and took some beautiful, intimate photos of us with Max, that we will forever treasure. Unfortunately the hospital weren't able to give us digital copies, so they don't reproduce well out of the booklet they were carefully placed in. Here are some of the loving, thoughtful photos she captured:

In the morning, someone asked us did we want the hospital photographer to visit, and we agreed to that. We didn't realise that she was probably a forensic photographer - used to taking photos for official purposes like autopsies, probably. She took some really raw, confronting photos, very different in style to the ones taken by the midwife. Though I am immensely grateful for them, those images make me cry every time I look at them. I did send an email to her to tell her how much it meant for us to have the photos (her email address was on the CD of photos the hospital provided to us) but I never heard anything back from her. I felt sad about that.

Last week, on the 7.30 Report, this segment on Heartfelt was aired. Please watch it. My new friend Sally, who I recently wrote about, is featured on the segment in a photo of her, her husband, and her little daughter Hope. It's a beautiful photo. Watch this video of the work Heartfelt do, too. 

File away this information for when you hear of someone, near or far, who might need it. Families who are in shock and distress aren't able to think clearly. They need someone to do it for them. In our case, the next day in hospital, we were all alone, with no family to come in an take over to figure out all of this external stuff as we so desperately needed them to do. Leslie's mum sadly died three years ago, and mine is interstate. That's one thing I wish we'd had that day, an advocate - someone to ask the questions we were not capable of asking, to take the photos we were not capable of taking. 

You can read more about Heartfelt on their website, or in the following news articles:

The babies who didn't make it

From the heart

Holding onto memories

Forget me not

Everything happens for a reason? No, it doesn't, you arse-clown!

By far the most insulting platitude to receive when you are the mother of a dead child is the easy-to-give, but not easy-to-forget 'everything happens for a reason'. I've heard it more times than I care to remember, even from close friends.

I've spent a countless amount of time trying to understand where the desire to impart this piece of false and offensive wisdom comes from, and as is usually the case, it seems as if it is designed more to comfort the giver of the perceived 'wisdom' than it is the receiver.

It seems to be too much to bear for people to even think about, let alone humbly accept, that the universe is not concerned with our individual protection; that it will just as well cast us off to the biting winds to wither and die as it would go about serendipitously arranging our perfect destiny. The offer me this faux-spiritual response as a way of maintaining belief in their own immunity from fatal misfortune. People will protect this belief with everything they have, even if that means turning away from the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary that is right in front of them - my face.

I am a walking, breathing piece of evidence that terrible things happen to good people. That being 'deserving' of good fortune is no guarantee of receiving it. That wanting something badly enough is never powerful enough to manifest it. That praying, wishing, or begging, with all of one's heart, will not magically change one's destiny. That any of us, with every minute that passes, are just as likely one step closer to the tragedy that will define or destroy our lives as we are to our life's joy and fulfilment.

And so, they tell me 'everything happens for a reason', perhaps just so they have a string of words with which to distance me while they desperately enact an escape from the very sight of me, who has had no such chance to avert my eyes from the ugly, impossible truth.

It is to mock and belittle all I have learned, and all I must live with, to tell me that my poor innocent baby's death was a part of our, and his, destiny. That it was foretold by some kind of ancient fathers. That some good, somewhere, sometime, will come from this experience and reveal the meaning and resonance of it in some kind of spectacular spiritual dénouement complete with a flourish of the heavenly magician's hand, a drum roll, and a crash of the cymbals.

If you say this to me, what do you say to an orphaned child whose whole family has been raped, shot dead or decapitated in a Syrian village? What do you say to a mother whose child is dying of starvation or preventable disease in a developing country just outside our fortunate shores? For your logic that you get what you deserve, and that what you don't deserve later reveals itself to bear wisdom and meaning after all, applies only to those of us who are already privileged enough to have escaped a meeting with the manifold horrors life has to offer. In other words, the only way you can possibly believe that everything happens for a reason, is to be lucky enough not to have encountered something yet that shows you, undeniably, otherwise.

I may have once thought this myself, of course. Perhaps I didn't get one job I desperately wanted because the job the universe really intended for me to flourish in was just around the corner. What a laugh to look upon this in retrospect! That the universe, which is erstwhile inflicting savagery upon millions of equally undeserving human beings in the other three corners of the globe should use even a millisecond of its celestial energy to line me up the perfect job, or the perfect date! Oh, if the universe really did have a plan, how it would chuckle at our attempts to define it!

Seems a silly and rather unsophisticated thought when you put it that way, doesn't it?

I didn't have an appropriate response for people who said this to me, until I saw this video, which I shall save on my phone so as to replay to the next offender. Please, don't let it be you!

Everything Happens For a Reason
by: d2bmum

The Kitty and Pepper Show

Roll up! Roll up! The Kitty and Pepper show is currently playing approximately three times a day in our home, hopefully for a limited time only!

Kitty and Peppy have been spending a lot of time practicing their intimidating martial arts moves on each other. Kitty adds some kind of judo-speak to his routines, as you will see in this video, but we can't quite figure out if he is saying 'I am going to kill you!' or 'please don't hurt me!' What do you think?

Peppy used to be quite gentle with his little brother when they were playing, but since Kitty has gotten much bigger Peppy has been roughing and tumbling with him with increasing gusto. There's no making allowances for Sebastian's kitten-ness any longer. He's definitely a big boy now!

Having Sebastian around the house is one part exhilarating and one part exasperating. I was trying to count some coins this morning that I'd fundraised by selling chocolates for the Teddy Love Club, and every time I made a carefully-counted pile he came along with his cute kitten paw and knocked them all over. I was so crabby at him. But then, when I was sitting on the couch and having a little cry about how much I missed Max today, he came right up close to my face, as is his custom, and licked away the tears that were falling down my face. I couldn't believe it. He is such a special little cat.

As I sit rugged up on the couch on this freezing cold day, head spinning with so many thoughts and plans and questions, Kitty and Pepper are snuggled up beside me on the pile of blankets we're all sharing, and making me feel like I'm surrounded by the best company in the world.

On My First Son (1616)

Ben Jonson

This poem was written upon the death of playwright and poet, Ben Jonson's son, Benjamin, aged 7 years.

On My First Son (1616)
Ben Jonson

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy ;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
Oh, could I lose all father now ! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age !
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.

Isobel's Child

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In Representations of Childhood Death, Gillian Avery and Kimberley Reynolds write of a body of literature that developed across the centuries, which dealt with the need for parents to accept the death of their children for the sake of the children's eternal rest and peace. 

Often in this literature, they write, 'the child[ren] cannot die or find peace in death until their parents - and especially their mothers - can be persuaded to let them go.' Avery and Reynolds use Judith Plotz's term, the 'death-watch' poem, to describe such a scene of a dialogue between a mother and her dying child. 

They refer to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem, Isobel's Child, as a typical example of the genre, which I've included here in its entirety. The noble woman Isobel's pleas to God: "Oh, take not, Lord, my babe away / Oh, take not to thy songful heaven / The pretty baby thou hast given" will resonate with all parents who have experienced the death of an infant even more than 150 years later.

Isobel's Child (1838)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
So find we profit,
By losing of our prayers.
---SHAKESPEARE.

I.

To rest the weary nurse has gone:
An eight-day watch had watched she,
Still rocking beneath sun and moon
The baby on her knee,
Till Isobel its mother said
"The fever waneth--wend to bed,
For now the watch comes round to me."

II.

Then wearily the nurse did throw
Her pallet in the darkest place
Of that sick room, and slept and dreamed:
For, as the gusty wind did blow
The night-lamp's flare across her face,
She saw or seemed to see, but dreamed,
That the poplars tall on the opposite hill,
The seven tall poplars on the hill,
Did clasp the setting sun until
His rays dropped from him, pined and still
As blossoms in frost,
Till he waned and paled, so weirdly crossed,
To the colour of moonlight which doth pass
Over the dank ridged churchyard grass.
The poplars held the sun, and he
The eyes of the nurse that they should not see
--Not for a moment, the babe on her knee,
Though she shuddered to feel that it grew to be
Too chill, and lay too heavily.

