Like the beginning.

Sometimes I feel like I'm back at the beginning again.

Most days, I'm indistinguishable from any first-time mom winging her way through toddlerhood. I sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and make my fingers and thumbs dance up before the rain comes down to wassssshhhhh the spider out. I sidestep the food storage containers she's pulled out onto the kitchen floor, and put toys and books back neatly on their shelves at day's end, knowing full well they will be spread out all over the floor in a chaotic tumble again tomorrow. I blow bubbles just to watch her face light up. I clap when she toddles twenty steps. I scrub dishes and fold laundry and wonder what I will make for dinner tonight.

It is these and a thousand other tiny instances of dailyness that keep me focused on what's right in front of me.

I keep tabs on friends who had babies right around the time I had Ewan. In Austen, I have a picture of what might have been 16 months ago, but with these friends, I am able to look and say, "So that's what a two-and-a-half year old boy is like," and imagine Ewan doing those things, too: hula-hooping, scooting trucks across the kitchen counter, making colorful works of art that I would display on the fridge.

Most of the time, the speculation into the Might-Have-Been doesn't ruin me, but sometimes it puts me back at what feels like the beginning of grief. I listened to this song last night, written by a 16-year-old who lost his best friend to a heart defect when she was just 9 years old. I was lying on the couch while the tears slid across my nose, down my cheeks, and splashed onto the cushions.

There, someone else wondered and was singing about what might have been. Someone else got sucker-punched with the knowledge of life's fragility, who knew that he'd never stop wondering. Someone else who holds an impossible ache that serves as a reminder to love deeply and well and now. Someone else who, I'm guessing, understands all too well that grief is a journey without a finish line, a hole with no bottom.

And then I was in bed, curled up around a pillow, begging God for my baby back. Hurting and aching like we put him in the ground yesterday. As long as he's gone, these moments will come. I know this, I know this. And still they surprise me when they come and suck all the air out of my lungs.

As long as he's gone, I can't stop wondering, or wanting him here.

* * * * *

And speaking of songs ...

Plumb's "I Want You Here" (from the recently released album "Need You Now") was inspired in part by our grief journey after losing Ewan, as well as the journeys of others who were forced to say goodbye to their little ones far too soon. I advise keeping a box of tissue ready.

There is always, always, always something to be thankful for.

The days here begin before I'm ready to be awake. The baby is crying or cooing or giggling or kicking, her noise and her motion a clear indication that it's time to get the day started. Sometimes I will set her on the floor with a few toys while I lie in bed for just a couple more minutes and force my eyes to remain open, willing away the sleepiness that will tug at my heels for the rest of the day.

First things first: coffee for me, breakfast for the baby. Playtime on the floor, a book or two, and -- if the baby's breakfast was an immersive (read: messy!) experience -- perhaps a bath. Start some laundry. A walk to the park, some more playtime, and a nap for her. I do a workout video (two, if I'm ambitious), shower. If there's time, I clean up the breakfast dishes.

Our days have a steady and predictable rhythm, with the usual ups and downs: fussy days, giggly days, bumping-into-everything days. Stick and leaf-eating days, two-trips-to-the-park days. Sometimes the steady stream of normalcy we currently enjoy makes the reality of everything that happened just a couple of years ago seem like no more than a really bad dream I had once. 

We're in constant motion these days!

But even when it's not immediately obvious, Ewan is in everything about our normal days: he is why I begin every morning telling Austen, "Good mooooooorning, I loooooove you!" in  singsong voice. He's why I get down on the floor and play with her, and chase after her on my hands and knees. He's why I don't mind a bit of spit-up on my shirt or avocado stains on my pants. He is why her laughter is the best part of my day, and the reason why I thank God I get to be so tired all the time. He's the reason why I look at the swing and the high chair and the board books and the sippy cups and baby paraphernalia that has taken over my house completely and smile.

He's also the reason I'll pause at the end of a day and before I go to fold what's in the laundry basket, notice the lump in my throat, the tear sneaking out of the corner of my eye. I'll remember how she played with a toy that was intended for him first, how I wondered while pushing her in the swing at the park how it would be to have my two-year-old boy in tow. I will think of her pointing at his picture and how it catches me off guard sometimes. That's Ewan, I say. That's your big brother. And I wonder what it would be like, the two of them together. 

It was James' idea to have the monkey as a way of including Ewan in family photos.

I don't know that experiencing sadness to the depth that we did makes our current mostly-happy, incredibly-normal normalcy any happier, but it does offer a striking contrast, throwing into sharp relief just how beautiful it is, this life we have now. It's easy to forget sometimes, even for me, even with a not-so-distant loss that, for most people, falls into the category of "Oh my God, that's so horrible, I can't even imagine."

And so I am thankful for what I have: the messy house, the stained shirts, the piles of laundry waiting to be folded, the dining room table that is in constant need of clearing. The crawling baby I can hardly keep up with, the brown ring under the coffee mug on the kitchen counter, and the dried remnants of sweet potato on the floor. The ear-piercing squeals, the grabbing hands, the cup tossed to the floor yet again. The way she reaches for her mama, the way her face lights up and her cheeks bloom into a smile when her daddy walks into a room. The way she laughs so hard when I corner her and kiss her belly button, her back, her cheeks. The way she claps her hands. The way those little reddish-blonde curls spring out from the back of her head when her hair gets damp.

Morning snuggles with daddy

Two years ago, the story was so terribly different. Of burying my son on a rainy Saturday in October, of digging my fingernails into a rocking chair in a dark nursery, of hanging the Christmas stocking for the baby who wasn't there -- it is still very much a part of our present. It is tucked inside like a nesting doll: not noticeable from the outside, but still real and tangible and just as much a part of the right-now as the parts you can see. 

I'm thankful for all of it. Sometimes I need help to remember those things that live just below the surface, but yes, yes, yes: I am thankful for all that my hands hold, and for all they once held.

A study in contrasts

If you saw the previous post, I don't need to tell you: we spent some time in Washington recently. It was wonderful and perfect and all about rest and laughter and family.

James had not had any time off since Austen's birth, and I was anxious to be there for Ewan's second birthday. It surprised even me how much the geographical distance separating his physical body from mine pained me on his first birthday.

I was anxious leading up to that moment. We went to the grocery store down the hill from the cemetery, selecting gerbera daisies and balloons to decorate his resting place, a stuffed alligator, cupcakes. A big, colorful candle in the shape of the number "2." My Dad told the florist he asked to arrange the flowers we had purchased: These are for our grandson's grave. He died when he was 16 days old. 

We weren't even there yet, and already I felt the prick of tears behind my eyes.

