There are specific days, memories, or events that seem to conjure up a memory that seems to bring me moments of peace. The one I am going to tell you about is pretty unusual. This is a story of a time when two grieving mothers found each other.
In November of 2017
It was less than 2 months after the death of my twins. I was not in a great place. But I did my best to put one foot in front of the other and to still be there, be present for my son. It was right before Remembrance Day (also known as Veteran’s Day for my American friends) and my county museum displays a marker for each person who was lost in service during any of the combats that Canada had participated in. There are over 200 markers on the lawn of our museum and archives.
I feel that it is especially important to teach my son about the sacrifices that have been made and are continually made so that we can live peacefully in our beautiful country.
He was newly five years old at the time and we walked through the rows of markers. We paid our respects and had a meaningful conversation about what it means to be in the forces in the past and currently.
As we were walking, I noticed that there was a woman standing at a marker. She looked to be in her late fifties, maybe sixties. For some reason I saw her. I kept looking at her. I wondered about her. As we walked closer, I saw her. Like I really saw her. Her face, it looked like mine, just defeated. Obvious signs of grief covered her face. I knew those cry lines, I recognized the puffy eyes, I could see past those dark sunglasses that she was hiding tears. I felt her crushing pain. She was grieving.
As we got closer, she began to smile. She smiled at my son and sparked up a conversation. My little oblivious five year old began to tell her about the markers he had found and spoke about guns and tanks (because what five year old doesn’t think that’s cool). She was so kind and expressed interest in what she was saying. She then began to tell my son about her son. He was in the war and when he was small, he wanted to be in the army. My boy was listening…like really listening. He then asked, “Is he still in the war?”. Her face softened and she knelt to his level, I remember her saying as she pointed to the marker “see this?”, my son nodded. “This is his name. He never came home”.
Those words hit me in the gut. I couldn’t hold back. I began to cry. No, I began to sob. She put her arms around me and said “I’ve been watching you walk down these rows. I don’t want to pry, but you look very sad”. My son piped up, “my mom misses our babies”. I nodded and I told her about my story. As I was telling her about my babies, she began to cry. She pulled me in for a hug, held me and said, “no matter how old or how young our babies are, they’re always our babies”.
By this time, my son was getting anxious to keep moving. I thanked her and thanked her son for the ultimate and devastating sacrifice. With a smile, she said she was grateful for this memory and I agreed. It was one more quick hug, and we parted ways.
When grieving mothers find each other, it makes life a little more bearable.
I am not sure if this was some magnetic forcefield of grief that brought us together or something else, but on that day, we needed each other.
I am not sure if this was some magnetic forcefield of grief that brought us together or something else, but on that day, we needed each other. This was a time when two grieving mothers found each other, a time that made the grief feel just a bit more bearable, even just for a moment.
I am forever grateful for this day. I am so grateful for that moment. That day we grieved together. We finally felt understood. She gave me something I had never had but always needed. I think of her and her son every November. I thank them both for the gift of that day.
Death cannot be compared. Grief cannot be compared.
My babies’ death will always be mine. For as long as I am alive, my miscarriage will always be my biggest loss.
The way I see it, grief is like a snowflake. There are similarities but there is no two the same. Grief is a slow descent; it hits the warm ground melting into a water droplet creating space. But sometimes the water freezes making it difficult to move, becoming stuck like ice. So this is my grief , it’s the ice, and it’s stuck.
Pain is not meant to be compared, it’s meant to be shared
-Ashley Stock
I saw a quote from another grieving mother on Instagram, her name is Ashley Stock. She lost her three year old daughter, Stevie to DIPG, a form of relentless cancer. In an Instagram post she writes, “Pain is not meant to be compared, it’s meant to be shared”. This struck a huge chord in me because she’s right! I have a right to be in pain. It’s ok for me to grieve. I don’t need permission to be sad over my twins’ death. I want to share my story. They mattered, so did their deaths. It all matters when we walked down this path of parenthood that didn’t happen on the earthside. We have to stop comparing our grief.
For so long, I had guilt about missing my babies and compared my grief to other stories. I buried it. I always wondered, “how can I hang on to pain for so long when I didn’t feel them?” , “people must think I’m crazy because I talk about them so much”, “maybe they’re right, I am lucky I wasn’t too far along”. But then I come to and realize that thinking that way is crap. Complete and utter crap. We shouldn’t compare our losses because we should be comforting each other. Comparing a loss is just cruel. It’s minimizing life. It’s lessening the importance. Regardless, if your miscarriage happened at 3 weeks or 30 weeks, that child is loved, wished for, dreamed of, and so important.
I have a right to grieve. It’s ok that I will never get over my children dying before me. I should be able to talk about my miscarriage and not worry about comparing another miscarriage and wondering “oh, they had it worse off than me”. It’s this type of thinking that’s toxic and I am over it. I should be able to miss the four hands I never got to hold. The two voices I never heard. The two faces I didn’t get to kiss. This is what I miss. It is what I grieve. This is my loss.
My story is mine. It is unique.
My hope for you is that you give yourself permission to cry and find the opportunities to miss your child or children. I hope that you grieve your loss as long as you need to. I really hope that you stop comparing your grief. Stop comparing your sadness to mine, to someone else’s, or allow anyone to minimize your loss. Your grief and your loss matters. Feel it, embrace it, and heal with it. Use your experience to do some good in our world.
This is your story. It is unique.
