The days following Calvin’s birth were a blur of grief, tears, anger, and numbness. However, there is one day in particular that we look back on and laugh. Emotions were so high with different people reaching out who were not on social media. We were excitedly being asked if our baby had been born yet and forced to rip the band aid off over and over. That is one of the things no one warns you about. Even in the thick of our grief I started to feel guilty telling people what happened because you had to watch them process it. In the span of five seconds, you saw every negative emotion, especially horror, cross their face. Stillbirth is just so far out of the realm of possibility for most people. Plenty of people said dumb things, which is to be expected, but you could tell they meant well. One evening an acquaintance responded with a bunch of flippant nonsense including “Keep swingin’ away, man.” It was honestly so bad that you would have expected us to be furious or upset, but we ended up laughing hysterically. It was like the final crack in our psyche that broke us.

A hospital room with a child born to earth

Next door another is born to Heaven

A family breaks out in cheers and yells

The other pushes as silence fell

A little one born, lets out a cry

The other spreads their wings to fly

A baby met with mom’s arms clinging

A baby greeted by angels singing

Checking fingers and warm toes

Always remembering their button nose

Having forever to kiss and hold

Feeling their delicate skin grow cold

A mother excited for memories to come

Another grieves till her heart grows numb

Her babe will grow with dreams and fears

Her angel will know love but never tears

Perhaps its because Calvin was the last baby I held. In the year between births, I never held or interacted with anyone younger than one year old. Just hearing a baby cry in the same building was enough to put me on edge. It was easier to keep my distance because I wasn’t emotionally ready. Nolan arriving, ready or not, and being my first interaction with an infant since Calvin pushed me into processing a lot of what I went through. Hearing a baby cry vs giving birth to a silent baby, a warm baby vs a cold baby, having twenty-four seven together vs only having five hours. I think our brains naturally compare like moments and its easy for them to blend together. My heart breaking moments with Calvin were popping up and being confused with moments with my living baby. Every moment of silence or stillness was suddenly triggering instead of peaceful.

Anyone with living children or anyone who has seen a funny video about parenting knows the joke: you finally get your kid to bed and suddenly, you ache to be with them. You want to snuggle them, hold their hand, touch them, just be in their presence. Even if they stay asleep and have no idea you are there, you still feel a pull to simply be with them. It doesn’t matter if every ounce of your body is exhausted, you can’t turn off being a parent. You can’t stop loving them just because they’re not with you. When they don’t need taken care of, you don’t suddenly stop being a parent. It doesn’t matter age, distance, or if they’re off in dreamworld. You are always their parent, you’re always madly in love with your child, and you miss them the moment they’re not in your arms. That feeling, that pull, that sense of something missing when they’re not with you. That! That is what it feels like to have a baby who died. Every moment of every day a part of me is drawn to Calvin. Some days that part of me is bigger and the grief is stronger; other days I am happy and living my life with an invisible string tying my heart to Heaven. No matter what there is always this sense that a piece of me is missing.

It is no secret that grief is hard on a marriage. No two people grieve the same way, so how can a couple be expected to deal with grief individually while taking care of the other simultaneously? Sometimes all you need is a good day. You can not handle thinking about your loss and all you need is to distract yourself. What happens when your partner needs the same day to wallow in their grief and let out their pain? In marriage you compromise, so one or both sacrifice the day they need to help the other. Each person’s grief is just as important, so how do you decide whose needs get met? It’s just as difficult when both need to wallow and have time to themselves. The house needs taken care of, meals prepared, living children taken care of. One of you needs to be the strong one at any given point. Marriages crumble when one person is being the strong one too often. Their needs are not being met and resentment can build.

So often it felt like I was getting an unbalanced amount of pain. In a world where people only post the joys in their life, where burdens are only shared once they’ve reached their happy conclusion, and where people praise Him in triumph but don’t acknowledge the battle, I felt isolated and struggled to connect with people. It suddenly felt like grief and tragedy ostracized me. As disconnected as I felt, I watched others struggle to connect with me. People are uncomfortable when they can’t relate. It creates awkward silence and even when there are no words, people feel compelled to speak. Truthfully, miscarriage and stillbirth impact everyone. Those on the outside are forced to face a harsh reality of what can happen to anyone. It terrifies them and they have to find a logic in it. Perhaps it distances them from the pain. If this was all God’s plan, it makes it feel less out of control. It feels less like it could happen to them. Sometimes, it is easier to believe God had no knowledge or control in these moments. Everyone takes comfort in easy answers and so they feel a desire to give you simple answers, to bring understanding in a senseless tragedy.

