Triggered Grief, Unfair Life, Incomplete Love

It's the morning after delivering Hailey's Hope's bags to UAB, and I feel that I should be happier than I am. Instead, that familiar, uncomfortable emptiness of missing Hailey has taken over and left no room for me to feel all the joy that I want to be feeling. I wanted to write a post about the delivery, not my grief. But I am writing about it because writing provides a small bit of relief and comfort.

So what triggered my empty heart and led me back to the place of deep sorrow? No, it didn't have anything to do with delivering her bags yesterday as you might think. The triggers tend to be a picture of a baby or the familiar comments of a pregnant woman rejoicing in the doctor's confirmed health of her and the baby she is carrying, and that's what it is this time. What I don't understand is that some days I can look at pictures of babies and read or hear about those types of comments and be just fine, when other times like now they pierce my heart and deflate it.

As this trigger confronted me, a part of me became enraged in sadness and quietly screamed inside that my baby and I were continually given healthy reports too. I was continually told her heartbeat is strong, her size is good, she's in the right position, she looks healthy, she's doing great...I was told everything that every woman carrying  a child wants to hear. But they were wrong. Sometimes I can't get over the fact that everything was 'normal', and I went into the hospital in labor expecting to have my healthy baby girl placed on my chest and leave with her in a couple of days. Instead the opposite happened. It was unexpected. It was terrifying. It was my worst fear. Not only was my baby girl not healthy like they thought, but she was going to die. How do you ever come to terms with that kind of unexpected, shocking truth?

In one day my life completely and unexpectedly changed. I went from being the typical happy mom-to-be with baby showers being thrown for me/us, joyfully decorating the nursery, shopping for new and gently used items that we would need for her first year, preparing as much as possible for bringing this baby into the world....to being confronted with my baby's countless health problems, living out of a suitcase at a Ronald McDonald House and in the hospital for a week, learning she was going to die, preparing for her death, to becoming a babylost mother. My soul aches from that change. A part of me wonders that if knowing there was something wrong with Hailey from the very beginning would have made a difference in the end, because in the end the result is the same...

I know this isn't the first time that I've written about how seeing and hearing of pregnant women happily and eagerly anticipating the arrival of their new healthy baby just makes me want to scream out that was me, that was me, I did that too, I thought that too, and look where I am now. And I don't know why I want to scream it out, but I do.  Maybe it's the part of me that thinks life isn't fair but it should be... But here I am still struggling with the same thing. I wonder if it will always be this way with the same things suddenly bringing my grief to life again.

And that's not the only thing I'm struggling with today. I'm struggling with loving her. I feel as if I was robbed of the time to get to know my daughter and fall completely in love with her. Don't misunderstand me; I love Hailey, always have and always will. But sometimes like today I struggle with my love not being whole or complete enough. How do you love someone who isn't here? Sure you can feel you love them, but you can't tell them, you can't show them, you can't kiss them, you can't hold them...You can't know that they know. There are other things I do now to show my love for her  and carry on her memory like talking about her, planting a flower in her memory, Hailey's Hope, etc. but I feel like it's not love at it's best. It's not love as it could be or as it should be.

Even when she was with us, I now feel as though I didn't love her enough. I had a difficult time sharing her with so many people - nurses, doctors, friends, family members. I knew they needed their time with her too so I gave it to them, but all the while I just wanted her to myself. I didn't want to share her, but I did. And there are sometimes, like today, when a part of me wishes I didn't share her, and I had kept her all to myself. Then maybe I wouldn't feel like I didn't love her enough, hold her enough...

Sometimes I feel as though my heart was incapable of fully showing her my love when she was with us because it was already in the stage of mourning. My heart was crowded with fears, worries, sorrows, and grief - how can you completely and fully pour out your love on someone when the love is being crowded out by all of those other emotions and thoughts? I did my best to tell her and show her I loved her while she was with us. But what if it wasn't my best? The problem with grief is that it brings with guilt and feelings of it not being good enough. What if I love her more now than I did when she was with us? Am I a terrible mother if that's true? Is it true?

Last night I silently cried myself to sleep. The only thing allowing peace and sleep to come to me was something you might consider me crazy for doing, unless you have lost a child or close loved one and love Jesus as I do. As I cried, I prayed. Longing and needing to be held as I longed to hold Hailey, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Jesus and Hailey being with me right then and there in that moment. I needed and wanted them both. I imagined Jesus lying next to me wrapping me in his arms as a Father holding his child, stroking my hair, trying to soothe me. I imagined Hailey in my arms. And this is where I think I transitioned from imagining to dreaming. In my mind Hailey was older than she should have been, maybe closer to 9 months. I saw her, a vague, blurry image of her that I couldn't quite focus on, smiling and giggling at me. Gently touching my face with her chubby baby hands as though she was searching for something. She touched my tears and wiped them away for me; then she crawled and climbed all over me like she was playing with me. And that's the last thing I remember...

I woke up this morning hoping that 'though my sorrows may last for the night, my joy comes with the morning.' But the emptiness and tears remain. I miss her a lot today. I want to touch her and hold her again...

(One last note: I didn't write this for sympathy or pity or for anyone to worry about me struggling with my grief. I shared this for me because carrying it inside is like bottling the pain up in my heart which hurts, and like I said at the beginning, writing about it relieves some of that painful pressure. I will be okay, as okay as a mother without her child can be, and eventually the emptiness and tears and pain will subside as they always do. Today is just one of those days.)