I got my hair cut last week. Not cut off, but cut shorter. I'd been holding out, waiting for my confidence to bolster. When I was on bed rest with Elianna, my hair was obnoxiously the wrong length...not that there is a great length for hair to be laid on for weeks at a time, but it was a small piece of frustration in the big picture of catastrophe. So after chopping it off two summers ago, I've let it grow, with one main purpose in mind: it needed to be long enough to pile on top of my head and lay flat on for weeks at a time. It's funny how we each choose to cope...what tasks we choose to take the wheel of control over when really we are, for the most part, tied up and blindfolded in the trunk. But as I type, my 2 lb 25 3/7 week little someone has remained redeemingly gestational. No bed rest. Apparently my incompetent cervix (That's really one of my diagnoses: "Incompetent." Touching. Of note, the term has been recently updated to "insufficient cervix." Phew, now I'm just insufficient, not incompetent. What a relief!) is no longer as much of a screw up as it once was. Anyway, hair? cut. Confidence? bolstered. Truth be told, I suppose there's a second reason for skipping my fancy trips to Holiday Hair. Maybe it'll sound crazy, maybe you'll get it to the point of feeling relief that you aren't the only crazy one: when you've got desperately and shockingly little to hold on to after tragedy, you hold surprisingly and frighteningly tightly to whatever is left. Cutting my hair enough times in the past 3 1/2 years would mean cutting off all of the hair that had been mine while I mothered Elias and then Elianna. After Elias was born and died, I stood over a bowl of orange jello at my sink for much longer than is reasonable debating whether or not to toss it. Jello gets moldy. Who knew? I poured it and a fair number of tears down the sink. That jello was part of my mothering, feeding myself what my stomach would tolerate on narcotics meant to dull the discomfort of my baby and uterus expanding within the trap of my pelvic bones instead of up in my abdomen. Weeks later, I had to hold my tongue and choose to literally walk the other way as I watched Kevin calmly dumping baggies of ice out into the sink....more mothering, down the drain - ice meant to soothe my body before it sacrificed my baby for itself.
So we all cope. Some in therapeutic ways, some in family shattering ways, others in ways that you'd never tell someone out loud for fear of a 302. Scratch that. We all cope in all of those ways, simultaneously, hoping no one is keeping a tally of which kind we favor.
I remember precious little about my last minutes pregnant with Elianna. I know my nurse said my water had broken. I know Dr. May was there, glassy eyed, straight lipped, not an ounce of disguising her appall...exactly the kind of physician I want, someone who rightfully doesn't trust me and isn't afraid to show it. Elianna's heart rate dropped. My blood pressure bottomed out. I passed out. Someone was asking for scrubs for Kevin so he could go to the OR. Steve came in...dear friend...beloved co-worker...fantastic neonatal nurse practitioner. "Do you have a name picked out?"-what a kind heart, letting me be a mom for a few minutes longer. Then the cold OR. Kevin so full of hope and joy over our little girl. Lorie's words, "She just cried. Did you hear her cry?" And my realization (experience sucks sometimes) that there was no way she was the 680 grams she had measured on ultrasound. She couldn't be much more than 500..."she's little, isn't she?", the mother version of my assessment. 530 grams. A kiss (thank you dear friends) and then gone. Off with her Daddy to the NICU, my NICU, to the hands of my MaryAnn, angel, surrounded I believe literally by a legion of the celestial version. Then the PACU to recover (now there's a loaded word) and wait to see Elianna again.
Kevin coped by Daddy-ing...introducing his little girl to her family, checking in on me, bringing me pictures of our girl while I waited for the anesthesia to wear off and then for the NICU team to be done their eventual futile attempts to get an arterial line into my tiny baby. Me? I wanted to pump. Now. I knew the stats. I knew I had a window to make things work if they were going to work. I knew that my milk was a necessary piece of Elianna's intensive care. Mostly, I knew I wanted nothing to do with lying still while everyone else took care of my baby.
So cope I did. Elianna was born at 9:40 am. I pumped at 1:30 pm, 4, 8, and 11 pm. After that, there was no more need for milk. Kevin and I stayed with Elianna in the NICU until 2:10 am when her little heart stopped. Two big girl extubated breaths while she lay naked on my chest (thank You for moments of mercy) and then stillness. Stillness together for another 3 days.
"...death, burial, and resurrection...God is continually revealing Himself through this cycle...There are always those three days...the three days between burial and resurrection - the longing, the waiting, the questioning." - Gwen Kik
And then home.
One of the more complicated steps during the three days was one that took us by surprise, one that had never warranted thought after Elias. Which funeral home? check. What pictures to take? check. Cremation or burial? check. Do I want to do her postmortem care? check. Who needs to meet her before we give her frame away? check. Start pumping again? Keep pumping? For no one? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...check.
Three weeks after Elianna died I had a mature milk supply. Four weeks after I had oversupply...1200 mL a day, 40 ounces. We bought a deep freezer. I filled it. I borrowed freezer space from my parents. I borrowed freezer space from my inlaws.
For no one?
No, for my sanity. To cope. To mother. What started as, "Maybe I'll see if I can get some colostrum to store in case we really pursue adoption" turned into being matched with a birth mom and having a baby to pump for.
By the middle of the summer, I had donated 39 gallons of milk to a mother's milk bank for premature and ill babies and to three adoptive families willing to drive and fly my milk as far away as Oregon.
And on May 22nd at 10pm, my little spitfire, 18-hour-old, 32-weeker, Tahlia nursed after a precious and gracious blessing from her birth mom.
Resurrection.
Redemption.
Grace.
I wonder, aloud sometimes, whether people who've not experienced adoption really actually believe that I can love Tahlia as much as they love their biological children. I wondered it before it happened to me, changed me, redeemed me. Kevin and I have met one another in a perhaps surprising place, wondering whether or not we can possibly love new baby as much as we love Tahlia. I think what we know from our own unique parenting tale and from what we've watched happen around us and to those we love and trust is that when you have another child, it isn't that you have to divide up the love you have for one and share it evenly with the next. You grow a whole new heart. I love Elias desperately, with my whole heart. I love Elianna with a whole new heart, all for her. And Tahlia with another gaping wide heart. And Maura..., and now new baby. And it works in reverse too. Just like I love Tahlia with a whole new heart of infinite love, I MISS my other babies infinitely with that same whole heart they started with. There's no "closure" of missing them based on newly found love for Tahlia and new baby just like there's no dividing up the initial love for them.
I will say this...I believe that when God names you as mother, you can mother
under wild circumstances,
in strange places and ways,
under conditions you never thought a possible part of your story,
children you never knew you couldn't live without,
babies born not of blood, sweat and tears, but of paperwork, interrogation, suspicion, sweat, tears, travel, and waiting, for years sometimes.
And I believe that my mysterious, sometimes silent and back-turned, often sheltering and redeeming God knew that part of my mothering story would be to nurse my babies. There is redemption in knowing that while her birth mom's strong body and heart grew Tahlia for 32 weeks, that my body and heart quite literally grew her for months afterward...25 of them in fact. Milk, sweat and tears over two little girls. Not the story I could have ever written. A story I've thought could never be redeemed. But a story of redemption none the less.
And such is life today at, now, 25 4/7 weeks pregnant with new baby: it feels like return, rescue, redemption.
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