I was still struggling with how to separate my pregnancies and accept that this could be a different outcome. I was at a loss on how to stop dissociating and truly connect to the child living inside me. I read articles and read books, and even found a great pregnancy app for those that suffered loss. It all seemed to come back to the idea of “Leaps of Faith.” It’s obvious that Pregnancy After Loss (PAL) moms are not going to be the first to have their nursery decorated, or have an entire wardrobe bought the moment they know the gender. We are too cautious, you may even call us pessimistic but we feel we are just a realist. We understand the reality more than most. I spent the end of my third trimester slowly making my leaps of faith. Even if I couldn’t fully make myself believe we were bringing home a baby, I could start taking actions to show the universe this pregnancy would be different.

Your baby brother, Nolan, was born at 36 weeks. I lost you at 39 weeks, and when I held him in my arms at what would have been his 39th week, my grief grew. What I lost was no longer this abstract idea of a baby. It had been so long since I held a baby in my arms that I don’t think I fully grasped what I was missing. Nolan had emotions, wants and needs. He could yawn and sneeze and hiccup and make facial expressions. He found ways to communicate with his cries and constantly sought the warmth and love of his mommy holding him. I didn’t just lose a pregnancy, I lost a child. A real living child who never got to take a breath. My child who felt emotions, had dreams, and did life’s monotonous things like yawning had died without me looking into his eyes.

When we lost Calvin, the grief was hard on Charleigh. Her doctors warned us that her symptoms would likely be exacerbated and its all to be expected. What we didn’t expect was to lose the independent kid we had before. As much as we had our own naivety ripped away, its worse to have it taken at such a young age. Death to a child should be explained away by old age and sickness. No child should have to face the reality that death can come at any point by a freak accident. Wanting answers is something that is expected from adults grieving, but for some reason I wasn’t prepared for a child to want them just as bad. With both the miscarriage and losing Calvin, she wanted exact explanations and details about what caused them to go to Heaven. Her little mind was trying so hard to make sense of it all.

When you find yourself in a moment of laughter
You are playing your baby’s favorite sound
When you lose yourself in music and dance around the kitchen
It was your baby’s favorite way to be rocked to sleep
When you find yourself smiling
It’s your baby’s favorite view
When life brings you blessings
Your baby celebrates with you
When you can’t hold back the tears
Your baby is holding your heart tight
When you continue to live your life for them
Your baby is proud of you

This year, holidays were even more complicated to navigate. Losing Calvin left a hole in our hearts that can never be filled. Even with a baby on the way, all the “what should have been”s kept hitting us square in the face. At Halloween we were confronted with all the baby costumes we should have been looking through as we shopped for Char’s costume. Thanksgiving brought forth all the adorable “First Thanksgiving” outfits. Christmas was the toughest of all. My due date for the twins was in December and they would have been a year old. All the things I had saved in our Amazon Wishlist for Calvin went unbought. There was no stocking on the fireplace for him or presents under the tree like there should have been. Everything we should have been experiencing with him for the first time was just ripped away. My heart ached anytime I went shopping because I kept passing the things I would have gotten him. A walker, toys, clothes, maybe an outfit to match Char. I couldn’t help but wonder if he would be crawling or trying to walk along furniture. I wondered what his first words would have been or if he would be saying “Momma.” It made it difficult to fully jump into the celebrations when so much was weighing me down.

I tried to look for neat ways to tell everyone but everything that discussed a rainbow baby made me angry. Again, after my miscarriage, I loved the term rainbow baby. It made sense, after loss and difficult times you get a rainbow. After losing Calvin, my original rainbow, I struggled with it. I think there is a strange protectiveness and need to validate my son’s existence. Whenever I thought about the term, I wanted to retort “My son was not a storm! He is a baby and my child, no matter where he is.” Then suddenly, I changed my way of thinking. Why is a storm a bad thing? Yes, they can cause chaos and destruction, but that shows how powerful they are. The pain and destruction lead to an opportunity to rebuild. When you rebuild, you can provide a stronger foundation. Storms bring communities together and can impact the entire world. My son was not a storm, but stillbirth is. It destroyed everything we thought was true in the world. It tore away our naivety and our false sense of security. Left shaken to our core, we cried enough tears to flood the earth. With our future and our plans broken down, we were able to take stock of our lives. Our marriage and relationships became stronger as well as our purpose for living. We were shown how many people are there for us and even forged new relationships. We became a member of the stillbirth community, which introduced me to so many stories of strong powerful people and their beautiful babies. Our son’s story impacted so many around us and was heard by people around the world.

