Incompatible with Life

A fundamental truth of pregnancy and infant loss is that a mother blames herself. It doesn’t matter what the doctors and nurses say to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault—that it was nobody’s fault—she believes at the deepest part of her being that she caused her baby’s death. All around her she sees other women who have delivered their perfectly healthy babies with ease. Her awareness of having been singled out for the agonizing fate of loss is compounded every time she realizes that she is the only mom in the room who didn’t get to keep her baby. The broken record of prenatal admonitions screeches in her head. If only she’d exercised more, or eaten better, or been able to keep those horse pill vitamins down, or prayed harder…She ponders what she could have done to deserve such disaster. She wonders if God hates her.   Her shame is a secret so dark and deep, so powerful, that it drives her sorrow underground. To publicly display her grief would expose the magnitud...

Silent night Holy night All is calm All is bright Hospital bed Middle of night Doctors and nurses Witness the plight Round yon virgin Mother and child Holy infant So tender and mild Tiny blue babe Fights for each breath Mother and father Await her death Sleep in heavenly peace Sleep in heavenly peace.

It was eight o’clock when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” I called to Scott, who was otherwise occupied with carting in armful after armful of holiday loot from the car and dumping it under the artificial fir tree in our foyer.  This brief sojourn at home was the midpoint in our annual Christmas Eve tour of gorging and gifting. Having finished a traditional holiday dinner at my mom’s, we’d stopped at the house just long enough to unload the current batch of presents and let the dog out before hopping back into the car for the next round of merriment at my sister’s.  I opened the door and there, on our front porch, stood Santa Claus, flanked by a sullen pair of teenagers in green and red elf hats who were clearly mortified to be spending the night before Christmas trailing their dressed-up dad as he canvassed the neighborhood for young believers.  He must have been a neighbor, but I didn’t recognize the face under the beard and—I’ve got to admit—I felt a lit...

Our 2006 Christmas photo, two months after Anna's death. One of the hardest parts of losing a baby is the wondering. A stream of questions without discernible answers emerges in the wake of loss. Who would this child be? What would he or she be like? What parts of family temperaments would have merged to create his or hers? What would family life be like if this little member had lived? Which of this child’s interests and talents would we be supporting as parents? And, conversely, which of his or her quirks would be driving us berserk? These are the questions that creep up on me in the middle of ordinary days and haunt me in the dead of night. When I lost my youngest daughter, I lost any semblance of the future I’d planned. My sugar-candy former life dissolved into a murky puddle of grit, gratitude, and grief. What appears clear on the surface—even now, years later—is muddied and dark at its depths. One of the ways I cope with sadness is by imagining what life would be...

Family portrait by six-year-old Sammy. Note that I take center stage in a larger-than-life role. Mothers are biologically hard-wired to ensure the survival of the species. They are charged with preparing their offspring to leave the nest by teaching them the skills they’ll need to navigate the world independently.      With reality television shows and women's magazines glorifying the exploits of pushy and meddlesome moms, controlling moms who demand that their children live up to unreasonably high standards, one gets the sense that modern mothers grade themselves on their children’s achievements. From the women who trundle their pre-schoolers from one resume-building activity to another, to those who spend the equivalent of college tuition on their kids’ elite sports leagues and dance teams, many moms seem to believe that it is their level of devotion that determines their child’s destiny. There was a brief spell, very early on in my parenting lif...

Brown hair, maybe blonde Blue eyes, like her sister Round cheeks, stubborn jaw A grin full of mischief The sum of our parts Put twice together In the daughter we know And the one lost forever

Earlier this week, I spent a chunk of a cool summer’s evening sitting in a dark parking lot at the Veterans’ Administration complex, listening to the muted roar of One Direction fans singing along to their favorite tunes. It was the fifth and final event in my daughter’s year-long endeavor to see her favorite artists live and in person. It started with an October road trip to Moline, IL that included an overnight stay in an overly expensive hotel. I stayed in the room, plugging away on revision, while Sammy and her friend sang and danced with Demi Lovato in the arena next door. I slept on the pull-out couch while they commandeered the king-sized sleep number bed, reliving with breathless wonder every moment of the show. The next stop was an arena closer to home on one of the coldest evenings of February. Not wanting to go downtown and back twice, Scott and I dropped the girls off near the Ariana Grande marquee, went out to dinner, visited the auto show, and finally made our wa...

I used to love September. The shift from sultry summer to crisp autumn was a welcome one. I enjoyed the back to school vibe. I marveled at the brightly colored leaves drifting from the trees, and savored the sounds of apple orchards and pumpkin farms. Heck, I even got married in September. It was Anna who obliterated my adoration of autumn. She was due in November—11/11 to be exact—although she ultimately arrived on 10/10. I’d learned in June that she carried a fatal chromosome defect, and by the time we reached September, she’d already outlived her life expectancy by two months. That September was a month of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was filled to the gills with excess amniotic fluid and having contractions almost constantly. I knew that the end was near. I lived under a steady drumbeat of impending doom that none of the pleasures of autumn—not even the first pumpkin spice latte and slice of caramel apple pie—could mute. Every September since has resurrected t...

A social media acquaintance who communicates with frequency and intensity about the awesome abilities of her children, recently launched a boast (no, that’s not a Freudian slip for post) to trumpet her eldest’s latest accomplishments. Allow me to add a disclaimer right now: I have nothing against other people’s lovely children. I have nothing against their children’s success. In fact, I’d like nothing more than to have everyone in the world be proud of their children’s accomplishments. But…do we really need to glorify them? Do we need to make every good grade, every high test score, every sports performance, every volunteer act public knowledge?  I’ve promised myself that this will not turn into a rant, though I suspect that it will take every last ounce of my self-control to contain my indignation at the audacity of parents who inflate their self-worth by proclaiming their children’s achievements as if they were their own. In my experience, these parents are unawa...