III.

She only dreamed; for all the while
'T was Lady Isobel that kept
The little baby: and it slept
Fast, warm, as if its mother's smile,
Laden with love's dewy weight,
And red as rose of Harpocrate
Dropt upon its eyelids, pressed
Lashes to cheek in a sealed rest.

IV.

And more and more smiled Isobel
To see the baby sleep so well--
She knew not that she smiled.
Against the lattice, dull and wild
Drive the heavy droning drops,
Drop by drop, the sound being one;
As momently time's segments fall
On the ear of God, who hears through all
Eternity's unbroken monotone:
And more and more smiled Isobel
To see the baby sleep so well--
She knew not that she smiled.
The wind in intermission stops
Down in the beechen forest,
Then cries aloud
As one at the sorest,
Self-stung, self-driven,
And rises up to its very tops,
Stiffening erect the branches bowed,
Dilating with a tempest-soul
The trees that with their dark hands break
Through their own outline, and heavy roll
Shadows as massive as clouds in heaven
Across the castle lake
And more and more smiled Isobel
To see the baby sleep so well;
She knew not that she smiled;
She knew not that the storm was wild;
Through the uproar drear she could not hear
The castle clock which struck anear--
She heard the low, light breathing of her child.

V.

O sight for wondering look!
While the external nature broke
Into such abandonment,
While the very mist, heart-rent
By the lightning, seemed to eddy
Against nature, with a din,--
A sense of silence and of steady
Natural calm appeared to come
From things without, and enter in
The human creature's room.

VI.

So motionless she sate,
The babe asleep upon her knees,
You might have dreamed their souls had gone
Away to things inanimate,
In such to live, in such to moan;
And that their bodies had ta'en back,
In mystic change, all silences
That cross the sky in cloudy rack,
Or dwell beneath the reedy ground
In waters safe from their own sound:
Only she wore
The deepening smile I named before,
And that a deepening love expressed;
And who at once can love and rest?

VII.

In sooth the smile that then was keeping
Watch upon the baby sleeping,
Floated with its tender light
Downward, from the drooping eyes,
Upward, from the lips apart,
Over cheeks which had grown white
With an eight-day weeping:
All smiles come in such a wise
Where tears shall fall or have of old--
Like northern lights that fill the heart
Of heaven in sign of cold.

VIII.

Motionless she sate.
Her hair had fallen by its weight
On each side of her smile and lay
Very blackly on the arm
Where the baby nestled warm,
Pale as baby carved in stone
Seen by glimpses of the moon
Up a dark cathedral aisle:
But, through the storm, no moonbeam fell
Upon the child of Isobel--
Perhaps you saw it by the ray
Alone of her still smile.

IX.

A solemn thing it is to me
To look upon a babe that sleeps
Wearing in its spirit-deeps
The undeveloped mystery
Of our Adam's taint and woe,
Which, when they developed be,
Will not let it slumber so;
Lying new in life beneath
The shadow of the coming death,
With that soft, low, quiet breath,
As if it felt the sun;
Knowing all things by their blooms,
Not their roots, yea, sun and sky
Only by the warmth that comes
Out of each, earth only by
The pleasant hues that o'er it run,
And human love by drops of sweet
White nourishment still hanging round
The little mouth so slumber-bound:
All which broken sentiency
And conclusion incomplete,
Will gather and unite and climb
To an immortality
Good or evil, each sublime,
Through life and death to life again.
O little lids, now folded fast,
Must ye learn to drop at last
Our large and burning tears?
O warm quick body, must thou lie,
When the time comes round to die,
Still from all the whirl of years,
Bare of all the joy and pain?
O small frail being, wilt thou stand
At God's right hand,
Lifting up those sleeping eyes
Dilated by great destinies,
To an endless waking? thrones and seraphim.
Through the long ranks of their solemnities,
Sunning thee with calm looks of Heaven's surprise,
But thine alone on Him?
Or else, self-willed, to tread the Godless place,
(God keep thy will!) feel thine own energies
Cold, strong, objectless, like a dead man's clasp,
The sleepless deathless life within thee grasp,--
While myriad faces, like one changeless face,
With woe not love's, shall glass thee everywhere
And overcome thee with thine own despair?

X.

More soft, less solemn images
Drifted o'er the lady's heart
Silently as snow.
She had seen eight days depart
Hour by hour, on bended knees,
With pale-wrung hands and prayings low
And broken, through which came the sound
Of tears that fell against the ground,
Making sad stops.--"Dear Lord, dear Lord!"
She still had prayed, (the heavenly word
Broken by an earthly sigh)
--"Thou who didst not erst deny
The mother-joy to Mary mild,
Blessed in the blessed child
Which hearkened in meek babyhood
Her cradle-hymn, albeit used
To all that music interfused
In breasts of angels high and good!
Oh, take not, Lord, my babe away--
Oh, take not to thy songful heaven
The pretty baby thou hast given,
Or ere that I have seen him play
Around his father's knees and known
That he knew how my love has gone
From all the world to him.
Think, God among the cherubim,
How I shall shiver every day
In thy June sunshine, knowing where
The grave-grass keeps it from his fair
Still cheeks: and feel, at every tread,
His little body, which is dead
And hidden in thy turfy fold,
Doth make thy whole warm earth a-cold!
O God, I am so young, so young--
I am not used to tears at nights
Instead of slumber--not to prayer
With sobbing lips and hands out-wrung!
Thou knowest all my prayings were
'I bless thee, God, for past delights--
Thank God!' I am not used to bear
Hard thoughts of death; the earth doth cover
No face from me of friend or lover:
And must the first who teaches me
The form of shrouds and funerals, be
Mine own first-born beloved? he
Who taught me first this mother-love?
Dear Lord who spreadest out above
Thy loving, transpierced hands to meet
All lifted hearts with blessing sweet,--
Pierce not my heart, my tender heart
Thou madest tender! Thou who art
So happy in thy heaven alway,
Take not mine only bliss away!"

XI.

She so had prayed: and God, who hears
Through seraph-songs the sound of tears
From that beloved babe had ta'en
The fever and the beating pain.
And more and more smiled Isobel
To see the baby sleep so well,
(She knew not that she smiled, I wis)
Until the pleasant gradual thought
Which near her heart the smile enwrought,
Now soft and slow, itself did seem
To float along a happy dream,
Beyond it into speech like this.

XII.

"I prayed for thee, my little child,
And God has heard my prayer!
And when thy babyhood is gone,
We two together undefiled
By men's repinings, will kneel down
Upon His earth which will be fair
(Not covering thee, sweet!) to us twain,
And give Him thankful praise."

XIII.

Dully and wildly drives the rain:
Against the lattices drives the rain.

XIV.

"I thank Him now, that I can think
Of those same future days,
Nor from the harmless image shrink
Of what I there might see--
Strange babies on their mothers' knee,
Whose innocent soft faces might
From off mine eyelids strike the light,
With looks not meant for me!"

XV.

Gustily blows the wind through the rain,
As against the lattices drives the rain.

XVI.

"But now, O baby mine, together,
We turn this hope of ours again
To many an hour of summer weather,
When we shall sit and intertwine
Our spirits, and instruct each other
In the pure loves of child and mother!
Two human loves make one divine."

XVII.

The thunder tears through the wind and the rain,
As full on the lattices drives the rain.

XVIII.

