Kye's Site

I've been following this popular blog about postpartum depression for the last several months or so.  It's called Postpartum Progress and has a ton of information on it keeping readers up to date on current research, media portrayls of postpartum, PPD from a political perspective, and basically everything and anything related to postpartum depression.  What I really love about this blog is that it's upbeat.  It shows moms that there really can be a life after going through the trauma, fear and societal pressures surrounding postpartum depression.  My favorite part is the "Surviving and Thriving After Postpartum Depression" that is like a photo album of moms and their kids who are doing great after suffering postpartum depression.

I've had PPD myself two times now with the last time being the most severe.  The worst part was that I did not even get to have a live baby and still suffered from postpartum depression.  During my first bout of postpartum after my daughter was born 3 years ago, I was at home on maternity leave with her.  Here in Canada, we get a year maternity leave before returning to work after having a baby.  Last year, I was halfway through the pregnancy when a doctor at an ultrasound clinic told me that my baby had died.  Devastated is a serious understatement for what my husband and my family felt.  I was about a thousand times past the feeling of devastation.  I felt the familiar depression wash over me like an unending series of waves in the ocean.

Well, Paula and I were really doing a lot better. Things were going well. Of course the pain of Kye's loss never went away, but it no longer controlled us. I guess you could say that we found our new normal (things will never just be "normal" again).

So, we decided to try getting pregnant again. After several months, we found out that Paula was pregnant! We were somehow both excited and scared shitless. We decided to try to enjoy the pregnancy as much as possible even though as Paula now says "just because you are pregnant doesn't mean that you get a baby"... This is something that only parents who have had a miscarriage ever truely understand and how I envy those people who do not understand it.

Things seemed to be going well and we decided to tell our families because whatever happened was going to affect them too. They were thrilled, yet concerned for us.

Paula got sick. She has had the H1N1 shot a while ago, but this was a really nasty flu that really knocked her off her feet for a while. After she tested positive on a pregnancy test, we figured that it was just her body adjusting... Who knows...

This week, Paula started to bleed quite a lot (she is trying to spare me from the worst of the details)... We went to the doctor for help, but he has gone off to start a private practice and we don't have enought money to afford the huge fees (he was good, but not that good). Now we have found that we don't have a family doctor any more.

When Kye died, it hit us really hard. Ever since then, I have found that for Paula and I, we have a lot more trouble handling things and other people's grief.

A little while ago, my wife's cousin Jen went to hospital and within a couple of weeks, she died. Her family came to visit her and stayed until she died. I never met Jen, and to be honest, I have only met her family once or twice. So, you would think that I would have felt pretty distant from all of this happening, yet we ended up helping the family as much as we could and I found that I was really emotional and it really affected me. Before Kye died, I would have felt bad for them, but it wouldn't have hit me as hard.

So, even a year and half later, I am still emotionally off-balance. Slowly, I am getting my balance back, but it is definitely slow...

I came across this great article about "What to say to someone who experiences a loss" on blogged today.  It is one of those things that they really should give you (and more importantly family and friends) when you have a miscarriage.  After you lose a baby, it is amazing some of the really stupid things that people say to try and cheer you up.

Of course sometimes it is almost worse if someone says nothing at all...

My Dad does not always handle these things in the best way and I must admit we were a little worried about how it might go when we saw him after we lost Kye (he was out of town at the time). I still remember meeting him at the airport and he just hugged my wife and said something to the affect of "My condolences and I talked to a friend who had a miscarriage and she said that I should just not say anthing else, so I will." It was great that he acknowledged our loss, but it was also great that someone had taken him aside and warned him not to try one of those stupid "it will all be okay" lines that everyone seems to try.

I came across this greatarticle about flags for angelversaries on blogged.

I just came across a quick piece that the NBC Today Show did about miscarriage. It is just a quick bit, but I was impressed how well they did it and how frank they were. These shows often carefully avoid dealing with issues like miscarriage or find some way to sensationalize them.

Paula often reads a really good blog on postpartum depression called "Postpartum Progress".  After requests from Paula and others,they started a short discussion on "Postpartum Depression After Miscarriage or Stillbirth". The next day, they published another article on"What Is the Difference Between Grief & Depression After Pregnancy Loss?"

This is really great since people rarely talk about postpartum depression, miscarriage or stillbirth, and practically never talk about them together.

Here is the comments that I posted there, but I suggest reading the whole thing as I hope that there will be some posts by people far better at this that me.

"One of the toughest parts of dealing with the PPD after miscarriage was that there are some people who deal with and understand PPD and there are people who deal with and understand miscarriage, but there seem to be few people or resources to deal with the horrible combination of depression and grief that can come when you have both. To make it worse, some of the things that therapists worry about and try to stop in depression patients (like too much sleep) are normal ways of handling grief. There are a number of behaviors that have conflicting meanings or importance depending on if you view it as PPD, grief, or a combination of the two. It takes some real attention to treat them both.

A friend of ours lost a baby at about 38 weeks shortly after Kye died. She has always been such an upbeat person and rarely talks about it. Now, she is pregnant again. I know that she is pretty scared, but trying to make the most of it. She posted some of her ultrasound pictures on facebook in an album named "Here is Rerun/Reboot". She wrote "We are calling her reboot since we don't have a name yet and she isn't really a number 2." It summed up some of the confusion that I feel about Kye's loss, the prospect of trying again, and how we deal with it all.