Upon arriving, I felt like I had to throw up. This is what I had wanted-- to be here, all together -- but I felt a sudden and visceral need to retch up all the wrongness I felt: a birthday party in a cemetery. Instead of cake and frosting on his face, jammed into the crevices between his fingers, they sat in a circle around his marker. We struck match after match to light the candle, huddling around it to protect from the breeze long enough to sing "Happy Birthday."

I'm still not accustomed to how wrong it feels. It still feels as though it might not be entirely real, like a very vivid and long ago bad dream, even though everything -- his body in the ground, the dates on his marker -- tells me that it is.

Austen sat near her brother's grave, jangling the car keys up and down, pressing the button to change the music on her Baby Einstein toy. She reached for the stuffed gator, stretched out a hand to touch the flowers.

Here we all are.

It wasn't lost on me that day, the interplay of sunlight and shadow: my buried son, my vibrant living daughter. Grief and joy, ache and elation, letting go and holding on. Smiles and laughter alongside tears and throat lumps. It was all there.

It isn't one or the other anymore -- maybe it never was. Those opposites are always there, not tugging against one another as I once thought.

They are holding hands.

Bracing myself

I think that even if I hadn't seen a calendar in God knows how long, I would know. Even without the advantage of moving my fingers past a few hundred squares, each one marking the passage of a day, something deep in my viscera would tell me it's coming.

It is telling me, and it has been telling me. A birthday, and the anniversary that follows ... oh, say ... 16 days later.

Once upon a time, I thought that marking these milestones was more or less meaningless. Every day has its pains, its challenges, its giggles and its tears. Grief isn't married to a date on the calendar. It doesn't wax and wane with the moon, or arrive only with marking the earth's annual passage around the sun.

His birth day.

But it's like my body knows somehow.

And why shouldn't it? It was his home for nine months, give or take a few days (I hope you'll forgive me for not doing the math). My body was how I came to know him: through his kicks, his rolls, his hiccups, his punches. An unceasing experience of another person. I remember telling James I couldn't think of anything more intimate.

My body was how he gained entry to the world. My body didn't know his was broken, though -- at least not in the way my mind did. So my body made him milk anyway, even though almost from the moment he left me, he received his nourishment through one of many tubes on a metallic tree near his isolette. The tubes had digital readouts that announced what they contained ("Lipids", "Proteins"), how much was being administered. Even so, I pumped and I pumped, I poured the milk into bottles and then deposited them into a pink plastic tub in a NICU freezer.

Then he died, and I stopped pumping. Just like that. We drove home from the hospital at around 2 or 3 am that night, slept in our own bed. It was the first night in 16 I hadn't gotten up to pump, and so I woke up to the offense of sunlight through our white curtains, remembering my dead child, and to the sweet, pungent scent of breastmilk that had spilled out from me and onto our sheets. I touched it and looked at like an afterthought, a distant memory. I decided to let it dry out (from the sheets, from me) on its own.

So why shouldn't my body remember and know and remind me:

It's coming. It's almost time.

Another child, lack of sleep, a cross country move. Nothing has taught me to forget. Nothing can make my body unknow his birth, his death. Him.

Nearly two years of knowing, remembering this, and this body, this heart is still not strong enough.

The sacred work of grief

I heard from a friend last night who just lost her second pregnancy in a year. One day she had a perfectly healthy, normal pregnancy in her belly and the next, the baby was gone.

Just like that -- just that fast. Baby, then all of the sudden -- no baby. An empty womb, and a broken heart. No explanation, no obvious reason.

A card I bought after Ewan died.

My friend heard the usual platitudes, the usual lame (albeit true) attempts at comfort: "Your babies are in heaven now." "Everything happens for a reason." And so on.

All the perspective and truth in the world does no good for the heart that hurts bitterly for what might have been, but was not; for what it once held, but passed unknowingly in the night; for the loss of the one who should have been known and held and loved and rocked to sleep in her mama's arms, but was not.

She left this earth almost as suddenly as she arrived.

Some very small part of my friend's pain has become mine -- but I know the far greater share belongs to her and her husband. And though it is one of the hardest things in the world to watch a friend suffer through, I will not try and take it from them.

My own loss is far too fresh to forget this truth: that grief is good, hard, and (above all) holy work. The temptation is to try to lift their burden of grief altogether. Knowing this to be impossible, I hope to do the work of grieving shoulder-to-shoulder with her leading the way.

Pockets of Grief

Austen is asleep in the baby swing right now. As I watch her rock back and forth, head lolling off to one side, it occurs to me that we've had this swing since we were pregnant with Ewan. A co-worker of mine, knowing I was pregnant, asked if I wanted any of their leftover baby things that she was seeking to get rid of. After a boy and a girl, she and her husband felt their family was complete. I happy accepted any hand-me-downs she had, and this Graco baby swing was one of many baby things I inherited from her.

I remember bringing that swing home along with a slough of other baby things: a brightly colored jungle-themed activity mat with mirrors, crinkly, crackly fabric, and balls attached that would roll and show off flashes of orange and yellow. There was a box full of rattles and cups and stacking toys. But I remember taking particular care with the swing. I removed the fabric elements and washed them. I sanitized the tray that lifts up and snaps back down. I pictured Ewan in that swing.

But he never got to use it.

When we had Austen, we knew there would be many moments like this: Austen experiencing firsts that only ever were should-have-been's or never-happened's with Ewan. Even though we knew those things would be there ahead of time, the experience of having these moments with Austen is opening up pockets of grief that have more or less been latent and sleeping since he died. We missed the first smile, the first laugh, the first bath. We never got to dress him in any of the miniature clothes I held up to the sounds of oohs and aahs and declarations of "that's so cute!" at any my baby showers.

Now that we get those moments with her, I find these pockets of sadness opening inside me -- the things that we never had with him. There are so many of them, bursting wide open one after the other because of his sister.

After her first bath

It's hard to be overly sentimental about it, to focus on the joy of the moments we share with Austen at the expense of the moments we didn't have with Ewan. It's never so clean and compartmentalized. I even find myself wondering if I can really count these things -- these normal experiences we never had with Ewan -- as a loss. After all, we never had those moments -- we merely expected and hoped for them. It is not the same thing. But it still hurts.

And so I find myself holding the tension one more time: the joy of every moment we have with our healthy, living daughter, and experiencing intimacy with those moments now that with Ewan, slipped through our fingers like water. They were never ours to hold.

Ewan's been gone for nearly a year and a half now. While it will never be the case that having Austen will take away any of the pain we experienced when we lost Ewan, there is something about having Austen here that makes it okay somehow -- that makes it okay not for what has already happened, but it makes it okay in the now. I think it's because losing Ewan isn't where the story ends -- it's still going on.