"My little child, what wilt thou choose?
Now let me look at thee and ponder.
What gladness, from the gladnesses
Futurity is spreading under
Thy gladsome sight? Beneath the trees
Wilt thou lean all day, and lose
Thy spirit with the river seen
Intermittently between
The winding beechen alleys,--
Half in labour, half repose,
Like a shepherd keeping sheep,
Thou, with only thoughts to keep
Which never a bound will overpass,
And which are innocent as those
That feed among Arcadian valleys
Upon the dewy grass?"

XIX.

The large white owl that with age is blind,
That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow,
Is carried away in a gust of wind;
His wings could beat him not as fast
As he goeth now the lattice past;
He is borne by the winds, the rains do follow
His white wings to the blast outflowing,
He hooteth in going,
And still, in the lightnings, coldly glitter
His round unblinking eyes

XX.

"Or, baby, wilt thou think it fitter
To be eloquent and wise,
One upon whose lips the air
Turns to solemn verities
For men to breathe anew, and win
A deeper-seated life within?
Wilt be a philosopher,
By whose voice the earth and skies
Shall speak to the unborn?
Or a poet, broadly spreading
The golden immortalities
Of thy soul on natures lorn
And poor of such, them all to guard
From their decay,--beneath thy treading,
Earth's flowers recovering hues of Eden,--
And stars, drawn downward by thy looks,
To shine ascendant in thy books?"

XXI.

The tame hawk in the castle-yard,
How it screams to the lightning, with its wet
Jagged plumes overhanging the parapet!
And at the lady's door the hound
Scratches with a crying sound.

XXII.

"But, O my babe, thy lids are laid
Close, fast upon thy cheek,
And not a dream of power and sheen
Can make a passage up between;
Thy heart is of thy mother's made,
Thy looks are very meek,
And it will be their chosen place
To rest on some beloved face,
As these on thine, and let the noise
Of the whole world go on nor drown
The tender silence of thy joys:
Or when that silence shall have grown
Too tender for itself, the same
Yearning for sound,--to look above
And utter its one meaning, LOVE,
That He may hear His name."

XXIII.

No wind, no rain, no thunder!
The waters had trickled not slowly,
The thunder was not spent
Nor the wind near finishing;
Who would have said that the storm was diminishing?
No wind, no rain, no thunder!
Their noises dropped asunder
From the earth and the firmament,
From the towers and the lattices,
Abrupt and echoless
As ripe fruits on the ground unshaken wholly
As life in death.
And sudden and solemn the silence fell,
Startling the heart of Isobel
As the tempest could not:
Against the door went panting the breath
Of the lady's hound whose cry was still,
And she, constrained howe'er she would not,
Lifted her eyes and saw the moon
Looking out of heaven alone
Upon the poplared hill,--
A calm of God, made visible
That men might bless it at their will.

XXIV.

The moonshine on the baby's face
Falleth clear and cold:
The mother's looks have fallen back
To the same place:
Because no moon with silver rack,
Nor broad sunrise in jasper skies
Has power to hold
Our loving eyes,
Which still revert, as ever must
Wonder and Hope, to gaze on the dust.

XXV.

The moonshine on the baby's face
Cold and clear remaineth;
The mother's looks do shrink away,--
The mother's looks return to stay,
As charmed by what paineth:
Is any glamour in the case?
Is it dream, or is it sight?
Hath the change upon the wild
Elements that sign the night,
Passed upon the child?
It is not dream, but sight.

XXVI.

The babe has awakened from sleep
And unto the gaze of its mother,
Bent over it, lifted another--
Not the baby-looks that go
Unaimingly to and fro,
But an earnest gazing deep
Such as soul gives soul at length
When by work and wail of years
It winneth a solemn strength
And mourneth as it wears.
A strong man could not brook,
With pulse unhurried by fears,
To meet that baby's look
O'erglazed by manhood's tears,
The tears of a man full grown,
With a power to wring our own,
In the eyes all undefiled
Of a little three-months' child--
To see that babe-brow wrought
By the witnessing of thought
To judgment's prodigy,
And the small soft mouth unweaned,
By mother's kiss o'erleaned,
(Putting the sound of loving
Where no sound else was moving
Except the speechless cry)
Quickened to mind's expression,
Shaped to articulation,
Yea, uttering words, yea, naming woe,
In tones that with it strangely went
Because so baby-innocent,
As the child spake out to the mother, so:--

XXVII.

"O mother, mother, loose thy prayer!
Christ's name hath made it strong.
It bindeth me, it holdeth me
With its most loving cruelty,
From floating my new soul along
The happy heavenly air.
It bindeth me, it holdeth me
In all this dark, upon this dull
Low earth, by only weepers trod.
It bindeth me, it holdeth me!
Mine angel looketh sorrowful
Upon the face of God.[1]

XXVIII.

"Mother, mother, can I dream
Beneath your earthly trees?
I had a vision and a gleam,
I heard a sound more sweet than these
When rippled by the wind:
Did you see the Dove with wings
Bathed in golden glisterings
From a sunless light behind,
Dropping on me from the sky,
Soft as mother's kiss, until
I seemed to leap and yet was still?
Saw you how His love-large eye
Looked upon me mystic calms,
Till the power of His divine
Vision was indrawn to mine?

XXIX.

"Oh, the dream within the dream!
I saw celestial places even.
Oh, the vistas of high palms
Making finites of delight
Through the heavenly infinite,
Lifting up their green still tops
To the heaven of heaven!
Oh, the sweet life-tree that drops
Shade like light across the river
Glorified in its for-ever
Flowing from the Throne!
Oh, the shining holinesses
Of the thousand, thousand faces
God-sunned by the throned ONE,
And made intense with such a love
That, though I saw them turned above,
Each loving seemed for also me!
And, oh, the Unspeakable, the HE,
The manifest in secrecies
Yet of mine own heart partaker
With the overcoming look
Of One who hath been once forsook
And blesseth the forsaker!
Mother, mother, let me go
Toward the Face that looketh so!
Through the mystic winged Four
Whose are inward, outward eyes
Dark with light of mysteries
And the restless evermore
'Holy, holy, holy,'--through
The sevenfold Lamps that burn in view
Of cherubim and seraphim,--
Through the four-and-twenty crowned
Stately elders white around,
Suffer me to go to Him!

XXX.

"Is your wisdom very wise,
Mother, on the narrow earth,
Very happy, very worth
That I should stay to learn?
Are these air-corrupting sighs
Fashioned by unlearned breath?
Do the students' lamps that burn
All night, illumine death?
Mother, albeit this be so,
Loose thy prayer and let me go
Where that bright chief angel stands
Apart from all his brother bands,
Too glad for smiling, having bent
In angelic wilderment
O'er the depths of God, and brought
Reeling thence one only thought
To fill his own eternity.
He the teacher is for me--
He can teach what I would know--
Mother, mother, let me go!

XXXI.

"Can your poet make an Eden
No winter will undo,
And light a starry fire while heeding
His hearth's is burning too?
Drown in music the earth's din,
And keep his own wild soul within
The law of his own harmony?
Mother, albeit this be so,
Let me to my heaven go!
A little harp me waits thereby,
A harp whose strings are golden all
And tuned to music spherical,
Hanging on the green life-tree
Where no willows ever be.
Shall I miss that harp of mine?
Mother, no!--the Eye divine
Turned upon it, makes it shine;
And when I touch it, poems sweet
Like separate souls shall fly from it,
Each to the immortal fytte.
We shall all be poets there,
Gazing on the chiefest Fair.

XXXII.

"Love! earth's love! and can we love
Fixedly where all things move?
Can the sinning love each other?
Mother, mother,
I tremble in thy close embrace,
I feel thy tears adown my face,
Thy prayers do keep me out of bliss--
O dreary earthly love!
Loose thy prayer and let me go
To the place which loving is
Yet not sad; and when is given
Escape to thee from this below,
Thou shalt behold me that I wait
For thee beside the happy Gate,
And silence shall be up in heaven
To hear our greeting kiss."

