Facebook.
Why I go there? I just don't know.
Probably because I am certifiable.
My uncle is collecting a list of the dates of birth of the youngest generation for his family tree project. The generation that includes Jessica, Georgina and Reuben.
I add my three.
And I am going to add three because Georgina isn't just going to disappear from our family tree. I had a bit of a struggle getting her on there in the first instance and I'm not letting her wander off at this stage in the game. You can erase her when I'm no longer around to care about it. Or when I leave facebook. You may be off the hook sooner than you think at this rate. Then you can lop her off like a dead branch if you so choose. Except you wouldn't even do that. You'd take that tiny twig and stuff it right back into the trunk, as though it had never even been there.
Jessica born on the 26.08.2008
Georgina born on the 26.08.2008, died 29.08.2008
Reuben born on the 04.05.2011 (Star Wars Day!)
because let's not leave this post on a bum note eh? Let wrap the dead baby up with a exclamation point! Because I can't help myself! M'kay! No blow in life that an exclamation point can't soften!
Death! Cancer! Divorce! Suddenly you're looking all perky my friends!
And so everyone else adds their children and their dates of birth.
Including one who is, as yet, unborn.
With a tilde preface, presumably to signify some degree of uncertainty.
Give or take a couple of days, quips somebody.
Or a couple of weeks, add another.
And it takes all the power left in my small, bitter and wrinkled heart not to add a poisonous comment of my own.
Or a couple of months eh? Or better still, try four fricking months. How'd you like them apples? Eh? EH?
And you've added this on a post where not only was one baby born extremely prematurely but another actually died as a result of prematurity? Nice. Real nice. Thanks for that, I love that reminder that babies don't always show up on time but, just maybe, up to a couple of weeks before or after their due dates. Due dates? Ha! Who needs those? Thanks a bunch.
Because it won't happen to you. Not you. Only to me, bitter, wrinkled-up, poisonous, old me. Who was too cautious to make any reference to due dates or babies, particularly on facebook. You're too healthy and too nice and too good. Well how absolutely delightful for you. Shame it sucks for me eh?
And I sigh. At myself. What has happened to me?
You go to bed one night in August 2008 imagining that you are Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty, or The Fairy Godmother, or at the very least, one of the mouse footmen. A pumpkin coach even? Something either nice or, at least, something innocuous. A very minor bit player.
And you wake up and you find that, hey, you aren't one of the good guys. You're Rumpelstiltskin. All twisted, and mean, and threatening to steal away people's first borns. Because however inconsiderate a comment like that is, my own reaction is worse.
Really? Really Catherine? After all this time? You STILL have that reaction. It isn't as pronounced as it used to be. Those italics fly through my brain and out of my ear extremely rapidly these days.
I stamp my foot and utter my curse.
Then I take it back and put my slippers on. Good bye stamping toes.
I don't truly want to curse anybody. Of course not.
It makes me feel so horrible, like something stunted or something poisoned, something crippled.
That I can't be truly happy for others anymore.
Because I am still so bitterly jealous. With my wonky womb and my tiny, frail children.
Why couldn't it have been Georgina?
Who was born just like everyone expected her to be.
Who is alive now, just as everyone expected her to be.
But she's dead.
And her mother's turned into Rumpelstiltskin.
Poor little girl.
I'm so sorry love.
I'm working on it.
Trying not to be a spitting, stamp-y, angry thing.
I know I'm over reacting and that it's stupid. I wish I could just smile and mark the due date on my calendar. Planning which little gift to buy.
But instead, it hurts. Like an old bruise, pressed. Not quite faded. Not yet. And, heaven knows, it's been a while.
Probably it's just because Jessica is starting school next month when I'd tried my best to avoid that.
And I'm not ready to let her go.
Probably it's just because it's August and it's an unexpected birthday and then the anniversary of my daughter's death.
And, if only they had been born a couple of weeks before their due date, it is likely that none of the above would be troubling me.
