Becoming a mother changes a person. I think everyone knows that. I don't believe you have to be a parent to pick up the knowledge that life after kids will never be the same. Our parents remind us all the time how their lives changed after our birth. Tv and books, often portray a transition between not having kids and having kids in their characters. We see our friends become parents and how it alters them. Changing after becoming a mother is expected. We all know that. It doesn't matter if we have kids ourselves or not.
Becoming a grieving mother changes us, too, but unlike the latter there aren't books and tv shows or friends and family to explain that to us. We don't get a handbook as we leave the funeral home on what to expect. There isn't a Monday television show on our local channel that addresses the death of child head on. Most of the time, we don't have friends or family who have experienced what we are embarking. Becoming a parent changes a person, we all know that, but losing a child changes us too.
It's been 9 months, 1 week, 2 days, 3 hours, and 25 minutes since my son's heart stopped beating. I didn't have to check my calendar or my clock to know that, because I count the minutes since I last held my son. At the end of every day, I silently add another tally to the invisible calendar in my head marking the days that have come and gone without my baby boy. But that's all it is... invisible marks, because everyday I wake up expecting to hear his hoarse cries coming from his crib and everyday I have to come to the realization that my toddler died. The pain is just as real today as it was yesterday.
People constantly tell me, time will heal all wounds. They tell me with time, I'll move on and I'll find myself again. But that's not true.
I don't just have to deal with the pain of loss. I have to deal with the pain of the guilt. Being a parent and knowing I couldn't save my son kills me every second of everyday. I wonder, while I'm cooking breakfast, while I'm bathing my other kids, what could I have done differently to save Nathan.
I deal with an internal conflict. I wasn't just his mother, I was his nurse. I grieve my son in two different ways. I grieve him half the day as his exhausted nurse who knew that he was miserable and in pain and it was time to just let him go. I grieve him as the caregiver who understood his diagnosis and understood that medicine could do no more for him. But as his mother, the other half of the day I am angry and hateful. I scream alone in my head at the thought of the doctors who gave up on him. I scream at myself for not pushing for more answers and I just simply miss him and don't understand why this happened to my perfect little boy.
The post traumatic stress... the questioning of faith... the sigh of relief and the guilt that follows...
My family... Watching my three year old as he tries to understand why his baby brother was put in a box and dumped in the ground or my six year old struggling with guilt because she was too scared of all the medical equipment to get close to Nathan...
When I was pregnant, doctors, nurses, friends, relatives, books, magazines... they all prepared me for becoming a mother, but no one... nothing prepared me for losing that child. Things that use to be funny aren't funny anymore. Things I use to believe in, I don't believe in anymore. I feel like the person I was 9 months, 1 week, 2 days 3 hours, and 45 minutes ago is a stranger and she always will be. I don't know her anymore. She died with her son.
Becoming a grieving mother changes us, too, but unlike the latter there aren't books and tv shows or friends and family to explain that to us. We don't get a handbook as we leave the funeral home on what to expect. There isn't a Monday television show on our local channel that addresses the death of child head on. Most of the time, we don't have friends or family who have experienced what we are embarking. Becoming a parent changes a person, we all know that, but losing a child changes us too.
It's been 9 months, 1 week, 2 days, 3 hours, and 25 minutes since my son's heart stopped beating. I didn't have to check my calendar or my clock to know that, because I count the minutes since I last held my son. At the end of every day, I silently add another tally to the invisible calendar in my head marking the days that have come and gone without my baby boy. But that's all it is... invisible marks, because everyday I wake up expecting to hear his hoarse cries coming from his crib and everyday I have to come to the realization that my toddler died. The pain is just as real today as it was yesterday.
People constantly tell me, time will heal all wounds. They tell me with time, I'll move on and I'll find myself again. But that's not true.
I don't just have to deal with the pain of loss. I have to deal with the pain of the guilt. Being a parent and knowing I couldn't save my son kills me every second of everyday. I wonder, while I'm cooking breakfast, while I'm bathing my other kids, what could I have done differently to save Nathan.
I deal with an internal conflict. I wasn't just his mother, I was his nurse. I grieve my son in two different ways. I grieve him half the day as his exhausted nurse who knew that he was miserable and in pain and it was time to just let him go. I grieve him as the caregiver who understood his diagnosis and understood that medicine could do no more for him. But as his mother, the other half of the day I am angry and hateful. I scream alone in my head at the thought of the doctors who gave up on him. I scream at myself for not pushing for more answers and I just simply miss him and don't understand why this happened to my perfect little boy.
The post traumatic stress... the questioning of faith... the sigh of relief and the guilt that follows...
My family... Watching my three year old as he tries to understand why his baby brother was put in a box and dumped in the ground or my six year old struggling with guilt because she was too scared of all the medical equipment to get close to Nathan...
When I was pregnant, doctors, nurses, friends, relatives, books, magazines... they all prepared me for becoming a mother, but no one... nothing prepared me for losing that child. Things that use to be funny aren't funny anymore. Things I use to believe in, I don't believe in anymore. I feel like the person I was 9 months, 1 week, 2 days 3 hours, and 45 minutes ago is a stranger and she always will be. I don't know her anymore. She died with her son.
