Almost Time

The year is winding down. Ryan and I will celebrate Christmas, our third wedding anniversary, and soon a new year and a new baby all right here in Santiago. To temper the 90-degree heat, the fans in our apartment provide a constant whirl, but do little to bother the stiff boughs of our adorable little tree, which we picked out at the department store rather the tree lot—you won’t stumble upon those so easily in the Southern Hemisphere. This time last year, Ryan, Ruby, and I were heading south to do Christmas on our own terms because the holidays, when you’re grieving, can be especially tough. Heck, a random Tuesday in July can be especially tough—or blissfully ordinary. Things twist and turn.

This year, we are staying in Chile for an entirely different reason: we’ve made it to the ninth month of pregnancy. It isn’t safe to fly, much less drive too far from the city just in case this little girl, with a mind all her own brewing, decides to arrive early. So we are gratefully ensconced at home, where the only snowflakes are made out of felt and Ruby’s collar provides an inadvertent jingle as she wanders to and fro. I have a panettone, an Italian tradition my mom has passed down, ready to toast with butter on Christmas morning, though Ryan is still a little skeptical. To be honest, it was a taste I had to grow into myself, but the second I saw the red square box on the shelves at our grocery store, I grabbed it with such glee you would have thought I’d found the Holy Grail of Christmas. (In Chile, it features in Christmas dinner, but I’m sticking with breakfast.)

Ryan and I have only had a few Christmases together, so each one presents the opportunity to fine tune our own traditions. We’re keeping it simple, as we’re apt to do these days. We topped the tree—the first that’s all our own—with an homage to California, I’m baking despite the heat, he’s perfecting “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” on the guitar, and most of the gifts are for Ruby.

Next year, there will be a little girl here with us. She’s here now, safe inside, waiting to be born. We are SO excited to meet her. I still worry, I still hiccup as I write even these words, lest… but her activity reassures. She is strong. Her long limbs reach clear across my abdomen and are almost ready to explore the world beyond. The foot she’s lodged up by my right ribs signifies how far she’s enabled us to grow together. I cherish that spot, holding a palm over where that little foot must be, wondering what day it is, soon, that I’ll get to cradle it in my hand. That we’ll get to cradle all of her without limit.

We’ve come a long way since last Christmas, since two Junes ago, since the Christmas before when our journey to parenthood was about to begin. As timing goes, I’m due the same week we once found out we were pregnant with Lorenzo. Things do twist and turn… and overlap. Since then, I’ve spent nearly 18 of 24 months pregnant. How much time remains? Two weeks? Three? Four? Regardless, we will be three again.

Four, I already want to correct. Because of course there is also a heart for Lorenzo on our tree. Hearts are my tradition now, year round. This one is a momento from that holiday road trip last year. Pucón memory or keepsake, it says.

I do remember. I do keep. I always will.

Happy, healthy, peaceful holidays, everyone.

Commentary

Lorenzo was in The New York Times! I add exclamation because I can still rave about my son. I can still bellow with pride, as any mama would, so here I go. The New York Times Motherlode blog published my essay, “23 Weeks Pregnant, With ‘No Good Choices’“. It’s not the first time I’ve told the world what we felt we had to do for our son, nor will it be the last. But it gave Lorenzo’s story the visibility that only a publication like the Times can deliver, one that reaches beyond this supportive circle of blog readers and heart collectors into open, unpredictable water.

When I woke up to the news that the essay was live, that it had been circulated around the White House, that it already had over 90 comments in under 24 hours, my breath caught. What would this really mean? What would people who didn’t know us really think?

I thought about not looking at the comments, but I haven’t come all this way for fear to hold me back. So, I read one compassionate comment and then another from people who read my 950 words and articulated how our story moved them, inspired them to talk about a choice of their own, or made them understand another angle on the issue. They took the time to honor Lorenzo with the simple repetition of his name (I will always love hearing it, seeing it). They expressed their condolences, shared sorrow, sympathy for me and Ryan as parents, admiration for our courage, and hope for our future. That was 90 percent of the commentary, and I can live with 90 percent.