Ugh, the family tree.. why does it have to be so hard.
ReplyDeleteIt is tough too watching how other people think baby loss could not happen to them, when they know it's happened to you.
Hugs.
I think that is what makes me get all stamp-y Cece. That they think that these kinds of things only happen to people like me? Not to people like them? When, in all honesty, I'm sure they never think of what happened to me and my daughters at all. Even when we are in the list right above them. Sigh.
DeleteI am jealous of the normal women's ignorance and many other things, but especially their ignorance. I wish I could be that way again because I hate feeling so jaded and jealous.
ReplyDeleteI hate feeling that way too. I just want to feel genuine happiness for other people instead of envy. It makes me feel awful.
Deletejeez Catherine, I got chills. Today, I was at a mall... dress shopping for my sister's wedding coming up in Sept. ... and I passed by an engraving store, with key chains, mugs, frames. And in the front of the store, there sat displayed a tree of charms. All silver. And each charm was a photo frame. And in the little frames were black and white pictures of grandparents, dogs, children, married couples. A family tree. I kneeled down, and gently held the small frames in my palms.
ReplyDeleteI thought of Alexander, forever hanging there in the family tree. I thought of it's appropriateness - and if anyone else thinks he belongs on our family tree. It was sweet, but sad.
I loved your post. It AMAZES me how everyone just carries on planning for babies... so certain of how the first few months, years... and so on will unfold. And they use "you know" sometimes. 'You know, when they're around 1 or so... you know, for the car rides.'
But it just keeps on happening so perfectly fine for everyone... I don't have the energy to speak up.
I loved your italics. I could write BOOKS with my new set of italic thoughts. And the exclamation mark! brilliant! Just brilliant! I've seen it so many times! Feel better!
sending big hugs
May August be kind to you
Oh I love the idea of the charms hanging in the family tree. And Alexander will be there, forever. Sweet and sad.
DeleteGlad I'm not the only with italic thoughts! See even my poisonous italics are better with these ! ! ! ! ! s. Thank you Veronica x
I been there and it does hurt. And it does change you. And even when you dont say it, it still nags. I know, dear... Oh how I know...
ReplyDeleteI'm quite good at not, in reality, actually saying anything aloud. But yes, even when I don't say anything, it still nags away at me. Making me miserable and bitter. Hopefully writing it out will help me to let go of some of it.
DeleteI just saw a copy of a huge family tree from a far away relative of my husband's. No one has been added for several years, but I can't help but think about whether his dad will pass along Bear's information as our first child. This is all completely hypothetical at this point, but the thought of him not being included makes my blood boil.
ReplyDeleteMy experience with premature babies is nothing like yours, but people who assume that babies come on or near their due dates makes me so uncomfortable. I can't imagine how this must feel. Ugh, people are so clueless!
I question my sanity every time I log on to facebook. Why must I punish myself?
I have a strange love/hate relationship with facebook too.
DeleteI hope that your Bear is included in his rightful place on your family tree. I know how angry it makes me feel to think of Georgina being excluded, blood boiling indeed x
Honestly...I'm HUGE into genealogy and it's the one place I feel Aidan really "counts". In our genealogical tree his name will be tallied as any other family members: Emily, Brian, Aidan and Kaia. His prominence as my first born is not hidden as it is in our every day life. He will have his birth date and his death date inscribed just like everyone else... It's just too bad those dates are the same.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah...those happy shinny people with their 'due dates' and 'expecting' comments... That's just not where I live anymore.
I like it too. That Georgina is recorded just as the rest of us are, she's right there in the register of births and deaths. Should anyone feel the need to examine their genealogy in the future and our family becomes part of their tree, they'll find her. My first born.
DeleteAnd I don't live among the happy, shiny people either. Not really.
