I've had lots of friends tell me they have had dreams about my babies, but I haven't had one yet....several friends dreamed about Jimmy after he died but I never had a dream about him, or Becca.
That always bothered me because I see dreams as a way for people to visit you after they are dead. I know that seems silly, but I believe it. I've studied a lot about dreams from experts and how they're your sub-conscious' way of processing emotions and I've gotten pretty in-depth with dream analysis. And yet I still believe that dreams are a way for someone who has passed on to stop in and say hello.
After my dad died, I had many dreams about him, most were mundane dreams where he was just part of the scenery...typical dad stuff. But I remember one where it changed my life. Taylor was about 6 months old and I had decided to go back to college. I had gotten student loans and Pell grants to go to MSU and it was my first month in married-student housing. (I wasn't married but as a single parent I qualified.) I had also applied for and gotten foodstamps to help me as a single mom since school and my son took up most of my time instead of a job.
The guy I had been dating for 8 months got fired from his job and decided to move in with me. I wasn't too thrilled but at 22 I hadn't quite learned to stand up for myself yet or even realize I had a right to.
One night I had a dream where I was at home in Oregon and I got to hang out with my Daddy all week. I came from a family with 8 kids and Dad was a surgeon at two different hospitals with 2 offices so getting time alone with him was hard to come by. So anyway, in my dream, it was just me and dad all week and I was thrilled! At the end of the week the whole family sat down to dinner and my sister sat at the head of the table and I said "No, thats where Dad is sitting" and they all just stared at me and reminded me "Kate, dad is dead. He's been dead." And in my dream it just hit me like a ton of bricks that I had been seeing what I wanted to see all week...I wanted Dad so bad that I had imagined him up all week and because of my feelings I couldn't see the reality...that it wasn't real. In my dream I turned to my mom and cried and said "Mom, I think I need help." And then I woke up. And I realized that in my waking life I had also been "seeing what I wanted to see" and that I was just with this bum because I was lonely and scared being a single mom with no family nearby and that I had been seeing him as a caretaking figure when in reality I was taking care of him AND single parenting at the same time and he was a no good lazy mooch! And that day, I kicked that guy out of my house and out of my life and told him shame on him for taking advantage of a single mom on foodstamps trying to make it through college and he needed to get off his butt and go find another job and another place to live. He whined and cried but I told him to call his parents, and he did, and they bought him an apartment and furniture and everything he needed. But my point being, that dream really meant something to me...and I think my dad had everything to do with it.
When my mom got sick with cancer, my dreams about my dad stopped completely and I heard from mom and my sisters that mom had started having dreams about dad. This made sense because at the time, Mom obviously needed dad more than I did! Mom kept having dreams that Dad was on a train and she was trying to hop on it but kept falling off. We joked around and told mom to "stay off the train, mom, stay off the train!" because we didn't want her to leave us, we wanted her to beat her cancer and stick around for a few years. Mom died about a year after diagnosis...I wonder if her last dream was getting on that train with dad?
After Mom died, I had a couple of dreams about her, but she wasn't as subtle as Dad. Dad always just showed up in the background of my dreams and waited for me to notice him. Mom just came up in my dreams and tapped me on the shoulder and scared the crap out of me. I was all "AAAAAAA you're dead and you're tapping me on the shoulder!", hahaha! Needless to say, mom only came to visit me in my dreams a couple of times before she stopped.
The night before grandma died, I had a dream about her. She came to see me and said "I'm lonely, I'm scared, and I want a cigarette." Grandma had quit smoking 20 years ago, but I know how it is....I bet she did want a cigarette. I wish I could have gone to see her, but she was already in a coma and Jimmy had just been born dead 3 weeks ago and I couldn't handle any of that stuff either psychologically or physically. (Sorry grandma!) I did manage to make it to her funeral though.
So, yesterday I had a dream that most people would call a nightmare, but after thinking about it...I'm just really dang grateful I even had a dream about one of my babies at all. Very grateful. Nightmare or not, I dreamed about my baby Becca and that was a gift.
