Six months of grieving
December 12th, 2020 is six months since our precious Blair was stillborn. Six whole months. Half a year. In this picture, I was trying to give her a lifetime of kisses in one night.
My personal journey as a grieving mother has evolved overtime but I do not say this lightly or to infer that I have somehow "gotten over" the death of my child. I never will. Most days I'm able to function in daily life, be present with my kids, and active in my community. The weight of grief, however, is always there. I'll have crazy bouts of productivity, and then, in the quiet, the heaviness of her absence is felt. Life has continued for me but there will always be moments where I am brought to my knees in heavy grief over missing my child. This generally happens when life gets quiet and I'm able to have some time by myself. In those moments, however fleeting, there is deep and profound sadness as I sincerely just want to hold my baby again or return to the days when she was still growing and kicking in my belly.
There is also a lot of anger. As time passes, I realize new milestones that our family is missing since Blair never had a chance to grow. The fact that we never received an answer for her cause of death is agonizing. While mostly stable, I do have to check myself every now and then to not enter a spiraling "what-if" line of questioning and wondering what might have caused her to die.
Our living daughters speak of Blair often and know their baby sister very well. This makes me feel fulfilled that I am doing "right' by Blair. It's as simple as Violet seeing a mother in a book and then pointing at me and back to the mother in the book and saying "two mama's". My response is always "Yes, I am your mama, and I am Cora's mama, and I am Blair's mama". Grief for my children six months later looks like a worn-down, broken picture frame from over use and pretend play. Sometimes Blair isn't mentioned for a while and then there are days and hours of lots of Blair talk. Some of the things they've done lately "with" Blair is dance and spin with her photo frame (C), kissing her photo over and over again (V), playing peek-a-boo with fabric (V), and sticking markers into play-dough and pretending they're candles for their baby sister (C). I re-read Blair's birth announcement this morning and my promise to Blair, "we will remember you and we will honor you every day for the rest of our lives" continues to be lived out. I find a way to speak Blair's name every single day.
As six months later, I feel more attuned with myself and what I need socially and from other people. Right now, what that means is more alone time. This has nothing to do with anything personal with other people per se, I am simply in a place where being alone with my thoughts and feelings is where I want to be.
I protect myself from content online that might upset me. More so than before I experienced stillbirth, I know more than ever that I need to be in control of when I see certain things and when I don't. I see photos of the babies born of close friends and relative around the same age as Blair would have been and while it makes me so happy these families, I also know that I can't look for very long as a way to protect myself.
I've hidden pregnancy loss groups and other personal Instagram accounts, too, as there is a kind of re-traumatizing that happens every time I read about or view pictures of the sad losses of other babies gone too soon. There are certainly times when I crave to be in community with others 'loss moms' and continue to dive into their support. I am so grateful for their content, their bravery, and I'm proud to be amongst them in my writing and reflections on stillbirth, but my controlling when I view these accounts has been healthier for me especially as the last half of these six months have included the first trimester of a new pregnancy with our fourth child. Protecting my mental health while being pregnant again and still heavily grieving has been a top priority, even if it looks selfish and self-isolating at times.
For a more light-hearted grief activity, I've spent some time planning out how I'd like to tend to Blair's grave in the future. I've found some really neat lawn stakes to place by her grave and found some sweet things to decorate her space for holidays and different seasons. Never did I ever think I would be doing a keyword shopping search for "artificial cemetery flowers" nor "holiday grave markers" before, yet, here I am. While in the early months I didn't have much of an incentive to visit her grave and talk about it at length in this blog post, I'm now finding myself in a different place six months later. Initially, all I want to do is claw my hands in the soil and get her out of there, but eventually, I find myself somewhat at peace for being as physically close I can possibly be to my daughter. Perhaps the pain of visiting her grave has lessened as I am not in the depths of healing physically from a postpartum side of things. With less of a reminder from my body, I still crave to be as physically close to her as I possibly can.
As time goes on, I realize that there will always be a part of me that will wonder what new things Blair would have been doing at this stage in her life had she lived. If she had been born in June, she would have been born a 32-week preemie and, in December, would have been about four months old adjusted from her August 2nd due date. We would have been in the throes of the four month sleep regression, starting to wean her off of swaddle blankets, and would have still been able to enjoy keeping her near to us in her bassinet for a month or two longer. Alas, Blair died. Blair was stillborn. I do not wish this on anyone.
Happy half birthday in heaven, my sweet daughter. I will always wish you were here.