Rumplestiltskin - indeed! Beautifully put as always Catherine. I remember my own bitter Rumplestiltskin moment when a friend called to tell me, "We're going to have a baby", and I very nearly asked her, "How do you know?"
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you included Georgina in the family tree. My aunt is big into our family genealogy, and it was a big comfort to me to know that she included my great grandmother's babies who died (all FOUR of them - poor woman). It gives me hope that I won't have to fight to have Z included on the family tree.
Ha ha ha! I did feel all Rumpelstiltskin-y , all bitter and twisted with stamping feet and curses springing to my lips.
DeleteOh your poor great grandmother. Her four dear babies. How very sad. Strange how an experience that must have been so very common is now, comparatively, rare. Shame it's not rarer still. Vanishingly rare.
Heaven help the person in my family who tries to leave Hope out of a family tree......
ReplyDeletexo
I hope she'll always be included, just as she should be. A and J's big sister.
DeleteOh I hate that you have all of these thoughts to write down but I am so relieved to see them here. I think these things too, so often. I feel bitter and resentful and wonder what is wrong with me and why I can't just be happy for other people. it takes everything I have not to give every person in front of me a dose of my sobering reality and it makes me wonder if I am going to grown into a bitter cranky old lady. If I do can we sit together and complain about all the wrongs of life in our rocking chairs?
ReplyDeleteOh Jessica. I can just see myself growing into a bitter, cranky old lady! It's hard not to be cranky sometimes. I wish, wish, wish that I was just happy. I have to laugh at myself really, at how mean and grouchy I can still be when the mood takes me. See you over by the rocking chairs x
DeleteOh, how I HATE the complacency that seems to accompany moost pregnancies. When women that I know, after that first trimester, talk about how "safe" everything is. Or after 24 weeks Viability! screams off of their pages- I want to say- that doesn't mean anything. Babies die all of the time after that point.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't.
I recognize that Rumplestiltskin in you- I suffer from the same sickness.
On the flip side, when a baby loss mom says the word "safe" and "viable" I want to cheer her on. They are the only ones allowed to freely celebrate pregnancy milestones, in my view.
I don't know- all of these people planning life like they have control and this type of loss is something that only happens in other places make me crazy. I have to bite my tongue when the baby conversations start. Now that I am pregnant, I have to remind myself that people get excited when they see a pregnant belly. When they say, "when are you due?" I have to remind myself not to say-" December.... but we really aren't expecting to bring this baby home. You know how these things go- there are no guarantees that a baby will be born healthy."
I better stop, because this is something that I have been ruminating on lately and I could go on and on about it.
I am glad you wrote Georgina's name out. She is part of your family and she should be there (I too am a geneology uff, and love my Bea's page in our family tree- the place where her life story is just as valid as everyone else's.)
Oh it is very different when it is 'one of my own' as it were. I can only really accept talk of viability from baby loss mums. Because they know what they are talking about. And, if they know me and my girls, they know how precarious viability is. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be celebrated. I suppose I would just like a little more respect from joe public!
DeleteLove that Bea has a page in your family tree, a beautiful reminder that our daughters' lives are just as valid as anyone else's.
Yes.. I still stomp my feet at other people's insensitivity and general lack of understanding. I. still. get. pissed.... at all of it.
ReplyDeleteHow did we get to this place? I often wonder...
You aren't overreacting.. I think it is just the norm for us.
Where you turned into Rumpelstiltskin I became Medusa. We all change.. that is for certain.
