Baby After Loss

While the central focus of this blog is advocating for safer practices in midwifery, we also recognize the importance of supporting families who have endured loss and injury along the way.  This post in particular, begins to document the personal journey of life inevitably moving forward after loss, and the complexities that come along with it.   

The journey for us started with a feeling that something about Magnus's death wasn't right.  We started asking questions, and quickly learned there were many obviously negligent practices that took place in our care.  Much of the past, nearly two years now, has been spent seeking accountability and reaching out to help others.  Those two efforts have been enormously healing in and of themselves, and will continue to be a part of what we must do.  I have found the way in which we perceive Magnus's love to be present with us every day, leading us forward, and the way we can talk about him as a family to be a great comfort. 

It hasn't been an easy journey by anyone's standards.  The most difficult moments seemed to come when they were least expected.  Last week for example, we went as a family to a 20 week ultrasound for a baby we're eagerly, yet anxiously, expecting to arrive this summer.  This is our third pregnancy since Magnus's birth and death.  We have hoped to have another baby for many reasons, but fully knowing that nothing could replace Magnus.  This entire pregnancy has seemed surreal.  It seems as though my husband and I are bracing ourselves for the moment when someone pulls the rug out from underneath us yet again.   I think it's much like self defense, like preparing yourself for the worst, in case things don't work out.  

We went to the ultrasound last week full of nervousness, and hoping everything would be okay.  We took our 4 year old son, who wanted to also see his brother or sister on the screen.  Everything turned out great, in fact we're expecting a girl.  What surprised me was the flood of emotions that came afterward.  We are excited to be having a girl, and in a way glad that it will be a different experience than any we've had before.  At the same time, I found myself struggling with such a definitive move forward in our lives.  I don't want to ever forget Magnus, and I know that we won't, but things felt more real after seeing our baby on that screen.   We also were mentally prepared for raising two boys.  We had hoped for a girl so things would be different, but when it turned out to be the case, we found ourselves emotional about shifting away from the idea of having two boys to raise.  Before this baby, I always felt like we had two children, one who couldn't physically be here with us.  Now that has suddenly shifted to feeling like we have three children, still one who can't be here.

We feel so grateful for this baby on the way.  It's difficult though when I know we likely wouldn't have attempted another pregnancy had things turned out differently with Magnus.  It's an awkward sort of blessing and tragedy all rolled into one.  I had heard other people refer to their "Rainbow Babies", and never quite knew what it meant.  In the middle of my emotional roller coaster last week, I came across this beautiful description of what the term means:

       A "Rainbow Baby" is a baby conceived after the loss of another child.

      "Rainbow babies are the understanding that the beauty of a rainbow does not negate 
      the ravages of the storm. When a rainbow appears, it does not mean that the storm     
      never happened or that the family is not still dealing with its aftermath. What it 
      means is that something beautiful and full of light has appeared in the midst of the   
      darkness and the clouds.  Storm clouds may still loom over but the rainbow 
      provides a counterbalance of color, energy, and much needed hope."  
     (Author unknown)

Her words so eloquently summed up exactly what I had been wrestling with.  And so we will celebrate this rainbow baby, the light that brings us much hope.  We will try to trust that things will go the way we hope they will, and try to push out the fear, the harsh reality that too many times it does not.   We will never forget what happened to Magnus, and will be dealing with the aftermath for a lifetime to come.  The most challenging part is finding security in life, trusting, and enjoying the good, instead of bracing for the next big blow.  We work hard on that daily.  We refuse to submit to sadness, (even though it still often creeps in), and instead look for ways to "grab the good" from every situation we face.   

My favorite good moments from the ultrasound experience were the sigh of relief I heard from my husband when we could see and hear the heartbeat.  It was when Jonah's baby sister lifted her arm and "waved" at him, and the smile of pure love that spread across his little face.  It was learning that it is okay to be happy, without one bit of lost love for Mangus.  

When Our Baby Died

When our baby died, we thought we were alone and that no one on earth had experienced the devastation we were feeling.  Over time, we learned that there are many families left behind by the dark side of midwifery.  Over time, we learned that our loss experiences were eerily similar. Over time, we came to realize the bizarre spell that midwifery had cast upon us, a spell that took hold of us for months following our baby's death.  

Below is a series of steps that outline how the grieving progression went for us over the first year since our baby's birth and death.  The purpose in sharing this is for other mothers and families to realize they aren't alone.  There are threads we all have in common, not only in loss, but in coming to grips with the experience of negligent care with midwives, and how it affects our lives afterward.   

(Traumatic birth - 3 months)  
1) We experienced Devastation; Shock; Nightmares; Difficulty Breathing

2) We desperately tried to protect the way our baby was remembered, including the fact that he was born at a birth center instead of a hospital. We felt determined to defend our midwives.

3) We tried to make sense of everything by telling ourselves that our midwife did everything she could, that babies die in hospitals too, etc. . . . but that didn’t seem right.

The following link has been copied and pasted from a former Oregon blog about midwifery and provides an analysis of the psychological relationship that takes place between mother and midwife after loss.  Reading this put into words what I have been trying to describe about the "spell" that it seems we were under in the days/months after our baby's death.  This post defines and explains the progression of how women react and why after losing a baby with her midwife.  

Psychological Analysis: “The MidwifeSpell” after Loss

(Around 3 months postpartum) 
4) We started to realize that things didn't feel right. We felt deeply unsettled. Our midwife's explanation that "some babies aren't meant to live" never left me. It kept nagging at me to find out more about what actually happened.

5) We started to ask questions of our own midwives, then of other midwives and obstetricians, too.  We talked to the EMTs and doctors in the RNICU that tried to save our son’s life.  We started to read in detail what recent research said about our kind of birth. We asked for medical records.

6) We understood that our baby's death was preventable, that we were put into harm's way to advance an agenda, that our midwives lied to protect themselves, that our labor and delivery was grossly mismanaged, that we had been severely uninformed, and that what we had experienced was extreme negligence. 

(Around 6 months postpartum) 
7) We slowly started to realize there are other families who had experienced the same thing, both here in our very community (under the care of the same midwives, same birth center) as well as across the country. It began to feel like an epidemic to us.

8)  We learned that loss & injury in home birth is more common that most people think. We learned that most families don’t talk about it and, tragically, that the birth communities they held dear usually blame the parents.  We learned that midwives have contrived responses to loss.

Below is a link to the "10 centimeters" blog about common reasons given by midwives to loss moms.  It is insightful to say the least and helped me understand the dynamic I was personally experiencing as I tried to gain understanding of what had happened. 

 What We Say to Loss Moms (10 centimeters) 

(Ongoing)

9) We experienced other kinds of loss. Yes we lost our baby, but we also lost our faith, our trust in humanity, any feeling we formerly had of being protected in this world, and our confidence in our ability to make decisions.  We felt embarrassed, too - foolish for not having seen who our midwives were and for trusting their guidance.  I still feel like I’ll never be a good enough mother a) for not knowing something was wrong and b) not being able to see this coming.
 

(Around 6 months - present)

10) We learned there are no regulations, no reporting outcomes, no insurance requirements, and no accountability for midwives in Michigan.  We feel compelled to change that in an effort to protect other families. 

I hope that this post reaches other mothers out there who have struggled to understand loss with a midwife or loss under negligent circumstances.  The message intended in sharing our experience is that you are not alone.  I hope this post offers insight that, in some small way, resonates with your experience and further helps you move forward.  Please send us an email using the "contact" tab for further support.

(Another post coming soon that examines the relationship more closely between mother and midwife entitled, "Should my midwife be my friend?")