I just found this website. I've been reading it for hours now. It makes me feel like I'm not alone. Someone else gets it. Like I could bare my soul and it would be okay.

I'm at the beginning of this journey - the journey no parent ever wants to take. My beautiful boy, Ian, passed away eight days ago. He was eight weeks old. He was happy and healthy and we were just getting to know him. He acted a little sick one day - a little out of it. By that evening he was lethargic, and I noticed his fontanelle bulging slightly. We took him to urgent care, where they must have seen something I didn't. He was taken to the hospital in an ambulence. They did a CT scan and found a huge mass on his brain. 24 hours and one surgery later my husband and I were trying to figure out how we could possibly say goodbye to our little angel. Shock doesn't begin to describe it. How can your whole world change so drastically in just 24 hours?

I've gone through every emotion described in this website. I won't indulge my pain and repeat all the things every parent who loses a child feels. I'm feeling them all in varying degrees, in varying patterns...sometimes one at a time, sometimes all at once. But what I haven't read about, and what makes me wonder if I'm crazy, is my inability to let go of the physical connection with my precious boy. I was nursing. I love nursing. I have two older children, and nursed them for a long time. It is something I love...that bond, the closeness, the feeling that I'm giving my baby something pure and healthy and made just for them. Something no one else can give them. One of the things - among hundreds - that has been so heartbreaking for me this week is letting my milk dry up. The first few days I had a hard time even throwing away the milk I had pumped just to relieve the engorgement. It's like throwing away something that was Ian's. And I can't bare to do that. It's my last physical connection to him - it's evidence that he was here and loved and nurtured. My body made it just for him and the fact that he's not here to drink it tortures me. But I can't let it dry up. This morning my husband left the house for awhile and, like a deserate madwoman, I got out my breastpump and pumped what little was left in my breast, hoping it would prolong the inevitable for just a few more days. Am I crazy?

Not crazy at all. I am so sorry for your loss. Eight days is so new, there isn't much you could do that would be really crazy. I never nursed Gabriel because he was born very prematurely - it was a shock to me that I made milk at all, having not been told it could happen. And I was still extremely sad when I stopped being engorged, despite the pain of it, and in the last few days when I stopped leaking the last few drops of milk. I've also stopped bleeding in the last few days, and I cried about that too. I've bleed most of this year between the cervical pregnancy and the placental problems with Gabriel's pregnancy, one might think I wanted a break, but as you said . . . one of the last physical signs and connections . . . hard to let go.

The only thing I might caution or urge you think about is whether prolonging your supply will also prolong the pain of losing your supply and severing that connection. I don't know, because it wasn't something I faced, but I know it's been one of the things I've struggled with choosing when to return to work. It's an extremely difficult thing for me to do, but I realized this week that delaying it wasn't going to make it less painful and that this may just be one of those things that needs to be ripped off quickly like a bandaid and that might make it hurt a little less in the long run.

This place - just reading - has been a refuge and a blessing for me, taking away some of that alone-ness and isolation. I am glad you found it too.

I tried to donate the breastmilk since at least that might be one thing good to come out of Aeryn's death - letting a preemie have real milk to drink, less strain on the gut and all - but was rejected because they use the blood donation rules and the Red Cross still thinks anyone who lived in England in the 80s must have hidden BSE microbes running around in the system...anyway, I suppose I'm trying to say I understand about throwing the milk out hurting. I would rather have had it used, here we are roughly a year and a half out and I still am hurt and angry that nothing of hers could be used.

Tricia, I'm so sorry about Ian. I'm glad you've found this place, though. I'm guessing at least part of you knows this, but I'm also guessing that it might help to hear it and read it: you aren't crazy.

Lactating and stopping lactation are hugely emotional when your baby is dead. I remember that I didn't want my milk to stop even though I knew it would have to, and I remember standing in the hot shower letting the water fall over my breasts, just as the doctor had warned me not to. I didn't want to let go of that connection, either.

And I know I've read things from other moms who've felt similarly. I wish I could remember who and when, so I could point you to those posts as well.

Much love to you.

Oh my gosh, you're so very, very far from crazy!!! Please know that you're in a place that we've all been and are in and what you're feeling (physically, emotionally and otherwise) is totally and completely normal.

Your family is in my thoughts and I'll be sending many healing and peaceful thoughts your way. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

Julie

I'm so sorry about Ian. :(

I don't think you're crazy. I remember having one or two bottles of breastmilk in the freezer which sat there for weeks after my little girl died. Eventually we planted a tree for her and created a garden around the base of it. Before we planted the tree I tipped the breastmilk onto the soil there as my way of marking this garden as hers. Perhaps you should keep what you are expressing for comfort and someday you'll find a way to use it symbolically as well?

I am so sorry you are here, but very glad that you found us.

xx

Tricia,
I am sorry you lost Ian. I am glad that you found us. You are not crazy. You are normal and facing one of the hardest things you will ever go through, the loss of your child. Try not to judge your feelings, just do what you need to do to get through the day, or the hour that you may find yourself in. My daughter died 8 weeks ago and I still can't take down the ultrasound pictures off the fridge. It won't always be this hard. I care.
Diana

Hi Triicia, I realise I'm a little late in replying here, (I've only just found this place.) but I just wanted to add to the replies above and say you are absolutely not crazy at all!
My baby girl died in July, and I knew immediately that I needed to feel my body react in a normal way to pregnancy and birth. I have four older living children, who were all breastfed, maybe that makes a difference, I don't know.
I do know I was desperate for my milk to come in, to feel the engorgement and to see milk from my breasts, it somehow meant I was normal,not a monster, and it reminded me I really had given birth.
I donated my milk for 6 weeks after my daughter was born. My supply naturally dipped at 6 weeks without a baby to stimulate production, and it felt like the right time for me to stop.
I hope you find the right way for you, (if you haven't already).
Love Jeanette