It's still going on.

It Is Never One or the Other

"Caring for this child will be a good distraction from your grief."

It was the second time she had knocked on my door to come tell me about her religion. We had told her about Ewan the first time after the four of us had been standing in our open doorway for nearly half an hour. The taller, younger woman who was with her cried as we briefly shared about the 16 days our firstborn was alive while her more talkative counterpart pointed to leaflets, went on about how hopeful I could be, how good I could feel about seeing my son again -- just like she would see her husband again.

I've written about a variety of tensions here often enough, and I told her how this is one that I hold constantly: that the hope I have in a future resurrection doesn't do away with or mitigate grief to any great degree in my present. "I hold both," I told her. "I can affirm with deep conviction my belief that God will raise my son to life again. And I can also say that living with the daily reality of his loss is hell, pure and simple. I know our pain is not without purpose, and I know we will see him again. But that doesn't change the fact that the present reality is hell."

"But ..."

"There is no 'but' to it," I said. "Though I grieve as one who does have hope -- and I thank God every day that I do -- it still hurts like hell. One absolutely does not do away with the other." Even though I knew this point likely wouldn't be embraced, I had to be adamant.

Though different in some important details, I affirmed that a belief in the resurrection of the body was one that we shared as Catholics -- one I affirmed every time I recited the creed, and one that often enough, reduced me to tears when I thought about Ewan in particular, rising with a body restored and perfect. No broken heart.

This time she told me about how after her husband died, one her children bought her a puppy she didn't want. She told her son, "How is caring for a little dog supposed to help? I don't want this!" Her children told her it was never meant to be a replacement, but something that would daily compel her out of focusing on her grief and her loss. But then she found, she said, that it worked. It didn't replace her husband of course, but it gave her something else toward which she could direct her focus.

"This baby will do the same thing for you," she told me.

Their time at my front door was much shorter this time. She was, I observed during that first visit, one of those people with whom it is difficult to get a word in edgewise, so I didn't get to share what I already knew for sure, which is this:

Caring for Austen will not be a distraction from my grief for Ewan. I've already felt how very not distracting it can be: experiencing with my daughter all the things I never got to experience with my son. Things as simple as a bath or a diaper change, or putting on one of several adorable miniature outfits. Taking a ride in the car. Going for a walk with my baby firmly strapped to my chest. Breastfeeding. Smiles and giggles and coos. Celebrating 17 days of life outside the womb, and every day beyond.

These experiences will create a new tension: a joy in having them and experiencing them with my daughter, and impressing upon me deeply in those early days and in all the days that come after exactly what I missed out on with my son. It won't be a distraction -- it will be a new way of holding my loss close to my face, a way in which I can examine every nook and cranny and detail with a magnifying glass. In enjoying these beautiful moments with Austen, how can I help but think of what we lost with Ewan in light of these particulars?

It isn't one or the other. It hardly ever is. It is both. You can't have it strictly one way or the other, no matter how much you want to. It is hope and it is pain. It is embracing the present and acknowledging that the past will always be a part of you and how you experience life. It is moving on and it is looking back because there is no way you can forget, even if you wanted to. It is messy and confusing and uncomfortable and not the least bit predictable.

I know she meant well in what she said. I get that. But embracing this new life and all the hope and joy that comes with it is, in addition to being a new and joyful experience in its own right, one more way I will learn to grieve my son -- all over again.

I Wish I Had a River

It is difficult to believe that just a week from today is Christmas Eve. We have four stockings hung over a large bookcase this year instead of three over a fireplace mantel. We've got a North Carolina fir lit and decorated in a corner of our dining room, and have twinkling icicle lights hanging in the front window. Instead of pulling on thick cozy socks when I get home to protect my feet from the chill, now I swing the front door wide open to let air in during the near 80-degree weather here. Last year, we were not two, but three minus one. This year, we are not three, but four minus one.

Much has changed between Christmases.

The closer we get to meeting Austen for the first time, the more I find myself turning to memories of our first Christmas without Ewan. Though by now I have some practice at being Ewan-less for birthdays and anniversaries and holidays, I find it has not gotten any easier. Though she hasn't arrived yet, expecting his little sister throws into sharp relief all the things we've missed out on with him in the past year and more. And I expect that enjoying each of her firsts will do the same thing for all those first rites of passage that Ewan missed: first smile, first laugh, first bath, first everything. All her firsts will be something that Ewan didn't get to do -- and that is impossible to forget.

It is these kinds of moments I was thinking of when I wrote about the challenge of loving them both. It was not the case that I didn't think my heart would have room to love two children so much as it was feeling like I might rip in half from what loving both of them means. Loving Ewan often means tears and tissues and a throat sore from crying. It means recognizing that there is every day more and more of our family life for which he is not present. It means wanting to hold him close and lamenting the reality that his body is buried over 3,000 miles away.

Loving Austen is so different already. There is not the dread and uncertainty accompanying her entry into the world like there was with Ewan. We expect that with her, loving her will mean kisses and cuddles and singing songs that we make up just for her (just like we did with Ewan). It will mean taking pictures of her sleeping and smiling and being held. It will mean dressing her up and changing her diaper and falling asleep beside her. It will mean being present for and enjoying all those things that we didn't get to do with our son.

My challenge lies in the reality that just as for a mother whose children are all living, my love for them doesn't take turns. There is not a loving Ewan time and a separate loving Austen time. All the heartache and all the joy are happening concurrently. And sometimes the intensity of both feels as though it will break me.

There are still questions I ask myself about Ewan -- about what he felt and experienced in his final moments. There are still "what if?" types of questions that I ask. And I still have days where I cry out to God and ask him for my son back. Then Austen will kick and with tears in my eyes, I'll laugh at her antics. I will look forward to a life with her at home.

It's both all at once, and I don't know what else to say about it but that it hurts.

As I was out running errands this morning, I heard Sarah McLachlan's rendition of the Joni Mitchell song "River" come on.

I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I could teach my feet to fly ...

Though there are times at which it doesn't hurt as badly as others, it never really stops. And like anyone in pain, sometimes I wish I could just escape it for awhile in a way that wasn't forgetting or escapism or burying my head in the sand and pretending none of it ever happened. I wish sometimes I could outrun, outfly, or outskate the way it hurts on any day, just so I could find a little relief -- but most of all on the days where I feel stretched so thin I feel as though I will disappear.

Sometimes, I wish I had a river.

Fear Creeps In

If something can go well, it will.

I've seen this on bumper stickers and magnets all over the place. The phrase is a beacon of positivity in a world that tends to see the glass half empty. It is a gentle and encouraging nudge toward recognizing and embracing the good. I can get on board with that -- in theory, at least.

