You round a corner and the lamp swings just so, and you catch a quick glimpse of something entirely magnificent, something that steals your breath. A tapestry, perhaps. Or a floor to ceiling stained glass window. You know, completely normal things you find in normal castles. Except that long ago all lights in this one were put out, and there is no fairy tale twist to reverse this curse.
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It was only in that moment, ten years later, that I figured out why I did it. Why I circled the NICU like an animal, fending off every other lens. It was for Ben, for his ballast. So that someday, he might attach Liam’s humanity back to him, like Peter Pan’s shadow, despite all the rest.
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All the time, babies are born perfect and alive without prenatal care, vitamins, heartbeat monitors, ultrasounds, and tests. By doing these things, we think we have some control, when we don’t. We just don’t. So when something goes wrong (the baby is formed with a heart defect; no kidneys; neural tube problem; the cord knots; the placenta tears away; the cervix gives out) ….what do we have?
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My friend shifted his weight and looked around the room. “Oh gosh, okay, wow. I’m so sorry. Oh, man. Yikes.” For days I thought about the exchange, and how badly I yearned to speak from the vantage point of a mother with a live child. No one had ever innocently asked me about my baby. Until I told this friend that Cora died, the dialogue was unfolding the way a typical one with a new mother should. It felt weird, wrong, wonderfully make-believe.
Read MoreBereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
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Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
: for one and all
: ttc | pregnancy | birth after loss
: not ttc | infertility after loss
: parenting after loss
: on the bookshelf
: how to stop lactation when there is no baby
: how to help a friend through babyloss
: how to plan a baby's funeral
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