In my dream, Rusty and I were were having a quiet weekend when a woman came up to me and pointed out that I could try to breast-feed Becca. Apparently, in my dream, I had been bottle-feeding for some reason or another. That conversation reminded me that I hadn't seen the baby all weekend...since Thursday in fact, and it was Sunday. I went into panic-mode thinking oh my God I've lost my baby, I haven't fed her since Thursday, she could be dead of starvation. I frantically searched the house and couldn't find her. She was tiny when she was born so I looked in her crib, it was empty, and searched through all the blankets thinking she got hidden in there somewhere. I kept wondering how on earth could I forget my own baby? What kind of awful mother was I?? I got on the phone and called Rusty, sobbing hysterically, and he was so concerned he was all "What? What?! What's wrong??" and I cried "I've lost the baby! I don't know where she is!" and just then my friend Jennifer came home and I remembered that I had let her take the baby for the weekend so Rusty and I could have some alone time. I was so relieved! I went to the back of her vehicle where she was unloading groceries and I looked over the back seat and saw an infant carrier with a baby in it. All I could see was Becca's little tiny arm waving up in the air. I asked Jennifer if I could have my baby back...and I asked it in a way like someone who felt that the baby did not belong to them anymore, but to the other person...very timidly. And she said "Of course!" And I was about to go around and retrieve my baby when I woke up in a panic...for a split second I carried that "OMG where's the baby!" feeling into my waking life and in another split second I remembered that there is no baby to lose because they are all already dead and gone and that was quite a blow.
I woke Rusty up and told him my dream and cried for just a minute, but really, I wasn't as upset as I thought I should be. More of just this calm, empty feeling.
After thinking about it, I remembered the last ultrasound I had gotten when I was in the hospital with Becca. They took me down to the lab for a full scan to see just how big she was and how much she weighed to see what our options were. On the screen, Becca held up one of her little arms and waved at me...it was like she was saying "hi" (or maybe goodbye?) and I snapped a picture with my iPhone and sent it to Rusty since he was still in Columbus and wouldn't be back for a few days. That was the last time I saw her move since she was alive but very still when she was born.
I wonder if maybe that little tiny arm waving in the car seat in my dream was Becca stopping by to say hello or goodbye.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Happy Un-Birthday?
Well, today is the day that Becca would possibly have been born had my cervix not given out on me. Hard to say, since babies aren't usually born on their due dates, but today should have been that day.
I don't have any huge, over-whelming emotions right now...just a sort of resigned sadness that comes with the acceptance of loss. I miss my daughter so much, but I can't go back in time and even if I could, I doubt very much that there is anything I could have done to change the outcome.
I also don't want to dwell on the loss of Rebecca Lane, nor do I want to delve back in and relive those two weeks in the hospital.
All I want to do is acknowledge her life and death, and share some very precious photos of her right after birth while she was still alive...pictures of my daughter living and with her heart beating....(*her coloring was due to her skin being thin from being so premature and from the lack of oxygen since her lungs were not developed yet. She was very much alive in these photos, and perfectly formed...she was just not finished growing yet...born too soon.)
Mommy loves you so much, Becca. Give Jimmy a kiss for me and tell him Happy Valentines Day. Thinking of you always....I read something the other day that sums up how I feel and it went something like this:
"I have heard that time in heaven as compared to time on earth is like the blink of an eye. This comforts me. I like to think that you are in heaven, running and laughing through golden fields with sunshine and butterflies...so happy and so distracted that by the time you think to turn around and look for me, I will already be there."
Sweet Jesus, heaven is going to be such a beautiful place....one day I'll get to be with ALL my children and never have to cry or say goodbye again. I can't wait!
Loving you with all my heart today, sweet babies...Love Mommy.
I don't have any huge, over-whelming emotions right now...just a sort of resigned sadness that comes with the acceptance of loss. I miss my daughter so much, but I can't go back in time and even if I could, I doubt very much that there is anything I could have done to change the outcome.
I also don't want to dwell on the loss of Rebecca Lane, nor do I want to delve back in and relive those two weeks in the hospital.
