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This is Parenthood After Loss

Michelle Valiukenas

5 minutes

05/24/2021

My gorgeous son is eight months old and is crawling around, pulling and grabbing at things, and giving his parents quite a workout every day. When he lets me sit for a minute, I will look at him and think how did this amazing little guy come into our lives? It often feels surreal that he came home with us and that we get to be his parents for the rest of his life. But, mostly, it feels amazing to see him grow, to see how he smiles when I blow him a kiss, how he is trying to get into mischief that his body currently prevents him from doing but soon will not, how he makes noises and sounds that show me that he will be a talker just like mom.

Then, just as easily as that overwhelming joy, peace, and calm washes over me, the drowning feeling of fear creeps in. What if he dies? What if I am missing signs that warn me he is not healthy? It probably seems a bit odd to get that fear so quickly, to think those things, but that is parenthood for you, or better said, that is parenthood after loss.

We lost our daughter Colette at nine days old in May 2018, a result of underdeveloped lungs due to being born more than 15 weeks early after a three week hospital stay for me due to severe preeclampsia and interuterine growth restriction, commonly known as IUGR. To say that it was a shock is an understatement. I went to a routine OB appointment at 21 weeks pregnant and after multiple readings, my blood pressure was 188/110. We were sent to the hospital’s labor and delivery where in a haze of things, I was told I was being admitted and then later found out that being admitted meant staying in the hospital until I delivered. Colette was born early and spent her short life in an incubator in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), where things changed rapidly not just day to day, but minute to minute.

The day that she died, I was so convinced that the doctors were wrong. I kept thinking, you do not know my child, she is stronger than any other baby, and she will pull through. Doctors tried to explain everything calmly and rationally to me and I understood what they were saying, but assumed they had it wrong. There was no way that she could die, right? Up until the very end, when she died in our arms, finally removed from the only home she would ever know, I kept imagining her stirring, her numbers shooting up out of nowhere and forcing the doctors to eat crow.

But, it never happened and along with Colette, the part of me that could relax and just let things happen naturally, died. I spent so much time in those first months (and hell even today) examining every part of the pregnancy—what did I do wrong, what decisions had led to this exact moment, what I could have done to save Colette. Today, I am happy to report that most of the time, I can live with the knowledge that yes, she died, but that nothing I did or could have done would have guaranteed a different outcome. Yet, there are so many times when I start my spiral of thinking of all the “mistakes” I made, all the different things that I got upset about that just did not matter, that if I had been better, I would have my daughter here with me, that my son would be able to see his big sister, and that I would not have known this immense grief.

This is parenthood. We all have the constant worry and panic that we are not doing things “right,” that our children are not doing what they are “supposed to” be doing, what milestones they need to accomplish, and our own baggage that surrounds our parenthood journey—for me, that is infertility, IUI’s, IVF, miscarriage, and then losing Colette; for others, it may be childhood trauma, postpartum mental health issues, traumatic births, and so on and so on.

Michelle's son

When it comes to my son, I worry constantly about his health, his safety, even more so because I cannot live in denial that babies sometimes die and often without much warning. I worry that I am not being a good enough mother, that there may be signs that I am missing, that talking about his sister will have detrimental impacts on his mental health, that because a piece of me is always with Colette, he will feel ignored or neglected, that he will wish he had another mom, a mom who did not have the same baggage as his does.

When these worries come to light, I am so thankful for my husband, the eternal optimist who reminds me that today, right now, in this moment, he is healthy and thriving. I am thankful for the fellow loss moms I am proud to call friends who understand the fears and worries and who are also managing to parent living children while also balancing the grief of their loss or losses and the multitude of emotions that come with that. And most of all, I am thankful for both of my children—Colette, my little girl, forever frozen at nine days old, who although tiny, showed so much spirit and drive and is my constant inspiration to continue doing the work to help other families; and Elliott, my little boy, who grows and grows, who I can see is healthy and active and thriving.

These amazing two kids are my greatest blessings and it has been and continues to be an honor to be their mom and I will keep working on trusting myself and my mom gut that protects them, whether here next to me or up in heaven. It may not seem like much, but it is what I have and what I will have to accept.

This is parenthood after loss.

Michelle and her son
Michelle and her son

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