But every time I see of it, I can't help but think of what happened to Ewan. His story could easily be titled "If Something Could Have Gone Wrong, It Did."

From the moment he was first intubated, most things just didn't go right for him. Acknowledging this is not to say that there weren't good things that happened. Like any parents of a child with a heart defect, I can point to the ups in our story just as easily as I can point to the downs. When you're in the hospital with a critically ill child, you learn to ride the waves that come with both. No one expected him to make it through that all-night surgery, for example. And I remember a cardiologist coming to James and I after viewing the echo during Ewan's second trial off of ECMO: "Frankly, I didn't expect it to look that good." He was beaming from ear to ear.

So were we. We called our parents and friends. We updated Facebook. We hugged, kissed, jumped up and down, and had a celebratory bowl of ice cream at the Baskin Robbins down the street. Exclamation points abounded.

Something could have gone well that day -- and it did.

But if you're here, you already know the rest. I don't need to rehash for you just how very temporary the "going well" lasted.

When you've repeatedly ended up on the wrong side of statistics in something as high stakes as your child's life, it is impossible to shake the fear that something can go wrong again -- because it is no mere statistic when you're the one burying the child you gave birth to just three weeks prior. Even for one bent toward embracing the positive, it's difficult not to find that the fear of something going wrong is digging its teeth in. When this happens, not a single platitude out there -- no matter how true or well-constructed -- will change that. You can reason with yourself for hours on end until, in a frenzy, you find that deep down, you remain unconvinced.

It could happen again.

We have both felt it. I've had waking nightmares where my incredibly active daughter is born still. James has repeatedly caught himself referring to Austen as "he," unable to shake the thought that this is Ewan all over again. In many ways, this second birth is even more surreal than our first. Because we had our first baby. And then after a few weeks, we returned home, our lives from the outside looking much like they had before -- almost as if my pregnancy, his birth, his life, and his death never happened. It made the lines between what was real and what felt real a bit blurry. It felt as though someone had taken an eraser to the previous ten months of our lives, but left us with the trauma of what those months contained.

It's hard to shake. I wish that by immersing myself in positive phrases, reinforcing the facts of everything having gone so perfectly this time around, I could drown the fear monster and feel his teeth unclench. There is no reason to think anything bad will happen. The last thing I want is the fear of what could (but probably will not) be rob me of the joy of what actually is. Austen is here. She is active and healthy. Everything about this pregnancy has been perfect. We are preparing to greet  her in the most beautiful and welcoming way we can.

The truth is, I need a whole lot of "If something can go well, it will" right now. So when that fear creeps in, I picture me with my daughter in that first of many unbelievable moments. Labor is over and I'm holding her, her sweet skin right up against mine. There are no NICU nurses. There is no need for IVs or oxygen, no need to have her rushed away. I have no idea what it will feel like to make the leap from imagining I can hold her for as long as I please to finding that I don't need to imagine it anymore -- because it's real. Holding that moment in my mind makes me weep with joy every time as I mourn what all three of us lost the first time, and as I begin to feel those first small waves of healing that come even as I imagine the second.

It could happen that way. It really could happen.

The trauma of what has passed is very real, and that can never be undone. That is here to stay. Though the fear created by what has happened is not an entirely irrational, "out of nowhere" type of fear, it has no bearing on the reality of what is right now. What is real now -- in this very moment -- is that we have every reason to believe that our experience will be very different this time. Perhaps all that good won't undo the scar, but I sense already that the experience we are about to embrace will be a healing balm over it.

The fear will continue to creep in. There is no use in pretending that it won't. But until I have a darn good reason to believe otherwise, I am choosing to cling to hope that it can go well -- and it will.

I knew this was going to hurt.

The boxes of Christmas things are still out in the garage. Our stockings, ornaments, and lights haven't been brought into the house yet. The fact that we are just now getting the last of our unpacking and putting everything in its place done is a large part of it.

Christmas 2010

Also, this is another Christmas without Ewan. I don't find it useful or particularly meaningful to use words like "better" or "worse" or "easier" or "harder" when it comes to comparing holidays since he died. This will be the second and frankly, it still hurts like hell. Every day is a day I wake up with the awareness of the would-have-beens and could-have-beens that will remain just that: unfulfilled potentials, unrealized hopes, and pleasant dreams that never came true. Every day is a day where I am an anomaly as a first-time parent.

But this is Christmastime, and everything about it is meant to be special.

At a time when people are hanging stockings, buying gifts, and capturing moments on camera of kids tearing into their presents, I'm thinking of the one who will never get to do that with us. I'm thinking of those moments James and I will never get to witness. We will never see Ewan's eyes go wide when we hold him up for a better look at the Christmas tree. We won't stand in line with him to see Santa, or snap a picture of him fast asleep with an arm around his Christmas prizes. Years from now, we won't be able to look back on photo albums of Christmases past and laugh at the memories we made.

Austen's presence delights us to no end, but it hit me this morning like a two-by-four to the head that I will never have all my family in one place: not for the everyday mundane, and not for Christmas either. Even for all the joy she brings, that joy comes with a sharp edge. We will never see these or any other siblings together. And now we are over 3,000 miles away from where he is buried; we cannot easily take Austen for a visit, or all go and visit his grave to place a little stocking or candy cane or anything. It will be a long time before we can all be in one place, even in the cemetery.

Today, I don't really care if those boxes ever come down from their perch in the garage. So instead I'm holding this brokenness today, not knowing what else to do but to let it hurt.

Loss & Advertising

One of the things I didn't know to expect when I was pregnant with Ewan was how I would get inundated with the snail mail version of spam for all manner of baby products: coupons, samples, and other mailings all screaming: Buy our product! BUY OUR PRODUCT NOW! If you love your baby, you will BUY OUR PRODUCT! And just so you can find out how much you've been missing out on, here is a massive box of samples for you to try for your newborn! And COUPONS so you can go out and BUY IT!

I remember after picking up the mail that we had stopped while we were at Children's Hospital overseeing Ewan's care that among the piles of bills, credit card offers, and the coupons we never used, we came home to a couple of large boxes of formula samples. Great. While the mail itself didn't make me feel anything I wasn't feeling already, I knew some people for whom this kind of mail might trigger additional depression, anger, or stress. Reasoning that these companies could not have known that just days before, I had held my dying baby in my arms, I numbly set aside the boxes of samples to be donated later.

Just a couple of days before Ewan's first birthday, the formula companies struck again. In the mail, I received a small package of samples of toddler formula amidst advertising emblazoned with the slogan "I am not a baby," and providing some bullet-point style education on how a toddler's nutritional needs vary from that of a baby. More coupons were included.

