LongLegsBigCity

A Letter For Maliyah

March 4, 2024 6 Comments

In the early days of my grief, I started to read a book called Saying Goodbye. It’s a 90-day support guide to walk you through baby loss and grief. On Day 11, the task of the day was to write a letter to the baby you lost. When I read that, I thought it was crazy. I could not imagine what I could write. She was gone. What else was there? She’d never read it, she’d never grow up, she’d never know. And I barely knew her. But the more I thought about it, the more all of those reasons seemed like reasons I needed to write the letter. I sat with it for a few months. More and more thoughts came to mind. I thought of memories of her, memories of us, memories of happy times. Sometimes, I feel that since I know the end of the story, it negates all of the pages before. But as I struggled to try to remember the days of hopes and dreams, I realized that there were times of happiness. I didn’t want to forget them. In June, I started to write.

Today, in honor of Maliyah’s first birthday, I want to remember the happy and hopeful times. Since I never posted on my blog about those exciting moments, I am going to share my letter.

Dear Maliyah,

I have so many things to say. I have a lifetime of things that I will never get to say to you while you’re physically with me. A lifetime of memories, both the ones I had before you, the ones I had with you, and the years of memories I will have after, but that you will always be a part of. I like to think you’ll hear/read/see this somehow, wherever you are, hanging out with all of your friends, hopefully having a lot more fun than we are in your absence.

Usually, in a eulogy, people talk about their memories they have of the person who died. When I first sat down to write this, I thought I had none. You never existed on your own, you were always part of me. But then I realized, I actually am fortunate, because I have every single memory you have. We were one. My memories of you are your memories too. For every second you existed, you and I were together. While I wish you grew up and had your own life and memories of your own, experiences, friendships, romantic partners, you will never have those things.

But during the time we were together, we had a lot of great memories. You were a world traveler. Your first place you visited was Sweden. I had no idea you were with me then, but your dad decided to be spontaneous and book a trip for the weekend. We ate meatballs and learned about the Nobel Prize. We saw Viking ships together, and danced and sang in the ABBA museum. The number one review of the ABBA museum said not to go alone, but I didn’t care, I went anyway. I thought I was there alone, but it turns out I wasn’t.

A few weeks later, after I knew you and I were on this ride together, we went to Australia. Together, we saw koalas and wild kangaroos, we watched as wombats came out at dusk. We saw the Sydney Opera House. We walked over the Sydney Harbor Bridge. We jumped out of a plane together. I wonder what you thought of that. Were you as nervous as me? Did you laugh when our tandem diver asked if we would have a beer after? I did. But you were still my little secret then, so I chuckled to myself. We were partners in crime. Together, we saw the Great Barrier Reef, one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. I remember feeling like I was The Little Mermaid, truly part of the ocean world. I wonder now if that’s how you felt about me, part of my world. Did you know that you would be part of my world forever?

We went all over the United States together too. We were in Los Angeles, we were in St. Louis, we were in Philadelphia, we were in Atlanta, and we were in Fort Lauderdale. You met coworkers, friends, family, and so many strangers. In all of those new places, I wondered if you would be friendly and extroverted like me, or thoughtful and intellectual like your dad.

At first, you were my little secret. I sent a photo of the pregnancy test to my friend. Those two lines were the first proof I had of your existence. But even before that, I had a feeling. I knew something was different and that’s why I took the test. Something changed in me, and I knew it would be changed forever. People say that when you are pregnant, your DNA makeup literally changes. I know my spirit has definitely changed, and maybe my physical composition has, too.

Slowly, I started telling people about you. I had more partners in crime, a friend who drank my wine at a birthday dinner so people wouldn’t notice. She ordered us a gin and tonic (hold the gin) during the Halloween pub crawl. Most of my friends had no idea you were hanging out with us during all of the important events of the fall. You were there at Halloween, while we watched the marathon, at the Macy’s Parade, during Christmas. I am usually a pretty good secret-keeper, but it was SO hard keeping you a secret.

I took pictures of us, but I didn’t post them. You and I had our own little world no one knew about. At the Macy’s Parade, there was a first-time balloon of a dinosaur and their kid little dinosaur. I had my sister take a picture of me and you, with the family of dinosaurs behind us. We took pictures at Christmas where your dad and I tried to make a heart at my belly. Right where you were. We were so excited for the next year to add a third to our matching pajamas tradition. I remember on Christmas Day I sat at the table and ordered us matching sets for 2024. And then at my friend’s wedding in Florida, when my best friend was pregnant too, I took a picture of the four of us. It would be the only time we all got to meet.

I wish I had real or mental pictures of you growing up and meeting and playing with my friends, laughing at their funny faces when you were a baby, or laughing at our old clubbing stories and rolling your eyes at us when you were a teenager and far too cool for us. The only memories I have of you and my friends are when they found out about you. I remember their excitement. I remember how they said they couldn’t wait to meet you. They bought you gifts and checked in on me (and you) often. I remember them thinking about how you would look and act, a combination of your dad’s big eyes, and my super tall self. I remember them joking about how some kids are no-screen kids, but you’d be an all-screen kid with a baby iPad because your dad lovesss his electronics so much.

I remember hating women who used to touch their bellies all the time, but it was so exciting to know you were in there. I refused to be “one of those people” in public, but I remember always feeling my stomach in the shower, making sure you were still safe in there, happy to be with your mom. I remember when I started to feel your kicks. It was really late in the pregnancy, and my doctor told me it was because of how you were positioned in my body. I only felt you moving around for a couple of short weeks. In hindsight, I think it was you protecting my heart. You knew that if I felt your presence for too long, it would be even more difficult to let go. I remember laying in bed at night feeling you dancing around, and putting my hand on my stomach to see if I could feel you from the outside and show your dad. Unfortunately, I never could. He never could. That used to make me sad, but now I prefer to think of you knowing, protecting his heart, helping him heal for the future. He never knew what he was missing.

Speaking of your dad, I remember the day I broke the news to him that you existed. It was his birthday. He loves when I write him little poems, and I used to write them all the time when we first were dating. I thought a perfect full-circle moment would be to write him a poem to tell him about you. I remember sitting across from him at dinner as he read the card. At first, he was confused, and then he was so excited that he cried. I remember him saying you were the greatest birthday present he could ever receive in his life. I remember the big hug he gave us. You should know your dad does not show emotion often, and definitely not in public. But your existence brought him to tears right there in the restaurant. Even while you were in my body, you had that huge power. You will always be that to me, the best gift ever.

I wish I could explain to the world how special you are. I wish I could tell them your favorite books, your favorite foods, your likes and dislikes. I wish I knew. The only thing I know is that you were in the safest place your whole existence. I was recently reading a text where someone signed it ILY. I Love You. I realized those letters are in both your name and my name. It was unintentional, but now that I know, it feels intentional. You had no enemies. Everyone who knew you, loved you. They loved the idea of you, they loved their hopes for you, and they will love you forever. Especially me.

Love,

Your mom

Last minute trip to Sweden, tiny little kanelbullar in the oven and we didn’t know!

Big City Living

Koala in NYC

January 17, 2024 2 Comments

The best part about living in New York City is that everyone always visits. There’s no need to travel to see friends, because friends always want to come to see you! New York is the best city in the USA (not biased at all), and there is so much to do.

However, the worst part about living in New York City is ALSO that everyone always visits. If you think it’s exhausting living in the most populated and dense city in the world, navigating without a car, dealing with constant weather changes and no changes of clothes etc., imagine that PLUS showing people around and walking through Times Square. Blegh. My favorite is when someone asks if I’ll be meeting them at the airport. HAHAHHAH No. I will not. What would I do anyway? I can’t go to the gate and I don’t have a car. I will be in my living room waiting for your Uber to arrive.

Anyway, as I mentioned, the complicated part of every tourist’s first NYC visit is that they always want to see and do the same things. Times Square. Freedom Tower. 9-11 Memorial. Top of the Rock. The high line. Broadway shows. The Met. MOMA. The New York Public Library (Carrie was supposed to get married there, you know!). Central Park. 5^th Avenue. And don’t get me started on tourists wanting to go to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. I generally advise that it’s a full-day activity and I will meet them when they get back for a late dinner.

I know I sound like a complete B, but it’s very difficult to have tourists in town, when every tourist wants to see the same things that you’ve seen 100 times.

But what happens when the New York visitor used to live in New York, has already done all the things and been all the places, knows how to navigate the subway alone, and doesn’t actually need you to act as a tour guide? Well then, you have fun. And that’s exactly what I have been doing for the past two weeks.

I’m very lucky to have a BFF who lives halfway around the world in Australia, and I’m even luckier that she visits often and we see each other in 3D almost every year.

I met Katherine from Craig’s List, which is where all great friendships begin. (I don’t think I need to tell y’all that is sarcasm, but please do not go searching for new friends on Craig’s List, that is actually how all true crime Netflix documentaries begin, not friendships.) It is, however, how our friendship began. It was March 2014, and I was living in a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment that we had broken into 4 bedrooms. We were searching for a lucky 4^th roommate to join our home. I was living an EXTREMELY miserable life as an attorney, and I was hoping our next roommate would be a fun addition to our crew. Kat showed up to our living room for an interview and we loved her immediately. Her accent, her cleanliness, and did I mention her accent? She had just graduated college and was in New York for a year, looking to explore all of the arts and culture that it had to offer.