The other 10 percent did not understand our choice, questioned our medical advice, and wondered if our situation was dire enough to warrant its outcome. If dying quickly without extreme interventions or pushing death slowly back with those extreme interventions isn’t dire, I’m not sure I know what is. Several asked why I simply didn’t let nature take its course and let him go after birth. I’m compelled to answer. In simplest terms, we weren’t allowed. Rather, it was not advised because it posed an ethical dilemma for the hospital: once he was born, there was something to be done, medicine to administer, surgery to schedule, heroic efforts to be made. Had it been our preferred choice, we could have involved an ethics committee, but we did not have that kind of time—another reason why I speak out against these 20-week bans. I should also mention that with other fetal diagnoses, carrying to term presents additional health risks for the mother. It isn’t always the answer, medically or emotionally.

But how curious this question really is. On the one hand, those who ask seem to agree that Lorenzo’s heart should have been allowed to go the way it was designed—not to survive in our world. In essence, we are talking the same language. It’s the fact that I intervened that is problematic, even though I did so before most medical professionals have assessed my son could feel pain. I fully respect women who are permitted to make this choice, and I trust their babies are made as comfortable as possible in their passing. For me, I knew I could not carry my baby for three to four more months of growing and bonding and heartbeating only to let him go. So, I did what I could do, what I felt was as natural as possible by consciously delivering him, which was another choice. It bears repeating that we were legally and medically allowed to do so as his parents. It is only up to us, not strangers, to wrestle with the leftovers in our hearts.

Still, I am grateful the piece provided an arena for largely respectful debate and examination of all sides. I can thank The New York Times for that. But thanks to the snaking ways of the Internet, to which I have willingly volunteered our story, this visibility also meant that someone found an old blog post and decided not to remain respectful in our differences. Instead, he decided to serve up hate, sarcastic hate at that. Does it get any lower? Honestly, I expected it much sooner. After all, it’s been 18 months since I started posting about Lorenzo. By now, I thought maybe it wouldn’t come. But there it was in my inbox, pulsing. I won’t give it more ammunition by quoting it, but rest assured it intended to cut deep. It may have cut deeper had it arrived, isolated, on any other day than one that also offered such compassion. Or maybe I’m now strong enough to take it. Ryan and I are still standing after all, our root systems stronger on account of the long storm.

Still, I’ve been thinking about what we say with our commentary, be it on screen or to the faces of those who make different choices than we might make. When I told Tara, my grief mama group leader, about it, she offered a stellar twist, exclaiming: “You got hate mail!” That meant people were engaging and grappling with an issue most don’t want to examine so closely. It’s OK that not everyone would or could make the decision we felt was best for our family, she said. It’s enough to spread awareness in Lorenzo’s memory because it’s actually not about sides, though we operate—we comment—in a political climate fueling us to believe otherwise. We are constantly, it seems, trying to get other people onto our side.

I, for one, know that I cannot judge what I have not lived—one of countless lessons from Lorenzo. Standing where I stand, it can still shock when people do. But I can also rest in the difference.

Writing By Heart

Ever feel like a snowball right after it’s rolled off the top of a mountain? As speed overtakes and layers fatten. As, having let go, no choice remains but to follow the energy all the way down. I sense a surge, momentum building around Lorenzo’s story, strengthening it and giving it greater visibility as it manages, miraculously, to grow.

First off, I’m happy to share that the Chain-Link Heart Project has surpassed 2,000 hearts! In less than a year! I can’t thank all of you heart collectors enough for pausing to remember, capture the moment, and send it along for the rest of us. Check out the Heart Map to see all the countries now represented, including newcomers Albania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The 2,000th heart, in particular, means a lot. Like the 1,000th heart, it’s from home and was given before we knew Lorenzo was so sick but while he was very much here and expected and loved. Its meaning changed, as the meaning of all hearts changed. It is changing again as a new heart grows.

Heart Link 2,000 from Laura Lee Mattingly
In other Lorenzo news, my personal essay, “Lorenzo’s Island,” about traveling to Rapa Nui, has been accepted for publication in the anthology Three Minus One: Tales of Loss and Love Inspired by the Film Return to Zero (She Writes Press, May 2014). I encourage you to see and support this film, which stars Minnie Driver and is based on the true story of one couple’s journey after losing their first child to stillbirth. We don’t often come across these stories in mainstream media, but considering stillbirth affects 36,000 families a year in the U.S. alone, I remain surprised that it is discussed, much less represented, so infrequently. That is one of many reasons why I speak out and publish these stories about Lorenzo and why I’m so grateful when you share them in turn.

