Emotional trip report
Before we left on Monday we of course went to the cemetary.
This year, year three, what would be Emily’s third birthday, is the year of bitter, I think.
Perhaps this is a good time to let everyone know that we did not pursue legal action against the hospital - we pursued it pretty far, enough to know that it was going to be a fairly brutal dog fight (centering around the lost tracings from the monitor, and questions of why Carl and I did not freak out more during labour, which was the real sticky emotional point) and we did not have the time and energy for that, as well as worrying a bit about money. (For my American readers, I’ll reiterate that the largest settlement ever in this province for a perinatal loss was $50,000 per parent. That is not missing a zero. The result is that very few lawyers will take it on a contingency basis (get paid if you win) and so we were looking at paying out of pocket. That was not our most major consideration, but things are so different up here I thought I would go into more detail.)
So this is the year I bitterly regretted that reality and decision. I am not a huge believer in fair, since, you know, it is not fair that I was not born in Ethiopia or Rwanda, etc. But that doesn’t mean I don’t experience moments of that cry inside and standing in front of Emily’s headstone on her birthday, with the memories of Noah’s very lively, family and cake filled birthday still fresh, it felt vastly unfair that she did not get that, and that we did not get that with her.
And I was very very angry all over again and bitter at the hospital and myself. It was a bit of an ugly mess inside my head. I have been sad before and angry before but it didn’t feel quite this dry and edgy. I hope that does not continue to be a theme.
Once we got up to the inn there was all the distraction of settling in and good food and not having to be quite so grown up. I think it’s in Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in Heaven that Taylor narrates something like “once you become a mother you can never be the baby again, not even for ten seconds” and that is in my 18 month experience so true. Except, of course, if you happen to have scrimped and saved (and be lucky to have that excess) to land at a resort for fairly rich people where you get fed and your room made up for you and activities planned if you would like to join in and spa services available.
(Unfortunately it was this babying state of mind that led to the car debacle, but hey.)
So some of the bitterness wore off and just left the usual empty. Having spent the last two seasons of grief up there too, there’s the corner I cried in the first year; the chair I moped in, the walk I took into the woods during Noah’s nap last year. It’s strange because Emily was never at this place (although while pregnant, Carl and I did drive up to that town alongside the lake, which is why I picked the inn in the first place) but it is becoming one of the places I most associate with her, almost like she is a long-lost relation and these are her grandparents’ things, or something.
The days always seem to tick by in split time for me. All those hours at the hospital and the NICU were always marked by institutional wall clocks: the times we visited her, the times doctors came, the times nurses didn’t come to check on me, the hours family members arrived to support us, the long time spent staring at the clock alone at the hospital, messaging Idaho on Carl’s Blackberry in the middle of the night, the hour at which the annoyed nurse brought me the Ativan. The minutes I was pumping breastmilk and watching the clock. All that seems burned into my head and so it’s like that’s going on in the background while at the inn it’s breakfast buffet, lunch buffet, swim time, and so on.
This year it was just as fresh. At any moment anyone could have asked me what I’d been doing in 2004 at that minute and I could have said. And as usual I felt a bit of a relief because there is no forgetting, after all. Emily’s life was short but it is still there, in some way.
Monday night, then, the night of the 12th, the night after labour when we still had a lot of hope and Emily was still at East General, Noah had a not too bad night but not great - of course, it being all new - and so I held him a lot and brought him into our bed around 1 am. It was good, really good, to hold him and feel him breathing against my skin or nuzzling around for a nurse. Not healing precisely but soothing.
The 13th was spent exploring the house and grounds. I got a manicure and Carl and Noah went swimming, and then in the afternoon I took Noah all around to the various common areas and sat with him and had coffee and showed him animal pictures and rode in the elevator up to the tower and all those things.
The night of the 13th though was the night I’d opted to stay at East General, because I was still having trouble walking and was in shock and there was no doctor to release me and really just didn’t know what to do, the Ativan night, and this year I also did not sleep really. Noah was a trooper - down at 8, only up to feed around 1 and then at 6:30 - but after the 1 am feed I could not sleep and was awake until about 4:30, worrying about everything under the sun. Mostly worrying that Carl will die - he has gained a lot of weight since we lost Emily, and doesn’t take care of himself a lot and lives an unheathy lifestyle where he is overworked and doesn’t get exercise, and we have been arguing about this in mild ways. But really if you name something I worried about it. That Noah will get leukemia. That his future wife won’t like me. That the planet will be drowed in the melting ice caps. You know, everything.
I almost wished for an Ativan, but it was one of those times to ride it out, so I did.
The next day was also filled with Noah goodness, but I also watched way too much television, including Bringing Home Baby. I guess that is completing the cycle: after Emily died I watched An Adoption Story, which always ends with a happy adoption, and then while pregnant with Noah I watched A Baby Story which always ends with a reasonably healthy baby birth, and now I watched the newborn story, where the newborn always ends up happy and hale and the parents get confident. These shows are that fake reality where (as noted in the group I attended last year) labour always starts 20 minutes into the show and ends 28 minutes into the show, no matter how crazy it actually was. And it’s very soothing, that Disneyesque baby universe.