All I want to do is acknowledge her life and death, and share some very precious photos of her right after birth while she was still alive...pictures of my daughter living and with her heart beating....(*her coloring was due to her skin being thin from being so premature and from the lack of oxygen since her lungs were not developed yet. She was very much alive in these photos, and perfectly formed...she was just not finished growing yet...born too soon.)
Mommy loves you so much, Becca. Give Jimmy a kiss for me and tell him Happy Valentines Day. Thinking of you always....I read something the other day that sums up how I feel and it went something like this:
"I have heard that time in heaven as compared to time on earth is like the blink of an eye. This comforts me. I like to think that you are in heaven, running and laughing through golden fields with sunshine and butterflies...so happy and so distracted that by the time you think to turn around and look for me, I will already be there."
Sweet Jesus, heaven is going to be such a beautiful place....one day I'll get to be with ALL my children and never have to cry or say goodbye again. I can't wait!
Loving you with all my heart today, sweet babies...Love Mommy.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Fairytales By Email
We all get them...those emails that are mass-forwarded by a well meaning friend that contain some sort of miraculous story with a happy ending and a profound revelation or deep thought at the end, often-times religious in nature.
These emails are meant to bring a tear of joy at the "triumph-over-tragedy" and make us appreciate life/God/children/puppies/etc.
I got one of those yesterday and the main character happened to be a baby who was born too soon and after a night of prayer by the parents, the baby lived to grow into a beautiful little girl who brought a profound message from God to her mother. Trouble for me was, I couldn't see past the heartache caused by the fact that the little girl in this story, when born, was 3 days older than Becca (24 weeks) and only one ounce heavier (1 lb 9 oz).
I prayed for 2 weeks straight in the hospital...heck, I "prayed without ceasing" since the moment I knew she existed in my womb since we had lost Jimmy the year before and had a miscarriage in-between. I prayed and prayed and did not get my "miracle story with a profound revelation or deep thought and tears of joy."
Reading that story made me angry and sad! I prayed too, but my baby died!
And *story* is just what I decided that was. In real life, you pray and pray and pray and your baby dies anyway. In real life, you get pregnant again and whereas in a story you would get a living baby the second time around (and thereby your triumph-over-tragedy miracle story), in REAL LIFE you get a second dead baby...and a third...and who knows maybe even a fourth or fifth.
Real life is not full of miracles and happy endings and in real life bad things happen to good people. In real life, God doesn't always say yes, he says NO a good bit of the time. And God says no in situations where the storybooks have almost guaranteed us a yes....like after having a baby stillborn at full-term and a miscarriage at 2 months, the storybooks tell me that I DESERVE and will get a happy ending with the next pregnancy...but that was not the case. I had a baby literally die in my arms as I was praying for her life to be spared.
REAL LIFE!!
Fairytales should stop being told all the time...its really not fair. Or, at the very least, someone should be telling just as many real-life stories. In these fairytales, they always praise God for his love and kindness and mercy because he showed these things BY HIS MIRACLE that he bestowed upon the people in the story.
But what about when God says no? What about in the situations like mine? Where are the email mass-forwarded stories about the woman who has 3 dead babies who praised God anyway and whose "profound and deep revelation" is *merely* that God is still great and merciful and loving even when we are suffering and get a big fat NO instead of our "miraculous happy ending?"
Where are these stories??
Perhaps losing a baby 3 weeks before his due date, losing another at 2 months to miscarriage, and losing a baby an hour after birth because she was born to soon would have been just a little easier to bear if I had not had it ingrained in my head by fairytales that God shows us he loves us by giving us what we ask for or by happy endings or "being blessed."
So let me just say this from experience....even if God says NO, even if you are suffering, even if you think you cannot bear one more ounce of bad news, even if you did not get a miracle when you thought you should....God STILL loves you!! And yes, in real life, we still love God even when we are angry with him. (They don't tell you that in the stories, do they?)
In real life, we don't always get our tragedies turned into triumphs and wrapped up in a neat little story with a bow and happy ending that we can tell our Sunday school class or pass on in an email to everyone and their Grandma.
In real life bad things happen to good people and tragedies don't always make sense, but we trust that God has a reason for doing what he does and we praise him anyway.