A family of three on Rapa Nui/Easter Island, April 2013

As for Rapa Nui, Ryan and I had originally planned this trip as a “babymoon” when I was still pregnant with Lorenzo. We didn’t travel there until the following year, after two babies were then weren’t here. I told you all a bit about the trip before, but I didn’t tell you about its origins or what it’s like to travel without, to live without our son, who I continue to see everywhere, think of all the time, and miss with all my heart. 

Looking up toward the sky over Rapa Nui and seeing my son’s name.
Next year, Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine will publish, “The Weight of Two,” an essay about a different kind of travel—home, after you’ve been gone awhile and find the familiar ground shaky beneath your feet. In this case, traveling back to California this past May, almost one year after we lost Lorenzo at the hospital where I was born, the hospital just down the road from the house I grew up in and where my mom still lives. The grief mingled with the familiar late spring air as the one-year anniversary of the hour I held my son approached.
Message in a bottle, from a son to a lost mother, Ocean Beach, May 2013
I also recently reviewed Holding Silvan: A Brief Life by Monica Wesolowska on Literary Mama. I first read it during my quest for other mothers like me (Monica lost her first child, a son, soon after his birth and also faced the most heart-wrenching of choices.) When the San Francisco Chronicle published my op-ed about our own choice in the wake of Texas passing a 20-week abortion ban (the 12th state to do so and the 9th where such a ban has now gone into effect), Monica reached out. To start a dialogue with a writer and mother (and a mother writing about her lost baby) made me feel less alone, just as reading her memoir did. I encourage you to read her book and get to know Silvan and what it took to care for him and let him go.

Hearts on the gate where Ryan lived, then where I lived, all those moons ago.

Amidst all this, there has been another essay in the works for several months. I’m hopeful it will still be published, but there was editorial concern that it may yet be too political. I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. Censored? Marginalized? Like the ruffle through a pristine set of feathers? Maybe even a little proud as I keep writing about what makes some people prickle. Even though ours is a story of love and of truth, it doesn’t fit into the accepted narrative about what babies and their bearing should be. But where does that leave our babies? I don’t take the public platforms who do give voice to my son for granted. As I walk this earth, I will continue to put forth all I can about Lorenzo. It’s what I do for him now.

Where Loss and Life Meet

This week I’m entering my third trimester, and the uncharted territory continues to emerge both within and without. Thank God that it does. Now that I’m really showing, I’m getting this question: “Is this your first?”

It’s a day I hoped would come and am grateful for because it means my child has grown past where her brother grew and into her own visibility. She is sticking out into the world, leading the way as we walk down the street, as older Chilean women pass and smile at my belly, as I’m led to a special line at the bank, as seats are given up on the metro.

A new heart line.

Innocents are the ones who ask. I no longer do. I might ask another pregnant woman: “How far along are you?” or “How are you feeling?” I keep the focus on the baby in the belly right in front of me because that is the only baby I have evidence of. There may have been others who came and went before, as there were for me.

Despite my emotional preparation, this question about birth order is throwing me. I answer it differently every time, but I simply cannot bring myself to lie and say: “Yes, this is our first.” She’s not. She’s our third, though I feel differently about our loss of Lorenzo and our miscarriage, the one I held and the one I never saw. But I hesitate to say that she’s our third, lest people ask about the other two, live, children I must have running around at home, which isn’t the case.

So, I say: “We’ve had some difficulties, and this is our first healthy baby.” Or, as I said last week to a second-time mom I was being introduced to, “We lost a child at six months,” to which her eyes went wide and I clarified, “when I was six months pregnant.” Her face, still stunned, simply nodded, our pregnant bellies hovering between us. The entire exchange was so awkward, I was left wondering if I shouldn’t have said anything at all? But who would that have been for? Certainly not me, certainly not Lorenzo. It would have been for this woman, this stranger I may never see again, in order for her to feel more comfortable, on Remembrance Day of all days.

I forget to say what author Monica Wesolowska came up with in these cases, when she carried her second and third sons after losing her first soon after his birth. In her memoir, Holding Silvan: A Brief Life, she would simply say: “Not exactly.” Or, “Kind of.” It left the ambiguity there on the table for the other person to process. It didn’t quite suck all the air out of the room.

But in the moment, I forget those short, simple sentences. My mind races to Lorenzo and how whole he felt to me even though his heart was not, and I tell the truth.