The rest is history. She became an integral part of my friends group, and we showed her all of the American things she needed to know, like how cold it gets at Christmas at this latitude (she carried a Christmas tree home from a street vendor with me), and how even though we don’t know much about soccer, we still will drink excessively if the US is playing in the World Cup. We also introduced her to her first Bloomin’ Onion, which, curiously, they do not actually have in Australia. Who knew?

Christmas in Winter, a new concept for an Aussie!

Even though she moved back to Australia in 2015, she came back to visit in the summer of 2016, 2017, 2018 AND 2019. Then she came back to the US for her glorious post-Covid return in 2022, once Australia allowed their citizens to leave again, and she came to Mexico for my wedding. I was so honored to have her there, and I knew I HAD to go to Australia. I had been talking about it for years. Finally, in fall of 2022, I went to visit. We spent two weeks together and had a blast.

Then, 3 weeks ago, she came back to New York. So, what does a person show a “visitor” when she’s seen all the things? Well, as it turns out, mostly restaurants.

A few weeks before Kat’s arrival in the big apple, she sent me her notes app with a full list of 30+ restaurants she wanted to hit. The timing was perfect because the first week she was in New York, I only had two days of work. This left plenty of time for eating. My friends all mobilized because it’s not every day that a person from 10,000 miles away visits! We had a friend fly in from Florida for 5 days, a friend from south Jersey come in for two days, and a friend who was away in Florida for Christmas flew back early to spend time with Kat.

We ate a LOT. We went to Parm. We went to Papaya Dog. She got Halal Guys. We had happy hour at a Mexican place. We had brunch at Bubby’s. We had another brunch at Maison Pickle. We had gelato at Anita. We went to JG Melon’s. We took her to Raising Cane’s for the first time. We went to a HUGE family-style dinner at Carmine’s. We had the special Upper West Side flavor at Ample Hills ice cream (Night at the Museum).

Speaking of museums, visiting museums is her truly favorite activity in New York, but since I don’t love/understand art, I mostly let her get her art fill while I worked. However, she did persuade me to go to the Jewish Museum, which I had never been to before. My mom drove in from Philadelphia for a day visit to see Katherine, and we started the day with bagels, as any good Jew crew does before visiting the Jewish Museum. There was a very interesting exhibit on of photographs of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s collars. Also, there was a beautiful fashion exhibit of Gaby Aghion and the house of Chloe.

First time at Cane’s! The live DJ really is the pièce de résistance.

Besides eating and one museum, we also went to see two Broadway shows. The first week, we went to see Gutenberg!, which was absolutely hysterical. We laughed out loud the entire time. While it considers itself a musical, and there are a lot of songs, I wouldn’t say the music was memorable. The comedy, however, was amazing. Also, the entire show was done by the two main actors: Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells. There were literally 0 other people in the show. The only exception was that 10 minutes before the end, there is a guest star every night, and it is always a surprise. The night we went, it was Billy Crystal and people were agog. It was such a fun addition.

For the entire next week, I entered the lottery to see at least 7 different shows every day, and eventually, I won! I ended up winning tickets to see Kimberly Akimbo, which we both had heard amazing things about, but knew absolutely nothing of the plot. When you win lottery seats, you never know where they will be in the theater, and since the tickets are $40/piece, you get what you get, and you don’t get upset. Well, our seats were in the front row. FRONT! Row AA. This was only the second time this happened to me, the other was when I saw Frozen in February 2020. It was a bit annoying craning our heads, but we could see every actor’s facial expressions and it made the experience even more unique and exciting.

We loved Kimberly Akimbo. It was very different from Gutenberg! still funny, but also heartwarming, and cute, and I may have even cried once, what else is new!? I highly recommend it.

Besides Broadway and food, we did a lot of walking around the city, through Central Park, up Riverside Park, through and around Little Island, and into shops in Tribeca. We also did a lot of hanging out with big groups of friends. It was a huge change of pace, given that I was mostly a hermit recluse for the entirety of 2023. Who knew that all it took for me to leave my couch was a friend who traveled across the world. She even got me to stay out on New Year’s Eve until 2 am! I later learned that she was out until 5 am, including a late-night Taco Bell run, but I was impressed with myself for my 2 am bedtime.

I don’t know yet when I’ll see her next, but she’s always welcome to come back to New York, especially because she doesn’t ask me to go to the top of the Empire State Building!

Grief and Pregnancy Loss

Proud of Myself 2023 – Surviving Not Thriving

January 4, 2024 4 Comments

I’m doing things a little backward this year. Usually, I spend my first post of the year talking about goals. I’ve never been much of a “resolution” gal, I’ve liked to reframe as “goals” instead. I talked about this wayyyy back in 2017. Then in 2018 I posted my top goals, and again I did that in 2019. Then the world fell apart, both for everything, and for myself.

This year, I am throwing my goals in the trash. Goals are for people with certain futures, or people who want to plan. Me, I’m just trying to get through the day.

So while most people are future-tripping through 2024 on day 4 of the year, instead, I want to pay homage to myself, and to the 365 days of 2023 I endured. I’m proud of myself. Let’s be clear, I wasn’t proud of myself every day. Many days where I cried 4 times before noon and couldn’t scrape myself out of the corner of my U-shaped couch I never would have said, “yes, I’m proud of me.” But now, in retrospect, I think I have things to recognize. Since this is a personal blog, I’m going to make y’all recognize ME with ME.

So, here are some things I’m proud of myself for in 2023:

I’m proud of myself for surviving. I did it. I got through. Some days I wished I hadn’t. It would have been way easier if a bus somehow made it to the 3^rd floor of my apartment building and drove through the window, but that didn’t happen, and I’m still here.

I’m proud of myself for remaining married. Relationships are hard in the easiest of times. Relationships are even harder in extremely rough times. Some studies say 80% of marriages end after child loss, some studies say 16%. I must admit, I didn’t fact check these, and they are clearly wildly different statistics. That said, I know it’s hard. No two people grieve a loss in the same way, and in the case of a baby who was carried and birthed by only one of the spouses, it makes sense that their experiences would be extremely different. The experience of grief is a lonely one, and when you feel like you’re the only person in the relationship experiencing it in a specific way, it’s even more lonely. In 2023, I was not the perfect spouse, not even close. But I tried. I set up a special surprise for our anniversary. I suggested a trip as a belated birthday gift. I tried to leave the house for a date night here and there, even when it was the last thing I wanted to do because I hated people and the outside. And somehow, through communication and a lot of Chris listening to me cry, we have weathered part 1 of the storm. There’s still a long way to go (like… forever), but I’m proud we made it through months 1-10.

I’m proud of myself for reading. I love to read. It never occurred to me the concentration it takes to sit down, get out of one’s own head, and enter another space for a period of time. When I first left the hospital, I thought I’d never read again. I took the book Someone Else’s Shoes out from the library in mid-February, and usually I’d finish it in a week. I brought it to the hospital with me when I thought I was going for a routine check, and that I’d have to kill time in the waiting room for a while. But I was immediately whisked into triage, and then didn’t pick up that book again for a month. I got a few late notices from the library. But eventually, I picked up reading again, and somehow I got through 36 books in 2023. For me, that’s not any sort of record, but I’m still proud.

I’m proud of myself for remaining active. I love to move my body. I like to feel strong and accomplished. But most of 2023, I wanted to move into a closet and live in darkness. But I didn’t. Somehow, I walked 4,319,734 steps. You read that right, I walked 4.3 MILLION steps. The only month I didn’t average over 10,000 steps/day was March, when I was in the hospital. And that month, I averaged 8,705 steps/day. I went to 116 classes at Orangetheory and I got 2,376 splat points, despite being pregnant for a few months of the year AND not being allowed to go for 6 weeks. I am proud of myself for prioritizing my health, even when my brain was screaming not to.

I’m proud of myself for keeping my friendships (although changed, and not all credit goes to me). I truly can’t believe I have any friends left. I tried my hardest, really, to keep up with my friendships. I tried to text back, I tried to recognize birthdays, send baby gifts, I tried to peel myself off the couch to go out on coffee dates. I was sometimes successful. Sometimes I was not. But somehow, I haven’t lost any friends in the last 10 months. Credit does not all go to me, except maybe in that I choose amazing friends. But a lot of credit goes to them. For checking in periodically, for offering alternative 1:1 plans when they knew a birthday brunch was just not going to happen, for Amazon-ing me 5-pound bags of gummy bears to keep me afloat. I have an amazing group of friends and I don’t take that for granted. I’m proud of me for trying my hardest, but even more, I’m proud of them for accepting my not-as-great-as-usual friendship.

I’m proud of myself for doing “the work.” I tried my damndest to “get better.” It has not been easy. Also, I’m not sure if it “worked,” but it’s not for lack of trying. I exhausted so many avenues. I had a peer counselor. I tried three therapists. I tried EMDR. I tried two different support groups online, multiple times. I tried a yoga class and art workshop. I tried a writing workshop. I reached out to random loss moms on the internet. I went to coffee and breakfast and happy hour with local loss moms. I joined Facebook groups (back when I was on Facebook). I followed innumerable Instagram accounts. I listened to hours and hours and hours of podcasts. I wrote many blogs. I kept a journal. It’s hard to say whether any of it “worked,” but I knew I needed support, and I sought it out. I’m proud of myself for that.