XXXIII.

The nurse awakes in the morning sun,
And starts to see beside her bed
The lady with a grandeur spread
Like pathos o'er her face, as one
God-satisfied and earth-undone;
The babe upon her arm was dead:
And the nurse could utter forth no cry,--
She was awed by the calm in the mother's eye.

XXXIV.

"Wake, nurse!" the lady said;
"We are waking--he and I--
I, on earth, and he, in sky:
And thou must help me to o'erlay
With garment white this little clay
Which needs no more our lullaby.

XXXV.

"I changed the cruel prayer I made,
And bowed my meekened face, and prayed
That God would do His will; and thus
He did it, nurse! He parted us:
And His sun shows victorious
The dead calm face,--and I am calm,
And Heaven is hearkening a new psalm.

XXXVI.

"This earthly noise is too anear,
Too loud, and will not let me hear
The little harp. My death will soon
Make silence."

And a sense of tune,
A satisfied love meanwhile
Which nothing earthly could despoil,
Sang on within her soul.

XXXVII.

Oh you,
Earth's tender and impassioned few,
Take courage to entrust your love
To Him so named who guards above
Its ends and shall fulfil!
Breaking the narrow prayers that may
Befit your narrow hearts, away
In His broad, loving will.

Losing sight of the bigger picture

Mia Freedman seems to be writing a lot of articles that really resonate with me lately. This one - a column published in the Sunday Herald Sun today - spoke volumes about how much your priorities change once you've had a baby die and been forced to take stock of the fact that so many facets of pregnancy and childbirth can go so awry - and usually the ones you were least expecting.

The article talks about the rise of what Mia calls (controversially, no doubt) 'birthzillas' - women who are obsessed with controlling every facet of their experience of childbirth, and who define themselves, and others, by the choices they do or do not make in regard to how to get a baby from the womb to the cradle.

Mia defines birthzillas as women who 'appear more interested in having a birth experience than a baby'.  As I found out when watching many friends become pregnant and give birth over the last couple of years, there are a few main 'tribes' that women seem to fall, or be coerced into. Just personally I've known three home birth advocates very well, an elective C-section mum terrified of labour, numerous women who've suffered through a birth in the absence of pain relief due to overwhelming fears of being permanently paralysed by an epidural gone wrong, and a few who have, refreshingly, given little thought to their birth plans and just turned up on the day to do whatever it was that needed to be done. Women bring so many different beliefs and such different histories to childbirth, and often it is confusing to get access to reliable information about the real risks and benefits of various alternatives. It's little wonder that women, in the most vulnerable time of their lives, cling to the birth plan in order to retain some kind of semblance of control. 

I didn't get time to make a birth plan. And even if I had, how would it have helped? I'm sure as hell that no one tells women they need to make a section for what they want to happen in the event that their baby dies. And therein lies my new problem with birth plans. They encourage women to think they have control and choice. Except that sometimes you get no choice, either in how you give birth to your baby, or more importantly, to whether your baby lives or dies. No one prepares you for that, either in a birth plan or otherwise. A dead baby certainly puts the birth wars in perspective, doesn't it? Don't expect a mother of a dead baby to pfaff around discussing with you what drugs you're going to say 'yes' or 'no' to, or whether you want to give birth in a bath or on an organic cotton rug made by a remote Ugandan tribe. The only thing she's ever going to say again is 'get my baby out alive'. She'll never understand why that's not your greatest concern, too.

When I thought about birth before I had Max my only birth plan was to get a rather large laminated sign that said 'EPIDURAL, ASAP'. I'd long been terrified of the pain of childbirth, I'd been told one-too-many horror stories, which are impossible to forget once you've heard them. When I was younger I always thought the only way I'd get a baby out of me was through an elective C-section, but I got braver and more sure of myself as the years passed, helped in part by very many years of therapy that helped me learn not to catastrophise things so easily, which anxious people often do.

Having my baby at 23 weeks, when I'd only just started feeling him move and kick, and without ever having attended an antenatal class, was obviously not part of the plan. When I arrived at the hospital to find out that my cervix was already 4cm dilated and I'd likely been in labour for the last 12 hours, I could hardly believe it. Yes, I'd been in pain, but it was not the kind of pain I'd expected labour to feel like. Why hadn't anyone ever told me what to really expect? No one was more shocked than me to find out that I was already in the throes of the experience I'd feared and dreaded my whole life. 

Did it matter that I wasn't at all prepared for labour or birth? That I had no calming music or essential oils? That I didn't have a change of clothes let alone a pocket full of affirmation cards to get me through? Not in the least. The only thing on my mind was what was happening at that exact moment. I had no ability to think even five minutes into the future. I took no notice of who was around, or what the room was like. I remember none of the details. And no, I didn't get an epidural. And not because a nazi midwife refused to give me one as I'd always feared, but simply because I didn't even think to ask. I instead availed myself of the pethidine injections they so kindly offered and later on, a self-administering Fentanyl drip, whose button I broke by trying to make it give me a bigger dose.

While I was not as obsessive as some women in planning the minute details of my birth 'experience', I did naively think that I would have it all under control in the early days. I couldn't have been more wrong, could I? Birth, for me, very quickly became a matter of life and death, and something I feared for reasons very different to the ones I'd initially feared. On that day I feared that if my labour progressed at 23 weeks my baby would die. And he did.  My greatest fear came, tragically, true. But Max's birth was what it was. Despite the horror and shock of the event, he experienced a predominantly calm and peaceful entrance into the world and I have only warm memories of those hours. No screaming, no crying, from either he or his mother. I did what I had to do for my baby in the most excruciating of circumstances. It's that fact which I'm most proud of. I couldn't have cared less how he got into my arms, so long as he could have got there safely.

I think, like Mia says, that women need to take a step back from their often polemicised views of birth, as I had no choice but to do, and see it for what it is really about: the safe delivery of a healthy child to a living mother, whatever the best way is for that to happen. Let us never forget that a living, healthy baby is not a guarantee.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't

I was really surprised to find this week that a new post on MamaMia had quoted the article I wrote a couple of months back. It was an article about Lindy Chamberlain, talking about the way her stoic public face in the aftermath of baby Azaria's death helped to cement her guilt in the eyes of the Australian public.

I clicked on the headline because I'm interested in the way that the tragic Chamberlain case has recently brought discussions about the 'right' and 'wrong' way to grieve into the spotlight, with most commentators, and many member of the public admitting they were wrong to have judged a woman's innocence or guilt on the basis of how she endured after her daughter's death. I didn't expect to see my own name mentioned in such an article, but there it was.

The writer, Rebecca Sparrow, had used my article as an example of how women like Lindy can be vilified for not emoting enough, but how women like myself can be vilified for being too honest and emotional. I am very thankful that the short-lived online pillaging I received had no lasting impact. I did not have to serve a jail sentence for grieving the 'wrong' way, as you could say Lindy did.

I'd be interested to know what this great, unknown, Australian public believe is the right way for a mother to grieve the death of her baby. Because I sure as hell desperately looked for a rule book in the days after Max's death that would help me know what to do and I couldn't find one. No one came out of the woodwork to show me the way forward. I have had to stumble my way through step by bloody, ugly, step.

People can be quick to judge, but they are never so quick to help when they see someone suffering. Have you noticed that? And not just in this situation. I read in the paper today of a man who had collapsed at the Melbourne Uni tramstop with chest pains. No one went to his aid because he was homeless and looked scruffy and dirty. Tens of people walked on by, knowing that a fellow human being was suffering, and not even taking the slightest effort to acknowledge it, let alone alleviate it.

I was kind of hoping that my article would disappear into the ether, never to be heard of again after everything that happened when it first came out. But it seems that it will continue to resonate with others, and for that I am grateful. This gives me confidence that I should try and find an outlet for the article I've written on the importance of holding your baby after they have died, in response to the publication of recent research suggesting that doing this inhibits your ability to properly recover from your loss. As if that was ever possible in the first place!