I threw the samples away and recycled the mailers.

In the two months since Ewan's birthday, I've received two additional mailers reminding me that my toddler's nutritional needs are different than a baby's. The most recent arrived last week. It is still sitting out on the counter, reminding me to write them. While it is still the case for me that these marketing mailers don't trigger any stressful or depressive emotions, they are becoming irritating, and I do wish they would stop. Ignoring for the moment the fact that my would-be toddler is not among the earthly living and clearly not in need of formula, the sheer insistence and persistence with which various companies use one of life's most joyous events (the birth of a baby) to try and turn a dime is off-putting for me.

I know many mothers have written to these companies asking them to stop. And whereas I've been satisfied in the past simply to toss the mailers, samples, and coupons and move on with life, I'm finally at that point where being repeatedly confronted with this advertising is an emotional drain. I find it concerning me more than it should. So I'm going to let them know -- I'm sending the mailers back to them with a note of my own:

* * *

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing to request that my name be removed from future mailings.

The boy who would be a toddler now died in my arms when he was 16 days old. While his date of birth is a matter of public record and, I imagine, particularly handy for constructing mailing lists targeting new parents who might be in need of samples of your products and the coupons you provide, we have no need for them.

I have been satisfied in the past simply to ignore these mailings and toss them into recycling. But imagine my surprise when (after several months of advertising silence) I receive more samples -- this time for toddler formula -- just days before what would have been my son's first birthday. It was a day of celebration and joy for us, but the boy who turned one was conspicuously absent.

I have looked high and low for simpler ways to be removed from your mailing list, and after finding nothing online that answers my particular query, writing to you seems to be my only option. Might I suggest that you provide an easy way for those of us who have no need of or desire for your mailings a way of making that request? Mothers like me might be in the statistical minority of those to whom you advertise, but I can assure you I am far from being alone in this category. I can safely promise you that there are thousands of parents on your mailing lists who no longer have a baby or toddler in their care.

I probably should have sent something to you much sooner making this request. But life after burying your baby can make even the most mundane and benign tasks feel insurmountable. And while a parent who has lost a child is never in need of a reminder of what they have lost (trust me -- not a moment goes by where we forget), being confronted repeatedly with advertising that serves to point out one of the many "would have beens" we will never get to experience with our children can be emotionally draining.



Maybe I am just a name on a mailing list -- another potential customer. But for me, this is personal. I lost my child -- a beautiful boy named Ewan, and I thought maybe you should know that -- and see his face in the program from his funeral.

Please remove me from your mailing list.


Sincerely,
Kirsten Petermann
Proud mama to Ewan Eliezer (September 18, 2010 - October 4, 2010)

* * *

Tell me, Team Ewan mamas (especially those of you who are in the same boat) -- how have you handled these advertisements and mailers? Toss and ignore? Call? Write? How did these make you feel?

The conversation is happening on the Team Ewan Community page on Facebook.

Hope Changes Everything.

Dear Team Ewan Friends,

I don't know if you remember me mentioning several months back (shortly after I arrived here in Florida) that I had participated in a project my dear friend Christianne was working on, and that I would share it with you when it was ready.

Well ... it's ready.

And it's beautiful.

Click on the image to go to the Hope Changes site

I got my first glimpse of the site this morning, and not only am I bursting with pride at what my friend and her team has accomplished, I was almost instantly moved to tears. There are so many things in life that may threaten to keep us from living fully.

Depression. Anxiety. Doubt. Anger. Guilt. Disappointment. Grief.

You name it. And yet, God can meet us where we're at in each of those places and through them, bring us to a life beyond what we ever could have imagined for ourselves.

That's what this site is about. Victory emerging from the struggle. Hope emerging from the darkness. Walking through the fire and coming to see that Hope Changes Everything.

If you get the chance, please take a look and if so moved, share it with your friends. The video stories you see on there are all real people speaking honestly about their journeys and struggles, and how God met them in those places. You can find our story on the Grief page (of course), but I hope you will not stop there.

I'm so thrilled to share this with you.

Motherhood

I could have added to yesterday's post of confessions the following: Oftentimes, I really don't feel like I am a mother.

I say I am a mother to myself as a point of fact and a reminder. Especially after Ewan Eliezer died and before Austen Brielle was a tiny cluster of cells in my belly, I didn't know how to think of motherhood. I wore it differently than I had ever hoped or anticipated, looking nothing at all like what I understood it to be. Instead of sleepless nights rocking a fussy baby, I remained awake with nightmarish memories of a 16-day hospital stay. Instead soothing his tears and cries, I gave sway to mine, letting them take me where they would. Instead of caring for a child at home, I tended to the empty evidences everywhere all around me of what we had once hoped for.

From the spray of flowers on his casket

There are those who would say to me here that I shouldn't concern myself with labels and to a great extent, I agree with them. With one child gone and one soon on the way, the last thing I need is to concern myself with how I'm fitting into a definition of something that is perhaps too narrowly understood.

The truth is, I would have given anything to be servicing the types complaints I heard from other mothers. Not wanting to use my grief as a weapon, I kept to myself the thoughts of, "You have no idea how lucky you are to be doing that." And then when I became pregnant again, oozing joy and hopefulness and anticipation for the new life inside me, then came the "Just wait until your baby is doing this ..." comments, words that pointed a finger at my inexperience with the normal dailiness of mothering and (it seemed to me), seeking to temper the unbridled joy I had that someone new was alive. I could have said, "It's better than the alternative," or yet, "I will learn these things the same way you and every mother before you in the history of the world did -- by my own experience," but again -- these are thoughts I kept to myself.

I thanked God for those who taught me to think of it differently. It was Annie (our doula) who, when she heard the story of how Ewan died, told me, "You mothered him right up until the very end." A friend of mine who flew from Texas for his funeral said that as far as she was concerned, I had been thrown into the deep end of motherhood: "It's loving your child more than yourself, doing what's best for him, and knowing when to let go. Most of us learn to let go of our children a little bit at a time. You had to learn all at once."

In the weeks and months that followed, I began to think of my motherhood taking the form of what I call mothering memory. With all the attendant instincts and no living child for whom to care, I mothered a memory and tended carefully to the heart of mine that my son had turned inside out -- this, too, was part of and evidence of his life. It didn't look like motherhood as I had previously conceived of it and maybe that's why I never felt like I really was one. My motherhood took on a kind of dailiness, but in a very different form.

I still have difficulty in understanding myself as a mother. I know how most people understand it and in the world at large, how many women embody it. By all appearances, motherhood may be comprised in its early days of diaper changes and feedings and blowouts; later on, it will look like potty training and manners training and tantrum management; and later than that it will look like a great many other things. But I wonder if at the root of it all is what my friend said: loving your child, knowing and doing what is best for him and when it is time, letting go of what you once held on to.

