Making Room for Celebration and Grief
Holidays are always a big deal to me. I’m the annoying Pinterest mom looking up recipes and crafts to make an occasion as special as possible for my daughter. However, there always gets to be a point where I struggle at Christmas because Charleigh’s “heart-iversary” is on Christmas Eve. At a day shy of a month old her aortic valve had progressively gotten worse and they needed to intervene. Any procedure is risky with a baby that young and after the procedure they had to deliver the news that she required chest compressions during it. Now in her medical chart there will forever be “ALTE (apparent life threatening event) in newborn and infant” under her history. What should have been a two or three day stay turned into a nine day stay. She was stuck in CICU hooked up to wires and needed a blood transfusion to get her blood pressure under control. Maybe that’s why we always make the most of the holidays. We know how fortunate we are to have her in our lives. We celebrate all the good her procedure did, but it doesn’t take away the fear and hurt we felt during that time.
It was such a joy helping shop for Christmas presents for children in the community. We kept lists of all the children, their ages, and gender so we could keep track of what toys were for each kid!
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 stumbled into something that did help my heart. Our church gathered together to buy presents for over 80 children. My family and I shopped for little ones and wrapped their presents to help make their holidays special. Shopping for other people’s “babies” helped the pain of not shopping for mine. During one wrapping session, they called out about a baby girl who was born early and her mother didn’t have time to prepare. I knew God was winking at me and pushing me along as I offered to shop for the infant. I felt like I was doing it in Calvin’s honor using his first Christmas to make Christmas just a little bit special for other kids and babies.
Through all the grief and heart ache surrounding the holiday, it was important to me for Charleigh to still have a special Christmas.
As the rushing slowed down and Christmas night hit, all the negative feelings caught up to me. As I feel our next son kicking more, its becoming difficult not to be paranoid. I had felt Calvin move all night, but at our last appointment with him they kept asking if I had felt him move that day. He was never very active during the day but the realization that I didn’t notice he hadn’t moved at all will always haunt me. The stillness I felt after will forever impact me. When you’re busy and rushing around you don’t notice movements as easily, so I kept panicking and laying down with a snack to get this baby to move. All my anxieties came out as I slept. A main symptom of my PTSD has been nightmares, and I guess the trauma of our loss decided to manifest the same way. All night I dreamt that cancer was found and doctors were forcing me to deliver so they could operate on me. I would beg each doctor that it was too early and to find a way to save my baby. I would awake and each time I closed my eyes again it would be a new doctor, a new test, and more begging to save him. Some were callous and didn’t treat him like he mattered, others looked at me with pity saying there was no hope for him.
The next morning, I just couldn’t shake the nightmares. It was like a dark cloud hung over me and only increased my anxieties. After miscarriage, you search for the “safe zone.” If you can just reach a certain week, you can relax. After stillbirth, the anxieties increase as your pregnancy progresses because you’re robbed of the false hope of “safe zones.” Now each week is scarier because it will make it that much harder if you have to say goodbye. Each week closer to delivery is a step closer to the “will they/won’t they” dilemma of possibly losing them. I tried my best to be social and soak in the time with the people I love, but it was easy to slip into just going through the motions. The hardest part is knowing Char is grieving too. She deserves all the holiday cheer more than anyone I know. So, I have to find room in my soul to fit my grief and celebrate the loved ones I do have around me. I need to find peace in being excited for our next son’s first Christmas next year instead of fearing that it will be taken away again. It’s not wrong to grieve on Christmas and it’s not wrong to celebrate even when you’re grieving. It is extremely difficult to feel both, but it is also extremely important and well worth it.