So far, a few days after my post was again mentioned on MamaMia, I have had no new contacts from any haters, so I guess this is a small victory, huh? But even if I do, well, the haters are gonna hate, aren't they, no matter what the sentiment expressed. It does not mean that what has been written is not still valuable and necessary. It is my mantra to try and remember this each time I put my words out there in the public eye.

A post in honour of Hope and her mum, Sally

You might remember me mentioning in a previous post that I met another bereaved mother a few weeks ago at a focus group I attended for Sands. We were there to provide feedback on the organisation's support literature. I brought the raw perspective of a newly bereaved parent, and Sally brought the wisdom and experience of someone whose baby (also her first child) died four years ago.

Sally's little girl, Hope, was stillborn at over 40 weeks gestation - a full term, healthy baby. Hope died in the most tragic, regrettable, and preventable circumstances, while her mum was in labour. The incompetent midwives had sent Sally home from hospital numerous times, not taking seriously the concerns of someone they obviously saw as a typical nervous first-time mother making a mountain out of a molehill. I'm sure they thought they'd seen it all before. Go home and wait, they urged. You'll be better off there. Except that Sally wasn't better off there. Some time while she was at home, scared and wondering what the hell was going on, and waiting for the midwives to give her the magic green light to come back again, Hope's heart stopped beating. Her mum had developed an infection during her prolonged labour that travelled straight to Hope's safe space. Hope died. She should not have.

But I don't want to tell Sally's story for her. She does this herself, with all of the intense emotions you would expect, but couldn't possibly imagine, on her blog: Tuesday's Hope. I emailed Sally recently, after she generously gave her details to me, yet another stranger, who'd just begun walking the same road. I hesitated in contacting her, afraid that she was just being polite, and that really the last thing she needed was to be taken right back there, to the coal face, where it all began.

I needn't have worried, as it turns out Sally is somewhat of a 'mentor' to many newly bereaved parents, mostly as a result of that incredible blog, and the community she has built along with it. She offered me the chance to read it, and it is not an overstatement to say that doing so changed my life. I read in her words so much of myself, and by the time I'd gotten through all four years of posts I felt like I knew her like an intimate friend. She had read my heart, and uncannily she and I have written of so many of the same feelings and experiences.

Please visit Sally's blog. Please read her story from beginning to end. I spent 48 hours last week pouring over every word she'd written, eyes stuck to the screen like an addict. Her story is so compelling, and her writing so evocative, that I couldn't believe it was not some kind of fictional tele-movie. I read Hope's birth story on the edge of my seat, praying for a happy ending, even though I already knew where the story led. I cried for Sally and for Hope, and the sheer waste of this perfect baby's life. And then, following the birth of her two subsequent, living babies, I cried tears of sheer relief and exhilaration for Sally and her family, culminating in my absolutely sobbing my heart out watching this video of her little son's joyous, healthy birth.

Of course, I hoped when reading Sally's story that I'd get to the part where she finally got her happy ending. I hoped that I would read of the time when the pain of losing her first baby went away. I wrote in my email to her:

I'm afraid you're going to say that while it is wonderful and joyous and incredible to have the gift of a living baby, that the pain of losing Hope is still there. That it never goes away. Because that's what you are going to say, isn't it? That this is my tragedy forever. That the image of my poor little boy's dead body, that I was unable to protect, will be forever etched on my mind. That even should I be lucky enough to have another baby (and I have so many doubts this will ever happen), I will still look at that new baby's face and think of all of the things my Max missed out on. 

And of course, in so many words, this is exactly what she said. And on her blog she still says it, day after day. Every day she lives with her beautiful family, no matter how grateful she is, is tinged with the sorrow of what might have been, or rather, what should have been. Because Hope did not come back with the birth of her subsequent children, just like Max will never come back with ours. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton has written:

Nature never repeats herself, and the possibility of one human soul will never be found in another. No one has ever found two blades of grass alike and no one will find two human beings alike.

The children that came afterwards for Sally, and that I hope will come in the future for me, are not the babies we lost. I wonder how many times you have to remind yourself of that during a new pregnancy?

Any living baby we have, after the catastrophic loss of our first, is an entirely new person, with his/her own gifts, own promise, and with whom we'll share a completely different relationship than we would have done with our firstborns. Not a lesser relationship, mind you, but a different one. A changed one. Eleven living babies couldn't make up for the one tiny person lost. And neither should they have to. Our subsequent children have suffered enough of a tragedy even before their birth - the loss of a sibling which we have already grieved for them, on their behalf.

I imagine that creating a new identity as the mother of a different child, and a new relationship with that child, brings up complex issues that play out in big and small ways, not only in the obvious comparison you will probably make between your experience of a new pregnancy and your experience of the last one. Then there are the seemingly endless questions about how you organise the practical concerns of your every day life. For example, if you are lucky enough to have a living baby after losing your first, do you use the baby things that had been set aside for your dead baby?

I feel a bit superstitious about that, like it would be the wrong thing to do. I feel very protective of the fact that the baby things I have belong to Max and Max alone, and that any new baby would have to have his/her own things. Of course there's no right or wrong answer to those kind of questions, you just do what feels right for you at the time. Sally writes about all of these seemingly-small details, and describes how she managed them, and what she decided to do, which has been so very helpful and reassuring to read.

Sally and I have been emailing back and forth for a week or two now, and given that we live fairly close to each other, might meet up for a coffee or to go for a walk and chat in person some time soon. I am so glad to have met her that day, and so grateful for the generous way in which she has shared herself, her daughter, and their story with me, and now, with my friends and family too.

Heartfelt thanks to you, Sally. I am so sorry we had to meet this way - the worst of ways - but I am not sorry that we met. Thank you for reaching out to me. I can't tell you how much it means.

Things-I-Love Thursday: New Beginnings

I started these weekly Things-I-Love-Thursday posts back in February. For a long time there Thursdays were really hard days for me to bear. Thursday was the day that my pregnancy ticked over to the next exciting week. Thursday was the day Max was born. A Thursday was Max's due date.

I know that I am changing because Thursdays don't really hurt much anymore. They don't seem to hold the same significance that they did even a few short months ago, when every Thursday was for me a cruel reminder of all that I had lost.

I still feel very despairing much of the time, believe me. It just doesn't seem to be tied to any one thing, or time or place as it was in the beginning.

Thursdays have lost their power. Or, perhaps, I have become more powerful.

I'd like to think it was a little bit of both.

Thursday's gone back to being just another day, as good or as bad as any other.

As some things lose their symbolism or significance, though, others gain it when they didn't have it before. I hate the day I get my period, for example. I rage and cry against it, where I never have before.

My grief grows and changes as I grow and change. It is more comfortable now, as if I've worn it in like a pinching pair of new shoes. I still walk around in it, but it doesn't bit and make me catch my breath in shock as it did in the beginning. Except I suppose that's not really true, as sometimes it really does feel like I'm walking in those pinching shoes for the very first time again, and I can hardly believe how easily I can be thrown right back to the beginning.

Thursday - Jupiter, the God of sky and thunder's day - doesn't rain on me anymore. And so there will be no more Things-I-Love-Thursday. Not because I don't love things anymore, but because I don't need to set aside a special time in the week to remind myself that there are still things I love so much anymore. Gradually, those things have started to weave their way back into my sights of their own accord. Slowly, and hesitantly, but they are there.

Perhaps I'll instigate a new blogging practice. I'm not sure what yet. But as this blog is a record of who I was, who I am, and who I'm becoming, it's important that I mark these milestones of thought and feeling.

Things-I-Love-Thursday: I don't need you anymore. But thanks for helping remember the things that remain, when all else has been lost.