Well us villains can hang out together. With our snakes and our stamping feet :)
DeleteAhh, I can relate to SO much of what you write so beautifully. Max's place on our family tree is also really important to me. My mum has traced our family history back a long way, and I made sure one of the first things I did after he died was to make sure he was added. He will be remembered, and drawn attention to, every way I know how, until the day I die. As for Facebook, well, I've got little goodwill towards that beast. I deleted my account a few months ago and have not looked back. Who needs it? I did hear recently of a way to block people's updates from containing anything baby related, which I thought would have been timely about eight months ago for me - http://unbaby.me - great idea, huh? And, Catherine, you're not alone on the poisoned remark front. I have to stop myself at least once a day from saying something vitriolic to someone who probably doesn't deserve it. I worry that I've lost my ability to ever be happy for anyone again, and I don't like being that person, it just seems the only way to stop the constant stream of pain is to disengage from everyone else's life. Thinking of you as end of August approaches. xx
ReplyDeleteI don't like being that person either. I hope it brings you a little comfort to know that I'm not her all the time. Sometimes I'm happy for other people just . . . .not as much as I used to be? Not as genuinely pleased as I used to be? I don't know. Other people's happiness sometimes seems to leave a bad taste in my mouth and how horrible is that? What an awful, awful thing to know about yourself.
DeleteBut who could blame us really? We're just trying our best. Glad that Max has his proper place on your family tree x
I totally relate to this. Tonight I've had one of those - screw all these pregnant people that don't think anything but the right outcome will happen for them - their naive facebooking and happy status updating. I know how stupid and horrid it is to hate these people but tonight I just do tonight! Will I ever get to a point when I can just be happy for them?!? I don't think I can - I'll never be normal like them again, life will never be the same again - always with someone missing from the family.
ReplyDeleteOur children will always be part of our family and their place on our family tree is well and truly theirs. Love to you in this month of August xx Di
Oh Di. You made me feel so sad. Selfishly, I'm glad that I'm not alone in feeling like this but I almost wish that I was the only one. Because it is horrible when you find yourself stamping your feet at people when they are just being happy and carefree. And we just can't be that way any longer.
DeleteI can be happy for other people, but I'm also overly anxious for them. Then sometimes I think I'm past bitter and jealous—and then some simple comment or happening or expectation reminds me I'm not (though I'd really like to be). And it really isn't all that much time.
ReplyDeleteI can't image leaving Georgina out. We don't erase people from the family tree when they die.
I do worry. And, some of the time, I feel I'm past feeling so bitterly jealous and then, some innocuous little remark comes along and turns me into something horrible. Sigh. I would like to be too. Really.
DeleteI just wanted to point out that not that many generations ago, our great-great-great grandmothers had children by the dozen and ALL of those babies got to be on the family tree. She had fifteen babies, two of them died as infants. They both have names and resting places and a space in our family's history. No one pretended like they had never been born, and we still talk about them to this day. I think it's ridiculous that because children dying as babies is less common (which IS a good thing!!) people have decided we're not allowed to even REMEMBER them. Stupidity.
ReplyDeleteSo true Goog. Strange how something that was once, sadly, such a normal part of the lives of the majority has, thankfully, become rare. I just wish it were even rarer still. Like you say, rarity is a good think but there is nothing wrong with remembering the dead and according them their proper place in the scheme of things.
DeleteI found your blog today, through the Still Standing post, and quickly came to your blog to read more. "Sad to sad, snap." Your first post on this blog was the day that my water broke with one of my twins, Abigail. She was born at 22 weeks and passed about 5 hours later. Her little brother, Benjamin, was born 6 weeks later after hospital bedrest at 28 weeks and came home from the NICU 10 weeks later. He is now a healthy 3 year old. It's weird the things that seem important now, but seeing your story and that you started your blog on the day that our sad story started seems important to me. I just wanted to say hi and let you know that you have a new reader. Thanks for sharing your story. Kim
ReplyDeleteHello Kim, thank you for stopping by.
DeleteI'm so sorry that our stories match so well. I'm so very sorry for the loss of your little girl, Abigail. What a beautiful, beautiful name. If R had been a girl, Abigail was close to the top of our list of names.
I'm very glad that Benjamin made it through the NICU and came home to you, healthy and safe.