I’m proud of myself for trying to figure out and take care of my physical health. Unfortunately, this wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Sitting in the uncomfortable uncertainty has taken an extreme amount of patience (and tears). I found out this year that just because you want answers does not mean you will get them. Just because you are seeing the best doctors in the country, they may not be able to solve or explain everything happening in my body. There is still a lot that is a mystery. But I didn’t give up, and I have continued to seek answers. I followed doctors’ orders, I took all of the medications they suggested, I had all of the blood tests (and there were a LOT) and ultrasounds and I took my blood pressure every single day. These things may seem simple or easy, but when you endured severe trauma, even taking a medication twice daily that reminds you of that trauma is difficult. But I did it (and I still do it) and I am proud of myself for that.

I’m proud of myself for keeping my job (even being good at it?) This floors me. There were days I forgot the entirety of the work day. Like I had meetings and 1:1s, I went to conferences, I had work trips, I moved projects forward. And yet, I don’t remember a majority of the year. It’s almost as if I dissociated. I still have a job, and I often get positive feedback. This seems like a strange miracle? I guess I am a compartmentalizer extraordinaire, but I have somehow kept my job, continued to go day after day, and somehow I have been successful at that. While I’m flummoxed, I’m also proud.

I’m proud of myself for still doing my nails. This one is lighter, but equally as important. Somehow, I continued to have a hobby. This one for sure was part of my “fake it ‘til you make it” plan. On March 5^th, I was discharged from the hospital, and on March 10^th, I decided I needed to do my nails. I have completely fallen off posting them on my nailstagram (@manisinmanhattan) but my nails were done almost all of 2023. I am proud that I tried to have/feign interest in something (while not really caring at all about anything).

I’m proud of myself for having my most successful year for my side hustle, Braid in Manhattan. Again, if you’re surprised, I’m even more surprised. I talked a bit about this in my post about Burning Man Braids, but somehow despite my extreme grief, dissociation and disinterest in life in general, I managed to have the most successful year to date in my business. I somehow braided over 100 girls’ hair while thinking about my dead daughter and the hair I’ll never braid. I somehow did hair for birthday parties thinking of the ones my daughter will never have, for family portraits of mothers and daughters that I’ll never take, and for Hanukkah parties of which I had no child to bring. I truly don’t know how I did it without crying in front of a single client (many tears after), but I am proud of all of that.

Finally, I am proud that I tried to find joy. I tried and tried and tried. I met up with friends. I went on walks. I did things I used to love. I traveled. I spent time with my husband. I did crafts. I went to the beach. I saw family. I tried. I can’t honestly say I was successful most of the time, because joy was excruciatingly hard to find, but it didn’t stop me from trying over and over again. I think there’s some pride to be had in the process, despite the mostly failing results.

2023 was not the year to start new things. It was a year to survive, not thrive. It was a year to persist and get through. It was trials and tribulations, not resolutions or celebrations. With all of that in mind, when I reflect, I think I did a damn good job. I’m not going to say, “this year will be even better!” because maybe it won’t. I don’t plan or even opine about things like that anymore. But at the end of this year, maybe I’ll reflect again and be pleasantly surprised. We shall see.

Most of my year, glued to the corner of my couch

Grief and Pregnancy Loss

Signs, Sealed, Delivered

December 24, 2023 2 Comments

(If you missed Part 1 or Part 2, start there!)

In my continuing quest for signs and strange things, out-of-the-ordinary occurrences started to stick out to me. In September, I was working from home when something bright blue caught my attention outside the window. I got up and walked toward it. It was a blue jay, sitting in the tree outside my window. Not only are there not usually blue jays in New York City, but there are rarely birds at all in our courtyard area between buildings. I kept watching as the blue jay flew around, landed back on the tree, flew around, landed again. I thought it was weird, but beautiful. I didn’t think anything else of it.

In late October, I started following a girl named Payal on Instagram. She’s a loss mom who loves to read, and she and I have similar taste in books. I was scrolling through her page when I realized that she also hosted a book club. I was intrigued. I went to the first meeting on Zoom and met 5 other loss-mom-readers from across the country. We all started following each other on Instagram. One of them, Carolyn, had twin girls, Camryn and Keeley, who died 7 weeks after Maliyah. Carolyn and I were DMing each other one day about different things we have to commemorate our girls, and she mentioned that she has blue jays on her desk, because she planted a tree for her girls and she used to always see blue jays in the tree when she first planted it. Of course, I had to tell her about the errant blue jay that hung out at my window the month prior. At the time, I had assumed it was something related to global warming, but it sure was strange to meet a loss mom 4 weeks later and have her tell me, completely unprompted, about her blue jays in a tree. Was it a sign? I wasn’t convinced, but it did seem like an odd coincidence.

Shortly thereafter, I decided to join an ornament exchange for the holiday season. As soon as I saw a post about the exchange on Instagram, I knew it was the perfect solution to my problem. You see, I wanted to celebrate Maliyah’s first Christmas, but I also couldn’t bring myself to buy her an ornament, it was just too damn sad. The perfect solution was to buy one for another loss mom’s baby, and then have someone else buy one for me/Maliyah. Enter: JJ’s ornament exchange. I filled out my Google form, and I was on my way.

Two weeks later, I received my assignment. Imagine my surprise when of ALL the people in the world (or, in the loss-mom-world), I was assigned Payal, the mom who started the book club where I met Carolyn! Even stranger, I had just had a conversation with Payal the day prior in the DMs. The DMs are filllledddd with loss moms talking to each other. I later asked how many people participated in the ornament exchange and learned it was more than 370 people. Woah.

I took my ornament-exchange responsibility extremely seriously. I knew that I wanted whoever was assigned to me to take their job seriously as well. I read the google form from Payal about 20 times. I started searching high and low on the internet, mostly on Etsy. I knew I wanted something fun for a kid, something meaningful, and something personalized. I had about 15 tabs open on my computer with different Etsy sellers, and I finally decided on one because the seller looked like she would hand-paint and personalize it.

I know this may surprise you readers because I share so openly here, but I’m not usually one to share my story with strangers, colleagues, or acquaintances. In this specific case, it was important to me that this ornament was done correctly, so I laid my cards on the table. I messaged the Etsy seller and I explained about the loss-mom ornament exchange and why it was so important. I told her I was a loss mom myself, and it was really imperative that this was special, so I asked if she’d be able to personalize the ornament. I remember sending the message and feeling unsettled. I felt it was an overshare, but I tried to tell myself, “what’s the worst that could happen?”

What happened next, I never could have predicted. I received a long message back, and she said, “First of all, I am very sorry for your loss. I lost my daughter as well. She was 16. It’s a heartbreak, unmatched.”

OMG. I immediately burst into tears. I couldn’t believe my luck/unluck. To find another loss mom… out of the 15 Etsy sellers I was choosing between. She wrote on to say that she would come up with something special for me, and if I wasn’t happy with it, I could send it back for a complete refund. I wrote back and told her I 100% trusted her judgment, and that I addressed the ornament directly to Payal’s son Zion because I truly knew she would come up with something awesome. She did, and Payal loved them (she ended up making her two ornaments, one for Zion and one for her other losses). Meanwhile, I’ve kept in touch with the Etsy seller; I wrote her a message on Thanksgiving to let her know I was thinking of her, and I plan to do the same on Christmas. Holidays are HARD and I always appreciate the extra love, I assumed she would, too. Again, I’m not sure if my choice of Etsy seller was Maliyah’s doing, but it did seem strange.

I love how she put this little ice cream cone on for Zion!

The next coincidence/sign was simply about the addressing of my ornament. As I mentioned, I had it addressed directly to Zion. I was a little nervous about this, because people have different opinions about receiving mail with their dead child’s name. I was hoping Payal would like it. The day after I ordered the ornament, she posted on her Instagram stories that she had ordered a drink at Starbucks with his name, simply because she likes hearing it sometimes and loves seeing it written. I replied to her Instagram story to say I was so glad she posted that because I addressed her ornament to him! She replied that she was so glad I did, because it’s rare for her to see and hear it.

I wrote back, “that’s kind of ironic, because I hear his name all the time since it’s my nephew’s name!” She was STUNNED. At this point we had been chatting on Instagram for about 8 weeks. She said, “WAIT WHAT?! You have a nephew named Zion?! How am I just hearing this?” She went on to say she had never met anyone with that name ever in her life. I thought back and realized I intentionally hadn’t shared that tidbit. I was wary to say, “your son is dead, but guess what, my very-alive-nephew has the same name!” I wasn’t sure how it would be received. Well, I was wrong. Payal was happy, shocked, and in awe. She took it as a sign from her Zion that I, with a nephew also named Zion, would be connected with her randomly by Instagram and then assigned to her as an ornament-buddy. When I started thinking about it more, I also thought it was stranger than I originally had thought – I, too, didn’t know a single other Zion. Also, it turns out they live 30 minutes away from each other. Another coincidence. Or sign.

The ornament I received from the ornament exchange didn’t bring any additional signs with it, although it is absolutely beautiful, and I plan to hang it up every year forever.

