I Am Here With You

In case you were wondering, I still love you.

You were there for me as we sat in the emergency room and found out that I was pregnant. That stabbing pain in my abdomen likely meant that the pregnancy was not viable and you whispered “We’ll try again.”

You were by my side during two c-sections bringing our beautiful sons into the world. The photos in the moments immediately after showed the joy in both of our smiles. We peered into the faces of our babies and could see the reflection of ourselves in their eyes, hair, cheeks, and hands.

You held my hand during the worst moments of our lives when our next two babies died during the second trimester of pregnancy and I had to give birth to them. The torturous hours of waiting through labor were an insult added to the shock after hearing the words “I’m sorry, but your baby has no heartbeat.” In those last few moments, when our daughter Nelle was born to our tears, you let me collapse into your shoulder and gripped my hand.

Six months later, when the unthinkable happened, and our daughter, Iris, had no heartbeat, you rushed into the hospital room and clutched me. Once again, you were by my side when she was born.

You supported me, remained upright when I fell down, over the next months. I was so depressed after losing my two daughters, and there were days that getting out of bed was a chore. I stumbled through the days and took care of our older children. I wrote, sometimes obsessively, about how I was feeling in order to keep my sanity. I retreated into myself, convinced that no one could understand my pain.

You were with me every step of the way as we navigated another pregnancy. We agonized together over whether or not to try for a baby again. With two living sons and two daughters stillborn, the odds seemed to play straight up the middle. When we heard that baby cry in the operating room after my third c-section, you held our daughter, Autumn, and brought her to my side. Once again, we could instantly see the embodiment of our DNA.

We continued to move. Not forward perhaps, but sideways. Parenting after loss was a different type of stress. It was managing the moments and trying to reassure ourselves that this baby would be fine. Our two older children were more self-sufficient but demanding of our attention in other ways as they entered grade school.

In all of that time — the years that had passed since first losing Nelle — I stopped taking care of you. You did everything to support me, and I did not reciprocate. I forgot to ask you how you were doing. A healthy pregnancy became the center of our universe, and as the incubator, I could not be separated from that. Our communication lacked.

It came to a head when Autumn was about six months old. It was like we didn’t know how to connect anymore — how to focus on any aspect of our marriage other than pregnancy, and now that part was over. You asked me “Why aren’t we back to happy?” as if having a living baby could erase the daughters that we lost. I looked at you in disbelief.

You told me that you felt like you had done everything you could to support me, and that I had done nothing in return. I acknowledged this saying “You’re right. I’m sorry. I had nothing else to give during that time, because I was in survival mode. But I will try to fix that going forward.”

We tried marriage counseling, but it intensified the problems by putting them under a microscope.

You pulled back, so strongly that I wondered if our marriage would survive.

Then one night, you came to me. You sat next to me and said “I have realized what the problem is. I have anxiety.” You had been having panic attacks, for nearly a year, and didn’t recognize them for what they were. It had come to be expected and you didn’t know how to deal with how you felt.

I held you, the way that you had held me so many times before.

I knew that the journey of healing would not be a quick one. You needed new coping skills, and I had spent years in therapy learning to handle triggers for grief. Medication was prescribed and helped, but it is a process in finding the right combination and dosage. Individual therapy and re-entering marriage therapy to learn how to take care of ourselves and each other at the same time.

You are facing nightmares, relapses, and a body that physically responds in a way that you cannot control. You haven’t yet found a way to communicate what you need, but I am listening. And I am patient.

You took care of me during the worst moments of my life over the past several years. Now it is your turn. Let me take care of you.