Losing Lorenzo taught me how important honesty is, and I can’t live my life dishonestly in his wake. If he is going to live on in any way in this world, it’s going to be because I write about him, because Ryan and I and our families talk about him, because you all send in hearts in his honor (we’re almost up to 2,000!). If I simply nod and smile and say, “Yes, this is our first,” it denies his existence by the very person who grew him. Do you see how impossible that would be?

I talked to Ryan about all this the other night. He said several things that helped, including something I could say in these contexts: “This is the most pregnant I’ve been before.” It’s honest, but blurry. It’s truthful without showing my deepest wound to a stranger though I’ve done plenty of that over the past 16 months. He told me that it’s just a little while longer I’ll be getting this question.

Three hearts.

He’s right. But the question will change. I’ve spoken to other bereaved parents who have had to deal with: “How many children do you have?” What did they say? Did they come right out with the truth, shifting the air, the mood, the tenor of everything else? How did they do the math? Did they subtract the lost child or include her and then deal with the follow-up questions about ages and interests? Eventually, the truth would have to come out. That there had been two, but was now one. That there had been an oldest, but now the youngest was significantly older than she was when she passed.

These seemingly innocuous inquiries leave us unsure about how to present the most significant aspect of our lives because the grief story never really changes, though the questions might. After all, the triggering question for me used to be: “Do you want kids?”

Perhaps it’s strange that we ask such encompassing questions at all when we meet people for the first time: “What do you do?” or “Are you married?” or “Where are you from?” Those questions may well be triggers for the subject if she just lost her job or hasn’t met the right person yet or can’t go home again for whatever reason. We have all lost our innocence in one way or another.

Maybe we should just smile, say our name, and hand over a card, color-coded to the area of life we’re most sensitive about. I know that’s unrealistic, but sometimes I just want to hold up the “I lost my baby” card (it’s the color of deep ocean water). I’d hold up two of them, actually, so the kind, unsuspecting stranger knows the truth about me, but I can simply say: “Can we talk about something else first?”

 

October Is Also for Our Babies

Up to 20 percent of confirmed pregnancies end in miscarriage. Annually in the U.S., 36,000 pregnancies end in stillbirth. In the wake of these losses, we don’t seem to discuss or console this kind of grief as we might do for others. But these are significant losses deserving of significant care.

Our own government agrees. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan deemed October as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. He said: “National Observance of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month offers us the opportunity to increase our understanding of the great tragedy involved in the deaths of unborn and newborn babies. It also enables us to consider how, as individuals and communities, we can meet the needs of bereaved parents and family members and work to prevent causes of these problems.”

Since 2006, October 15 in particular has been designated by the U.S. House of Representatives as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day for these babies. In my case, for two of my babies. Here are ways all of us can help moms like me and dads like Ryan in the remembering:

• An organization called Through the Heart offers support and resources for anyone experiencing pregnancy loss, either directly or indirectly. They’ve sent out an image to be shared on social media in an effort to help others speak out. I share it here for all of you.

• As Through the Heart and many bereavement groups, including this site dedicated to October 15, encourage us to do, light a candle at 7 PM in your respective time zone. Light up the world that way in memory of these babies.

• Author Monica Wesolowska is offering a book giveaway for her memoir, Holding Silvan: A Brief Life, about losing her firstborn son soon after birth. The contest ends November 2, so if you are doing something special this October, think about participating. In honor of this month, I have a book review of Holding Silvan up on Literary Mama. Please read it to learn more about this moving memoir and important story.

• Back in the U.S., various Remembrance Walks take place on October 15. I’d love to participate this year, but this isn’t a day that’s recognized here in Chile; I’ll have to reserve that solidarity for later years. I do know I’ll take a special walk with Ruby this day to remember.

• Reach out to someone you know who lost a baby. Don’t worry about “reminding them” of the pain. That’s not how this works. We remember year-round. We live on past these losses, but they remain touch stones for many of us for a long, long time. It’s been my experience that speaking out about losing Lorenzo when I was six months pregnant and about my subsequent miscarriage has led to the overall mental and physical health I have today, six months pregnant with new life. Your compassion may help others speak out and heal.

• Love each other. Hug your living, breathing child. Stare long at the ocean. Meditate. Listen to your favorite music. Light that candle. Say a prayer. Send in a heart to the Chain-Link Heart Project. Give something you have to someone who needs it. Read here for other resources, ideas, and ways to help. We appreciate any little thing that acknowledges that this day, for some of us, is different than the rest.

Thank you. <3