But don’t fret, unbeknownst to me, more ornament-themed signs were coming.

A week after the Etsy-seller signstravaganza, my friend Danielle asked me to go on a walk. Nothing was abnormal about that, we love going on walks and I often try to get 45 minutes away from my computer screen midday. This particular day, Danielle had a gift for me. She had asked in advance if I’d like something for Maliyah, because she wanted to buy it but also didn’t want to presume. Considering the fact that I thought Maliyah would be live in the flesh with me this holiday season, but is far from it, I told my friend that yes, I’d love to include her any way I could.

I did not know how meaningful her gift would be. I also didn’t know it would leave me with tears streaming/freezing down my face in the middle of the afternoon as I stood on the street corner under some scaffolding. She, too, got me an ornament, and first of all, it is GORGEOUS. It’s a snowflake, with rhinestones and sparkles. I said, “it’s so sparkly!” and Danielle said, “just like her momma.” It has a silver disk attached to it, on one side it has Maliyah’s name, birthday, and time of birth, and on the other it says, “Beloved and Bitter,” which is what her name means. I was a complete mess.

But then she had a little speech. She wanted to explain why she chose a snowflake. She said that just like every snowflake is different, every baby is different, too. She knows that we still want a living baby someday, but she also knows that it won’t ever erase Maliyah from our minds and hearts. She also said that some people think of snowflakes as “kisses from heaven.” I hadn’t heard of that before, but I loved the idea. I told her that I had just seen a statistic that it hadn’t snowed more than an inch in New York for more than 630 days, a record! I also had read that it was supposed to be a big year for snow, so maybe I’d have lots of kisses from heaven. Again, I’m not necessarily on board with the whole “heaven” thing, but it’s a nice thing to think about.

I tried to dry my tears on my sleeve so we could continue on our walk, and we headed toward Central Park. About 5 minutes after entering the park, we started noticing something falling. We both assumed it was leaves, after all, it was pretty warm and it was still November. But soon enough, we started seeing other people doing the same thing we were doing, looking around, looking up, looking at their sleeves… it was snow. The very first flurries of the season. I made us take a quick break from our walk for a selfie. It was not heavy snow, so you can’t tell from the photo, but we know it was snowing, and that’s what matters.

It’s hard not to believe there is meaning in that moment. Do I believe it’s a sign from Maliyah every single time it snows anywhere in the world? No, probably not, that’s too broad of an assumption for me. But do I believe that 10 minutes after I received a snowflake gift and learned about the “kisses from heaven” meaning, that a random first snow of the season, on a warm day in November in the exact same city where I am taking a walk with the friend who gave me the gift is a sign from Maliyah? Maybe.

Holidays are hard. Losing people you love is hard. If believing they are still around, trying to help you power through is helpful, then I say LFG. I’m in. I still haven’t figured out what Maliyah might be sending me to help me through, but I’m going to continue to look. I’m not sure if I’ll be “asking” for help to see signs, but I will be keeping my eyes, ears, and DMs open for anything to help me get to 2024.

Selfie in the Flurries. How many people in this picture? Depends if you count Maliyah.

Grief and Pregnancy Loss

I Saw the Sign… or Did I?

December 21, 2023 3 Comments

(If you missed Part 1, start there!)

Some people see signs everywhere. In fact, I was guilty of this at first. I was looking for something or anything to believe in. As with my superstitious underwear, my first believed “sign” was the most cliché of all: 4:44 on the clock. I swear, every time I looked at a clock or my phone, it said 4:44. Except then I realized no, sometimes it was 3:33 or 11:11 or 8:88 (kidding) and I said to myself, “close enough!” But it wasn’t close enough, and the reality is, those first few weeks sitting at home, staring into space, spiraling in my own thoughts, I was looking at the clock a LOT. You know the saying, “a broken watch reads the right time twice a day?” Well, EVERY watch reads 4:44 or 5:55 or 3:33 twice a day. And the more you look, the better the chances are that you see it.

I decided to throw that sign in the trash. But I still see it all the time (and notice it!) Just yesterday I glanced at my phone and look what I saw. I took a screen shot.

Despite throwing out that sign, I did start to look for more particular things. Of course, you never know what the signs will be, so I just started to look for anything out of the ordinary. Now, living in New York, out of the ordinary is ordinary. Just last Friday I saw a man’s full butt hole 3 times before 10 am. NOT a sign.

I decided to keep my heart open to the possibility of signs, and my eyes open (to things besides butts). Sure enough, I started to notice very strange coincidences.

I love music. So it makes sense that when I think about things, a song always comes to mind. In this case, as this post is so aptly-titled, I started to think of the 1992 Ace of Base CLASSIC: I Saw the Sign. It played over in my head often. “I saw the sign, And it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign, Life is demanding without understanding…”

In August, Chris and I decided to go on a staycation to a hotel in downtown Manhattan. I was feeling sad (as usual) and lonely (as usual) so he wanted us to do something different and special. We checked into our room, put on comfy robes, and got into bed to watch a movie on Netflix. But first, for some strange reason Chris decided to turn on the radio. This was not a normal thing we did in hotels, so in hindsight, it made this even stranger. The radio came on, and it happened to be right at the beginning of a song. It started blasting Ace of Base. Not “I Saw the Sign,” another one of their classics: All That She Wants. For those of you who don’t know the song, or maybe haven’t heard it since its heyday in 1992, I’ll refresh your memory. The lyrics begin, “she leads a lonely life” twice over. I chuckled at this because… spot-on. You know how certain songs, you don’t know the lyrics, or you think you forgot them, but the second they come on, you remember every single word? Well, that’s what happened with this song. And imagine my surprise when “all that she wants is another baby” came through the speakers. Yep, totally forgot that those were the lyrics of the chorus. Now, in the song, she is talking about a romantic-suitor-baby, not a cry-all-night-sh*t-their-diaper-baby, but still. I thought that was pretty dang weird because we never listen to the radio, the song is nowhere near current, I had been thinking about Ace of Base constantly, and of course, I completely forgot those lyrics.

Months later, I published a blog called “My Own Worst Enemy” about having a panic attack and annoying swirling thoughts. Again, that blog was titled after a song with the same title by Lit (1999, I miss the 90’s, ok?). The week after I published that blog, I was at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving, and I took my mom’s car to meet a fellow loss mom for breakfast. I was having a tough weekend because another fellow loss mom had posted on Instagram that she was 28 weeks pregnant, and I just felt so far behind.

I never drive, because, NYC, but the main thing I miss about being in my own car is blasting the radio. It was Thanksgiving weekend, which meant one thing: Christmas carols! But for some strange reason, I scanned all of the stations and I couldn’t find anything Christmas! I was upset and I settled on an “80’s, 90’s and today station.” The second song that came on was, “My Own Worst Enemy,” the song from my blog that week. I thought to myself, “that’s weird.” but I didn’t think too much into it because it did fit into the theme of the station. Then, the song ended, and the very next song was “All That She Wants” by Ace of Base. Weird. Was it Maliyah? I’m not sure. But it sure was a STRANGE coincidence to hear those two songs in a row.

Now it’s been 3 weeks and I haven’t heard that song again since, but you can bet that I am listening for it everywhere.

While Thanksgiving weekend and the radio were giving me some pretty strong signals, I didn’t know that a few other signs and connections were already in motion. More on that later this week!

Grief and Pregnancy Loss

Lord Give Me a Sign

December 18, 2023 5 Comments

The title of this post is a lyric from DMX, not a quote from me, but it’s topical. This week, I’m doing something a little bit different. I’ve wanted to write about signs for a long time, which means I have collected a LOT of thoughts. That also means that when I wrote this post, it ended up being far too long! Instead of posting it at once, I’m breaking it into three parts as we lead up to the end of the year.

Especially around Christmastime and New Year’s Eve, people tend to search for signs, miracles, or any indicator that “2024 will be their year.” In the spirit of all of those things, I give you installment #1.

I’ve heard people talk about “signs” from loved ones for a long time. The first time I remember truly thinking about them and believing in them was when my best friend’s dad died. I knew Stan well, both from my friend’s stories and because I had been on family vacations with them. When I was visiting Florida soon after he got sick, I went to visit my friend’s parents to hang out, even though my friend was back in New York. Her mom is a talker and she kept chatting with me and I remember him saying “Karen, stop it, she’s here to see ME!” We all laughed at that, but he was a character, and his outburst was completely predictable and on-brand. I had known him for 11 years when he died, and I was really sad for my friend when he was gone. But there was a sense that he was still around, and that he LOVED when we were hanging out together. It seemed like he was always looking out for us, and when my friend and I would do activities or travel, everything seemed to work out.

For example, we went on a trip to Costa Rica, and she had arrived a few days before me. The drive from where she was to pick me up from the airport was treacherous, and we later found out that the entire road was closed just days prior. But that day, it was open, and she picked me up with no problem. Later on that same trip, we went on a hike to a waterfall and found out that it was extremely muddy. Our hotel manager that morning said “you have rain boots right?” We didn’t. We also couldn’t find the trail head. Eventually we parked on the side of the road and saw a small sign, which led to us trekking through a private resident’s backyard. We were a little hesitant, but then this little lemonade-stand-type thing appeared with someone offering rain boots for rent. What??? How strange! We grabbed two pairs, and we definitely ended up appreciating them! Things like this kept happening.

