parenting after loss > Dealing with reality (rainbows mentioned)
Hi G
Hope you check back even though it's been a little while since your post. It was beautifully written and it sounds like you are doing a great job in including Roxie's memory in your lives. I have three boys. It is my second who died at three days old (six years ago), so I have two living sons ages 4 and 8. I really don't like telling people I hardly know about my second son. I loathe the question. "how many children do you have?" Sometimes, I have the notion that my family can never be complete, that there is an absence, unspeakable, so difficult to deal with, so few would ever come close to understanding. I think in a large part due to this, I have been socially isolating myself for years before COVID. Anyway, it sounds like you have been frank with people about Roxie and I really admire that. I think it's difficult because people's reactions can be so weird or insensitive, etc.
Death can be so swept under the rug, people don't want to talk about it. Perhaps one grace of the pandemic is people may be more open to talking about death, accepting of it and in so doing embracing the deep significance of those in our lives who have gone before us.
Regarding your Hudson's sensitivity, I don't think you have done any harm. It is instinct to want to protect our children and my husband and I are super protective of our boys, sometimes I wonder if this is to a fault because they will inevitably be introduced to some grim realities of modern life (should they live long enough) and one wonders at what age is it appropriate to unveil certain difficult aspects of modern life, history, etc.
For example, I remember learning about the holocaust in seventh grade and wondering why on earth my parents had never told me about it? How could I possibly have made it as far as age twelve and not have known? Ultimately, there is only so much we have control over as parents and as human beings. Sometimes I wonder if we have control over any of it (theories of "hard determinism" sometimes appeal to me)
I could relate to your shock about Roxie dying in the whom with no explanation. My baby was born with a traumatic brain injury which happened in the womb. The doctors think it was likely caused by the cord but that still doesn't really explain why this would happen to a healthy woman with a healthy pregnancy with no warnings etc.
Anyway, I love and admire your forthrightness. I think your way of being honest about what might happen to the caterpillar honors Roxie, Georgia, your husband, your sons, and the mother of us all -- nature.
Take Care, Mama, and let me know if you have any more thoughts on introducing difficult subjects to young ones,
Hope you check back even though it's been a little while since your post. It was beautifully written and it sounds like you are doing a great job in including Roxie's memory in your lives. I have three boys. It is my second who died at three days old (six years ago), so I have two living sons ages 4 and 8. I really don't like telling people I hardly know about my second son. I loathe the question. "how many children do you have?" Sometimes, I have the notion that my family can never be complete, that there is an absence, unspeakable, so difficult to deal with, so few would ever come close to understanding. I think in a large part due to this, I have been socially isolating myself for years before COVID. Anyway, it sounds like you have been frank with people about Roxie and I really admire that. I think it's difficult because people's reactions can be so weird or insensitive, etc.
Death can be so swept under the rug, people don't want to talk about it. Perhaps one grace of the pandemic is people may be more open to talking about death, accepting of it and in so doing embracing the deep significance of those in our lives who have gone before us.
Regarding your Hudson's sensitivity, I don't think you have done any harm. It is instinct to want to protect our children and my husband and I are super protective of our boys, sometimes I wonder if this is to a fault because they will inevitably be introduced to some grim realities of modern life (should they live long enough) and one wonders at what age is it appropriate to unveil certain difficult aspects of modern life, history, etc.
For example, I remember learning about the holocaust in seventh grade and wondering why on earth my parents had never told me about it? How could I possibly have made it as far as age twelve and not have known? Ultimately, there is only so much we have control over as parents and as human beings. Sometimes I wonder if we have control over any of it (theories of "hard determinism" sometimes appeal to me)
I could relate to your shock about Roxie dying in the whom with no explanation. My baby was born with a traumatic brain injury which happened in the womb. The doctors think it was likely caused by the cord but that still doesn't really explain why this would happen to a healthy woman with a healthy pregnancy with no warnings etc.
