A Year Later

It's been a year now.  It's been a whole year since losing my baby in an ectopic pregnancy.

In some ways, it still seems so raw a wound.  I can think about him unexpectedly and get swaddled in grief for the baby that I didn't get to hold.  I can't help but wonder "what if" at times.  He'd be walking by now.  A year later and it's still hard.

At the same time, the past year has brought more joy than I ever could have anticipated.  I'm holding my beautiful healthy baby boy as I type, and now my family feels complete.  I've found peace and a certain level of acceptance if not understanding.

I have learned so much from each of my four children, including the one who's gone.  One of the things that he taught me is hope.

Finding Peace

It can be hard to make peace with an ectopic pregnancy.  For the few days, it was just panic and overwhelming and medical necessities.  There was too much urgency to really stop and think.  Once I got home from the hospital, grief moved in with us.  Grief is not polite.  It doesn't ask when would be convenient or offer to come back later.  Grief sneaks into bed with you, embraces you in your sleep, taps you shoulder when you're getting dressed, shadows you. 

Somehow we had to move on.  As much as I just wanted to curl up in a ball somewhere and give up, I still had two kids who needed me and didn't understand what was going on.

Here's how we made peace.  My husband and I felt that we needed some type of memorial, and my husband had the great idea to plant a tree.  We took our daughters out to nurseries and garden centers with us, and eventually we picked a beautiful little weeping willow. 

One day we sent the girls out with a relative so that we  could have a couple of hours without them.  My husband and I held our own little service.  We sang a couple of hymns, although saying we sung isn't really very accurate as we don't sound very good at the best of times and both of us were trying not to sob.  We prayed.  We read some religious quotes about the eternal nature of families and the hope of seeing our baby again.  We went outside and planted the tree, and then we planted flowers around it.  It's in a spot in the yard where we can see it easily from the biggest windows in the house.  We held onto each other and cried, but in a new, healing way.

We also picked a name for our baby.  It was too depressing for me to think that they never had a name.  So we picked a name with a beautiful and appropriate meaning.  

We concluded our little memorial service by praying together, and then we just sat and cried and hugged and looked out at our new little garden.

It seems like such a simple thing, but we've both felt so much better and more peaceful since then.  I still miss my baby and mourn for them, of course I do, but it is manageable. 

After the sun goes down...

During the day it is easier to get distracted.  Whether or not we always want it to, life goes on.  We still have to take care of the kids we have, take care of the house, pay the bills, etc.  The grief is still there, but you can move it to the background for awhile, let it simmer on the back burner while you go through the motions.

At night it demands your attention.  For the first week after it happened, I went to bed at night and the tears just came.  My husband just put his arms around me and held me while I sobbed for hours at a time.  He usually ended up crying with me.

Weeping should be listed as one of the side effects of an ectopic pregnancy.