Go ahead...forward this to your email group. You never know who might need to hear that God still loves us even when we don't get our happy ending.
These emails are meant to bring a tear of joy at the "triumph-over-tragedy" and make us appreciate life/God/children/puppies/etc.
I got one of those yesterday and the main character happened to be a baby who was born too soon and after a night of prayer by the parents, the baby lived to grow into a beautiful little girl who brought a profound message from God to her mother. Trouble for me was, I couldn't see past the heartache caused by the fact that the little girl in this story, when born, was 3 days older than Becca (24 weeks) and only one ounce heavier (1 lb 9 oz).
I prayed for 2 weeks straight in the hospital...heck, I "prayed without ceasing" since the moment I knew she existed in my womb since we had lost Jimmy the year before and had a miscarriage in-between. I prayed and prayed and did not get my "miracle story with a profound revelation or deep thought and tears of joy."
Reading that story made me angry and sad! I prayed too, but my baby died!
And *story* is just what I decided that was. In real life, you pray and pray and pray and your baby dies anyway. In real life, you get pregnant again and whereas in a story you would get a living baby the second time around (and thereby your triumph-over-tragedy miracle story), in REAL LIFE you get a second dead baby...and a third...and who knows maybe even a fourth or fifth.
Real life is not full of miracles and happy endings and in real life bad things happen to good people. In real life, God doesn't always say yes, he says NO a good bit of the time. And God says no in situations where the storybooks have almost guaranteed us a yes....like after having a baby stillborn at full-term and a miscarriage at 2 months, the storybooks tell me that I DESERVE and will get a happy ending with the next pregnancy...but that was not the case. I had a baby literally die in my arms as I was praying for her life to be spared.
REAL LIFE!!
Fairytales should stop being told all the time...its really not fair. Or, at the very least, someone should be telling just as many real-life stories. In these fairytales, they always praise God for his love and kindness and mercy because he showed these things BY HIS MIRACLE that he bestowed upon the people in the story.
But what about when God says no? What about in the situations like mine? Where are the email mass-forwarded stories about the woman who has 3 dead babies who praised God anyway and whose "profound and deep revelation" is *merely* that God is still great and merciful and loving even when we are suffering and get a big fat NO instead of our "miraculous happy ending?"
Where are these stories??
Perhaps losing a baby 3 weeks before his due date, losing another at 2 months to miscarriage, and losing a baby an hour after birth because she was born to soon would have been just a little easier to bear if I had not had it ingrained in my head by fairytales that God shows us he loves us by giving us what we ask for or by happy endings or "being blessed."
So let me just say this from experience....even if God says NO, even if you are suffering, even if you think you cannot bear one more ounce of bad news, even if you did not get a miracle when you thought you should....God STILL loves you!! And yes, in real life, we still love God even when we are angry with him. (They don't tell you that in the stories, do they?)
In real life, we don't always get our tragedies turned into triumphs and wrapped up in a neat little story with a bow and happy ending that we can tell our Sunday school class or pass on in an email to everyone and their Grandma.
In real life bad things happen to good people and tragedies don't always make sense, but we trust that God has a reason for doing what he does and we praise him anyway.
Go ahead...forward this to your email group. You never know who might need to hear that God still loves us even when we don't get our happy ending.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Living With Chronic [Emotional] Pain
The date when Becca should have been born is coming up, so I thought I would print off a couple of her pictures and work on her scrapbook. I only printed off 3 or 4 pictures before I realized that I just could not do this. Looking at those pictures and thinking about her hurts too much.
Just like last year when I wanted to have Jimmy's scrapbook completed by his one year angelversary but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I guess it makes sense, because in the end, my babies will forever remain an unfinished work as well.
I started thinking about how irritating it is to try and get on with normal life, yet have all these sad and painful things lurking around in the back of my mind with my parents dead, my grandparents dead, and 3 babies dead...I remembered an article I had read a few years back about a guy who had some sort of back problem that medication could not touch and doctors could not fix and how he just had to learn to live with his chronic pain.