Noah loved the little babies too. There is starting to be a little bit of mounting pressure (is it ever done?) from various quarters about the question of another baby. And somehow some layer of numb has come off, for me. I brazened through Noah’s pregnancy on determination and numbness with a layer of sheer terror, but I am not certain I can ever, ever do that again, even if I did think I could handle two children, which is in serious doubt some days.
And at the same time I had this thought a long time ago that now, having been through that grief and loss, I’d be scared to have a single child who would have to lose Carl and I and have no sibling later in life. (Yes, I know there is no guarantee they would get along.)
All of which is to say though that watching the baby show my main thought was: I might be able to do the newborn stuff again but I cannot ever again go through nine months of uncertainty and another labour. And this after Noah’s easy easy birth. But that was the thinking, right then, and it was oddly huge and panicky, as if it rose from 2004 with extra strength because I’d ignored it at that time. So I spent a lot of that day panicking about how awful things were/might be, in that weird trauma way that makes you twitch at shadows.
Carl meanwhile was doing his own traditional sinkhole into online gaming. We make a strange couple up at this beautiful inn, who hole up in our room a fair amount and eat chips. What surprised me was that Noah was actually hugely content with that for an afternoon - he toddled between us both, had a nap, climbed all over the furniture, occasionally watched some of the television, and showed me birds and squirrels out the window. At home we don’t watch tv and usually one of us is actively interacting with him more, but he was just fine without that, at least for a while. It helped that the room had been pretty easily babyproofed with a few outlet covers and rearranging of things.
Carl and I did take Noah swimming in the afternoon and that helped me too, the feel of the present on my skin. He got a cut in the men’s change room though, and although it was a tiny one it bled a fair amount and the red blood really was a bit freaky. He also chewed off his bandaids and re-opened it twice, so I ended up having to sit with him and keep pressure on it on and off for about 45 minutes (for my peace of mind). This made a huge impression on him and later when he got strawberry on his finger he wanted pressure on that one too.
He also rushed at dinner and choked in a minor way (coughing), and then the little monkey made a “funny sound” after that was like inhaling with a wheeze and then stopped to see if we would laugh and I -freaked out-. For the all of two seconds he wasn’t making any noise I lived in that horrible void that things could go wrong all over again, and it was awful. Carl saw it in my face and we agreed it is too bad that with breastfeeding I can’t have a stiff scotch because damn, would I have ordered one. Noah started misbehaving around then (possibly partly because of the tension) and I just took him back to our room and Carl brought dinner up after.
And then Noah would not go to sleep, and I got a little frustrated and took him outside in the Ergo, but it was rainy and cold so we had to come in. And I marvelled that I could even care whether he slept, when his continued health and breathing should be enough. And of course as soon as I had that thought, he curled up on my shoulder and passed out.
That night I did sleep too.
The 15th, of course, is always the longest day. That was the day that started with the technician crying and ended in baptism and us holding Emily as she drifted further and further away. I thought I was doing remarkably okay until dinner, when the little girl at the table next to us started laughing and I just lost it, tears all down my face. Noah noticed and got very frowsy. Then he wouldn’t sleep again, and I took him outside again (no rain) and he was almost asleep when the biggest whitest rabbit jumped out of the dark cedars right in front of us. Noah was wearing his hat and was all bundled up in my coat and he snapped his eyes open soooo wide and then this little hand came up out of my jacket and he started signing “rabbit” frantically. So I laughed and we walked along making the rabbit move a bit ahead of us, not chasing but giving reason for it to move. And he was incredibly excited for about 10 minutes and then went down okay.
Then I sat in front of the tv and cried for a bit. Carl turned off his game and we hung out in nice ways and then went to sleep.
The next day was the day of bereftness and it always seems weird to be pulling out of the inn around the time that we left Sick Kids for that empty drive home. But of course all that was pre-empted with clouds of antifreeze pouring into the car and getting stuck and towed and brought home. That felt sort of okay though (well I was not that calm at the time, but underneath): the gears of life starting up again underneath with a few jagged moments before they caught.
And now we are back, and of course Emily is still not. All this has been very about me, this post. As for Emily I still remember what a fighter she was, breathing against the ventilator, clinging onto each stage of life so hard. I remember the feel of her in my arms and the smell of her and then how she was so much lighter at the end. Bathing her after she died, and making her hand and foot prints. Choosing her coffin (really a chest) on Yonge St. Wrapping her up in her quilt and putting her in it. God, we miss her. What would she have been like at three? Three is so big, it’s hard to contemplate at all, and three is all about that child’s personality, and we don’t know much about that. And this is the year of bitterness that we will never know.
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5 Responses to “Emotional trip report”
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I’m so sorry.
I thought about you and your family this past week, and hoped you would find what you needed to move into the next year. I’m glad Noah and Carl and the environment around you were able to give you some comfort.
(o)
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