Loss is not an easy thing to deal with. At one point or another we all experience loss. When I was in my junior year of college, I lost my baby. I’m going to go a little more into depth on this now and how important it is to be transparent about loss with our loved ones. Bringing the loss of a child into a new relationship, let alone a marriage is not an easy task. What was to be one night, turned into years of pain and heartbreak. In the end of the year 2013, I found out I was pregnant. What was one of the scariest moments in my life, became excitement, fear, but most of all love. I never knew I could have so much love for someone I had never met yet.
I was 23 weeks along, getting ready to celebrate valentine’s day. C was in a good mood, and he had planned a night out. I was supposed to pick him and his roommate up from class. I never made it. Instead, I found myself in the ER. I had started bleeding, and when you’re pregnant this usually isn’t a good thing.
Come to find out I had a torn placenta. The doctors said I would be fine, but if I had any intense cramping to come back in, but that some cramping was normal. They then sent me home and just told me to take it easy. About 3 am I started to have cramping. I didn’t think it was too bad, so I just put on a movie and sat in a chair. If I knew then, what I know now, I should have gone to the ER immediately, but I was new to being pregnant and I tolerate pain fairly well, so I thought it was nothing. Turns out I was very wrong.
I had started going into labor. I had no idea this was happening. What started out in a bathroom, went to an ambulance, to a hospital labor bed. The baby had made his way partly into the world by the time we got to the hospital. I’ll never forget the way I felt when the doctor told me the baby didn’t make it. I was so sad and angry. The worst heartbreak and pain I have ever felt in my life.
At first, I refused to hold my child. I painfully asked what sex the baby was. When the doctor told me a boy, I felt my heart shatter. I spent that day in the hospital going through things new mothers go through. I had to complete every part of a labor, but without having a living child. This was just one of the many hard parts about this.
The nurses in that hospital were wonderful women. The one I had, had also lost a child. She told me she was going to bring the baby in and that I needed to hold him. Even if just for a moment. She told me I would regret it if I didn’t. To this day I still thank her for her firmness and kindness. She brought him to me with a tiny handmade hat and booties and wrapped in a blue blanket. We named him Joshua.
Joshua weighed 230 grams and was 8 ¾ inches long. I have his hospital card with his information and footprints on the back. They are the size of my thumb.
Holding that baby boy in my arms was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. To hold a child so small, whose little feet had moved across your hands before he died, who only an hour ago was alive and safe inside my body, was a very difficult thing to do. I’m so happy to this day that I summoned the strength to hold him tight.
It has been 10 years now since I lost my boy. The fear and pain live with me every day. You never get over the pain. You just learn to live with it. But you learn to channel it and turn it into something different. To this day I still find myself crying over the smallest things. I love children, but when a new baby is born in my family, I cry tears of sadness and happiness.
The hardest part about starting a new relationship when you have lost a baby is having to tell that person that this happened to you. The question I hate the most is when someone asks me if I have any children. The last thing I want is pity, how do you tell someone you are just meeting that yes you have a child, but he is not alive. That’s really hard to do. It was the last thing I wanted to bring with me, but it is a part of who I am now. After all, even though he is gone, forever and always my baby he’ll be.
There is something about my man that makes him very easy for me to open up to. As I said before we used to talk on the phone for hours. Some things are better discussed in person. When I told my man my story, he wasn’t quite sure what to say, I don’t blame him, people never do. When he spoke, it wasn’t pity, it was love and sincerity. I have never had a man who tried so hard to understand and feel empathy, or who cared so deeply about this, than my husband.
He would never understand the pain and heartbreak, but instead of judgement or sorrow, he just loved me. This is how I knew that this man was the one for me. No one had ever reacted in the way that he did. He just loved me even more. Every time I mention stopping and seeing Joshua’s grave when I’m back home, he is right there with me. He never abandons me, even when I’m having a hard time.
Valentine’s day is my least favorite day, he knows I don’t like it and I don’t really care to celebrate it, but every year he tries to do something special for me, just to help me get through the day and make me smile.
Having to tell a spouse, a boyfriend, girlfriend, fiancé. anyone, about losing a child is not an easy task. Dealing with the loss of a child in a relationship is a very hard thing to do. Especially if one is already dealing with mental illness. I can promise you that talking about it, not only makes something that seems so unreal, real, but it truly is part of the healing process.
I have certain triggers that make me upset or cause me to cry. Sometimes the smallest thing and I just start crying. Having that communication that my husband and I do and the ability to really talk to each other has truly helped me. He recognizes some of my triggers, or I tell him when I’m sad and he doesn’t have to say anything. He just grabs me and holds me and that’s all I need to feel better. Sometimes I just need a minute to be sad, or just a minute alone in a dark room with some music playing to just cry my heart out. Sadness is an important emotion, one that needs to be expressed, otherwise it gets built up over time and can cause an explosion of all emotions at once.
If child loss is something you have been through or are going through, my biggest piece of advice is just to talk about it. Communicate with each other. Trust in the person you are with. It’s going to be very hard. You will both be overwhelmed with emotions and feelings that will be difficult to explain. Know that you are not alone in this. If you are bringing it in from a past relationship you need to have that conversation with your new significant other. It’s going to be scary, but they deserve to know. It is something that will affect you for the rest of your life and if your person knows and understands, then they can be there for you when you have your moments or understand why you may be in a mood or suddenly just shut down and push them away.
All they need to do is just be there for you, or if you are really struggling, help you find help, or maybe they themselves can help you get through your pain. Again, our guys need us to be strong while they are gone, but sometimes it’s okay to not be strong, to just break down if you need it. Just have some kind of support with you. I guarantee your man is going to worry about you, and hates to leave you, just as much as you worry about him and hate it when he’s gone.
Already having gone through such an extreme loss will make your worry and fears rise even more. I know my fears are much more heightened now than they were before I experienced the loss of my son. I worry a lot, and this makes being married to a Wildland Firefighter even more difficult. Just trust that worrying doesn’t make things better and just causes you more stress. Take a deep breath and just keep moving forward one step at a time.