Looking to the stars

I have a son, yet I will never know him. The only life he will lead is the one I imagine for him. The pleasure in this is that Max can be whatever I want him to be. He will never disappoint, or annoy, or exasperate me. He is the perfect child. I feel deeply that I knew my little boy's heart. His innate goodness, his warmth, and his wonder streamed from him like a streak of sunshine, despite the shock and sorrow that simultaneously crowded in around us. I knew his heart, but I will never know his mind - his likes and dislikes, his preferences for company or for solitude, his penchant for football or tennis. One of the things that it truly breaks my heart all over again to think about is that I will never hear his voice. How sweet it would have sounded to my ears. Even if he would only ever have used it to whinge or protest, it wouldn't have mattered. I am forever listening on the breeze around me for my little boy's breathe, and for his little boy voice, whispering 'mama'.

Because Max remains an enigma to me (me, his mother, who should have known him best), of course I've spent a lot of time wondering what he might have been like; what he is like now if he is living his life out in some kind of parallel universe as he should have done here. At times in my life I've been quite interested in astrology, although my interest is constantly interrupted by the other half of my brain causing my hand to slap myself around the face and say 'oh Janelle, really?!'. It's just that I've always been an uncannily true-to-form Cancerian. Well, specifically, a Cancerian with a charming Leo moon. I once had my birth chart drawn up by a professional astrologer (whatever that involves) and it was spookily accurate. I enjoy looking at the planets all mapped out in each of the twelve zodiac houses. Most of the activity in my chart falls in just a couple of zodiac signs. There's a lot of repetition.

In a bid to better understand my little Max, I did the same for Max, albeit online on a free astrology website, so who knows how accurate it is. I got such a lot out of reading about the boy he might have been, had he lived. This is what the stars say about my son, Maxwell Alexander, born 11.17pm on 24/11/11.

Rising Sign is in 12 Degrees Cancer
Very sensitive by nature, you prefer to be in your own familiar surroundings. Cautious and conservative, you make changes in your life only very slowly, if at all. You do not open up easily to strangers. Friendships are made for life, however -- once given, your trust is forever. Your mother, your home as a child and your early family life in general are very important to you. You are also very sentimental. When you feel self- confident, you are gentle, giving and protective of the needs of others. But when you feel insecure or threatened, you become overly sensitive to criticism, shy, withdrawn and moody. You have a strong need for security -- in the sense that you are being loved, nourished and protected.

Sun is in 01 Degrees Sagittarius
Very fun-loving, spirited and energetic, you have a huge reservoir of physical energy within you that needs to be released. As such, exercise or sports are very important to you. Quite gregarious, you enjoy being with other people, but you tend to avoid emotionally restrictive or intimate relationships. Constantly curious about the broader issues of life, you may at times be quite careless and sloppy about details -- you tend to leap to conclusions before all the facts are in. An avid reader, you are totally enthusiastic about any given subject should it interest you. You are known for being idealistic, generous, sociable, cheerful and very positive!

Moon is in 21 Degrees Scorpio
Your feelings are very intense, never superficial. You tend to be either very angry or very sad or completely and totally happy. Your moods are deep, extreme and not always completely understood by yourself or by those with whom you have to deal. Emotionally, you tend to prefer to live at the cutting edge of life, pushing your reactions to the ultimate extremes, even if the results are dangerous or upsetting. You are easily jealous and very suspicious -- you require a great deal of emotional reassurance. A good detective, you are very curious about deep and mysterious things, especially human nature and motivations. Be careful not to be ruthless, tactless or too overly frank or you will meet with much resistance from others.

Mercury is in 20 Degrees Sagittarius 
Your mind is very curious and inquisitive, always seeking information on a wide variety of topics. The broader the subject matter (philosophy, science, religion, metaphysics), the more it will appeal to you. You prefer to deal with abstractions -- the small but important details associated with any subject tend to slip your grasp. You are known for being blunt, honest and truthful.

Venus is in 27 Degrees Sagittarius
You are very aware of the need to maintain a high sense of morality in a relationship. Your loyalty and interest will remain constant in any relationship (either friendly, personal or business) that is based on fairness, honesty and justice. But you will become greatly hurt and disappointed if the other person takes any but the high road with you. Also, you cannot tolerate anyone being overly emotionally possessive of you. You are known for your friendly, outspoken manner.

Mars is in 06 Degrees Virgo
Very careful and systematic, you pay great attention to details. You are always seeking perfection and sometimes get bogged down searching for the ultimate when adequacy would have been sufficient. You dislike abstractions, preferring whatever is practical, useful and demonstrable. You have a strong and enduring sense of personal responsibility, and you demand that others be as responsible and upright as you are. Very critical of yourself and others, sometimes you carry this too far and become overly intolerant of others and their right to choose their own lifestyles.

Jupiter is in 02 Degrees Taurus
Growth only occurs for you after you have found a stable lifestyle and a dependable, protective and secure environment. You are at your best when those around you provide you with a great deal of affection and support. When you feel insecure or threatened, you tend to become possessive and grasping and self- indulgent. You are an inveterate collector with an expensive preference for all the good things that life has to offer.

Saturn is in 25 Degrees Libra
Although you take quite a while to make decisions, you usually consider all sides to a question, all the pros and cons, and the solution you come up with is very often the correct one. You tend to be very reserved and shy, but, once you make a commitment to someone (in either a business or personal relationship), the partnership is forever. You have a strong sense of justice and fair play and greatly respect the laws and institutions by which you are governed. As such, you are outraged when others break laws or show contempt for authority.

Uranus is in 00 Degrees Aries
For you, as well as for the rest of your peers, the issue of personal freedom is not just an abstract issue that can be discussed and then forgotten. You feel very deeply the loss or threat of loss of your ability to remain unrestricted and independent. And you will react vigorously and vociferously to defend your right of self-expression, no matter what the cost.

Neptune is in 28 Degrees Aquarius
You, and your entire generation, will idealize and even venerate the ability to remain detached as well as the ability to objectively analyze any given situation. There will be a concerted effort on your part to cure the ills of society as a whole. But be very careful to continue to maintain and protect the rights of individuals in the midst of these potentially far-reaching changes.

Pluto is in 06 Degrees Capricorn
For your entire generation, this is a period of intense changes in the very fabric of society. Many accepted institutions may pass away or be born anew. The good of the community as a whole will be stressed and individual rights may come under attack. This will possibly be a period of decay that will lead to a new order.

N. Node is in 14 Degrees Sagittarius
You will probably have many different contacts and acquaintances throughout your life. You're quite gregarious by nature and your natural curiosity about others lets you take the lead in forming new relationships. You'll form close ties with those who have similarly idealistic ideas -- especially those who can stimulate you intellectually in your chosen field of interest. Your enthusiasm for learning new things may also cause you to do quite a bit of traveling. Because you probably will have many wide-ranging interests and concerns, you most likely will have contacts and connections in various parts of the country (or world).

Thinking about 200 posts

I am soon to write my 200th blog post, here, on The Beginning of All Things. This, in itself, is cause for reflection. Many of my posts have well over a thousand words inside them. In fact, it is probably a conservative estimate to suggest that I have written 200,000 words here over the last six months. Who knew that there was so much to say about death? About grief? About longing? Six months ago my vocabulary of loss was almost non-existent. Now, I talk about loss as if it is all life has to offer. I've found a thousand synonymous ways to talk about death, and I'm still constantly finding new perspectives from which to look at life's endings.

