Day 21 of Capture Your Grief: Relationship
I'm reading the book Grieving Parents - Surviving Loss as Couple by Nathalie Himmelrich, as recommended by CarlyMarie's Project Heal. I also recently watched Return to Zero (a very honest, raw take on pregnancy loss, grief, and healing). Both of these resources show how grief can affect the relationships in our lives. I've talked already in previous posts about my relationships with friends, new and old, but I haven't really explored how this loss has impacted my relationship with my husband. We've been through a lot, together 10 years as of last week. We've survived many stressors, my struggles, many life changers. The miscarriage was unlike our previous experiences together. It was extremely hard on us at first. I was sooooooooo involved in my grief (and still am sometimes) that it was hard for me to understand his personal struggle. We are very different types of grievers. I went back and forth with my grief, experiencing a wave of emotions. I often cried, screamed, stomped my feet. I expressed my feelings and, atlhough sometimes it was hard, answered honestly when people asked. A simple "how are you?" did not allow me to say "fine" or "okay" because I was not. I blogged about it and talked about it to people who I knew understood. Sometimes this was my husband, sometimes it wasn't. I don't want to share his personal journey here because, frankly, that's his business and his experience to share. But let's just say he dealt with his emotions in a different way. In the beginning, I complained to him that he did not show enough emotion for me to know that (a) he was affected by this and that (b) I was not alone. He shared with me that this was not the case - he did not express it in obvious ways like I did but that did not mean he was not sad. After that, after I realized we were together and it was not just me mourning the loss of this baby that I will not get to meet in my lifetime, after we acknowledged that we grieve alongside one another but differently... that's when I realized that I was not alone. I already knew this as others had reached out to me but he was really the only one who felt what I was feeling, who had been through what I had, who was grieving the loss of THIS baby and THIS future. Even though *I* was the on who had unknowingly judged his grief process (thank goodness I said something or I may have harbored those feelings), he never once questioned mine. When I needed to talk about it, he let me talk about it. When I told him I wanted to make a scrapbook for angel baby, he told me that sounded like a good idea. When I just wanted to lay around and sulk, he was understanding about that too. We've struggled, yes, because this is such a hard process to experience separately AND together simultaniously... but I don't know what I would have done without him.
My relationship with grief itself has been rocky. I'm hoping for a rainbow baby at the same time as I grieve this tremenous loss. It's confusing and conflicting, pulling me in all sorts of directions. I feel like a bad mommy to angel baby because how can I hope for my rainbow baby who would never happen without the loss of angel baby? I feel like a bad mommy to my future rainbow baby because how can I wish so hard that my angel baby were still part of my future when I'm actually meant to be raising my rainbow baby someday? It's not as all-consuming as it was last week or last month or the month before that... but it's there. Creeping into my thoughts, tainting this hope. I try to push it away but it's really hard, much like many other parts of this grief process. Maybe this is just what I'm supposed to feel right now. I think the strangest part is that this grief is soooooooo strong, but yet somehow I barely remember being pregnant anymore. My positive test, or "big fat positive" as it's considered by the trying to concieve community, happened on April 24, followed by my miscarriage 11 weeks later on June 19. Those few months are fuzzy in my mind, a blur. I miss angel baby so excruciatingly and still the time we spent together is almost like a movie that I watched, a book that I read, a picture that I saw. I remember it but it doesn't feel like it was my life. I connected with the character, but I need to re-read the book. What happened, when, and by who? I'm not sure why this is. Somehow I think in my heart, I knew something life-changing was about to happen, and not in a good way. I was worried, anxious, fearing for the worst from the very beginning. I've decided that next time I will appreciate and accept my pregnancy. I will connect to the baby even more than I was able to with angel baby (sometimes I wonder if I've connected to angel baby more now after the miscarriage than before), despite the fears I know I will have regarding potential miscarriage and loss. I will not be afraid to let others in on my excitement and happiness. That, to me, will be imperative
in both my future pregnancy, and my grief process if I happen to miscarry again (but still praying that that doesn't happen, okay?).
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