Big sigh. FaceFuckingBOOK. I try to get some sugar there, and then I withdraw for a while, then I try again. Not sure why. Maybe I'm not good at accepting things the way they are? Maybe my rebellious, defiant nature can't help but push through? I'm often a "spitting, stamp-y, angry thing." And I frequently have very bitter thoughts. I catch myself growling out loud sometimes when I'm reading FB. Do I really wish bad things to rain down on those clueless heads? Sometimes I think, "Just wait, just you wait." Which is not very generous of me, I guess, but true--true, too, that bad things happen eventually, inevitably, to all of us. Although a few very lucky people seem to escape for years and years relatively unscathed. I was one of those people once upon a time. Naive, clueless (in my teens and 20s, though not *quite* as clueless in my 30s). However, I knew that bad things *could* happen. What really gets to me is the people who deny that anything bad would ever happen to *them*. It's that cockiness that gets on my nerves and makes me grind my teeth and think evil thoughts. The lack of humility....GRRR.
ReplyDeleteAnd right after Molly died, I actually felt jealous of my own mother. My.own.mother. Crazy, right? Because *she* got her children, and difficult birth (me) aside, we're all living. She got HERS. This is my life and the lives of my sisters we're talking about! I startle myself sometimes...but that's the way it is.
I like what goog wrote about her family continuing to recognize the infants who had passed away many years ago. No, I LOVE.
Thank you for sharing this with us, and much love to you, Catherine. xo
Hmmm facebook is more likely to give you a big ol' kick in the face than sugar. Sadly. Or perhaps that's just me!
DeleteI'm afraid that I've also been known to growl "just you wait, just you wait" on occasion. And I think I've felt jealous of pretty much everyone on occasion, everyone who isn't one of us. I took a bizarre comfort in the fact that this wouldn't happen to Georgina, that she wouldn't lose a baby. Clutching at straws a bit there I think. Sigh.
Catherine - I have been holding you and Georgina and Jessica close in my thoughts this month. I've been very quiet online but, in what passes for real life, I am abiding with you through August.
ReplyDeleteNearly four years and I am still plugging away at Emma's cross stitch birth sampler, which is my sort-of equivalent of a family tree (something that I think is entirely appropriate for a dead baby, something that gives her existence some tangibility to me but something that other people question). So yeah, I think it's completely right that Georgina is there with her brother and her sister (and to extend the metaphor still further - my jolly primary coloured Mr Men and Little Misses on the sampler do the job of your exclamation mark too.
I have (mostly) stopped feeling relentlessly bitter about other people's pregnancies and babies. Like Sara, it's anxiety that I feel mostly but, if someone (who isn't babylost) dares to express anything that I might construe as complaceny then my inner hulk is likely to make an appearance. I felt guilty this week though. I was jealous of Gary Barlow and his wife when announced their fourth pregnancy ('cos you know, as a millionaire celebrity, he has such a lot to do with my life but I was going through a particularly broody patch at the time) and now I just feel so sad that they have joined our ranks and they didn't get the happy ending that most people expect either.
Thank you Jill. I'm still plugging away at the girls cross stitch birth sampler too. It's an alphabet and it's huge so it will probably be finished in about a decade or so. I'm only halfway through after nearly four years.
DeleteI did feel very sorry for Gary Barlow and his wife for the loss of their little daughter. Nobody ever expects this and I know it is unfair of me to expect other people to be able to imagine themselves here. Who would want to? And I don't really want anyone else to know how this feels either. I wish that Georgina could have been the last.
Ugh. Face. book. Ugh. So full of cheery horseshit.
ReplyDeleteWith all my best intentions I tell myself I'm past the petty jealousy, can deal with it. And then someone makes a comment and I get all wrinkled and mean.
Everything can be so freaking hard.
Love to you.
xo
I always think I have become all graceful and kind and nice. And one little comment and . . BLARGH! I'm not nice at all. I'm mean and nasty and ungrateful and just . . .well, ick!