Anyway, I love and admire your forthrightness. I think your way of being honest about what might happen to the caterpillar honors Roxie, Georgia, your husband, your sons, and the mother of us all -- nature.
Take Care, Mama, and let me know if you have any more thoughts on introducing difficult subjects to young ones,
July 2, 2020 |
Em
Em
Jamie: When’s he going to hatch?
Me, wanting to manage Hudson’s expectations: Well it could be a while, and sometimes they do die in the chrysalis.
Jamie: Is that true, that can’t be…?
Hudson: Yes, it’s true Dad, just like when Mama told me that babies can die in their mummy’s tummies, it’s the same thing…
Oh my heart.
Today, Jamie and I touched base on that moment. I was stunned and impressed at the same time that Hudson had made those connections. Jamie’s reaction was that we should never have exposed the kids to that grim reality at such a young age.
A little bit of background… our first daughter Roxanne was stillborn 11 years ago. Since then we have had two rainbow babies, Juno now 9, and Hudson who will be 7 in July. We have always spoken about Roxie to the others, often visiting her grave together, and this year Hudson has started asking proper questions about who Roxie is, why she is there, and what happened. I was expecting this, since Juno was around the same age – 6 – when she asked the same questions.
My position has been to answer those questions straight up, and tell the kids what we know and what we believe. For Roxanne, there were no cord accident, no conclusive genetic tests, no answers, so it’s particularly hard for little kids to get to grips with that – the not knowing, the fact that grown-ups don’t have all the answers…
My position was in part born from the gigantic mind shift that happened to me when Roxie died, after a perfect pregnancy. To say I wasn’t prepared, does not contain the absolute f***ing explosion that rocked my core, all my beliefs. That a baby, in this day and age, for no apparent reason could die in the womb was just not something I could grasp.
For a long time, I hated the doctors, nurses, midwives and all the baby books for never being explicit that this could happen.
It was by some kind of grace that I found Glow in the Woods and found the others like me, shell shocked and incredulous, that this would be their version of motherhood.
So I resolved to tell everyone everything. Anytime I heard that a friend of mine was pregnant, I would find the right moment to send them an email about the importance of kick counts (why did no one tell me?!). I never flinched from telling strangers my truth. I still don’t.
And, so when my first rainbow Juno arrived, and then two years later Hudson, it was perfectly normal for me that they should never not know.
There was also in our family history the fact that Jamie’s sister had died when she was 11 and he was 7. She was disabled by a childhood illness - probably meningitis. I say probably, because either the doctors didn’t know or Jamie’s parents have forgotten.
You see, Georgia’s reality was hidden. When Jamie was about 2 or 3-years-old, Georgia was (following the family doctor’s counsel) sent to a hospice, ostensibly because it would be too hard for Jamie (and his parents) to deal with a disabled child and her inevitable death.
In true British, stiff-upper-lip and reserve, Jamie was raised effectively as an only child, with Georgia’s existence a faint memory – or a non-memory: just a fact learnt about later on in adolescence.
There were massive repercussions in the family. Felt to this day (Jamie is now 53 years old).
So, I was doubly determined that my rainbows would know everything. Their sister’s existence would not be forgotten; and their mind’s would not implode if the same outrageous shit happened to them.
But now, doubts arise.
Because Hudson is a sensitive soul and is scared for his caterpillar. Because during the coronavirus lockdown he became nervous of touching already cleaned surfaces. Because he’s the kind of soul that needs clear rules of engagement – telling him that grown-ups don’t have all the answers has rocked his little core.
I fear that I have planted the very hurt I was trying to avoid.
Well, it’s too late to go back now. Just as we found a way to cope with Roxie’s death and the multiple seismic waves that came after, that led to so much upheaval – both good and bad – we will find a way to help Hudson cope with all the unknowns, all the unspeakable, unknowable shocks that may come.
Parenting is hard. I wonder how you other baby lost mamas and papas are dealing with their rainbows confronting the reality of their sibling's death?