Due date

It came at 7 p.m. tonight.

Just a little reminder from Google calendar like you might get if you had an appointment the next day.

Only here's what it said:

Reminder: Baby Brigid is due @ Fri Jul 29, 2011

Ouch.


I'd forgotten I had even set up a Google calendar.  I did it while I was on bed rest in an effort to match up the many, many offers of help we were getting with the many, many needs that we had.  I put that date in there so people would know there was an end in sight.  A goal.  A light at the end of the tunnel.  It was so I would know, too, and remember that soon enough the nightmare would be over and we'd at least have one of our little girls.  And of course I knew that she'd likely come early, but that just meant that we'd have her sooner, so unlike all three of her brothers, she'd definitely be here by her due date.  I never expected this.  This date had been in the forefront of my mind for months and months.  And now it's here.  And she's not.

There are always a few dates that a pregnant woman remembers.  At first, it's her LMP date, which she promptly forgets in exchange for her due date.  And then, usually, it's the date that she actually delivers. 

But this time, it's so different, and there are so many other dates I'll remember.

There's the date we found out we were having twins -December 27th

Then there's the date I remember being really excited for: March 9th.  It was the one where we'd find out if we were having girls or boys.  I wanted girls, but seriously weighed it against the possibility that five little boys under five might very well qualify me for automatic sainthood, and that was looking good too.  Either way, of course, we'd be thrilled.  Unfortunately, we never found out the gender of the babies on that day.  What we learned instead was that they had TTTS and that it was bad.  It was a horrible day.  The first of many, as it turned out.

I found out they were girls on March 10th when I called back, crying, to ask.

There's the date we had the laser surgery, March 15.  Followed by the day we learned that Fiona had died, March 16.  (There was no corned beef and cabbage for dinner this St. Patrick's Day.)

Then, in what felt like rapid-fire succession, there was the date that Brigid was born (May 8th), the day we buried Fiona (May27th), the day Brigid died (June 23) and the day we buried Brigid (June 30).

And then now, the only date left.  Their due date.  I'll be glad to have it behind me. 

It seems that Fall will be the only season untainted by our experience. The only one in which there won't be a date that makes me cringe a little.  I always liked Fall best, anyway.

Today I had my follow up appointment with my OB.  It was supposed to be at six weeks, but that ended up being the day of Brigid's funeral, so I had to reschedule.  It was sad not having any babies.  Usually, you bring your baby.  Show her off a little.  I started crying as soon as I got back to the room.  The doctor came in crying.  She'd been the one who did my c-section.  We just passed the Kleenex box back and forth the whole time, and I got to share a little with her about why we're doing okay.  I'm glad for that, because I'm sure I won't be the only person she sees who doesn't have her baby with her at her six week check up.

And I think that fact is the reason that we went through this.  I never would have imagined that I could be doing okay on the other side of something as devastating as this has been, but God has helped us so much.  Through the kindness of friends.  Through the support of family.  Through His own words to our hearts, reminding us of how much He loves us and how He has not left us alone.  Reminding us that He is good and that He has a plan and that we can trust Him.

It's funny - before this, nothing proved to Patrick or me that we could trust God's plan for our life more than our meeting each other.  The timing of it and how perfectly we feel like we had been chosen for each other helped us to know that after years of both of us being lonely, it didn't just happen randomly.  It strengthened my trust in Him.  And I think He used that to prepare me for this.

Tomorrow will still be a sad day, but really, we're doing okay.

Clovers

The clover has become my favorite flower.

Not for the leaves of four that bring good luck -

In all my life I’ve never been able to find one

Search though I may.

This small white weed mars our otherwise perfect lawn.

Finally free from dandelions and crabgrass,

It’s the clover that lingers

And attracts the bees

That make me scared to let my children
Roam barefoot in the grass

As every child should.

Their lightly scented flowers are unattractive,

But their beauty is found

When they are brought to me
By a little boy with outstretched arms.

One bloom chosen from among the many

“For  you, Mommy,” he says, grinning

And then my heart melts

And that flower is more beautiful than any rose.

So many of these blossoms have been handed to me

Each summer by my darling boys.

And just today, with a heavy heart,

I visited for the first time 

The spot where my baby girls lie.

They have been there together for one month now.

As I sat in the grass weeping and speaking to them,

I looked around through eyes blurred by tears,

And noticed clovers there as well -

These ones touched with palest pink.