Some may believe that this morbidity is a character flaw - that I should lighten up and start to see the positives in life instead of wallowing in grief. For example, perhaps I should be thankful that there's nothing physically wrong with me that would suggest we cannot try for another baby. To be relieved that I am not caring for a severely disabled child, as Max could have been had he lived. To be grateful that I don't have the financial pressures to return to full time work before I am ready. Of course, I'm aware of all of those smal mercies. I'm thankful always for Leslie, my house, my cat, my family, my friends. But don't you dare, stranger or acquaintance, or sometimes even friend, point me in the direction of positive things, implying that I should thank my lucky stars my tragedy was not worse. You have no right. No right at all, unless you have also had 100% of your children snatched away from you after they were born, unless you've had them lying lifeless in your arms. Some people have lost all of their children, and some people have lost even more than that. They have earned the right to advise me, perhaps, but the difference is that they never would, for they understand the folly of trying to apply comparative 'measures' to tragedy.

So don't you dare imply that I am selfish or self-absorbed in thinking and writing only of my own loss. Don't you dare imply that I should 'suck it up' and put my own grief aside so as not to offend others by having to look upon its ugly face. For once in my life I'm throwing the whole rule book to the wind. As far as I am concerned there is no longer any 'right' or 'wrong', there are just moments, and experiences, and expressions, and they will be what they will be. I will not filter so as to protect someone's opinion of me. I will not grieve politely so as to save others from embarrassment. I will not pretend to be happy and joyous at your good news if I don't genuinely feel so. I think that it is too much to ask of a person barely surviving the daily motions of life to dutifully keep her gushing wounds in check at the same time.

That is the reason for this blog - so I have a space in which to record my own experience, as it happens to me. It is as public as I want it to be (which, for the moment, is not very). I can wail and moan and express my anger and frustration as often, and as with as much detail, as I'd like. I don't have to worry about hijacking the conversation with my grief, as this is not a conversation, it's a monologue; more than that, it is a secret diary, in which I've entrusted a few special loved ones with the key. I've had to choose those loved ones carefully, as one or two I had considered part of my inner circle really hurt me by judging what I write, and applying their own standards to my experience of grief. However the people I know and love best of all, who are most of its current readers, would never deny me the right to feel how I feel, no matter if it upsets or confronts them, or confuses them. They just let me be.

The people I've invited to read here are a carefully selected few who are intelligent, feeling, thinking individuals who are not afraid to join me in my grief. They are not scared that it is a contagious disease that will infect them should they gather too close to it. They might still find it confronting, but they are not afraid to challenge their own feelings and beliefs as a result of something I've written or said. They do not take my desperate bitterness at the unfairness of what happened to me and my baby as evidence that I wish their babies dead in Max's place. They are secure enough in themselves to know that anything I say, or write, or feel, is not really about them at all, and instead all about me trying to make sense of what has happened and trying to find meaning amongst the rubble, however awkwardly, hurtfully, or unsuccessfully that plays out. They want to grow alongside me, and to integrate my experience, and my little son, into their own experience of life, so as to develop as more compassionate, loving human beings, with a deeper understanding of life.

Well, at least that is what I hope and believe of all seven or eight of you who gather here. And I'd like to hear from you - every single one of you who come to witness the the annihilation, and sometimes the rebuilding of my heart. I'm asking something of you, as a donation in kind for your continued intimate access to this inner sanctum. To commemorate the hundreds of thousands of uncensored, unedited words I've shared with you, I'm asking you to tell me where those words and images have hit. Who are you? How do you know me? Who are you to Max? Why do you read here? What, if anything, have you learned about life, or about loss, or about pregnancy, or about truth? How has my darling Max impacted on your life? What do you think about when you think about us? What do you think of what I write here, and what I have shared with you in real life? How do you think I have changed, for better and for worse?

I've asked beautiful Leslie, and my beloved Anika, to start the ball rolling, by providing a special post for my 200th entry. I think she is writing a letter. I've also asked her little Sasha to draw a picture for, or of, Max, but I'm not sure how forthcoming she will be with the request. She's such a busy little girl these days - far too busy to talk to me on the phone. I can only hope she will have a rare moment of toddler creative generosity, for my sake!

Will you write, or draw something for me to post here? It doesn't have to be long. It could even have dot points. But I want to include you here, in this special space for Max, as our experience has affected you, too. I want you to share some of yourselves, as a result, if that is not too much to ask.

Please, email me your contributions, your thoughts and feelings, to beginningofallthings@gmail.com. I'd like to start including your contributions as guest posts over the next week or so, but at the same time, don't feel like you need to rush. I'd rather receive something from you late, than not at all.

This is my way of showing you that I consider you part of this journey, and that while I know from experience that I will have to leave some people behind as I begin to build my 'new' reality, I don't intend to have any of you anywhere other than right by my side. I value your input, I thank you for your unwavering support and love, and I love you in ways I cannot even begin to explain. That is what I really want to say.



 

Ashes to ashes

What do we do with our dead?

We get rid of them, quickly, out of our sight. Despite the fact that we have the means to preserve them these days, by way of refrigerated morgues, so that we might spend more time saying goodbye, we spend less time with our dead loved ones than we ever have throughout history. In the not-too-distant past, a deceased family member would be lovingly 'laid out' at home for a number of days so that visitors could come and pay their respects. Families could come to terms with a person's death while the body of their beloved was still under their roof to hold, and to cry over - to aid the expression of sorrow and grief. There's a tendency today, though, to act swiftly in the face of death, for reasons I can't fully understand. It is rare for the length of time between a person's death and their funeral to be more than a couple of days. When funerals are delayed for reasons of autopsy, or other complications, you hear people say how cruel this delay is - it's as if all anyone wants is to get the awful business over with, so as to more quickly move on.

I wish I hadn't felt that I had to rush to say goodbye to Max for the last time. I have so many regrets when I think of how the week of his birth and death played out, and one of my biggest is that I spent such a short amount of time with him after he died. His heart stopped beating around 4am, and we were home from the hospital by midday that day. I can't really say why. I remember being told at some point in the hospital that there was 'no rush' for us to leave, but I don't think I really processed that, or anything else much that was said to me at the time. We were sort of left alone in the morning in the room. The midwives who'd sat with us all night had gone off duty and it seemed like the new ones didn't quite know what to do with us. The obstetrician had seen me, the social worker had seen me and left us with a list of funeral homes. What were we supposed to do next? No one came to tell us. And we needed to be told. We were not in a state to be thinking for ourselves, and were certainly not capable of asking the questions I now so dearly wish we had. I think I said something to the new midwife, like, 'do we go now?' and she might have said 'if that's what you want'. I remember asking her if there was any reason why we needed to stay, and she said there wasn't, so I guess that was that. We gathered our things and we left. Just like that. One foot in front of the other, out through the corridor, down to the car park, and out into the cruel brightness of the world outside.

How I wish she'd said 'Yes, there is a reason you should stay. You won't be able to get this time back. Commit to your memory every molecule of his body. Drink him in while you can.' How I wish I'd stayed long enough for some of the shock to subside, so that I might have been more able to be fully present in the final moments I spent with him. I've since found out that I could have stayed there for days. He could have gone to the morgue at night, and I could have had him back each morning for as long as I needed to get used to the idea, firstly, that he was mine, and secondly, that he was truly gone. Until very recently, I've realised, I was labouring under the apprehension that Max was coming back. The finality of his death has taken a good six months to actually sink in. I think the resurgence of acute grief I've had the last week or so is part of finally having to accept that my baby is gone forever.

We left the hospital on the Friday, and Max was to be picked up by the undertaker on the Monday. Over the weekend I was overcome with the feeling that I wanted to go back to the hospital to spend more time with Max. I think they'd told us that we could come back at any time to see him. I remember talking to Leslie about it, but for some reason I think he talked me out of it, instead suggesting that we go to see him once he arrived at the funeral place. But when we called the funeral place on the Monday they said we weren't able to see him as he was being prepared for his funeral at another location. The chance to spend more time cuddling my baby had slipped away.

