7 years of this neverending journey in grief

It's been seven years. It feels like it was just yesterday and an eternity all at the same time. I still remember seeing him for the first time. His lifeless body dripping with amniotic fluid and a beautiful blue umbilical cord ; the only thing left connecting us as one physically. That brief moment of euphoria that I had looking up to see that he was a boy. It had not completely hit me in that moment that my baby was gone. I knew something was wrong, of course, but there is *always* that hope that a miracle will occur and your story will be the one where the baby comes back to life from your touch or your voice. That wasn't my story. There was no miraculous recovery. My baby, who had only just got here, was gone.

I don't blog much about the pain. Largely because I don't enjoy reliving it. I would rather focus on the positives that he brought into my life. I think this has made people think that I am "over it" or that everything is okay now. I am at that point where I feel like no one even remembers him. No one cares that I still ache to just smell his perfectly curly hair one more time. Or kiss those wonderfully chubby cheeks. I can't talk about him without feeling like people are tired of hearing about it. I mean there is no change, no birthdays, no milestones met, no kindergarten or 1st grade. It's the same story of death every time.

This year there have been a lot of triggers of my pain. Several people have had losses that were almost identical to mine. It reminded me of things that I do not like to relive over and over. I don't like that feeling of darkness that I felt when I walked into the house where my baby was born , while having to acknowledge that he died there too. I remember the first few weeks I would lay in bed hearing the sounds of a baby crying and then crying myself to sleep. The trigger that the sound of an ambulance had in the middle of the night. The tears, the physical aching in my soul. That feeling when you are in a room full of people and feel completely and totally alone because no one else on earth could possible understand your pain.  It took me back to that place of emptiness. My heart has an empty space filled with sorrow for my little boy that is missing. My life will never be the same without him. There is no way to go back to the life that was before this happened to me. There is no getting over it. There is no end to this road. There is no end to the sadness and pain. There are no words to describe the depth of pain this kind of loss brings. I miss him. I am *missing* him. One of my close friends was pregnant the same year. Her daughter is a few months younger than he would be and she is also my oldest daughters' best friend. I love her, but sometimes it is a painful reminder of what I don't have. My house is full of children; 3 boys and 2 girls. But he is always missing. I am always wondering what he would have been like. Would he be calm and gentle like his older brother? Or a typical rough boy like is younger brother? Would he be athletic or more into books? Would he be funny or serious? So many things I think about daily. There is and will always be a part of me missing. And nothing will ever fill that void. 7 years. He would be in first grade. I hope that I stay on the straight path and that I will be able to meet him at the gates of Paradise and that this time on Earth without will be more than made up for in the eternal gardens of paradise. I love him. I miss him. But to Allah we belong and to Allah we all return.

***If you have not read his birth story you can read it here. Abdul-Qadir 10/22/2005****

I am NOT a psychic. I am just a (mammalian) Mama with instincts.

Where to begin? Ok Let me just explain first why I am posting this. I recently did an interview with the author of the book "In Search of the Perfect Birth" about my stillbirth and what I felt regarding my care received. You can go see the post here: Getting Qualified Care: Interview With a Stillbirth Mother and follow her because she has a lot of good information and a different perspective on many birth topics. Anyway, I did this interview and she posted it on her Facebook page. I also wrote a blog 2 days ago discussing some of my emotions that I am working through about my birth experiences.

Today on her page someone posted the following: "May I ask a question? If Michelle "knew" that baby was going to die, why didn't she try to prevent it? Just wondering."  I also had the unfortunate pleasure of dealing with another person regarding my recent blog post in regards to the same thing. So I want to point out a few things.......

1- I AM NOT PSYCHIC. While I was pregnant with him I was not 100% for certain that he would die. While pregnant I knew that things were different and I had a strong feeling that he wasn't staying with me. I had a feeling but I HOPED it was wrong. 

2- My decision to homebirth as well as my decisions made during pregnancy WERE influenced by this feeling. Let me explain further because apparently people are just not getting it. The first time I ever felt that he would not be with me long was while I was STILL UNDER THE CARE OF AN OB. I was threatened with permanent sterilization and my wishes to VBA2C were not going to be considered. I left my appointment literally thinking that I would be so devastated if I lost this baby and could never have another one.