It felt like my girls were giving them to me too,

And I felt so lucky.

Image:  http://www.itsnature.org/plant_life/flowers-plants/white-clover/

Cards from strangers

Something has been happening to us lately that is blowing me away.

We've been getting cards from strangers.

People we've never met have been sending sympathy cards to us, with notes inside about how they were affected by Brigid's story.  I find this amazing.  I'm so grateful for people reaching out to us to tell us how they were praying for us in the midst of our trial, and that they are still praying for us now as we heal from our loss.  A nurse who cared for me in the hospital called me yesterday because she had just learned what happened.  I was able to share with her that God has been so good to us, helping us to heal by enjoying our time together as a family in a way that we never have before.  I shared the example God gave me for Brigid's eulogy and she was encouraged and asked if she could share it with others who are hurting from a loss.

But perhaps the most amazing thing to me is to see how God is carrying out the example, using the experience to touch more people than we ever imagined, just as the birthday surprise would have blessed more people than the chocolate chips alone would have blessed my son. 

I miss Brigid terribly.  She was such a sweet little girl, and I felt like I was really just getting to know her personality and her likes and dislikes.  It took me longer to learn these things about her since she didn't live with me, but a mother learns to read her children, and I felt like I was just learning to read her before she died.  I knew which songs she responded to when I sang to her.  I always said the same thing to her when I bent down to kiss her and she would open her eyes and often give a little smile.  It made me feel like she knew it was me.  I wish I could experience that again, even if it was still in the NICU.   Her due date is not for another ten days, but she's already been born and died.  That makes me so sad. 

But I know that she is with Jesus and with her sister.  And God is so good to show us, through cards from strangers, that her little life affected more people than we might ever know.

A new normal

It has been a week since the last post, and a lot has changed.

Our hearts have healed so much.  It's like God kept bringing the truth that He showed me back to mind and reminding me to keep an eternal perspective.  Our life is like a blip in light of eternity. 

Sure, we still cry.  I look at photos of Brigid every single day and long to be able to hold her again, to smell her smell and feel her soft skin and kiss her little head.  My heart hurts to think of the pain that her tiny body endured during her short life - needles and IVs and tubes in the throat and nose and a surgery and probably a hundred heel pricks to draw blood.  It's not supposed to be like that.  That's scary and painful and it makes me sad to think of her going through that alone.  It's supposed to be cuddles and warm milk and soft blankets and kisses.  That's what babies are usually greeted with shortly after they come screaming into this world.  But not our Brigid.  And yet, she hardly ever cried.  It was her normal.  It's all she knew.  I wish it could have been different.  But that wasn't God's plan, and I know her reward is great right now, and she is not feeling any discomfort at all.

And this week, I've been able to devote myself to the boys in a way I never have before.  It's the same amount of time with them that I've always had, but it's so much fuller now.  I appreciate it so much more.  I feel engaged with them in a way that I didn't before this experience.  PJ especially has been struggling with Brigid's death and having a hard time understanding what it means.  He has been fearful of being alone and clingy with me, probably because I've had to spend so much time away from him in the past few months - sometimes he'd wake up and I'd be in the hospital and I know that was scary for him, and I have to keep reassuring him that that time is over now and I'm not going away again. I think he's finally understanding that.  I love that I can devote my full attention to them right now, playing with them and being with them in a way that's not just being in the same room together doing our own things, but really doing what they want much of the time - being silly or building train tracks or reading books.  Paying attention to them.  Because that's what it's my privilege to do right now as I am able to stay home with them for these short and fleeting years until they're all in school. Patrick and and I both feel like we have so much more patience with them and we all feel that time together as a family is so much more meaningful because of the time we spent apart.

So that's our new normal.  It's funny that on the outside, it looks the same as the old normal.  We're all the same people.  But on the inside, we're all so different now.

And that's a good thing.

I'm so grateful for all the prayers and cards and kind wishes you've had for us.  I have no doubt that these prayers have helped to carry us through and bring peace and comfort to our hearts. 

Thank you!

Brigid's day

Thursday was Brigid's funeral.

Since then, I have been swallowed up in a tsunami of grief that has left me barely able to function. My mind feels like it is still anchored back in the NICU on the night that she died, and my body has been stretched from that point forward to now, like a rubber band that wants to snap back to that point. To relive those moments before she died to see what we could have done differently. I feel fragile and disconnected and so very sad.

