The Heartache of Infant Loss by Laura Schubert

"Infant loss is nature's cruelest practical joke. It's investing all of the required time and effort into pregnancy, only to be robbed of the result. It's cradling a body that grew within your own and trying to reconcile the cold, lifeless form in your arms with your memory of the baby who turned double flips in your womb.

It's worrying that you'll forget what your child looked like and snapping an album's worth of photos that no one will ever ask to see. It's sobbing so hard you can't breathe and wondering if it's possible to cry yourself to death.

Infant loss is handing off a Moses basket to the nurse who's drawn the unfortunate duty of delivering your pride and joy to the morgue and walking out of a hospital with empty arms.

It's boxing up brand new baby clothes and buying a 24-inch casket. It's sifting through sympathy cards, willing your foolish body to stop lactating, clutching your baby's blanket to your chest in hopes of soothing the piercing ache in your heart.

It's resisting the urge to smack the clueless individuals who compare your situation to the death of their dog or who tell you you'll have another baby, as if children are somehow replaceable.

Infant loss is explaining to your 7-year-old that sometimes babies die and being stumped into silence when she asks you why. It's watching other families live out your happy ending and fighting a fresh round of grief with every milestone you miss.

It's being shut out of play groups for perpetuity. It's skipping social events with expectant and newly minted mothers because, as a walking worst-case scenario, you don't want to put a damper on the party.

It's listening to other women gripe about motherhood and realizing that you no longer relate to their petty parental complaints because, frankly, when you've buried a baby, a sleepless night with a vomiting toddler sounds something like a gift.

Infant loss is pruning from your life the friends and relatives who ignore or minimize your loss. It's recognizing that, while they may not mean to be hurtful, the fact that they don't know any better doesn't make their utter lack of empathy one whit easier to bear.

My baby girl would have been 5 years old this month. I don't know what she'd look like, what her favorite food would be. I've never had the privilege of tucking her into bed, taking her to the zoo or kissing her boo-boos. I will never watch her graduate or walk down the aisle.

Infant loss is more than an empty cradle. It's a life sentence."

Epic fail

i have been struggling lately with feelings of failure. i feel like i'm a failure of a mother, like i failed Juju, like i failed our family. and because of my failure, my baby paid the ultimate price. now i know that having a live baby does not a "successful" mother make and vice versa. and if i were to read this in any of my fellow BLMs blogs, or hear any of my IRL friends say this, i wouldn't hesitate to jump in and tell them that they did NOT fail as a mother, that they are amazing mothers. but i just can't seem to hold myself to the same standard. funny how that happens. i guess the saying is true - we are our own worse critics.

my mind and heart are in constant battle with each other. my heart knows without a doubt, that i gave Julius more than all of the love i had to give. my heart knows that i cherished every moment with him, and that i would give my very life for him. but my mind....well, my mind tells me that i should have been there for him. as his mother, i should have saved him. as his mother, there had to have been more that i could have done to change the course of events that ultimately lead to my son losing his life and me being left, as brooke so eloquently put it, in this wizard of oz grayed-out world of constant sadness.

guilt has always been a strong part of my internal makeup. i can pretty much guilt myself into/out of practically everything {i used to joke that it is because i'm catholic. and if you're catholic and reading this, please don't take offense}. so it was absolutely no shock when i went "there" blaming myself immediately upon hearing the news that Julius had passed away. the overwhelming guilt has lessen quite a bit since reading the book The SIDS & Infant Death Survival Guide, which opened my eyes to the fact that SIDS is unpreventable. but it in no way completely removed the guilt from my mind. and every once in a while, it creeps back up to the surface and takes hold of me. it's as though most of the time it has me by the ankle, and every so often it manages to climb it's way up and grab me by the throat. and recently it's been around my throat.

i know i will never completely stop blaming myself, that i will always play out those "what-ifs" in my head. i know i will never fully dispel the thoughts that, unfortunately, my inadequacies as a mother cost Julius the one thing he deserves the most - his life. but i hope that he knows that despite all of that, i loved him {and continue to love him} more intensely than i have EVER loved another person in all of my life. that his mere existence gave way to a love within me that i never knew possible. it's almost as if there was a secret room of love that only he unlocked. and even though he is gone from this earth, that room can't be closed up, in fact that room grows more and more every day and is filled with love for him. ♥

**updated to include a great, in-depth article that talks about parental grief. it even has a section specifically for the grief of SIDS parents, which ressonated with me, especially in light of what i have been feeling lately. one paragraph that stuck out in particular was:

SIDS parents also are very often plagued by "if only's" that they are never able to resolve. They mentally replay such thoughts as: "If only I hadn't put the child down for a nap when I did." "If only I had checked on the baby sooner." "If only I had not returned to work so soon." "If only I had taken the baby to the doctor with that slight cold."

it brings me some comfort to know that this seems to be a normal feeling.**