After the decision to deliver Calvin as a VBAC, we needed to start up labor. That night they started with a foley bulb induction and were managing the pain with shots. The bruises were so big you could see them through my mesh hospital underwear. We kept looking for small things like this to giggle at. We wanted his birth to be a celebration and to allow our last moments with him to have some joy. My parents went home to be with Charleigh and keep her calm through the night. Sleep didn’t come easily for me as my contractions were getting stronger and closer together. Jack however, was so emotionally exhausted, he snored heavily at the end of my bed. I may or may not have thrown something at him. In his defense, I think we were both numb and still in disbelief.

I was fully prepared that I was going to see a couple babies at the party. For some reason, my brain short circuited and was counting two but, in reality, I walked headfirst into a living room full of them. I think I stopped breathing for a moment. My soul left my body, gave a stern talking to with God and crashed back down into me. I took a deep breath and put my smile on. The truth is it hurts to come face to face with what should have been. I should have been down on the floor with my own baby, in sleep deprived bliss, and most likely with spit up or an unidentified stain on my shirt. I should have the blissful ignorance of being frustrated at the small stuff instead of sitting there watching other people’s families thinking “I hope they know how lucky they are.” Being a grieving parent comes with a heaping side of jealousy and that’s okay. I feel envious when people complain about their wild child or what frustrating shenanigans their kids are getting into. I would give anything to see what a mischievous and ornery hellion Calvin would have been.

It’s been two months without you on Earth with me, but you keep showing us you’re here. When we were getting ready for the baby shower to celebrate you, hilarity ensued trying to blow up SO MANY BALLOONS. The balloons with gold confetti inside were comical when they popped but you already know that. You somehow find a way to hide those little gold circles in the most random places. In the silverware drawer, in the front yard, out back, by the toilet, and in the playroom those little gems pop up. I know it’s your way of reminding us how much fun we had while you were still in my belly kicking away. You loved it when everyone was laughing.

How can I hate my body when it made you? How can I hate my body when it was the only home you ever knew? It kept you warm, protected you, and fed you. It’s the body that felt your kicks and twists. The violent stretch marks show how you grew and remind me you were there.
How can I love my body when it failed you? How can I love my body when it became your grave? It couldn’t protect you and it could no longer give you what you needed. It’s the body that felt your kicks and twists stop. The violent stretch marks remind me you’re not here.

It’s easy to feel guilt over negative emotions. Grief is complex and it is hard to comprehend feeling good and feeling awful at the same time. I can be happy for someone else’s life, and I can be jealous that it’s not how my life went. I can still love God and look to Him for guidance while being incredibly angry at Him for not protecting my sons. It makes it more confusing when the logical side of you is screaming to feel the opposite. When we blame ourselves, hate our bodies, feel alone in the world, or feel pain over other people’s happy news, logically we know it’s not right but fighting against those feelings does not make them go away. Right now, I need to give myself permission to feel these ugly feelings because this is an ugly situation. I need to take time for myself, write how I’m feeling and break down. I need to do this even when I feel guilty doing so

In the birth center I was bombarded with so many decisions I never expected to make. In one conversation I was facing decisions on delivery and what to do with his body at the same time. In the same breath we were discussing his birth and death. My entire future we imagined, all the possibilities of his life folded in on itself and disappeared in an instant. They pushed for me to labor and give birth for my safety as well as the safety of any future pregnancies. Future pregnancies? How am I supposed to take into consideration more children when this beautiful child I wanted so bad has been taken from me before he even left my body?

My baby boy would have been a month old today. We should be posing him on his milestone blanket bragging about what he loves and what he is trying to learn. Calvin should be snuggled sleeping on my chest while I rock him. We should be changing stinky diapers and getting peed on. I should be nursing him. He should be here. Instead, I spent today looking at the few tangible things I have of him. My six-year-old has a house full of things proving she is here, and she exists. We all have a lifetime of memories and stored junk. Yet, I can fit everything that touched him into a box.