When we were planning the trip, we had really hoped to see a toucan. We knew they are native to Costa Rica, but they are also very rare to see because they dwell in rainforests, they sit at the top of trees, and they don’t tend to get close to humans. The 2^nd day in Costa Rica, we were sitting at the open-air restaurant for breakfast when our server heard something completely undetectable to us, and ran from our table to grab binoculars. Sure enough: a toucan. He told us to run over to him and look through his binoculars. It felt like we were spotting a unicorn. How crazy!! 5 days later, on the tail end of our trip (pun intended), it was Superbowl Sunday. We discovered a beach bar with TVs right by our second hotel and we decided to go there for the game. As we walked through the hotel parking lot to the beach, we heard a bird call. It was so close, we thought it couldn’t possibly be a toucan. Also, we were on the beach, pretty far from a rainforest. But there, perched on top of a tree in the parking lot was a toucan. My friend looked at me and just said, “Stan.” It had to be him, right? Like, how do you explain that?

Many years later on her honeymoon, she saw another toucan and sent me a photo. I couldn’t even believe she had service deep in the jungle of Belize! I said that, and she replied, “toucan Stan!”

Ever since our trip to Costa Rica, I’ve been a little more open to signs. For other people, that is. For me, I still can’t fully buy into it.

Here’s my main issue: thinking that there are dead people communicating to you through signs means that you think they are still out there somewhere. I’m not sure I believe that. I have a very fuzzy understanding of my own beliefs, but I’d say a rough outline is that I’m very far off from believing in a specific physical place like “hell” and “heaven” and definitely far off from believing there’s any sort of god-figure who is somehow meting out rewards and punishments.

However, since Maliyah died, I’ve been a little more open to thinking about “the universe” and the idea of karma. It’s still difficult, though, to see endless stories of tragedy and believe there’s some sort of justice involved. It feels completely unfair, and it’s almost better for my mental health to simply believe it’s all random. I do think there’s an extreme amount of solace in thinking someone is looking out for you, and everything is part of some long plan, and I often wish I was more religious for that reason, but that’s a whole different blog.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about signs a lot recently, so I asked my friend about how and why she believes in them. She isn’t too religious (probably more than me but that isn’t hard!). First of all, she said her mom believes everything is a sign! Even pennies on the ground are signs to her mom, so she was raised to look for them (the signs, not the pennies… well, maybe both). Second of all, she said that the alternative was that there are no signs, and that believing that when people die, they are just GONE forever is too difficult. This resonated with me. The finality of it is too much. I definitely believe that a person’s body is not their person, which is why for me, cremation and having an urn was not important, but it’s nice to believe that a person’s spirit still exists.

You may have heard me say, “I hope Maliyah is out there somewhere, having a whole lot more fun than I am.” But what does “out there” mean, and how can I be sure? I have listened to some podcasts about signs, and they always say you have to “ask for them.” My issue with that is… if I don’t believe in jack sh*t, then who am I asking?? I have been going back and forth about this all year, but even without asking, I have experienced some pretty strange stuff.

Part II about that coming later this week!

Grief and Pregnancy Loss

Anticipatory Anxiety

December 7, 2023 3 Comments

There’s a lot of talk about anticipatory grief, when you know someone is going to die, and you grieve the loss before they are even gone. There is not as much talk about anticipatory anxiety. Maybe that’s because it’s just called “anxiety.” But this is a very specific type of anxiety, where you DREAD an upcoming day or event. What I’ve found, though, is that I have this impending dread for weeks and then, surprise, those days or events turn out to be not as bad as I made them out to be in my mind.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the weeks after Thanksgiving.

Leading up to Thanksgiving, I was a mess. I was worried about everything. I thought I’d break down at the Parade and cause a scene in front of 4-year-olds on the sidewalk at 6 am. I thought everyone would ask “where’s Emily?” and assume I was in a corner crying in a ball, when I turned down my sister’s invitation to her Thanksgiving dinner. I worried for WEEKS about if my parents would go around the table and ask us to say what we were thankful for.

I thought about that last one for weeks. I talked about it with my therapists. I listened to podcasts about boundaries. I discussed it with Chris. I really wanted to ask my parents in advance NOT to do this. Chris did not want me to ask them to opt out of the tradition. I imagined the worst-case scenario, where I was stuck at a table while everyone gloated about their amazing lives and then they got to me and I said, “my baby died and I’m thankful for nothing.” I thought about just getting up from the table and crying in the bathroom. I thought about what people would say when/if I left the table. The whispers, the looks, the knock on the bathroom door from my mom to check on me while I cried on the floor.

But guess what? None of that happened. I didn’t cry at the Parade. I didn’t scare any 4-year-olds. To my knowledge, no one asked why I wasn’t at my sister’s Thanksgiving table (probably because they knew why – to avoid the 9-month-old baby, born 4 days after Maliyah). And at my parents’ house, they didn’t even go around the table to ask what we were thankful for.

You would think that I would have had a huge sense of relief after, but I didn’t. I had a sense of waste and regret. Why did I spend so much time worrying about these things that didn’t even materialize? What could I have been focusing on instead? Could I have transformed those negative thoughts into positive ones?

If I’ve learned anything from the past 9 months, it’s that it’s easier said than done.

This week, I met a stranger on a plane, and through a strange confluence of factors (no screens, broken wifi, empty middle seat, shared favorite drink that they were giving away for free), we got to talking. Something about the anonymity of knowing you’ll likely never see a person again had me sharing authentically and deeply about everything going on in my life. He told me that he couldn’t believe how “happy” and “light” I seemed given what I’d been through. I told him he was catching me on a good day. But he was also catching me on a day where I had been thinking a lot about my wasted time in anxiety. I told him that hindsight was 20/20, and I was trying my best to use my hindsight as foresight. I said that out loud, then I said to myself, “wow, that sounded prophetic.”

I’ve been trying to do this. Not always succeeding but trying.

I’ve started to think back to other “big days” I’ve had in the past year, and I’ve realized that this anticipatory anxiety happens to me a lot, and every single time, the things I worried about did not come to fruition, or weren’t as bad as I thought they would be. I think it’s common for others, too. On my favorite dead baby podcasts, they often say that the lead-up to anniversaries and big milestone days is worse than the actual day. I have found this to be true.

I DREADED Mother’s Day. I deleted social media 3 days before, I queued up many seasons of British Bakeoff, and I hid from the world. But you know what, it was 24 hours. It came, it went, it was over. Was it bad? Sure. But was it horrific-can’t-live-through-it? No.

The same thing happened for my due date. I agonized. What was it going to be like? Would anyone know or remember? What should I do to commemorate it? Should we light a candle? Make something? I thought for a long time about giving back to my Buy Nothing group who gave me so much baby accoutrements. I thought about buying Starbucks cards and giving them to the first 20 people who came to my apartment building from the group, or just handing out cash to people in line at the store. But then I realized that would require interacting with people and I had no interest. Also, it required foresight to buy gift cards or interaction with baristas. I thought about running a significant/symbolic number of miles in Maliyah’s honor. I thought about giving her a birthday party.

Spoiler Alert (3 months later), I did none of those things. And it didn’t matter. But I did spend hundreds of hours thinking about them. What I actually did was go to the gym, get a latte at Starbucks (and no gift cards), shower, and curl up on the couch to watch Friends.

Then the next week, I chastised myself for the amount of time I spent worrying about a day that came and went, just like every other day comes and goes.

This week I am facing a new challenge with a holiday party for Chris’s work. Last year at this holiday party I was pregnant. Last year, there was a lot of conversation around the prediction of the sex of our baby. We were choosing to be surprised but they were all SURE we’d have a girl. They were right, but no one predicted she would die. This year, I need to face these same people for the first time in a year. I was worried for months, going through every possible scenario in my mind of what they could say, and how I could react. Then last week I was on a support group and I brought it up, and they said “they’ll either bring it up, or they won’t; those are the two options.” This helped me. Then I brought this up to a therapist and I said well what if they do bring it up? What do I say and what if I say the wrong thing or they say something dumb? And she said, “these are basically strangers, right? You see them once a year? Why do you give a sh*t what they say?” She was right. I HATE when that happens.

I needed the reminder. The spiraling thoughts are not helpful. The party will happen and then it will be over. I’ve heard many insensitive things over the past year, and I’ve survived, there’s no reason to give mental space to the what-ifs.

As Hannukkah/Christmas/a new year approaches, I’ve been thinking about this even more. Instead of focusing on anxious thoughts, I’m trying to instead simply be aware of my thoughts and allow them to come and go, just like the days do.

I’m worried about spending time with in-laws and I’m sure it will be hard to have a holiday season that looks nothing like the way I wanted it to. But then it will be over and another day will come. Another year will come. Another milestone will come. And then they will pass. While I don’t think I am completely at peace, I’m getting there one slightly-less-anxious day at a time.

Grief and Pregnancy Loss

To Post or Not to Post, That is the Question

November 28, 2023 2 Comments

It’s been months since I considered writing a blog about social media pregnancy announcements. It’s been since June 12^th, Maliyah’s due date, and the date we announced her existence (past tense) to the world. We did not make the decision to post about her lightly. In fact, months and months of discussions went into that post. If I’m completely honest, the conversation goes even further back, to October 2022 when we first found out I was pregnant.