I began to wonder...isn't what I am trying to cope with here the emotional equivalent of chronic pain? I mean, it really makes sense. Its never really going to go away, I've just got to learn to live with it. And, for the most part, I have. I'm getting ready to go back to work (wherever that may be!) and I'm cooking special foods for the diet my husband and I are on, making preparations for my living son's 9th birthday party, started a band, got back in choir at church, working on a couple of guitar songs for Praise & Adoration....and doing everything I possibly can to learn how to live with this chronic pain.
I looked up an article on how to cope with chronic physical pain and the advice is much the same as I would give anyone who is suffering from chronic emotional pain:
1) Eat right and exercise
2) Prayer/meditation
3) Eliminate or reduce stress
4) Physical exercise to boost endorphins
5) Try to get enough sleep
6) Distract yourself with things you enjoy
The idea that one day I'm going to wake up and all this pain will be gone is just not true unless I were to die in my sleep and wake up in heaven! Some days are worse than others and some days are absolutely fabulous. (Thank you God for those days!!!) But for the majority of the time, I will go through my daily activities always carrying this pain with me. Realizing this and admitting that I am living with chronic pain makes me feel much better as it means I'm not a failure at life because I cannot make this pain go away.
I am a just a person learning to cope with chronic emotional pain...and I'm getting better at it every day.
Just like last year when I wanted to have Jimmy's scrapbook completed by his one year angelversary but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I guess it makes sense, because in the end, my babies will forever remain an unfinished work as well.
I started thinking about how irritating it is to try and get on with normal life, yet have all these sad and painful things lurking around in the back of my mind with my parents dead, my grandparents dead, and 3 babies dead...I remembered an article I had read a few years back about a guy who had some sort of back problem that medication could not touch and doctors could not fix and how he just had to learn to live with his chronic pain.
I began to wonder...isn't what I am trying to cope with here the emotional equivalent of chronic pain? I mean, it really makes sense. Its never really going to go away, I've just got to learn to live with it. And, for the most part, I have. I'm getting ready to go back to work (wherever that may be!) and I'm cooking special foods for the diet my husband and I are on, making preparations for my living son's 9th birthday party, started a band, got back in choir at church, working on a couple of guitar songs for Praise & Adoration....and doing everything I possibly can to learn how to live with this chronic pain.
I looked up an article on how to cope with chronic physical pain and the advice is much the same as I would give anyone who is suffering from chronic emotional pain:
1) Eat right and exercise
2) Prayer/meditation
3) Eliminate or reduce stress
4) Physical exercise to boost endorphins
5) Try to get enough sleep
6) Distract yourself with things you enjoy
The idea that one day I'm going to wake up and all this pain will be gone is just not true unless I were to die in my sleep and wake up in heaven! Some days are worse than others and some days are absolutely fabulous. (Thank you God for those days!!!) But for the majority of the time, I will go through my daily activities always carrying this pain with me. Realizing this and admitting that I am living with chronic pain makes me feel much better as it means I'm not a failure at life because I cannot make this pain go away.
I am a just a person learning to cope with chronic emotional pain...and I'm getting better at it every day.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Checking In
Taylor loves his new school so things are working out for him and that makes me a very happy Momma.
I'm still trying to find a job...they're hard to come by. Applied for one on base that I would probably have gotten they said were it not for someone applying for the job who actually held that same position 10 years ago.
There was only one job that was not a machine worker at the steel mill from the temp agency. I haven't heard anything back from that job or the couple of others I applied for from the unemployment office listings.
There's just not much to be had these days as far as jobs go. Not in our neck of the woods anyway. We're not hurting, praise the Lord, but we sure don't have ANY wiggle room at all in our budget and we're stretched pretty thin. (As in if anything comes up like the truck breaks down or something we're in trouble.) In order to meet any of our goals and get out of debt, I'm going to have to find a job soon.
In the meantime I'm making jewelry and looking around to see if anyone wants to make some music. Went back to church, trying to get back into the swing of things, and start marriage counseling on the 21st to try and help us deal with the aftermath of losing our babies.
It's like rebuilding after a hurricane.