There are many of us out there who have been forced too early into the deep end, skipping past all the normal dailiness and while we are still in motherhood's infancy, letting go all at once. Maybe that's part of why grieving a child feels so impossible. Most mothers, in a sense, grow into their motherhood as their children grow into maturity. But when motherhood is cut off in its infancy, we are pushed to the end of the mothering line as it were, widowed in motherhood before we've even had a chance to enjoy the honeymoon.

Of those of us who have experienced the abrupt letting go of a child, I know many of us are giving motherhood a chance again, looking forward to embracing the more commonly understood dailiness about which we've heard other people complain. We are, I know, looking forward to loving these children and embracing the dailiness that many see as mundane. We're looking forward to having the chance to make memories and savoring the everyday. And after the traumas of having to let go all at once -- finally -- we are going to learn what it's like to let go gradually, just a little bit at a time.

Past/Present: Grief & Gratitude

The closer we get to Austen's arrival, the more I find myself thinking about my pregnancy with Ewan and how it felt at the same point. I'm nearly 31 weeks pregnant now and remember having the same feeling last time: this baby will be here before we know it. While with both children we faced "before we know it" with excitement and joy, there were also some decidedly differently feelings that accompanied our pregnancy with Ewan.

30 weeks + 5 days pregnant with Ewan. (I am 30 weeks + 5 days pregnant with Austen today.)

Prenatal diagnosis is a double-edged sword where the experience of my pregnancy with Ewan was concerned. Given the choice of being prepared or unhappily surprised, I would take prepared any day. Even that, however, came at a tremendous cost. In the days immediately following the diagnosis, all thought of preparing for my first child was overwhelmed with grief. I lost any idea of having baby showers or celebrating or buying gender-appropriate clothing -- not because I didn't think he deserved it, but because instead of eager anticipation, my thoughts and feelings were consumed with sadness for my son and what he would face, a feeling of being so completely different than everyone else I knew facing motherhood for the first time, and a deep sense that already, things were not as they should be.

The closer his arrival came, the more stress I experienced. James was unemployed and I was working full time, staring down a dwindling timeline toward being on unpaid maternity leave when he was born. We had no idea until days prior to his arrival how we were going to meet our expenses during my leave. One set of doctors reminded us how very severe Ewan's condition was, and another kept assuring us things would be fine -- that after a bit of trouble, we would have a baby at home. It seemed like every appointment we had, something else wasn't quite right. In my mind, it didn't matter how minute a detail it was -- if something was off, it practically sent me into a tailspin. Stress escalated.

On top of all this, I had people telling me not to stress out (which, ironically, had exactly the opposite result than the one intended). "Stress is bad for the baby!" I was frequently reminded. I was given all sorts of advice from just "letting go" and focusing on a positive outcome, to sinking my tired, stressed, and very pregnant body into a hot bath from time to time. But how was I to "let go"? Honestly, what did that even mean? And if I had some hope of all our worries going down the drain with the bathwater, I would have done it. Our financial concerns weren't going to figure themselves out. We still had a baby with a very broken heart whose arrival was getting closer and closer, and we both felt overwhelmed with the gravity of what we were facing. We still loved him fiercely and wanted him to live, but we couldn't just forget about what was immediately ahead of him and us. I looked at other expectant moms I knew who were facing similar prenatal diagnoses and wondered at (and were deeply envious of) the calm they had through the whole thing.

And then came the night before I went into labor. I couldn't sleep for worry -- I loved him so much and deep down, had a feeling that I was going to be asked to let him go. You better believe I didn't want to, and honestly, I didn't think I could. That was a night of fists and tears and screaming, of lying on the floor without caring whether or not I got up. I grieved for me and what I had lost, but mostly for Ewan. He wasn't even born yet, and already he was facing what I couldn't imagine: attached to a stressed-out mommy, and then being born and immediately separated, being hooked up to machines, being intubated, being poked and sliced. As my mom put it, having no very good reason to have a very high opinion of being born.

I compare my pregnancy now to then and consider how decidedly different they are. I left my full time job when I was about 13 weeks pregnant with Austen before driving across the country to join James in Florida. Everything with this pregnancy has been completely normal: every scan, every measurement, every prenatal appointment. Not the slightest thing is amiss. And though I am working, it is in my own home. My job is to have a healthy pregnancy, to keep my home in good working order, to make our family ready for our second child's arrival.

And so I look back on my pregnancy with Ewan not with guilt, but with more grief -- grief for him and what he experienced before he was even born. I gave him all I had, but was not able to give him what I have been able to give his little sister: a peaceful pregnancy. I wanted the best for him, and couldn't give him that. And so the more I progress in this pregnancy (and rejoice in its normalcy) I also still grieve that his poor little body, in addition to the tremendous challenges it was already facing, had to deal with the additional burden of the stress we experienced.

Honestly, I feel like I can't say "I'm sorry" enough to him. I don't know that I could have done any better or any differently given the circumstances. Acknowledging just how very much was out of our control is a good step perhaps, but doesn't make the act of grieving what he lost as a result any easier.

And so when we recognized All Saints and All Souls Day this past week, those words so often recited at funerals and in remembering the dead carried special weight and meaning: Grant them eternal rest, O Lord ...

Finally. Finally, he is able to rest. That is a relief, and brings some peace to the tears that come when I grieve for what he experienced both before and after his birth. And as I feel his little sister kick and roll in a body that is decidedly more relaxed than the one Ewan had as a home, I find myself deeply thankful for what I experience now and feeling just a little bittersweet for what was our not-so-distant past. I know as well as anyone we can't undo what has been done -- but I can see it and acknowledge the truth of what it is. The tears will come and on its heels, the gratitude and relief that finally ... finally, rest has come.

Tears in my eyes and a smile on my lips -- my past and my present all rolled into one. Grief and gratitude inextricably bound, one with the other. Memory of the past and hope and wonder of a not-too-distant future. She kicks again and I laugh, "thankful" seeming a pale and pathetic word for what this is. The truth is, I am fairly certain I could not be so thankful without all of it -- without the sum total of all we grieved then and grieve now -- in fact, without him.

In Honor of All Souls

Last night, the Saint James Cathedral Choir performed Mozart's Requiem in honor of All Souls Day. I went last night thinking of Ewan and of other children I know who were taken from their parents' arms too soon. I thought of my grandfather and of those I met in the past year who have left their earthly homes for another. I love that there's a day in the liturgical calendar dedicated to remembering.

