Child Loss and Different Ways to Mourn by Robin

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When you find that person in your life that you’re willing to spend the rest of your life with, there is no other feeling like it. So much about your personalities and characteristics are similar, but you’re not naïve, you know that there are differences as well.

I have been married for five years next month, and my husband and I have experienced more pain that some people experience in their lives. There have been more than a few obstacles in life and within our marriage that we have overcome, but I’ll just focus on the one that we won’t overcome. Not now, not ever.

We were married two years when we found out we were expecting our second child. We had decided to start trying again but didn’t imagine we’d get pregnant within a couple months!

It’s not that we weren’t excited, but we had hoped that the universe would be on board with getting pregnant within a timeframe that would let us both graduate first. The universe laughed and we would be expecting our new baby right during the middle of our second to last semester.

Our class loads were heavy, taking 18 credits each. Our lives were hectic with a toddler that would turn 2 just before the baby would arrive. We were dirt freaking poor.

I worked part time and put us through school. My husband couldn’t work because he didn’t have a green card and we needed to trade off watching our daughter between classes anyway.

We lived in a horrible neighborhood in subsidized government housing and relied heavily on “food stamps” and WIC to feed our family. The timing for this baby wasn’t ideal, but it happened and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

When we found out it was a girl, I was even less excited about having another baby. I wanted a little boy so bad! (I really don’t even know why, I know nothing about little boys, I have 5 sisters)

I had the perfect boy name picked out and hadn’t even given a thought to a girl name. I hadn’t even looked a baby girl clothes or accessories. Again, it’s not that we weren’t excited… there was just so much going on that we couldn’t give this baby the hopeful anticipation that her older sister got.

The pregnancy went on, 9 full months of morning sickness and not keeping anything down at all. It was a Wednesday, two days after her due date. I wasn’t stressing about her being late because I had 3 midterms the following day and my Mum was in town helping with my oldest.

I knew something was wrong the moment I woke up the third day late, but it wasn’t until the afternoon that I let myself get checked at the hospital. No heartbeat. She was gone.

Gone before I even chose a name.

My husband met me at the hospital just after my Doctor came and confirmed she was gone. Without even discussing it, we named her right then. We knew.

There wasn’t anything to go back and forth on, we both felt the name we chose was hers and only hers. I have never felt more connected with my husband than I did at that moment and for the rest of the labor that I still had to endure in order to birth my dead child.

Our child died. We buried a baby. We dressed her in baby girl clothes, rested her on a blanket I made, left her with pictures of all of us so she wouldn’t be alone.

Life continued, but a piece of both of our souls died with her.

I did mourn. Breakdowns were a normal thing for me. I’d hear a song on the radio and breakdown. I’d see my daughter go and sit by someone else at church because they had a baby girl and she wanted her baby girl back.

I’m not ashamed of the grief and sadness I felt or how I expressed it. My husband was a strength for me every time I needed him. He’d leave class to meet me and help me calm down, always the perfect symbol of stoic strength. I didn’t know that inside it was tearing him apart that he didn’t feel sad.

My husband opened up to me that he felt guilty that his grief didn’t measure up to mine. He did not mourn. Why was he able to feel happy after his daughter died?

I was shocked to hear this, but I knew that we all grieve in different ways. I tried explaining this to him the best I could, but you can’t have an epiphany for someone else.

I suggested going to a counselor on campus to try and get some insight. I never judged him for what he felt or didn’t feel, but he judged himself, and that was enough to cause mutual hurt.

Seeing the counselor helped my husband recognize that feelings can coexist. You can be grieving, and still feel the happiness of everyday life. You can be in the gulf of sadness and still see the light. Being happy doesn’t diminish the overwhelming weight of losing a child.

I’d like to say that we found a resolution or the golden answer to coping with grief as a couple, but that would be a lie. It’s something that affects us every day. There is no happy ending to this story… and that’s ok.

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