The last time I saw Max was at his funeral. We'd asked to see him before the service, and were given about fifteen or twenty minutes before everyone started arriving to say our final goodbyes. How do I describe what that was like to you? I cry as soon as I begin to think about it. Was I afraid? Strangely, no. I looked upon him in his coffin with such overwhelming pride. He looked so beautiful wrapped in his baby blue blanket. He looked like a sleeping baby in a cradle. My sleeping baby. Mine and Leslie's. Our baby. Except that his cradle had a lid. And there was someone there wanting to screw it on over the top of him so that he would not be able to see or breathe or hear. How could I let them do that to my baby? I remember thinking, for a split second, that this was my last chance to grab him and run. All sorts of things went through my head during that service. I imagined myself pulling him out of the box and refusing to let him go. I imagined sitting in the front pew clinging to my baby as hoards of people tried to pry him from my arms. I'd fight each of them off with my teeth and nails and feet. I'd grab whatever weapon I could lay my hands on to stab them or maim them or pluck their eyes out as if I were a wild animal. They'd have to tranquillise me and restrain me before I'd give him up. While all this was running through my head, though, I sad quietly, numbly, and did as I was told, just like the good girl I've always been. I didn't make a fuss. I didn't want to upset anyone by losing control. Instead, I just hurt myself by keeping it together, ensuring I would carry all of that desperation and rage fresh into the months that would follow. I have no outlet for it now, it just eats away inside of me like a cancer.

I should have wailed. I should have swore. I should have kicked and punched and pummelled my way out of there. At that stage I didn't even care that my baby was dead so long as I could just keep him with me. It didn't matter to me that he'd never breathe or cry again, like other babies, but he was mine and the whole world were asking me to nail him inside a fucking cheap imported wooden box and throw it in a fire where he'd be reduced to nothing but dust in my nose; carbon in the air. It was never a question that Max would be cremated. I've always been hugely distressed by the idea of burial under the ground, Leslie agreed, and I was sure that I would want to be cremated myself. But now, after his cremation urn has arrived and I'm faced with the task of taking his ashes to be poured into it, I find myself wondering if we did the right thing. I wonder if I'd feel better if I had a place to visit in a cemetery - a physical place, and a plaque that marked for the whole world where he was. But we didn't feel comfortable laying him to rest in a cemetery far away, surrounded by strange bodies, and my family don't even live in this state, so he wouldn't have had many visitors. I thought he'd be lonely there. Sometimes I wish that he was still in a box underground instead of reduced to ashes in a carton, though, so I could go under cover of darkness and dig him up with my bare hands, like the desperado I've become. Maybe I've watched too much Buffy in my time, but I can't help thinking there must be a way to get him back, like maybe if my tears touched the earth of his grave it would crumble and release him if he were buried there. But there's no way, even in TV, to turn dust into something solid, something whole. In my darker, madder moments, I wonder if in cremating my baby I denied him the chance to come back to life, as if I believed that such a thing were even remotely possible.

So many people have told me, comfortingly, that my grief will get easier with time, but I think that this is simply untrue. The emotional distance time provides from the acute trauma of Max's birth and death have certainly lessened the symptoms of the trauma (flashbacks, nightmares), but not of the meaning of his death itself. As each day wears on - and sometimes it really does feel like it's wearing, like old, rusty cogs turning a seized up old engine - the idea of dealing with Max's absence every day. . . for the rest of my life. . . seems so much more impossible to bear. It reminds me of when I was in labour, and I was at the end of my tether, tired and distressed and in pain. I kept asking the midwife when it would finish, and she told me that it would only be another half an hour, at most. That's the only way I could keep going on, knowing there was an end to the pain in sight. There was an end to the pain of his birth, but there is no end to the pain that his death has caused. What do I do with that knowledge? Indeed, what do I do, in general, now?

Tomorrow I'll go to work with Leslie so that we can go to an engraver in the city to have a brass plate etched with Max's details for the top of his urn. I keep coming up with all of these things to put on it, and Leslie has to keep reigning me in as everything I want to write won't fit. Unfortunately he knows this from experience, as it has taken two years for his family to put a plaque on his mother's grave, as no one could agree on the exact wording it should have - there simply wasn't enough space on the plaque for everyone to have the message they want.

As this blog has proven, there are simply hundreds of thousands of words I want to say to, and about Max. How we can be expected to come up with only 10 or 12 words to sum up his existence is beyond me. I am writing a book about him, and at the rate I'm going it will be my life's work. I simply don't know where to stop writing about him and talking about him. Perhaps I can't bear to stop. The silence in the space where he should be is already too deafening.

Here is the urn we bought from America, after much deliberation. Heartfelt thanks must go to the Stamm family, who allowed us to ship the urn to their US address, and who very generously forwarded it to us after we found out the company would not ship to Australia. The plaque we hope to have made will go on the top of the box. It's so hard to believe that this box is all that is left of my baby; that a piece of me, perhaps the most important piece, lies dead inside it. All of this is so unfair. It's so, so unfair.

Max's cremation urn

Dear Max, send us hope

Dear Max,

It's been six months since you left us, and still your daddy and I remain painfully in the dark about why we could not keep you. There is not a single day that passes that I don't recall to mind the delicate contours of your little cheeks, and that I don't try to re-animate you with sheer power of my mind and will.

Your mummy has discovered that she is stronger than she ever thought possible as a result of losing you, but she's still not powerful enough to bring you back. There's no one who can do that.

You brought us so many special gifts on the night you came, and the greatest of them all was enabling me to experience, if only for the briefest interlude, being a mother. It was a feeling like no other, and one I miss desperately. It's as if you awakened in me an instinct I'd only glimpsed up until now; one that I practice with other people's children all the time, but that I know will never truly be realised again until I can be a mother to my own child, in my own arms, where you should be, still.

Our perfect boy, you showed us how much love we have to share, and in your honour we want to keep on sharing the love you gave us. We'd like to open our minds and our hearts to a new baby; one who will never replace you, but who will instead keep your memory alive, and who we hope will bring their own gifts to help us heal our hearts, and who will share with us a sense of hope for the future.

Daddy and I feel so torn about our hope for another baby. We have to come to terms with so many things.  The most important of these is that having a new baby will never mean that you have returned to us. It will be an entirely different person we'll be asked to love and welcome into our family just as we welcomed you with all of your unique promise and potential.

We have to manage our guilt, too, which when we let it threatens to overwhelm. In some ways it feels as if even thinking of having another child is the most unforgivable act of disloyalty to you. I can't bear the thought that you might feel replaced or in any way less loved or valued as a result of our wish for a baby.

We also live with so much uncertainty now. We worry about choosing the right time to try again, even though we know more than ever that there's no such thing as a 'right' time; that everything that happens in life is an entirely random, unpredictable occurrence.

The uncertainty morphs into fear very easily when I consider that perhaps you were my only chance at motherhood and that I won't be able to fall pregnant again, or that if I do, that baby will die too. The fears escalate with barely the slightest provocation and it takes all of my will and energy some days to quieten them.

I don't know what it will mean to be pregnant with another child that is not you, and I don't know how my profound experience of anxiety and grief will affect that journey. I just know that it must in every way. Will you be with me on that journey, Max? Is that too much to ask of you?

I guess what I'm asking for is your permission, darling, to begin to hope again and to use the gifts you gave me in the best way I know how - in sharing them with others, especially with a brother or sister of your own flesh and blood.

I'll never know for sure if you give me your blessing. I don't even know if you are able to have thoughts and feelings anymore. But in asking for it I'm hoping to feel a sense of peace that will tell me that we are doing the right thing, and that this is what you would want for us.

Our love for you will never, could never lessen or change. You are as much a part of me, and your daddy, as is our own breath.

Max, we wish for hope. We wish for peace. We wish that you could let us know the sentiments of your own little heart, that beat ferociously as we held you in our arms.

With all our love,

Mummy and Daddy

HOPE