Sorry, but I am not loving or even enjoying parenting my kids 24-7 during COVID-19. In fact, it sucks. Everyday, I feel more and more resentful, isolated, and frustrated. I tell my husband, I feel like a zoo animal. I am stuck in a cage and when we do go outside, we walk the same route. Over and over and over….
I see so many people on social media boast about how many lovely memories they are making. They claim that they are having so much fun together. Or How grateful they are to have this time with their kids. Showing off all their crafts and other BS that makes me feel worse….
No! Sit the Efff down, Karen.
Today and yesterday and the day before that and tomorrow, all I am trying to do is survive, while keeping my little people fed and watered. Trying best to not damage my kids and their kindred spirits and salvage my own mental health. I am doing this solo. It has not been fun for me, nor I suspect my kids are loving their crazy-ass mom at the moment.
No way am I looking for a pity party. I am just wanting to share my struggles because I betcha that there is another mom out there who is feeling just like me! Well, you know what sister…embrace the shit out of it because this is right now!
I don’t have the luxury of having my husband at home. He is an essential worker, so he is gone all day, 5 days a week. I bet that there are partners out there that are out of the home longer, with more kids, with worse off circumstances. You probably loathe me right now and my whining. Sorry, I’ll whine with you and we can complain and wallow in this parenting saga together!
I miss my friends. I long for the pretty stores to see the sparkly things I don’t buy and all the smelly candles. Even shopping on-line feels weird and different. And I don’t like it. I feel like I am playing SIMS and I am losing at the game of life!
You are not alone…I repeat, you are not alone with not enjoying parenting right now…
So, if you feel guilty, know you aren’t alone. If you feel like a crappy parent, I’m there with ya. If you aren’t loving every second, samesies. If you secretly wish school were back in session, I feel you, girl! Because I will be the first one packing a lunch and then taking a nap!
If you feel something, just feel it. These are weird times. These times are hard. Don’t let the Karen’s bring you down. Just take a deep breath and make bedtime early…at least that’s what I do. It is really, really, really hard to pour from an empty cup. Do your best, because at the end of the day, our kids (seem to) love us no matter what. Tomorrow is a new day. Fill up that mug with hot sweet bean-juice (or wine…I won’t judge) and take on the day like the queen you are! These times are weird and I think it’s ok to not enjoy parenting during Covid-19…
Boo-yah Mama!
Neither of my babies have been great nursers. Both of them went on a nursing strike between 7-10 months. If you have never gone through it, it is the most stressful, painful, annoying part of breastfeeding that I have at least experienced so far. My current baby went through a long one. Almost 2 months of squirming on the breast, biting, scraping (yes, and it hurts!), and screaming when my tater was near his face. Despite all of the tears from both of us, we made it through. I stopped my baby’s nursing strike. I don’t know why he refused or why he went through the strike, but I am going to share with you how we (because he and I are a team) made it through.
What I did:
- Kept offering the breast after naptime and throughout the daytime
- Pumped when he didn’t empty my breasts
- When he showed that he was frustrated, I took him off and didn’t force
- I gave him something to be distracted with (a blanket, a small toy)
- I followed up with a bottle of formula or breastmilk
- He needed time and I kept being annoyingly persistent
Kept offering him the breast:
My little guy has been on a routine since about 5 months of age or so. This predictability has helped me write this blog, but also give us both a consistent routine. I feed him after he wakes up for the day, after naps, and before bedtime.
This works for us.
When he went through his nursing strike, I would offer him the breast upon waking up. If he refused, I would stop and then change his diaper. I would then try again after the diaper change. If he refused, despite feeling frustrated I would offer him a bottle and then in the middle of his playtime, I would offer him the breast. There would be times where he would refuse or he would take a few sucks, and there would be times where he would drink for a few minutes. It was really touch and go.
Pumped after feeding:
More often than not, he wouldn’t empty the breast. I kept saying to my husband, “now I know what blue-balls feel like”. It was painful. My little guy would drink before my let down and then he would come off. I often had a breast pump or my hand pump available to catch what my guy didn’t take. It was so time consuming and quite frustrating, but I had an end-goal, which was to keep breastfeeding and to ultimately stop my baby’s nursing strike.
When he showed that he was frustrated, I took him off and didn’t force:
There was nothing more that I wanted to do than smush his tiny little face into my boob and make him drink. But that is not realistic and definitely not going to happen. Instead, I would try to calm him down and offer the breast again. When that didn’t work, I would change his diaper, and then try again. If that didn’t work we would abandon ship and try again later…until then it was date time with the pump.
I gave him something to be distracted with:
As time went on, I tried to be crafty. You know, outsmart the little bugger. I would give him a small toy, get him interested and then tip him back. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it only worked momentarily, sometimes it was an epic fail. Different times, I needed different craftiness, I would say rhymes and use my fingers, or I would make really awkward facial expressions while talking to him. Literally, I tried everything to distract him. It was hit and miss with him.
I followed up with pumped breastmilk or formula:
Sure this might defeat the purpose of all of my efforts to have him nurse, but I refused to allow him to be hungry. So I made this decision. If this is not an option for you, who am I to say it is wrong. This worked for me, so this is what I did.
He needed time and kept being annoyingly persistent:
This is where the success happened. Sure it took 2 months, I could have easily thrown in the towel, but just like anything, consistency is key to success.
Feeling like I tried a million things, something just clicked in his head and he’s back, he’s nursing. With help from a lactation consultant, my own research and persistence, we did it. It was a long and at times; stressful two months but we’re back baby!!
I hope that some of the strategies my experience of how I stopped my baby’s nursing strike can help you and encourage you not to give up!