DeleteNo fun is it?
x
Beautiful Catherine. I feel these words, feel your fists raised up. The layers of shit that gets piled on you when your kid dies seems endless, like those fucking pancakes in Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, the ones that have syrup running down the sides, the ones that eventually drive the town to get the hell out of Chewandswallow.
ReplyDeleteWhen your kid dies, it's impossible to imagine all of this shit. Like how Facebook could make you want to stab your computer or how a silly conversation at pre-school could make you want to verbally abuse someone or that, one or two or four years later, you're still sitting on your couch talking about your dead baby.
And fuck Cinderella. I think Rumpelstiltskin was probably more complicated than we all realize, and had we really gotten to know him, he'd probably be far more interesting to hang out with than Cinderella.
Oh it is so impossible. You're right. If somebody could have whizzed me forward from 2007 to read this post I'd have been like . . . urm, what the hell happened to me?! How did I become this stabby, nasty, obsessive kind of person. But life can certainly pull some nasty numbers on us and we get changed, whether we like it or not.
DeleteI hope I may get a little more gracious as time wears on. Or perhaps I'll just get too tired to fight? Who knows?
And I'm sure you're right. Who wants to hang out with prissy old Cinderella anyhow?
I get this SO VERY MUCH. The jealously. Ugh, but yes, me too. And the screechy comments (although I keep them in my head. too afraid to make other people uncomfortable even though, hello!, I am the one with the dead baby here) and the love/hate with facebook and yes with all of it. Yes.
ReplyDeleteI definitely still do quite a bit of internal screeching. Sometimes it's quieter or brief. But, sadly, it still seems to be there.
DeleteIt is strange isn't it. How is that we are worried about making other people uncomfortable?
It's amazing how bright that before/after line is. I can still remember how oblivious I used to be to death in general. Back then, babyloss was really something totally beyond my grasp. It's just a foreign concept until your baby dies. I strive to forgive people for their ignorance and to suppress my internal monologue but I'm afraid it still sounds just like yours. Why can't people realize how very close to the edge they are?
ReplyDeleteThat is the perfect description. Oblivious. Of something that seem so far beyond us, something that will never happen, that can safely be ignored. Pretty darn stupid really given that two things are certain, death and taxes.
DeleteAnd I do try, try to remember how I felt about all of this when I was on the 'right' side of that bright line, in the before. To conjure up some generosity and kindness. Sometimes it works . . sometimes . . . I'm not quite as successful. Sadly.
My father-in-law added A to the family tree immediately following her death and birth, and for that I will be ever grateful. And Facebook? Oh, god, Facebook. I don't know what to do with it. I think I have mentioned before how much of my headspace is reserved for coming up with totally inappropriate status updates that I will never post. But then, like others have said above, why do I worry so much about making other people uncomfortable? I guess because there is always that 'crazy dead baby lady' stigma - if I was posting about my dead father or mother, people might be slightly uncomfortable, or perhaps would think, gently, that I should be getting on with things, etc., but I'm pretty sure that posting about a dead baby will earn more revulsion than gentle pity...I wish I didn't think this, but I do. Love to you this month, Catherine. And to Georgina and Jessica.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I hear of a new baby born safely, my reaction is just.plain.awful... I feel relief (that's the good part) and then I sigh, because, if I'm totally honest - I'm disappointed. NOT because I want the baby to have died - I seriously wouldn't wish that upon anyone. But I'm disappointed because another happy healthy baby born perpetuates the myth that bad stuff happens to other people.
ReplyDeleteI don't know - I suppose it boils down to that ugly jealousy thing. I will never get to carry a child with joy and expectation and worry free - I'll always be an anxious wreck.
I don't want to feel this way. I don't like myself when I am bitter and angry and jealous... but I have no idea how to stop it.
But Catherine, however wisened and sour and bitter I've become, you managed to get an out-loud-laugh from me when I read the explanation points part - just so spot on!