Should we post, or should we not post?

If you are in your 20’s or 30’s, or if you have an Instagram or Facebook account, or if you just plain don’t live under a rock, you’ve probably been inundated with pregnancy announcements, gender reveals, birth announcements, or in some cases the hat trick – all three.

I am no stranger to social media, I have two TikToks, 4 Instagrams and 2 Facebooks. I used to post almost all of my meals to my stories. But with my pregnancy, I was terrified. This goes back to my post about superstitions, I was far too nervous to say anything on social media about my pregnancy at all and I didn’t want to hurt anyone. What if something went wrong? What if someone was struggling with fertility and my post made them cry? I posted exactly nothing about a pregnancy. In fact, I posted a blog in November where I talked about how my bucket list would need to go on hold “if” I got pregnant… but I already knew I was. I didn’t want to say anything and jinx it. I didn’t know what I would do about posting photos as I started showing, but I had already taken a step back from posting on my blog – that bucket list post was my ONLY post between October 2022 and July 2023. I figured I would do the same thing with Instagram and take a step back, or not post photos of myself. I posted a carousel of photos on Instagram from a wedding in mid-February where I was sort of visibly pregnant, but you could also have assume it was an unflattering angle or cut of the dress. I never said anything explicitly about it.

So, how do you announce your baby died, when you never announced she existed? Isn’t that crazy? Also, who wants to read about such a horrific loss? For some reason I felt like I wanted to tell people, but I couldn’t figure out why.

I had only one example to look to. I had a friend who had a pregnancy loss while I was pregnant. She posted about it as part of a larger social media post celebrating an anniversary. I was obsessed with that post. I read it 100 times. Eventually I asked her about it. I said, “how did you come to the decision to post this? And how did you decide when was the right time? What did your husband think of it?”

I asked that last question because Chris and I were not in agreement. He keeps things close to the chest. He doesn’t share anything about his personal life on the internet, and he certainly doesn’t share about such monumental and private things as this. I knew we disagreed, and we continued to have conversations about it.

I asked on multiple support groups what other people had done. Why did they tell people? Why didn’t they? When did they say something? Was it too late?

Some people said they needed to unannounce because they had already announced they were pregnant. We didn’t have this issue, since we never announced.

Some people said they announced to avoid questions about when/if they were going to have children. This was an interesting point I hadn’t considered.

Some people said they announced because they didn’t want people to assume their next pregnancy was a first pregnancy.

Some said they felt they needed to share about their loss because it was far too heavy of a burden to carry alone. This resonated deeply with me. As the days kept coming and going, it felt like the lead bricks on my chest were growing and it was too much for one person to handle.

But had we missed our window? She died two weeks prior. Four weeks prior. Two months prior. Would people even care? Should I share about her on our one-year anniversary, when I thought we’d have a growing family? Should I share about her on my birthday, when she was the only thing I could think about as my biological clock was ticking forward at a furious pace?

Here’s the thing: there’s no good time to tell the world about your dead baby.

I agonized over this constantly. Why did I feel such a fierce urge to share about her? I decided I needed to answer that question before I answered the timing question. I also needed to decide what I wanted the world to know.

I considered posting as a cautionary tale. I felt a sort of obligation to warn people. I had been healthy, I had a textbook, sickness-free pregnancy, I had no symptoms, and yet I almost died! I needed to tell people! I wanted to scream “CHECK YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE AND INSIST ON PERIODIC BLOODWORK” from the rooftops. Eventually, I decided that what I wanted to share had nothing to do with me. Yes, I think more education is needed, but I didn’t feel an obligation or responsibility at that point in my depths of depression.

What I wanted was a place in the world for Maliyah. I needed her to have a tiny corner of the internet that knew she existed. I needed people to know we loved her and would continue to love her. I needed people to see her tiny footprints and to understand she was a person. This was not just something that happened to me, this was a person who existed, and now she was gone. I wanted people to understand that Chris and I were not the same people anymore because the most important person in our world was no longer in this world.

For all of those reasons, I decided to post on her due date, the day that was supposed to be her birthday. I needed there to be a post only about her – a reserved spot just for her, on a day that was already reserved in my brain for her.

When I finally posted on Instagram and Facebook, I was relieved. She had a spot. Losing a child is so lonely. It feels like nobody in the entire world understands, or cares as much as you, and they never will. Even if only for one second of one day, I knew by posting on social media, people would see her name, know how much we cared about her, and perhaps pause for a moment and think about her. For Chris and me, those moments were all day every day, but for a brief moment in time, she would be on someone else’s mind.

But unlike when you post something amazing on Instagram and you sit there waiting to watch the likes and comments roll in, I couldn’t face the comments. I clicked “post” and immediately went to the gym where I locked my phone in a locker for 75 minutes. I was fearful of the pity. It wasn’t about me, after all. My therapist advised that “pity” could be reframed as “empathy” and perhaps people cared about me and that’s why they would extend sympathies. Maybe that was true, but I assumed as soon as I pressed “post,” there would be a game of telephone that started with, “OMG did you hear what happened to Emily?”

Overall, I was happy I posted about her on social media.

Meanwhile, I continued to see an onslaught of pregnancy and birth announcements on Instagram. People had so much hope and surety they would have alive babies. It seemed like there were ultrasound photos or onesies or bump pics every time I clicked on the Instagram app. I knew every permutation of these announcements:

A. The collection of onesies with the parents’ hobbies/sports teams/funny puns laid out on the floor.
B. The ultrasound photo
C. The letterboard announcing Baby Smith and a date (with certainty!) of when they would be born.
D. The family pet with a personalized bandana.
E. The living child wearing a “going to be a big brother!” shirt.
F. All of the above.

My gut-reaction every time I saw these was disgust and anger. How could the world keep spinning? How could people get pregnant so easily? How could people just… be sure their babies would be born alive? Didn’t they know what could happen??? How dare they have such confidence.

I started to think about this all the time and I realized the anger was just jealousy. Not jealousy about their babies or their pregnancies, I didn’t want their kids, I wanted mine! The one that was dead. I would scroll through the comments and see the hundreds of “congratulations” the “you’re going to be such great parents!” the “I can’t wait to meet them!” the “this is so exciting!” the “I knew it!”

I missed out on that. I missed out on all of the positive thoughts and excitement, and I found myself in a deep pit of regret. Why had I been so hesitant to share our joy? All I was left with was a cautionary tale and a hundred “I’m so sorry” comments or “I don’t know what to say” or “this is horrible.” And it was. And it is.

I felt sadness compounded on sadness. I try very much not to have regrets, but if I had to say one regret of my entire pregnancy it was this: I wish we had taken the opportunity to celebrate while we could. I was consumed with worry, and I didn’t allow us the space to have joy, and there’s no do-overs.

I had this regret almost immediately, even before we posted about Maliyah’s death. I wished for a redo. I wished we could have been happy before we were devastatingly sad. I remember calling my pregnant best friend and through snotty tears, telling her I saw a repost on her stories of her with a bump (which had also cried privately about) but I had noticed she hadn’t put anything on her feed. I was worried she was doing this to protect me. I didn’t want her to dampen her joy because of my sadness. It wasn’t fair to her. I hadn’t allowed myself to be happy (certainly not publicly) and I regretted it. I didn’t want her to make the same mistake. Of course, I said it was up to her if she wanted to mention anything on social media, it’s a personal decision, but I didn’t want her to base it on me. I told her not to worry about me seeing anything, and I had her account muted because I wanted to make the decision about when or if wanted to see it, but this was my issue, not hers, and I wanted her to feel comfortable sharing whatever she wanted to share.

When I spoke to another pregnant friend recently, she mentioned she wasn’t planning to post on social media about the baby. She knew many people in her life who struggled with infertility and had devastating endings to pregnancies, plus she had me. She said she didn’t know who else was hiding in pain as well, and she didn’t want to contribute to that. She explained that for those reasons, and because of her own “what-ifs,” she wasn’t planning a post. I told her I could relate, but then I admitted my regret to her. I told her how I wished I had made a different decision, but it was too late. I told her to bask in her joy and excitement because you never know when it will be taken away. She ended up telling me I convinced her to change her mind.

But I understood her hesitancy. I also had friends I knew who struggled to get pregnant, and friends who had lost babies. When I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t want to push my happiness in their face. And now, I have regret for that. For prioritizing my friends’ emotions over my own, and for letting my worries shroud my happiness in clouds of anxiety.

I want to make sure I’m clear here, I think it’s important to look out for your friends and to not do anything with intentional malice. But there are always people in the world who are struggling and may find your posts triggering, whether it is about babies, parents, siblings, work, food, really anything. As a human, you should always balance the feelings of others with your own. But you also cannot take responsibility for each person’s struggles. First of all, many may be invisible. There is no way to know if something you post may hurt someone with a silent struggle. It is also important to live life for yourself, and to take control of your own story, both in the real world, and online. While I regret not sharing about my pregnancy, I cannot change the past.