I took a few of the photos I had of Brigid and pieced them together into a sketch of what she may have looked like without all her tubes and tape. When I look at it, it makes me smile. It's exactly what she would have looked like: a bit of her brothers and a bit of her own person rolled into one.

Somehow, I gave her eulogy. It was as if I were a robot. I don't know how I did it, but I do believe I was supposed to, and so I did.

It said this:

As I knelt in prayer at church this past Sunday, I pondered Brigid’s death, as I have done every second of each day since it happened.

Specifically, I thought about God as our Father and the giver of every good and perfect gift, who tells us that if we as parents know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will he give good gifts to us if we ask him.

And I wondered: What about this? How is this a good gift?

I’ve told our boys that just because Brigid died, it does not mean that God didn’t hear our daily prayers for her to grow big and strong and come home to live with us. “Sometimes,” I told them, “God tells us no just like sometimes Mommy tells you no when you ask for things.” They accepted that explanation…but I wasn’t so sure I did.

We all tell our children no when there are things that they want that are not good for them, but as a mother, I tried to imagine the circumstances under which I could possibly tell my children no for something that would break their hearts as much as Brigid’s death has broken ours. Why would I tell them no for something that would make them happy? What would have been the harm in allowing us to bring our healthy daughter home to live with our family? Especially after we’d already lost her sister.

I racked my brain for an example.

It came. It involved chocolate. And I realized that it all has to do with perspective.

I imagined myself baking in my kitchen. I love to make special things for my family, and I imagined I was making an extra special dessert treat for the birthday party of one of my boys. Only he didn’t know I was doing it for him.

He comes into the kitchen where I am standing and asks if he can have a few of the chocolate chips that are on the counter. Because I need to use them for the dessert, I tell him no.

Being the young child he is, he is devastated. “Please, please, please?” he pleads. “Trust me,” I say. “No.”

He falls to the floor crying and kicking and screaming. But I do not change my answer. Instead, I lovingly pick him up, give him a hug, and tell him to go and let me work. He doesn’t know it, but within a short time, I’ll have used the chocolate chips to create something extra special for his party, and I know that he will love it. This is why I can be a loving parent and yet be unmoved by his pleas.

And then I thought about this example in terms of my perspective on our situation.

To a young child, my denying him the treat that he wanted was devastating. But as his mother, I knew I had a plan for it that was far better. I knew his tears would be short-lived, but that he’d appreciate the final product much more than the chips by themselves.

To him, the few hours until the party seemed like an eternity. But to me, it was just a brief wait that was worthwhile for the celebration that was to come.

The small chocolate chips would have been a treat for him and they would have made him happy, but the special dessert would serve many more people and benefit him as well as others.

I have to think that our Father, with his infinite knowledge, sees our situation in much the same way that I, as a mother, see things in relation to our boys.

Our wait to see Brigid and Fiona again is nothing more to him than a little boy’s wait for his birthday celebration. But oh, the celebrating will be so much greater. The pain of being denied our request feels profound and deep; our tears will flow for months instead of minutes. But to our Father, this is but a short-lived trial. Our girls would have enriched and blessed our family had we been able to bring them home to live with us, but incorporated into his plan, they have been used to affect so many others.

Many of you might never have known about our twin girls were this not the plan. And I’m pretty certain that none of us will ever be the same again. We prayed and we rejoiced and we prayed and we cried. Our prayers brought us to our knees in the middle of the night. They drew us in close to the God who was in control of this situation from the very start. They came from Australia and China and Hungary and Canada and Scotland. They came from people who were prayer warriors and from people who had never prayed before. They brought glory to God because they made us acknowledge the frailty and wonder of life and realize that there is a power greater than us at work.

To know that our girls may have been used as part of God’s plan for someone else is humbling. Our faith has not been shaken by their death. Rather, it has been toned and stretched and strengthened. We have been brought to the end of ourselves and found that He still gave us the strength to go on. Our prayers for Fiona and for Brigid were really for our benefit too. The act of praying for them tested us and helped us to grow stronger. And though God chose to answer our prayers with “no,” our prayers were not in vain.

I believe it with every fiber of my being, but it is hard to go on.

Here is the slide show we played at her viewing.



Somehow, we're putting one foot in front of the other. I have never known sorrow like this before. But our God is good and he will walk with us through this valley.