No one is asking us to forget. No one is asking us to pretend as though it never happened, as though their absence doesn't hurt like hell.

In honor of them, and of all those we miss ...

Requiem aeternum dona eis, Domine,

et Lux perpetua luceat eis,

cum Sanctus tuis in aeternum, quia pius es.

(Grant them eternal rest, Lord,

and let perpetual light shine on them,

as with Your saints in eternity, because You are merciful)

Grief & Gratitude

The grief still throws me for a loop sometimes. Though I accepted some time ago that the loss of our son was one I'd be feeling for the rest of my life, the how and the when of the grief as it takes me manages to catch me by surprise almost every time.

As I was preparing yesterday's blog post on Thursday night, I was (as I so often do) going through pictures of Ewan and trying to find pictures of him in the blankets that are now draped over the sides of the crib in our nursery. I found the one of him swaddled tightly, intubated again, and lying on his side. That was in the morning, right before he went into the cath lab. It had been a rough night for him and his nurses. He fought the intubation and resisted every attempt to get the breathing tube down his throat (we were told between doctors and nurses, it was about five attempts). When we arrived that morning, his nurse told us that even with morphine, it took several hours to get him calm again. That's the day the curtains were drawn, the lights were low, and there would be no holding him.

That one picture had me feeling that moment all over again: mourning what he suffered, and us, not there and completely unable to do anything about it. It is no use telling me there's nothing I could have done even had I been there and frankly, I understand as much. But in that moment, that picture drew out of me the grief I still feel that we had to be separated at all, that at just five days old he was screaming at doctors and nurses and resisting intubation instead of sleeping soundly at home, resting quietly in the arms of his parents.

I had stop writing then. I drew a hot bath and then gave myself the freedom to fall apart, let the grief have its way. I've long since learned that there are moments where there is no use in trying to control the flood. The levees have broken, the tide has risen, and the water will have its way. So I let it.

And a beautiful thing happened in that moment. In the middle of all that pain and all those tears, there was gratitude. The gratitude I experienced was not for my present pain or for the memories I will always bear of what Ewan suffered -- rather, it was for the love: our love for him, his for us, and the love that James and I have for each other that sustained us through a very dark time. It was gratitude for the love and loyalty we experienced from friends and family, and the love sent from people who had never met us before, but still cared deeply for a baby boy with a broken heart.

At the root of all that grief and pain, there was love. And if there had been no love, there would perhaps have been no grief. This may have made things easier in the present, but that love was the greatest thing I've ever experienced. It occurred to me that there are people in this world who probably never experience it like this.

Thursday night's status update

A status update on Facebook could hardly capture it, but all these things were so astounding to me, I had to share it. Mentions were made of optimism and a good attitude and no doubt those things play a part. I suppose I could have just as easily reasoned that it hurts too much for me to be thankful for it. But really, this gratitude was more blinding revelation than choice -- a clarity of thought I didn't previously possess, plopped smack dab into the middle of my consciousness, too glaring to ignore. I've long known that the love we experienced is a gift, but the realization of how deeply and inextricably the love and the grief are intertwined is a new and tremendous grace.

So I embrace them all. Grief, grace, and love are inseparably conjoined.

The morning after all of this, I recalled our last moments with him. I whispered many things in his ear the night we were saying goodbye. I told him how much we loved him. I thanked him for how he loved hard and fought so hard to stay with us. But I also remember telling him: You're the best thing that could have happened to us. You are the greatest gift I've ever received.

And so he is, and even everything that came after he was gone. How is love like that to be expressed? I know many would think what happened to be pitiable -- and it is that. I still wish Ewan was with us. I wouldn't wish the loss of a child on anyone. But it's not only that. To know a love that goes to such depths, that not only survives, but lives and thrives in those impossibly dark places -- that is a tremendous gift. That makes us not pitiable, but fortunate. That, I wouldn't give that up for anything.

Perspective

I want to tell her that I get it.

When she sees me with a hand resting on my belly, eyeing the baby clothes in Target and she has to look away.

When she passes me in church, choking back a hard and bitter lump in her throat as she hears someone else congratulating us.

When she unknowingly steps into line behind me at the grocery store and switches lanes as I turn to the side.

When she passes me with her head down, arms crossed, and with as swift a step as possible.

When she goes home and tells her husband how seethingly jealous she is when she sees pregnant ladies everywhere who are blissfully ignorant of the dark hell she is living in.

When she sits in an empty nursery, touching everything that never got used, wondering how it could have been different and what her baby would be doing now.

When she marks a first birthday with no one-year-old.

I don't want to say anything. I just want to reach out a hand and let her know:

I get it.

Learning From "Say Their Names"

When I started pulling together the details for the idea I had of what would later become the Say Their Names project, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would get 239 names.

239 names

It is 239 more names than it should be. But what I loved about doing it is that those are names that we all remembered together, our voices and stories proclaimed in unison. Losing a child can make a parent feel incredibly isolated and marginalized, wondering if we are the only ones who will ever acknowledge the existence of the little one we lost -- but none of us were alone in our remembering on October 15. And I hope our children were honored by what they saw.

The project spanned some decades worth of losses. Names were gathered from losses that occurred over forty years ago, all the way up to just days before the video was made. All types of losses were represented: miscarriage, stillbirth, and the death of a child before one year old. Names were submitted by mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters and friends. All of them care, and all of them continue to feel the absence of those who aren't here.

Having no baby to hold after Ewan died, I often clung to and slept this little sleep sheep, our first baby gift and the one thing that we brought to the hospital for him to keep vigil at his bedside.

I got some of the most incredible messages from you. People saying that this is the first time someone else had acknowledged their loss as a loss. People saying that they've never heard anyone else say their child's name out loud before. People saying they were in tears hearing all those names. And sadly, people who are wondering if they will have another child's name to add to the list next year.

In doing this video, I learned some important things. I have to confess as to being largely ignorant about how the rest of the world treats miscarriage. James and I have always cherished our pregnancies from the very beginning -- as soon as we had a positive pregnancy test, I kid you not, we shared the news -- I was calling grandma and grandpa and telling friends at work. We both appreciate and understand the reasons why people wait to share their news until they hear a heartbeat, or until the second trimester (especially when there have been prior losses). But our thinking was:

She or he may only be the size of a speck, but there is a new person here, and we want to celebrate that. We want people to know that we are hoping and planning for and expecting a baby -- that there is, even now, a new member of our family. And God forbid anything should go wrong in this pregnancy, but if it does -- we hope that those who celebrate with us at this good news will also mourn with us in what we've lost, because it is a loss. Because even if we didn't know the child we bore for a little while -- even if we didn't get to know if it was a boy or a girl and get to give them a name or hold him/her in our arms , we still have lost a member of our family.