I have mentioned before that social media sometimes feels like a highlight reel, and for that reason, I plan to make a conscious effort to share authentically here, and link these posts on my Instagram. This blog has quickly become heavy and dark, which is mostly because a majority of my life in this moment feels that way. But I want to also make a commitment to myself to share the moments of joy. There are so few, and they can feel fleeting. They deserve to be celebrated.

You may have assumed this post would end with an announcement. Well, it’s not going to. You may also be wondering if this means I’ll share publicly and early about a next pregnancy, and I’m not sure. To be honest, that’s none of your beeswax. But I have a feeling I will do things differently, and I promise if I do decide to share anything, I’ll take you along for the ride.

Grief and Pregnancy Loss

My Own Worst Enemy

November 20, 2023 6 Comments

A lot of things have gone wrong this year and most of those things have been outside my control. They may have been inside my body, but they have been outside of my control. Recently, I realized that even my feelings are spiraling out of control, and it’s extremely disconcerting.

I never considered myself a control freak, but as more and more snowballs, I’m realizing that maybe I am.

I had thought that if I had controlling or stressful tendencies, they would have come out during the most stressful times in my life, like in law school, or while planning a wedding. But no, when it came to law school, I was perfectly fine with studying as hard as I could, and doing as well as I could. For my wedding, I thought maybe I’d be a bridezilla, but instead I filled out a spreadsheet with my flowers of choice, told my two bridesmaids to pick a color and style of dress they liked, and then I showed up in Cabo for the first time, 4 days before my nuptials.

So why, all of a sudden, do I want to control everything including my thoughts, and I’m mad at myself for wanting to be in control, mad at myself for not just accepting that some things aren’t in anyone’s control, and then I continue to spiral out of control (which brings me back to my very first point)?

All of this came to a head last week when I had a grief attack at the gym. I wasn’t sure if I’d write about it because it’s extremely vulnerable and embarrassing. But I also feel like I shouldn’t be embarrassed, even if I am. This blog is already an overshare, that’s the point of a personal blog, so I figured I’d jump in headfirst and overshare again.

I’ve had two “panic attacks” since Maliyah was born, both in healthcare settings. I’m using quotes because I don’t think they fit neatly into a “panic attack” box. Panic attacks usually mean extreme physical reaction triggered by intense fear when there is no real or apparent danger. For me, it’s not really a fear, or thoughts of imminent danger, it’s more like a “grief attack” with intense physical reactions based on extreme sadness and self-loathing.

My brain is a very fun place to be.

The first time this happened was at a post-partum appointment at the OBGYN. Obviously, being at the OBGYN after baby loss would be triggering for anyone, but this happened before I was even called into the room. I was sitting in the waiting area barely able to catch my breath, with my heartrate sky-high, facing the wall trying to avoid eye contact with anyone pregnant, and my Fitbit vibrated on my wrist, congratulating me for hitting my “zone minutes” for the week. I opened my Fitbit app, looking for a distraction, and realized it had clocked a 23-minute workout. This all happened while I was sitting in a chair just trying (and failing) to breathe normally.

The next time this happened was when I had a full abdominal ultrasound because my nephrologist thought there was a chance I had one kidney, since there seemed to be no other explanation for what happened to me. Turns out I have two kidneys. It also turns out that the sound of blood flowing into a kidney on an ultrasound machine sounds eerily similar to the sound of a baby’s heartbeat in your uterus. Cue grief attack. I couldn’t breathe while I laid there on the table. The technician was instructing me when to breathe in and out, because when your lungs inflate, they move your other organs around, making the ultrasound more difficult to perform. Clearly, I was unable to breathe on her count. I couldn’t breathe at all. I tried to focus on the ceiling tiles but soon enough I was gasping for air, with water streaming out of my eyes, and I started choking on snot while I was gasping, so she made me sit up to try and catch my breath. I got ultrasound goo all over the place, and the tech asked me if I had brought any family with me that she could call in from the waiting room.

Again, while I was caught off-guard by this grief attack, it was not exactly unpredictable. Of course I would be grossly triggered by my very first ultrasound with no baby inside me. Of course the sound of blood flow that was not a heartbeat drove me to tears. In my rational mind, this makes sense. But in my irrational mind, which is my mind most of the time, I got mad. Furious, really. Frustrated. Angry. Livid.

The mantra in my head over and over again was, “Why can’t I be normal?? Why am I like this? Why can’t I do ___ like a normal person? I used to be able to do ___ without a problem, now I am a freak. I’m the same person but now I’m completely f*cked up.”

As I mentioned, my brain is a very fun place to be.

This week was different because I thought I was safe in non-healthcare settings. But Thursday I went to the gym and I proved to myself that no, I am messed up in many different kinds of settings, yippee!

Thursday at Orangetheory was a “benchmark” day called the 12-Minute Run for Distance. A few times a month, they have treadmill or rowing challenges where you measure your progress on distance, speed, incline, or power. They repeat these workouts 2-3 times/year so you can see if you have improved. As the coach said before class last week, “it’s you against you.”

The last time I had done that benchmark was in April 2022, the month before my wedding. I had been working out a lot, and I was in pretty good shape. But I’ve been working out now 5-6 times/week mostly as a mental distraction, and I thought I had set myself up to PR. I was determined to beat my previous distance.

Well, readers, I did not. I matched my distance exactly, down to the hundredth of a mile. I got off the treadmill and tried to continue the workout, but I found myself falling apart as I picked up the weights for the next part of class. I went to the bathroom to try and calm down, but it did the opposite. I started beating myself up.

My internal dialogue: “Why couldn’t I get .01 extra on the treadmill? What is wrong with me? It’s not like I have anything else going on. All I do is work out. It’s not like I’m taking care of a baby. I’m trying to come back from a post-partum break where I wasn’t allowed to work out, but I have literally nothing to show for it. I don’t have a baby. I don’t even have .01 on the treadmill. And why am I coming back from a post-partum break? How? How is it possible that I need to have a post-partum come-back when I am childless? And I’m supposed to be thinking about going through this again? Why would anyone ever do this again?”

Then the really fun thoughts start in: “Why am I not better yet? It’s been 8 months. Some people would be functional by now. And I’m in the bathroom at the gym struggling to stand. Why can’t I be normal? I used to be able to get through a f*cking class at the gym and now I’m so messed up I can’t run 12 minutes without having a panic attack?”

I finally got to a place where I thought I could go back to class, so I did. I lifted weights for 3 minutes while I continued to battle myself in my head. That’s when I realized that my heartrate monitor had been on the whole time. Everyone in class was in blue and green zones (moderate effort) and my name was the only little box on the screen in orange and red, clearly still in full panic. When I realized that the entire class saw my heartrate sky-high during the mental breakdown I had in the bathroom, I completely lost it again and left the gym. Somehow, I wiped off my equipment and got my stuff from the locker, and made it 10 yards from the studio when I stopped being able to breathe again.

I sat down on a railing and tried to breathe. I counted 4 in, 4 out, but it wasn’t helping. I was crying hard at this point but I’m not sure how long I was there. One of the best parts about NYC is that people mind their own business. But on this particular day, I guess I looked like I was in acute distress because a woman walking her dog asked me if I was ok. I nodded. I thought she would go away, but no. She asked if I had asthma, I shook my head no. She said, “should I call you an ambulance?” I vigorously shook my head no. Given that my previous panic attacks were both in medical settings, I knew the last thing I needed in that moment was interaction with healthcare professionals. The woman asked, “are you sure?” and I nodded again, so she walked away. I think the fear of having to talk to EMTs scared me into action. I went through a list of people in my mind who I could call, who wouldn’t think I was a complete basket case. I realized it was really only Chris because he had seen this happen to me before, so I called him and talked to him while I tried to get myself home.

An hour later, once I showered and through some superhuman power, braided a girl’s hair for a race, I was able to see what happened with some distance. When I took 3 steps back and I was in a better headspace, when I was able to breathe, I said to myself, “this makes sense. You are very sad. You’re not the same person, you had a baby die inside you. You gave birth to a dead child and almost died this year. What you achieved on the treadmill is a triumph. Despite everything that happened this year, you are not only alive, but you are in as good shape as you were three weeks before your wedding.”

I see that when I am not deep in it. But when I was in the bathroom at the gym, trying to tell myself those very same things, I couldn’t believe it. All I could believe was, “fail fail fail fail fail.”

Later that night, after talking sense into myself and feeling like a completely crazy person (because who starts sobbing at the gym???), I wrote to one of my loss mom friends and explained what happened. She told me that it’s so, so hard but also so, so relatable. She said that being in an extreme pit of grief feels like you are fighting a constant battle with yourself, and it’s excruciatingly exhausting. I couldn’t agree more.

I’m tired. I’m tired of being sad and I’m tired of being mad at myself for being sad. I wish I was “over it.” I wish I was “better.” It’s ironic that the Orangetheory coach had said “it’s you against you” for the benchmark, since that is ALWAYS the battle I am fighting in my head. I want to be kind to myself, I want to “give myself grace,” as all of the Instagram Inspo accounts say, but it’s easier said than done.

The ”benchmark workout” felt in my head like it was a benchmark of more than just distance on a treadmill. To me, it was a benchmark I was measuring to see if I was still the person I used to be. When I “failed,” and found out that no, I am not, and I will never again be her, it hit me like 100 tons of bricks.