This led to me doing a lot of thinking and a lot of praying. One of the things that was important for me was to be able to enjoy every single moment of my pregnancy stress free. I couldn't see myself going to this OB office and fighting them every single visit about my refusal for testing, my refusal for sterilization, and my refusal for a repeat c-section. It was going to be too much. I needed peace. This was also largely why I did not get bent out of shape when I went 2 weeks overdue. I loved every moment I got with him.

3- The other thing that is really pissing me off is the assumption that my midwife was terrible simply because my baby died. My midwife went above and beyond what I expected of her in regards to my care. She gave me exactly what I needed and wanted, which was peace, love, comfort, warmth, and security. I never ever felt that she endangered me or my baby. EVER. I cannot imagine having that birth/loss experience without her.  For some stranger on the internet to diagnose my baby's cause of death is ridiculous. Guess what! YOU WEREN'T THERE!!!!! You have no idea what you are talking about. I WAS THERE. I am pretty sure that makes me more qualified to speak on my birth than anyone else.

4- I knew that me saying his birth was the only one I had no regrets over was going to anger people. So I need to explain again the reason why I have no regrets. It was the ONLY birth that I trusted my instincts. It was the ONLY birth that I did not let anyone or anything around me dictate how it would go. All of my other births I ignored my gut feelings and was hurt in one way or another so YES I have regrets about not listening to my instincts there. If I had listened to and trusted myself every time I would have avoided an unnecessary c-section, an unnecessary induction which led to a failed VBAC and a horrible hospital stay for my daughter, undue stress from CPS, another uncomfortable hospital birth which involved me being violated physically by hospital staff. 

Yeah hindsight is 20/20. There is not a single thing about my loss that I regret. I spent every second of my pregnancy grateful I still had time. I spent every moment of my labor grateful for that time. I remember his birth as beautiful and empowering not traumatic. I am not sure why this angers people so much. 

My Homebirth Loss: The Birth

*** Disclaimer again:  Before I begin I would like to preface this post with a few things. First off, I have not shared the details of this birth publicly since he was born. This was largely due to the most insensitive and hurtful comments that I have ever seen a person make online regarding my loss without them even knowing the details. Please bear in mind that I lost my son and no one carries that burden of loss more than I do. If you comment with anything that is offensive, mean, or otherwise insensitive it will get deleted. Secondly I am writing this birth story in 3 separate blogs, the pregnancy and labor, the birth, and the hospital trasnfer. I am doing this because 1- there is just too much information to put it all in one post and 2-I want to separate my emotions from those three cycles of this process. The labor was amazingly beautiful, the birth was somewhat scary, and the hospital transfer was nothing short of infuriating.****

The Birth:

Here I was the moment I had been waiting for and missed with my first two babies. It was time to push! I remember just thinking how close I was to this being over and how I couldn't wait so that the burden of looming loss would finally go away.

I pretty much followed my instincts in regards to pushing. It felt best to stand in between contractions and push in a squatting position. I actually didn't even know at the time that squatting opens the pelvic inlet 30% more than normal. Instincts are such an amazing thing we have. I was in such a labor daze that I am unaware of exactly how long it took to push. I do know that my cervical lip was still there and that while pushing my midwife pushed it out of the way so that I could get the baby past my cervix.

There was a point in the pushing process that I was shown a mirror and I could see his head. I think the reason they did that is because they wanted me to see that I was so close to birthing. It helped to know that his head was literally right there.

It was not long after that things quickly changed. I recall hearing my midwife tell her assistant to check heart tones in between my contractions. I remember it like it was yesterday very very vividly. There was complete and utter silence. No heartbeat, not even the swooshing of the placenta. That feeling I had the entire pregnancy of a heartbeat not being found was happening. While I prepared for the worst at every prenatal, I never quite imagined that this may occur during my labor.

At this point the mood seemed to completely change. I could hear a lot of hustling behind me and encouragement for me to get the baby born. I remember hearing my midwife say "call them" telling someone to call 911. When I heard that I pushed with every single thing I had in me. I could feel the infamous ring of fire and hoped this meant it was almost over. In reality it had only just begun.

