What no one tells you about baby loss

There has been so much I have learned in the past almost two years with my three losses and with each one there is more to learn. Some of the learning is information, some of it is navigating feelings and emotions, and some of it has been about other people.

1. For starters, the baby loss community is huge. Like really huge. I know more people that have lost a baby one way or another than I do who haven't. A lot of people in the community refer to it as the shittiest club ever. There's a lot of us.

Through each of my losses people have shared their stories with me. People that I never knew were ever pregnant, people who have living children but have lost others, people who have had 5+ losses, miscarriages, stillborn, neonatal deaths; all of it. I have listened to and read so many other people's stories. Not enough people talk about this. I had no idea how many people this affects until it affected me. If I had heard all of these stories before my first pregnancy, I would have been more aware of how many people experience this and might not have had the "never me" attitude.

2. Postpartum depression does not spare you just because your baby died. After my first miscarriage and moving forward rather quickly, I had to grieve both of my miscarriages at once after the second one. I never grieved the first baby until I lost the second. This contributed to crippling anxiety and panic attacks for months.

Then, after Makenna was born, the first couple of days I felt good. She was doing about as well as could be expected and even though I had just gone through an extremely traumatic event, I felt okay. I kept thinking when are the panic attacks going to start again? When is it going to hit me what just happened? Well, it turns out the answer to those two questions were the minute we got the call that we needed to go to the nicu, I would not be okay from there on out.

Trevor is the whole reason I am still alive right now. And I do not say that lightly. He makes me get out of bed, he brings me food and makes sure I eat something, he brings me water, he forces me to go outside. I am currently almost 100% dependent on him because all I want to do is go to sleep and never wake up and I feel incredibly guilty about it.

3. After a traumatic event involving literal life and death, health anxiety develops. Prior to going to L&D that first night, I was the kind of person that really did not give a crap about my health. I mean, I was relatively healthy. I have a blanket IBS diagnosis and a couple of other little things that I had a meh I should get that checked but I'm probably fine kind of attitude. Nothing major. Well, now I'm constantly thinking I'm going to die or that Trevor is going to die or that one of my dogs are going to die or my parents or my in-laws or my brother. Every sneeze, every cough, every little thing and I can feel my heart stop for a second while I process and then talk myself down.

4.At some point you will feel every single feeling in a single minute multiple times a day. All of it. And it is so exhausting.

5. Doing anything is hard and it's hard to determine if that's the normal grief or the depression. Eating is hard. Getting out of bed is hard. Going to bed is hard. Getting dressed and showering is hard. Cleaning is impossible. Everything requires so much more energy than I ever realized and I just don't have it.

6. You won't want to be around people. You don't want people to bring it up but you also don't want people to forget. So, it's better to just not be around anyone and avoid that internal conflict all together.

7.You don't want to talk to anyone but also feel angry if someone doesn't check in. This one is hard to explain unless you've lived it. Avoiding phone calls becomes a skill and texting is way easier because you can easily choose who you respond to and who you don't. But you become acutely aware of how often people check in, you analyze everything they say when they do, and you're painfully aware of who has been silent.

8. Mom guilt still exists even if you don't have your baby physically with you. And it doesn't just stop there. Wife guilt, friend guilt, daughter guilt, guilt about house work, guilt about your job, guilt about the groceries and the lawn, guilt about being tired, guilt about your guilt. Losing your baby makes you feel an enormous amount of guilt that you didn't even know was possible.

9. Anger about things you didn't even know bothered you. Or, maybe they don't but they're easy things to yell about.

10. Therapy involving your baby's death is hard. There are many times that I left therapy feeling worse than when I went in. A therapy hangover if you will. But, it makes a difference.

There is no right or wrong way to grieve. There is nothing that anyone is going to say that is going to make you feel even a little better and healing does not come from any external factors. (Except therapy and meds if needed). These are all things that we know rationally, but when we are in the midst of a traumatic experience, none of these words matter. All we can think about is the loss of our baby. And that's okay.

It hasn't even been a month. I feel a lot of guilt about a lot of things but the one thing I don't feel guilty about is how hard my daughter's death has been for me. I will never apologize for my world crumbling when my baby died. I don't know how long it's going to take me to be okay. I don't know that I ever will be. A piece of me died with Makenna and that's something you can only understand if you lose a child.

I will never be the same person I was before any of my losses, but 3.5 days with Makenna has changed me in way I didn't know were possible.

Losing your child is not a traumatic event. An event ends. Your child dying is something you experience every single day for the rest of your life.