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  • Posted on April 4, 2010 at 10:26 pm

Well, great news!  Paula is pregnant again!  We are scared shitless.

Once you have been touched by miscarriage, getting pregnant is never the same again.  On one hand we are thrilled and looking forward to the new arrival.  On the other hand, we are constantly scared that we will have another miscarrage and every time that Paula does not feel quite right, we really start worrying.  Of course, I am trying to be positive and encourage Paula to think positively etc, but really, deep down, I know the risks as well as she does. I guess the main thing for me is that I know that there are only a few things that I can really do to improve our chances and helping Paula feel as relaxed and upbeat as possible is one of them. Part of what makes it so tough is that before you have a miscarriage, you are protected by the knowledge that at the end of all of this, you will get a lovely baby to cherish and raise.  You start to make all kinds of plans, and all of these plans involve the baby living a healthy life to a ripe old age.  After miscarriage, that is all taken away from you.  At this point, Paula is just hoping to hold the baby.  With our previous miscarriages, we never even got to see them and with Kye, we finally managed to get his footprints, but that was it.  So, at this point, we are hoping for the little victories.  Personally, I am still hoping for the healthy life to a ripe old age, but it is much harder to convince myself that it is gauranteed any more…

Well, wish us luck as we go down this path again.  So far we have two living children and two Angel Babies.  This time I really, really hope for another living child.

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Postpartum Depression After Miscarriage

  • Posted on December 21, 2009 at 8:08 pm

bear Postpartum Depression After Miscarriage

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.

My first time having postpartum was awful but my second time ended up with me being committed to the hospital for a couple of weeks.  I felt horribly guilty thinking that my depression had killed our son.  I had no baby in my arms and still suffered this terrible unending depression mixed with grief at the loss of our child.  There was no baby to try to hold it all together for and no maternity leave to rely on to keep the financial pressures at bay.  I don’t know what I would have done if my employer did not have long-term disability insurance to pay at least a portion of my wages until I could return to work.  What I thought would take a few weeks to recover from ended up being a year unable to work at all.

Most of these days passed with me in tears, unable for me to care for anyone.  Unable to even care for myself.  This was the darkest most frightening time of my entire life.  I cannot begin to explain what it is to have your mind shatter inside of you and still live.  It’s been about a year and a half now since my son’s death and I’m up to 4 days a week at work.  I’ve long come off of disability insurance but am more than happy to keep paying into it.  I am so grateful for the small amount of peace that it was able to bring to us.

I felt, and still feel like, even miscarriage support groups do not understand me.  I am not only suffering the loss of a child but also postpartum depression as well.  I am doing much better now and hope to one day be like the pictures of the Surviving and Thriving Mothers on the Postpartum Progress blog.  The difference will be that my arms will be empty.  Empty arms do not fill an empty heart.  Maybe my picture will be beside the lost babies memorial picture here that my son is a part of.  Postpartum depression without a baby is the worst kind of depression, in my opinion.

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And Round We Go Again…

  • Posted on December 7, 2009 at 2:52 pm

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.

We are still waiting for the test results, but all signs point to an early miscarriage… There is really no chance that the pregnancy survived… So, now we are left sitting waiting for the test results and once again thinking “why us?” and feeling very alone. I just feel very emotionally raw and the littlest thing is once again painful. We are left asking if we can really try this again. We want that baby so badly, but how much can you really put yourself and your family through? I guess we shall see. Right now, we are just trying to get medical help (very hard in Alberta) and get through this…

Wish us luck.

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Postpartum Depression After Miscarriage or Stillbirth

  • Posted on September 2, 2009 at 8:44 am

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.

Frankly, I place a lot of the blame for Paula being commited on a therapist who I don’t think really understood half of what was going on and I think often did more damage than good (I sat in on the sessions, so I have heard most of what was said, but that is a different story).

Luckily when Paula was commited, we looked for new ways to get help and found a wonderful social worker (thanks Lori-Ann Shultz@Foothills Hospital) who really did understand and was able to provide a huge amount of help.

