Strong As A Mother
A story of loss and continued love, part 2.
The After.
Sometime on July 2, 2016 in the afternoon I arrived home without my daughter. I closed the door to her nursery as I sobbed. I took a shower while sitting on a bucket because the blood loss made me light headed and I had dried blood stains all over my legs.
I then laid on my bed and cried myself to sleep.
I don’t remember lots of things about the next 48 hours but I know my in-laws brought us food. I remember feeling embarrassed, ashamed and empty. I refused to tell anyone what happened. I made my husband or other family members contact our friends and my work. I didn’t want to say the words “my baby died.”
We had the best community of support- so many meals, cards, flowers, monetary gifts to help with medical expenses, offers to walk our dog, keepsakes, and to just sit with us in the pain. Since then I have had the time to reflect on the items we were given. Receiving flower arrangements was hard, flowers die, just like my daughter died. I loved when someone gave us a living plant, because I was able to take care of something that kept on living. Monetary gifts while uncomfortable to receive were very helpful to pay for medical expenses (also THANK YOU health insurance) and allowed us to do two expensive things in her memory. We bought a bench at a local splash park and had her name engraved on the Memorial Wall at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
After her autopsy was completed we had Parker sent to a local funeral home. My husband and I decided we wanted to cremate her (really both options suck) and then learned we had to choose an urn. Luckily my dad went to school with the lady who owns the funeral home so she came to our house to discuss how things would proceed. There were only 3 options for babies: a heart, a teddy bear or an ABC block. We chose a pink heart; her ashes are still in that urn today. I became obsessed with where Parker was after she died. I wanted to know who was going to pick her up from Seattle Children’s and when. I wanted to know who was going to drive her to the crematorium and when. My mom picked her ashes up from the funeral home and brought her home to us. I sobbed again as I placed her in the dining room. I had this visceral need to know where my baby was at all times.
On about day 3, my milk came in. My body didn’t know my baby died. It didn’t get the message. Let me tell you… it was the most painful experience (for me). Engorgement, clogged milk ducts, so much pressure. I wore sports bras, drank tea, used cabbage leaves, dehydrated myself - I tried everything. I would often wake up in the middle of the night with my boobs THROBBING, I would take my sports bra off and let my breasts spray onto a towel to release the pressure. It took 4 weeks for my milk to dry up, an excruciatingly long time. In terms of recovery from labor and birth I was happy that my lady bits were healing okay and I didn’t get an infection from the placenta removal. After about a week my coloring came back from blood loss.
A week or so after Parker died I got a call from a Social Worker at Seattle Children’s. She said she knew when we were there we had declined any memorial items, but they had made the items anyway and taken a few pictures of her if we wanted them. I was SO happy and relieved to hear this and I immediately asked my sister to go get them for me. Not having more pictures and more time with Parker is one of my biggest regrets. If it wasn’t for that nurse and social worker we would have only 2 pictures of her. Because of these people we now have her footprints, handprints, castings of her feet/ hands, a lock of her hair and a short photobook. I am so glad the nurse at Seattle Children’s saw me for what I was: a new mother in complete shock that her baby died unexpectedly, and I’m so grateful that she still made the memorial items knowing I would appreciate them later.
I don’t really remember how or when but I decided I wanted to see a therapist. My husband and I met with one in Seattle- this turned out to be a big fail. She was eccentric, intense, and dressed in bright colors with cleavage that was super distracting. She did however refer me to the therapist I have seen for the last 6 years and I am extremely thankful for that. Initially I was seeing my therapist 2-3 times a week for EMDR (a type of PTSD therapy) and talk therapy. I still check in with her every 4-6 weeks. In the months following Parker’s birth and death we went to lots of doctor appointments. I wanted answers, and in the medical community answers come slowly. We met with a cold young female doctor at Swedish First Hill in Seattle who pretty much told me we were fools for not having our daughter in the hospital and that I should be able to have another vaginal birth in the future. We met with 2 more MFM doctors at Providence, one great, the other not so much. Everyone gave us the same answers- that our daughter’s death/fetal demise (what a horrible word) was a Maternal-Fetal Hemorrhage and therefore could not have been predicted or prevented and that I should have a vaginal birth in the future. I kept being told my vaginal birth was ‘success,’ to which I argued- my version of success is a living baby. I later did a pre-conception consultation with a local OB who gave me hug, and told me she would give me a ‘get out of labor free card.’ She said that if I didn’t think I could mentally handle labor and vaginal birth I could have a cesarean birth in the future. She was the first doctor who put my mental health first.
I then switched primary care doctors with the help of a dear friend (sometimes it’s about who you know). This amazing new primary care doctor asked me to wait 2 years before trying to conceive again, per AAP recommendations. I laughed, dropped a couple f-bombs, told her I would wait 3 months before trying again and we shook on it.
Many things in the months after Parker’s passing were difficult. Trying to conceive again was emotional, getting my period was continually disappointing, and having friends bring home living babies was excruciating. I was not in a good place mentally at all, I did not want to keep living. I wanted to be with my daughter. I cried every day for months. But I was in good hands: I had a loving husband, family, friends and health care providers who kept tabs on me. I made progress from a very dark place. As the dark clouds started to lift in March 2017, I saw 2 pink lines for the second time.