glow in the woods questions

Reading blogs...found an amazing blog with posts from many different baby loss parents... here are some of my thoughts.

http://glowinthewoods.squarespace.com/kitchen-table/2011/7/21/tick-tock.html

1. How much time has passed since the death of your child(ren)?  Do you mark grief in months, weeks or years? Does it seem to be going fast or slow?  

It's been 9 months, and about 17 hours since our baby girl was stillborn. Usually I mark grief time in months. In the beginning, I marked it in hours, days. I felt it in minutes. It seems to be going both slow and fast at the same time. I am grateful that time has passed and the grief feels less all encompassing, but at the same time, I feel like the memories of being pregnant seem soooooooo long ago.

2. Do you have an end goal to your grief?  How much time do you think that will take?  How much time did you think you'd need to get there right after your loss?  How much time do you think you need now? 

My end goal...to not go bat shit crazy when I (hopefully) have a baby who lives....and to be able to answer the question about children--"Do you have any children?" honestly without crying. I hope that I can answer the children question honestly within a couple years. Right after we lost our baby, I thought that things would feel considerably better at 6 months...but I think that the numbness only wore off completely at 6 months.

3. Rather than a clear end goal, is there a milestone or marker to indicate that you are feeling grief less acutely, i.e. going to a baby shower, listening to a song that made you cry early in grief, driving past the hospital?  How long did it take to get there?

My biggest milestone is being around my co-worker's babies that were recently born. That took about 7 months to handle. It makes me feel sad and wish my baby was in my arms.

4. How do you view the time you had with your child, either alive (within or outside) or already deceased?  Before you all answer "Too short! Not enough!", did you have time to "bond" or develop a future imagination about what this child would be like?  Perhaps depending on whether yours was cut short, how do you now feel about the nine-month period of gestation -- too long or not long enough?  

I treasure the memories of the ultrasounds when Maddie was alive. She was so active and silly. I know Maddie would have been a very silly girl like her mom and dad. She would have been a trickster and would have told corny jokes. We only had 5 months with Maddie alive. It's never long enough no matter how long you have with your baby. Your children should not die before you. Nine months is short...but just right to really learn to love.

5. One grief book suggested that it took 2-5 years to incorporate your grief into your life.  Where are you on this timeline, and you do you find that to be true?

Makes sense. No one understands this, though. 

Many think that 2 months is all it takes. Ha. I would like to tell them to try to imagine your child dead, in a casket. Imagine how that would feel. Now take that feeling of awfulness and imagine carrying that with you for the rest of your life. That's what the first 3 months feel like...and then it dulls slowly...but it's still there to knock you to your knees with little warning. Grief is an angry, greedy bitch.


6. There's a familiar saying, "Time Heals all wounds."  Do you think this is true?  Or do you subscribe to Edna St. Vincent Milay:  "Time does not bring relief, you all have lied"?

Grief wounds can't be healed. They can simply scar over...left vulnerable to injury with little to no provocation. 

7. Has your relationship with the future (immediate and far) changed since the death of your child(ren)?  How about your relationship with the past?

 I have become closer with friends who have lost babies. Some coworkers I have distanced myself from for self preservation. My husband and I have strengthened our relationship through grief, but there are still ups and downs.


8. How long did it take to answer these questions?

25 minutes