Once his head was born I could not push anymore and he was not moving out. I could tell by the look on my midwife's face that something was really wrong. She gave me a stern yet gentle stare and said " I need you to push. This baby needs to come out now!" Only I had no energy to "purple push" as they call it. I had no contractions and I had no energy left. So there I was with my baby stuck and nothing anyone could do.

It took 30 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. Police and EMT volunteers were there within minutes and NONE of them did anything. Not one single thing. They stood around and stared at me like I was in the circus. Once the ambulance finally arrived they kicked everyone out of the room. They were completely and utterly clueless about what to do. They were on the phone with the hospital asking what to do and while they were looking at each other trying to figure out what they needed to do the urge to push came back really strongly. I said more than once I need to push and my (ex) husband got their attention and with that push the rest of his body was born.

I remember saying how good that felt to be done. I looked up and saw that it was a boy and saw that he was totally lifeless. We asked them not to cut the cord they did it anyway. They never even attempted to resuscitate him AT ALL. No CPR, no oxygen, and I am not even sure they checked for a pulse.  Not only did they do nothing they didn't even let me see him.

I plan to continue the transfer part of this story in the next blog but before I do I want to address a few things about this part of my story.

First I would like to say that there have been many times where people have questioned or assumed that this happened because I was at home and being in the hospital somehow would have changed things. To that I would like to point out a few things:

1- Continuous fetal monitoring does not improve birth outcomes at all.

"Admission electronic fetal monitoring did not decrease neonatal morbidity and mortality compared with intermittent auscultation. Patients in the admission fetal monitoring group were more likely to receive continuous electronic monitoring and fetal blood sampling, but there were no significant differences in the rates of operative deliveries or episiotomy. Institutions not routinely using admission electronic fetal monitoring should not start; those that do may not be benefiting their patients." - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12791223/

So while yes in the hospital I would have had continuous fetal monitoring, the intermittent monitoring of the baby was sufficient enough to show if there was issues. In my case whatever occurred happened quickly and the outcome would have been NO different in the hospital.

2- The shoulder dystocia.  I have processed my birth in many ways and often over the last 6 years. I know that there will be some that say "well see your pelvis was too narrow". He was very large ( will get into that on the next blog) and I gave birth twice after that vaginally to babies that were 2+ lbs bigger than my c-section baby so, no my pelvis is just fine thank you very much.

Also I am pretty sure that my baby passed away before his head was born. Now Allah only knows for sure when He took his soul but from what little I do know I think he was already gone. Babies must be active participants in the birth process. It is a team effort. Once the head is born the baby usually rotates itself to allow the shoulders to come out. My baby was no longer actively particpating in the birth. I am not sure if the shoulder dystocia I had was due to his size or due to the fact that he was not rotating or moving at all.

Also this is NOT a predictable situation. Shoulder dystocia can happen with babies of ALL sizes. This is not something that anyone could have seen coming ahead of time. And the situation would have been the same in a hospital.

3- This is more about my religion than anything else. One of the pillars of Imaan (faith) is belief in the Divine decree of Allah. In other words what is written to occur in ones life cannot be changed. The pen has dried. Our entire life is written out while in the wombs of our mothers.

" Narrated Abdullah: Allah's Apostle, the true and truly inspired said, "(as regards your creation), every one of you is collected in the womb of his mother for the first forty days, and then he becomes a clot for an other forty days, and then a piece of flesh for an other forty days. Then Allah sends an angel to write four words: He writes his deeds, time of his death, means of his livelihood, and whether he will be wretched or blessed (in religion)....." Sahih Bukhari

So my sons life as short as it may have been,  was already decided upon and written out long before the labor pains began. It didn't matter what I did or where he was born or any of that he was meant to die a sinless person and return to Allah with a pure soul. And for that I am honored and eternally blessed to have been able to be a part of that little life even if it was short.

The transfer to the hospital part of this birth story will be soon coming.....