I'm still trying to find a job...they're hard to come by. Applied for one on base that I would probably have gotten they said were it not for someone applying for the job who actually held that same position 10 years ago.
There was only one job that was not a machine worker at the steel mill from the temp agency. I haven't heard anything back from that job or the couple of others I applied for from the unemployment office listings.
There's just not much to be had these days as far as jobs go. Not in our neck of the woods anyway. We're not hurting, praise the Lord, but we sure don't have ANY wiggle room at all in our budget and we're stretched pretty thin. (As in if anything comes up like the truck breaks down or something we're in trouble.) In order to meet any of our goals and get out of debt, I'm going to have to find a job soon.
In the meantime I'm making jewelry and looking around to see if anyone wants to make some music. Went back to church, trying to get back into the swing of things, and start marriage counseling on the 21st to try and help us deal with the aftermath of losing our babies.
It's like rebuilding after a hurricane.
Monday, January 10, 2011
How Funny...
...that I spent last week advising two friends and trying to help them save their marriage from the problems arising from the grief of losing a child...and here I am, struggling to keep my own marriage from falling apart.
I think my husband put it well when he said that I feel like I have no control over anything and that making the decision to leave him would be one of the few things I do have control over and would make me feel like I had regained control over my own life.
Pretty astute and pretty accurate.
I feel like I'm having an identity crisis. With everything that has happened in the past two years with me losing my mom and effectively becoming an adult orphan, losing 3 babies and all hope of being a stay at home mom and housewife, my only surviving child going back to school and me not being a homeschool mom, not having a job and no career prospects with a degree I cannot use......WHO AM I AND WHAT THE HECK SHOULD I BE DOING?
I am SO lost and so confused right now...maintaining my marriage and dealing with all the issues arising from our current circumstances and dealing with his ex and his kids and our financial issues, etc...I just feel like throwing in the towel. Not because I don't love my husband, just out of sheer mental and emotional exhaustion.
I just want peace from pain and worry and anxiety and drama and everything else.
I think my husband put it well when he said that I feel like I have no control over anything and that making the decision to leave him would be one of the few things I do have control over and would make me feel like I had regained control over my own life.
Pretty astute and pretty accurate.
I feel like I'm having an identity crisis. With everything that has happened in the past two years with me losing my mom and effectively becoming an adult orphan, losing 3 babies and all hope of being a stay at home mom and housewife, my only surviving child going back to school and me not being a homeschool mom, not having a job and no career prospects with a degree I cannot use......WHO AM I AND WHAT THE HECK SHOULD I BE DOING?
I am SO lost and so confused right now...maintaining my marriage and dealing with all the issues arising from our current circumstances and dealing with his ex and his kids and our financial issues, etc...I just feel like throwing in the towel. Not because I don't love my husband, just out of sheer mental and emotional exhaustion.
I just want peace from pain and worry and anxiety and drama and everything else.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Moving Right Along....
....got an appointment with the school tomorrow that Taylor will hopefully be enrolling in. Going to fill out all the paperwork and hope everything works out.
Tomorrow evening we have DHS coming to our home to see if we qualify to be foster parents. My husband insists that we don't have enough room and my friends have pointed out that while I would make an excellent foster mother, now is just not the right time.
Doesn't hurt to have them come talk to us though...it at least makes me feel like I'm doing something.
Waiting on a call about a job...they are calling for interviews this week so I'm hoping I get called, interviewed, and land the position.
I think its starting to sink in that I may never be having any more kids of my own...at this point, I'm just ready to stop hurting and if that means no babies, then I will just have to learn to live with that.
Tomorrow evening we have DHS coming to our home to see if we qualify to be foster parents. My husband insists that we don't have enough room and my friends have pointed out that while I would make an excellent foster mother, now is just not the right time.
Doesn't hurt to have them come talk to us though...it at least makes me feel like I'm doing something.
Waiting on a call about a job...they are calling for interviews this week so I'm hoping I get called, interviewed, and land the position.
I think its starting to sink in that I may never be having any more kids of my own...at this point, I'm just ready to stop hurting and if that means no babies, then I will just have to learn to live with that.
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