All I can say to couples going through it is:
1) it will get better. It really will. Someday you will find a new “normal”. It won’t be as care-free as it was, but it won’t be as bad as it seems.
2) don’t be afraid to seek help. And if at first, you don’t succeed, don’t be afraid to keep looking. I can not imagine where we would be now if we had not kept trying different things until we met Lori-Ann.”

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What to call the next baby after a miscarriage.

  • Posted on September 1, 2009 at 9:24 pm

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.

Continue reading What to call the next baby after a miscarriage.

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Postpartum Depression After Miscarriage

  • Posted on August 15, 2009 at 8:05 am

bear Postpartum Depression After Miscarriage

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.

My first time having postpartum was awful but my second time ended up with me being committed to the hospital for a couple of weeks. I felt horribly guilty thinking that my depression had killed our son. I had no baby in my arms and still suffered this terrible unending depression mixed with grief at the loss of our child. There was no baby to try to hold it all together for and no maternity leave to rely on to keep the financial pressures at bay. I don’t know what I would have done if my employer did not have long-term disability insurance to pay at least a portion of my wages until I could return to work. What I thought would take a few weeks to recover from ended up being a year unable to work at all.

Most of these days passed with me in tears, unable for me to care for anyone. Unable to even care for myself. This was the darkest most frightening time of my entire life. I cannot begin to explain what it is to have your mind shatter inside of you and still live. It’s been about a year and a half now since my son’s death and I’m up to 4 days a week at work. I’ve long come off of disability insurance but am more than happy to keep paying into it. I am so grateful for the small amount of peace that it was able to bring to us.

I felt, and still feel like, even miscarriage support groups do not understand me. I am not only suffering the loss of a child but also postpartum depression as well. I am doing much better now and hope to one day be like the pictures of the Surviving and Thriving Mothers on the Postpartum Progress blog. The difference will be that my arms will be empty. Empty arms do not fill an empty heart. Maybe my picture will be beside the lost babies memorial picture here that my son is a part of. Postpartum depression without a baby is the worst kind of depression, in my opinion.

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Queen’s Park Cemetary — Storybook Gardens

  • Posted on May 4, 2009 at 9:34 pm

4318 186400920537 886400537 6553336 475276 n Queens Park Cemetary Storybook Gardens

Not everyone may know this but in March of 2008, my unborn son Kye passed away in the 20th week of pregnancy. It’s been a devastating loss to our family that I’ll never totally recover from. Miscarriage and stillbirth are issues that no one wants to talk about or even acknowledge. Every pregnant woman realizes in her mind that it is always a possibility. The reality thought of losing a child can only be felt in the heart. It breaks everyday thinking of the loss.

To get over it, I tried to imagine that all I lost was a pregnancy, not a baby. In time I realized that while other people may think that is true, it just isn’t. From the moment you find out that you’ve conceived, you are a mother. You have hopes and dreams, expectations and desires for the baby that you hold with you inside of you every moment. Being pregnant is an overriding realization. You do all your regular day to day things all the time realizing that you’re pregnant. Every liquid you drink, every food you eat, every person you’re around or chemical you come into contact with is thought over carefully with regards to the baby growing in you.

When the ultrasound technican told us there was no heartbeat, everything came to an end. Nothing will ever be the same again. I’ll never again be pregnant and be certain that I’ll have a baby. I’ll never again buy a friend a baby gift before the child is born. I’ll hold the two children I have left a little tighter, cherish them a little bit more. And I’ll always dream of what could have, should have been for our son Kye.

We never had a funeral for him. Never had a tombstone erected, a gravesite, a memorial service or anything at all. He was cremated and I wear some of his ashes around my neck in a beautiful infinity symbol. The funeral home we dealt with was so lovely to us which really helped mend our broken hearts after dealing with a dreadful medical system.