If you missed it---- Part One: The Beginning, and Part Three: The Aftermath

My Homebirth Loss: The beginning

*** Before I begin I would like to preface this post with a few things. First off, I have not shared the details of this birth publicly since he was born. This was largely due to the most insensitive and hurtful comments that I have ever seen a person make online regarding my loss without them even knowing the details. Please bear in mind that I lost my son and no one carries that burden of loss more than I do. If you comment with anything that is offensive, mean, or otherwise insensitive it will get deleted. Secondly I am writing this birth story in 3 separate blogs, the pregnancy and labor, the birth, and the hospital trasnfer. I am doing this because 1- there is just too much information to put it all in one post and 2-I want to separate my emotions from those three cycles of this process. The labor was amazingly beautiful, the birth was somewhat scary, and the hospital transfer was nothing short of infuriating.****

The Pregnancy:

From the moment I got a positive pregnancy test I knew this was going to be a different experience. I cannot explain it in a way to make anyone understand but I never felt like this baby was meant to stay with me. I made my first appointment with the OB office to confirm pregnancy and get dates ( my period had just returned and was irregular). From the minute I saw him on the ultrasound I had this sinking feeling I would never hear him cry, never see him smile, never hear him laugh. With this heavy on my mind hearing the doctor tell me she wanted to tie my tubes really bothered me. All I could think about is if this baby dies I would never be able to have another one and I would be devastated. She clearly wasn't supportive of my desire to VBA2C either, so when I got home I posted a message on the ICAN-online (http://ican-online.org/) email list asking for help. I needed more options.

The ladies there were very helpful and threw out the idea of a birth center as well as homebirth. I contacted the birth center a few hours from me but was pretty sure they would not take me as a client. I was also given the name of a traveling midwife that was living in my state and told to contact her. After researching more on homebirth and the statistics of homebirth I decided to contact her and just see what happened. I told her my history and my desire to VBA2C and asked her would she be willing to attend my birth. She responded enthusiastically that even though she had retired she felt that fate had brought her and I together. The feeling was mutual especially when I realized the house she purchased to retire in was 2 streets away from me.   Dr. Wayne Dyer says "In  mathematics, two angles that are said to coincide fit together perfectly. The word coincidence does not describe luck or mistakes. It describes that which fits together perfectly." She was perfect for the journey in every way.

What I needed this time was to be able to gestate in peace without all the scary "OMG this is wrong with you!" ideas. I did not want any tests done, no ultrasounds, no nothing. It was important for me to embrace the fact that pregnancy and birth and a humans ability to do this was natural and normal. The only thing that was checked was blood pressure, urine for sugar, heartbeat and fetal growth. My entire journey was nothing but submitting myself to the will of Allah and believing in my ability to birth my baby which for me started with belief that my body could appropriately take care of the growing baby inside of me without unnecessary tests.

This baby was so unlike my older two. There was something about him that was so peaceful and so calm. I worried much of my pregnancy that when my midwife came for check ups that the heartbeat would not be found. The intuition that he wasn't going to stay was just that strong. I remember thinking many times that if he doesn't stay with me I want to at least give birth to him if nothing else. I wanted to have that at least. But every prenatal he had the most beautiful heartbeat ever. He sounded perfect. He was perfect. I never shared my feelings with anyone until the aftermath. Sometimes I feel like it was a Mercy from Allah to prepare me for the loss. I want to make it clear that this feeling I had was there long before I chose to homebirth.

The entire pregnancy my baby measured behind by a couple of weeks. When my "due date" came we had a prenatal and he measured at 38 weeks. I went 2 weeks past my due date and at my 42 week prenatal she measured him and he measured 2 weeks ahead. At this point she stated that I may want to think about doing some natural inductions as the baby was getting big and she wanted me to have the chance to birth.

In many ways I felt a little defeated by that idea. It was extremely important to me to not have any intervention especially an induction. I needed to know that I wasn't broken that my body did know how to labor on it's own. In some ways I think mentally I held on to him. I knew where he was he was alive and I was afraid to let that go. I spent that night thinking and asking Allah to make it possible to avoid any type of interventions. I agreed to allow her to check my cervix in the morning (which was something else I wanted to avoid)and then we would discuss where to go from there. As fate would have it after an excellent nights sleep I woke up on Jummah Friday at Fajr( morning prayer for the non-Muslims reading) October 21st 2005. It was also the last ten days of Ramadan which is a very significant spiritual time for Muslims.