Watching other people around me grieve differently and on different timelines makes it even harder. While I try not to compare, it’s impossible. Of course, I’ve read all the books about how grief’s timeline is different for everyone, but I want to be done. I want to quit. I want to trade in these feelings for other ones. I want to talk to the manager.

But that’s not how life works. And as surprised as I am every day to wake up, ready to put on my armor and go to battle with myself yet again, here we are, alive another day and ready to fight. Waking up each day as your own worst enemy is tiring and demoralizing. I hope someday to be a friend to myself. I hope that I can be kinder to myself. Gentler. Softer. Since it’s nearly December, maybe that will be my New Year’s Resolution. I am going to try my very best to be kind, because at least that is something I can control.

Grief and Pregnancy Loss

What’s in a Name?

November 9, 2023 6 Comments

Naming someone is a huge responsibility. You are deciding what a human will be called for the rest of their life.

When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I would take this responsibility seriously. Part of the reason I was so invested in this process was because I hate my name. It is so common, so typical. Everyone knows an Emily. Actually, everyone knows multiple Emilys. When a person hears my name is Emily, they automatically know what they think I’ll be like. They preconceive my personality, my appearance, and they probably assume I’ll be a white girl in her 20’s or 30s. And they’ll be right.

The first time I realized how much I hated my name was in 9^th grade when I went to sleepaway camp and in my bunk of 20 girls, there were 4 Emilys. Someone who did those assignments was surely chuckling at our confusion, but for us it was annoying. I remember each Emily came up with a nickname so we could tell each other apart, but my “nickname” was just “Emily.” Lame. Just last month I was in the airport when some “Emily” was late for her flight that was boarding at the gate next to mine. They kept paging an “Emily” over the intercom and I kept taking out my earbuds to see if it was me. But no, I was not traveling to Minneapolis, it was just another one of the million Emilys.

I have been pretty vocal to my parents about how annoying this is. Sure, every time I go to a souvenir shop I’m guaranteed to find a keychain or magnet with my name on it, but I also constantly answer to strangers who are calling out in the grocery store for another Emily. I go to Orangetheory, where they put your heartrate zones on a tv screen and sort them by first name. I’m constantly squinting across to room to see which Emily I am on the screen because there is ALWAYS more than one Emily in class. This is such a pervasive issue that the New York Times had an article about the extreme amount of Emilys recently. At least 10 people sent the article to me, since my friends know I complain about this all the time. I, of course, forwarded it to my parents to show them that I was not alone in my strife. There are too many of us!

When Chris and I tried to come up with names for our baby, we couldn’t agree. I had 4 things mandatory on my list:

Unique
Easy to pronounce
Gender neutral
Good nicknames

Chris and I had a Baby Names app where we could swipe right or left on names we liked or didn’t like, sort of like Tinder for names. We could do this asynchronously, and we were notified every time we had a match. Chris and I both had so much work and personal travel my first and second trimester, we were often not in the same place and this helped us move the name conversation forward without long, in-person conversations. I swiped and swiped (mostly left) and waited for a match. Matches did not happen often. Even for the names we agreed on, when we talked about them, we usually decided they weren’t top of our list, they were just “maybes.”

That is how we ended up in the hospital at 6 months pregnant, with the unexpected imminent birth of a child and no name.

Of course, we ended up with a dead daughter so there was no birth certificate, and no name was necessary.

I didn’t really think about a name after I gave birth. I didn’t think about anything. I was completely numb and I was on a lot of medications. I hadn’t even known she would be a girl until she was already gone. I went home from the hospital in a daze. Later in the week, I tried to rifle through the packet of papers I had received from the hospital. Some of the things were not helpful, but at the back of the packet there was information about support organizations. A lot of them were specific, either to religion, or type of infant or baby loss, but there was one organization that seemed local enough and broad enough to be helpful. I found their website and saw I could request a free peer counselor via webform. Since I was struggling to speak, this seemed easy enough. I wrote something like “I lost my baby over the weekend, and I wonder if you can help.”

The next day I received a call from one of the volunteers coordinating the program, and she asked me questions, trying to get more information so she could match me with the right peer. I cried silently through the conversation, but I don’t think she could tell. She said, “does your daughter have a name?” I was frozen. I didn’t even think of her as my daughter yet. People had never said that. At the hospital they tip-toed around terms. They were more concerned with my health and getting me in good enough shape to discharge from the hospital. No one wants a bereaved woman on the maternity ward, least of all herself. No one at the hospital called me a mom since the first night in triage when things started going south, no one mentioned my daughter. No one said “death” or “died.” There was vague conversation about “loss.” And here was this woman on the phone talking about my baby in the present tense, acknowledging she was a person, a girl, my actual child.

I said, “no,” because I couldn’t even bring myself to say, “we didn’t name her” and acknowledge “she” was a “she.” The woman on the phone said, “we really encourage moms to name their babies.” I thought, “Moms?? I’m not a mom I have no baby.” What I said was, “why would I name a dead baby?” She had a lot of reasons, and they all seemed equally as dumb to me. I was trying to FORGET that I had been pregnant. I was trying to forget that I had a baby, and now I don’t. I was trying to forget that for the brief moment in time when I did have her, she was killing me from the inside physically, and now she was killing my soul. Eventually, the woman on the phone stopped pressing the name thing because I was clearly not engaging, and she moved on to other topics. At the end of the conversation, she brought it up again. She really urged me to think about it, because in her experience, she had found naming a baby helped people heal and move forward. I agreed to think about it.

But I didn’t think about it. I went through the motions of living. Waking up. Staring at the wall. I went on walks to kill time. I saw doctor after doctor after doctor. None of them asked about my baby. It was all about me. Was my liver still failing? What caused this crazy fluke? Did I maybe have one kidney? Did I have an auto-immune disorder? The conversations of the long-lost baby were forgotten.

Meanwhile, I started following many dead baby accounts on social media. I listened to innumerable podcasts on my endless walks. On every single one of these accounts, people talked about naming their children and the way these moms talked about their children was heart-warming. I started to change my mind. I talked about it on support groups and with my therapist at the time. I decided to talk to Chris about it. He didn’t really see the reason for it. I tried to explain that it all felt made up. I felt like I dreamed up our whole pregnancy. She was inside me and now she wasn’t. No one knew about her. No one even knew she was a girl. How was I supposed to wrap my mind around the fact that “it happened” when “it” was a person, and that person didn’t have a name?

A few weeks before I was admitted to the hospital, I had asked Chris to send me his list of names from the Baby Names app. After our conversation months later, I went back through his list of names. The very first name on the list was Maliyah (muh-LEE-uh), like Malia Obama but with a more beautiful spelling. I absolutely loved the name immediately.

All of the reasons I wanted a gender-neutral name did not apply to a dead child. She would never go through the world. She wouldn’t have to deal with people’s assumptions before they met her because no one would meet her. No one would ever see her resume. I also cared less about having an easy-to-pronounce-by-sight name. No substitute teacher would ever call her name in class. I still wanted a unique name, one that showed everyone how special and different she was to us. I needed a name that made us think of beauty.

I looked up the meaning of Maliyah, and the first website I saw said it meant “beloved and bitter.” I felt the breath leave my lungs. How perfect and apt. I didn’t say anything to Chris, but I started thinking about her as Maliyah in my mind. I wanted to get used to her having a name. I was curious how it would make me feel. Almost immediately I found my perspective start to shift. She felt like a person. She felt more real. My grief made more sense. Of course I was devastated, I had a human inside me and now she was dead. The more I used a name in my mind, the more it felt necessary.

I brought the conversation up again to Chris. I was expecting a bit of a fight, since we had so much trouble agreeing on a name when we thought she’d live. But I think it was more important for me. I needed her to have space in the world and in people’s minds, and no one gives space to a nameless human they’ve never met. I told him about the meaning of Maliyah I found online, and he agreed, it was perfect.

The next day, I went to happy hour with a girl I had met from a support group and I told her we had a name. She asked what it was, and I said Maliyah out loud for the first time outside of our apartment. She said it back to me, and she said it was a beautiful name. I started crying. It was the first time I had heard her name out of someone else’s mouth. It gave Maliyah legitimacy. She existed! Other people knew about her and spoke her name! I immediately felt so happy she had a name. I started telling other people: my family and my therapist and my best friend.

I suppose it’s strange I haven’t said her name yet on this blog, given how happy it makes me feel to hear people say it. I posted her name on social media when we talked about her on her due date (blog coming on that next week), but sometimes I have conflicting thoughts. I want EVERYONE to know about her, but I also want to preserve parts of her for me. It’s a strange dichotomy I can’t explain. There are so few memories and so few mementos. We had so little time with her. Sometimes these things feel sacred and scarce, like a nonrenewable resource I need to keep all to myself. But sometimes, I just wish one person would text me and say her name. As my therapist would remind me, it can be “yes and,” because dialectical thinking exists. I can want people to talk about her, but also feel like I wish I had more of her to share. I can want the world to recognize she existed, but also feel that what little I have, needs to be protected.

But I do want people to talk about her. If we ever have future kids, I’ll want them to know there was a baby before. I want my friends to use her name. I wish I had more to share. I wish I had more memories. I wish I knew her better. I only have assumptions and unrealized hopes and dreams. But she did exist. And she did have a name. Maliyah.

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