I was going through one of my friend’s pics on facebook today and came across this shot which includes her son’s grave. He was stillborn 6 years ago yesterday. It was his angel-versary or what others may call the anniversary of his death or his non-birth birthday. This cemetary has a playground in the children’s section. It helps brighten up a desolate place full of dead babies and children. You can just imagine their angel spirits climbing on the colorful ladder and going down the bright red slide. All playing together and happy. Not alone and sad but all together, kids at the park. Friends and babies forever.

I just thought this was a wonderful gesture by the cemetary to add some color and live to what otherwise would be a very depressing area. Many of these passed children have siblings that come to visit. The playground offers them a place to play and be happy instead of being scared and crying during the visit. The parents can spend some time mourning at the grave while life goes on around them. I just thought it was wonderful and definitely worth sharing!

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Sometimes, the dumbest things mean the most

  • Posted on March 18, 2009 at 8:36 pm

After a loss, sometimes the dumbest things end up meaning so much to you for the dumbest reasons…

When Paula was pregnant with Kye, she really liked these individually wrapped chedder pieces. Not the processed cheese slices, but chunks of real cheddar like you might get with a lunch somewhere. We work at the same office and there were a bunch of these stupid cheese slices left in the fridge after Kye died. I returned back to work quite soon after he died (someone has to pay the bills), but my wife was off for 10 months of special leave and is just coming back part time now.

Through it all, these stupid cheese stayed in the fridge. Every time I got cream for my coffee, there they were. Usually I didn’t think about it, but sometimes, they would yank me back and make me think about Kye and Paula and everything that has happened in the last year. Sometimes stupid cheese even made me go back to my office, close the door and cry.

And still the cheese remained. I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them and well, they weren’t threatening enough for anyone else to.

Then, one day, as we come up on the one year aniversary of his death, they were gone. I opened the fridge and noticed that they were no longer there next to the cream. It was very odd. To be honest, it might have been anyone. I hope that it was not my wife who found them and had to deal with them.

I really don’t have a good reason to be sad that the stupid cheese is gone, but I am. It is just one more part of that time that is no more.

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Sometimes it just sneaks up on you

  • Posted on November 17, 2008 at 9:02 pm

It is amazing how much changes after you lose a baby. One thing that I really notice is how much more careful I have to be about watching TV. I used to just be able to zap through and at the worst I might be grossed out or somewhat offended.

Now I am pretty careful about avoiding things that will cause Paula and I pain. I usually watch TV with Paula and so I just tell myself that I am trying to help take care of her and protecting us from pain. I like to think that I am stronger than that.

Of course, as soon as you start thinking how strong you are someone is going to knock you down. I was watching TV by myself, and found some old war movie and figured that would be pretty harmless. I find that even though people are dying, it is so far removed from my life that while I can feel for them, I can handle it and it feels like something that I would normally have done before Kye died.

The movie was “Farewell To Arms”. It starts out as a war movie, then turns to a love story of them fleeing war. Okay, that is still nice and I am kinda watching it, kinda doing other things. The next thing, the heroine goes into labor. The labor goes badly and the baby that she wanted so much dies and I am sitting there crying. So much for a distant war movie being something “safe”. I don’t know how it ended. It just got to the point where it was dredging up to much pain and I turned it off.

Sometimes, it turns out that maybe you are not as strong as you told yourself after all.

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The Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation Comes Out Against EI After an Abortion, Regardless of Cause

  • Posted on November 10, 2008 at 7:41 am

I recently came across a poorly informed editorial by John Williamson who is the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.  I just got a response published on Sociberty as “The Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation Comes Out Against EI After an Abortion, Regardless of Cause“.
Basically, while on the surface it sounds like the government is giving free holidays, if you look into it you find that you have to have a doctor’s referal for it and it is meant for women who have an operation that is termed as an abortion, but the baby may already be dead (it is the same operation) or the family is forced to make some tough decissions and terminate a desperately wanted and loved pregnancy due to defects that mean that the baby could not survive.  These are not people just having casual sex and then having abortion afterwards, but rather families going through the worst experience of their entire life.  While a little time off is often not enough, it at least offers these women some time to work through their grief before having to go back to work.

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