So it surprised me just how often I saw a comment of thanks for acknowledging the loss of miscarriage alongside those losses like my own. Our losses may be very different in the particulars of how they occurred, but they are still losses and as such, are all horrible and awful -- just horrible and awful in different ways.

After hearing from those of you who have experienced the loss of miscarriage (many of you multiple times), I learned just how little those losses are acknowledged in the world at large. I learned from you just how taboo it is to speak of it. I can promise you that this will never be a space where you will find miscarriage dismissed as anything less than the loss of a child. I'm not someone who sees the point in measuring losses one against the other to see whose was worse. Even if you could win that contest, what would you gain? Losing a child is losing a child and no matter how that occurs, the loss cannot be quantified.

Now, you may not be able to say to me, nor I to you, "I know exactly how you feel," and that's perfectly okay -- the particulars of what we've experienced are incredibly different. The traumas we've suffered may look nothing alike. But we are both mothers without a child to hold. We both mark milestones with a piercing ache in our hearts. We all know what that is like.

Whether by miscarriage, stillbirth, or death before a first birthday, we all know what it is to lose a child. And we all know how important it is to acknowledge that loss for what it is.

So as long as any of us have voices, we will say their names.

The Last Anniversary

When I was pregnant with Ewan, my due date was October 5 -- my Dad's birthday. James' birthday is on October 8, so when we determined what Ewan's due date was, there were several animated family discussions about whose birthday he would share, and how I should keep my legs crossed should labor start too far in advance of the desired date.

But Ewan decided that he not only wanted his own birthday, but his own birthday month. So when I was just a few days shy of 38 weeks pregnant, Ewan made his grand entrance on September 18.

With Ewan's funeral on October 9 last year, we all forgot James' birthday (including him). Our son died the day before his due date, and his funeral was the day after his daddy's birthday. These were two of many truths about our loss that grated against my grief. What should have been days of celebration became days of bereavement packets and funeral preparations. 

That made celebrating James' birthday this year really important to me -- not just to remember it this time, but really mark it as something special. Though his birthday last year was the eve of the day we buried our son, we couldn't allow sadness to have the final word.

And so this last anniversary passed not with the same tearful memories that marked the day we said goodbye to Ewan, but with what I remember feeling just the smallest seed of on the day we buried him last year: acceptance. There wasn't a lot of it there at the time, and a year later, I still have plenty of room to grow where accepting all of this is concerned (I still have days where I cry and beg God for my baby back). But it was just enough that on his birthday this year, we were able to celebrate James with chocolate chip pancakes and cupcakes topped with Fruity Pebbles, with a dinner out, and a ridiculously hilarious night at the theater to boot.

I imagine that as these anniversaries approach again and again throughout the years, that there will be tears as we remember and acknowledge the significance of things that happened in years past. That will never go away. But October 8 this year was all about celebrating life again, of accepting without bitterness what has already happened that we cannot change, and of making sure that we are intentional in marking those things truly worth celebrating.

Happy birthday to the man I love: my best friend, the father of my children, and the one without whom life would be a bland and boring Fruity Pebble-less cupcake. I love you.

* * * * *

There is still plenty of time to submit names and share the link for the Say Their Names project. Names will be accepted through 3 pm (EST) on Friday, October 14. No name will be overlooked!

Why It Matters

I wanted to offer a heartfelt thanks to all of you who have submitted names for my memorial project, "Say Their Names." The trust you're giving me is a sacred one, and not something I take the least bit lightly. I know that each name represents your love and your heartache. Each name represents a human life that ended too soon. Each name represents a story, a family, a hope, and an unspeakably deep grief.

Each name takes an abstract "1 in 4" statistic and makes it deeply personal. 

And that's why it matters.

I have heard and read a lot about how child loss from miscarriage, stillbirth, and early infant death is a taboo subject -- something that nobody wants to talk about. And while I don't doubt that this is at least partly true, I don't think it paints a complete picture. I say this because I see online communities where we are talking about it openly. I see women bravely speaking up and writing about their losses. And there are a lot of us out there.

Before we received the prenatal diagnosis and before we lost Ewan, I had no idea that many of my friends had already suffered miscarriages. I knew what stillbirth was, and that babies died before ever seeing their first birthdays, but the fact -- though incredibly sad to me -- was not a personal one. Where I was concerned, it was an abstract notion. There were no faces attached to those facts. There were no names.

For me, there was no personal application in that information, and so it was about as compelling a fact as knowing the average annual rainfall in Greenland.

So I wonder if the topic so frequently called taboo suffers in equal measure from the fact that there are people out there who know very well that children die in pregnancy or in infancy, but the information isn't the least bit personal. It hasn't happened to them and it hasn't happened to any of their friends. Even if it had, what could they do?

The truth is, they probably couldn't do much. But if they heard a name, saw a face, got glimpses of the larger story -- then they just might talk about it.

Raw facts aren't so compelling or terribly memorable, but real people and their stories are. 

And then say someone like you or I comes along with our losses in tow, maybe it wouldn't seem so taboo to either of us. Chances are, they would tell a friend or two. Chances are, it would be a little more personal. We just might be able to talk about it.

When it comes to things like Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day, and things like the I Am the Face campaign -- and things on a smaller scale like I'm doing here -- that is my hope. That by showing our faces, saying their names, making our stories available, those for whom the notion of miscarriage, stillbirth, and early infant death isn't personal will see the face of someone they might know. They will hear the name of their own child, or the child of a friend . It will bridge the gap between mere facts and real life. They will see their neighbor, their sister, a co-worker. And it will click: these aren't just statistics, but this is real.

They just might think: "In fact, this could be me."

I felt incredibly alone in the days after that diagnosis because I felt like I was the only one. And when Ewan died, it was an incredibly lonely feeling -- but by that time, I had learned about many of my friends' losses for the first time, and I had met many more who were fresh in their grief like me. Though they were different in their particulars, it was helpful to know many others who knew the unspeakable sense of loss and grief that comes from losing a child, whether early in pregnancy or after his birth. They knew intimately that feeling for which there are no words.

One of the things that excites me most about doing this is knowing how powerful each of our individual stories and each of these children's lives truly are -- and when we say all these names together, each name standing for a real human story, each name tearing the veil off an abstract statistic and making it personal  -- then our stories don't stand alone or under a veil of anonymity, but as a collective and deeply personal whole. We give the statistic a face. And that's almost impossible to overlook.

Just think how powerful that is -- all those voices together.

* * * * *

There is still plenty of time to submit names for the Say Their Names project. Names will be accepted through 3 pm (EST) on Friday, October 14.