Labor:

I wasn't actually sure I was really in labor until after a couple of hours of contractions. I cannot express to you the amount of relief I felt that labor started on it's own and that intervention wasn't needed. I called the midwife and let her know and a few hours later she was there. We started to fill the birth tub and I just followed my body's cues. I stood up during contractions and moved my hips back and forth. The contractions were pretty regular at 5 minutes apart. I was surrounded by peace and love. I was able to move the way I wanted. No machines tying me to a bed, no one there that I didn't know or didn't care about me as a person. My midwife was like my family. I loved her, enjoyed her company, and trusted her.

After 12 hours of labor or so the contractions were getting a bit more intense. I decided to take a hot shower because I wanted to be in the water but I did not want to get in the birth tub to early and delay labor progress. The shower was comforting and helped me relax a little. At this point I was sitting on the birthing ball for contractions. Shortly after my midwife wanted to get some rest so she asked if it was alright to check me so that she at least knew where I was. I hesitated a lot about that cervical check because I was labelled a failure to progress in my previous labors. I agreed to the check and knew that it would likely be the only one I got. I was about 5-6 cm baby was really low and my cervix was pretty thin. In a lot of ways I felt triumphant. My body DID work. I went into labor on my own and now I have dilated halfway there all on my own. Trusting in nothing but Allah and the perfection of His creation.

The midwife left and I spent a few hours with my then sister-in-law and my doula. I would kind of hang onto one of them while the other applied pressure to my back. Something about my relationship with my midwife is just indescribable. It wasn't long before I just needed her presence there with me. It wasn't that I felt like birth was soon coming. It was that her presence in my labor was overwhelmingly comforting. I refer to her often as my "birth" mother. The type of love and comfort she gave me was unlike anything I had ever experience during a pregnancy. She wasn't just my midwife, my care provider but she was my friend.

It wasn't too much longer after she arrived that I decided to get into the birthing tub. The warm water was exactly what I needed to make labor more manageable. It was probably early in the morning on October 22nd 2005. I honestly had no idea what time it was because the clock was not in my view. And honestly I think it was better that way. I didn't need to be on a time constraint or feel pressured to hurry up and have a baby.

As I entered the transitional stage of labor I began to feel really emotional. I still had that nagging feeling about the heartbeat not being found and got nervous every time she wanted to check his heart-rate, yet every time it was a beautiful healthy sound. I remember sitting on the side of the tub being overcome with silent tears. I don't even know why I was crying other than transition releases a certain type of hormone that may have caused me to be overcome with emotion. Or maybe it was that I was really doing it. I was laboring on my own. I had started to feel a lot of pelvic pressure. I could tell baby was moving lower. I wasn't broken after all. At that moment with tears streaming down my face my midwife came to me and got eye to eye with tears in her eyes and told me that she knew exactly where I was at and that she was with me 100%.

At some point I began to feel really pushy and I am not sure if it was suggested that I get a cervical check or if I asked for one. Either way I got out of the tub in order for her to listen to the baby and check my cervix. The baby sounded great and I was dilated 9.5 cm. I had a small cervical lip so she suggested I wait before trying to push. I got back in the tub and she came to me and said that she didn't want me to be mad at her and she knew that I did not want any interventions but she thought breaking my bag of waters may help get rid of my cervix faster. I was very hesitant to agree and argued even. In the end she made a valid point that breaking my water at 9.5 cm was not the same thing as my water being broken at 1 cm. I was close to giving birth. This was not going to make me a failure to progress. I finally agreed since by this point I was ready to give birth and knew the cervix needed to be moved away.

So I got back out of the tub, water bag was broken, and heart rate was checked again. Again everything was perfect. Everything was going smoothly. My labor had been smooth sailing consistent and progressive. The baby had been perfect the entire time. I still felt like I couldn't wait to birth him so that the feeling I had carried for 10 months would be laid to rest as an unfounded fear. Eventually I got to the point of "ok I have to push I can't fight this feeling any longer." At that point I got out of the tub in order to give birth. I did not want to be in the water for the birth. I needed to be out of the water instinctually.

The rest of this birth story will be continued in the next blog so stay tuned.....

Part Two: The Birth , and Part Three: The Aftermath