William is almost here. I can see the finish line. Today marks 36 weeks and 2 days. Anya was born at 37 weeks and 2 days. I feel excited, but at the same time, the next few weeks are daunting, to say the least.
Past experiences tend to dictate your expectations when faced with the unknown. The second time you drive a car is a bit less scary than the first time - unless, of course, you got in a major collision the first time. In that case, I imagine you would be scared shitless. But you can mitigate that a bit, at least, by sticking to a safer environment - a parking lot, or a quiet street.
I'm not going to have a parking lot to practice in.
William's birth will happen whether I am ready for it or not. I might be just fine and able to give Kayleigh all of the support that she needs - but there's a very real chance that I won't. That's how we're approaching this birth: on the assumption that I will be completely useless.
In a way, this mindset relieves some anxiety, by forcing us to get other help. We've hired an excellent doula, who will be able to give Kayleigh all of the help that she might need. We'll also have Kayleigh's sister to lend a hand.
Looking at the birth in a more selfish way, though: there's only so much planning that can actually help me. Even if I know all of the meditative calming techniques on the planet, I can't know whether I'll know how to use them when I need them. Anxiety tends to prevent me from thinking correctly. There's no magic one-time drug I can take (or at least, not one that wouldn't make me drowsy). I might be in a state of complete panic, and unable to do anything about it.
But I will get through it one way or another. I know, deep down, that William will be fine. I just don't know that I'll be able to hold on to the comfort of that thought. As someone who likes to be in control, that scares me.
And at the end of the day, I am not the one having to give birth. I am not the one who will be born. Compared to what could happen to those two, my fears seem a bit trivial. I can only hope that I will be able to give my wife and son all of the help and attention that they deserve.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Fear and Surrender
Just a little over a month to go before we expect William to join us.
Some moments I feel a rush of excitement and love. I love William so much - as much as if he were already born and in my arms. Anya taught me the love of a mother, and in this moment I get to feel this love again!
Other moments, I am overcome with fear. Millions of mothers around the world go through the pains and anxieties of labour, knowing they will make it through whatever may come with a vigorous, crying baby.
Yet this has not been my experience.
It takes surprising concentration and mental acrobatics to equate the movements in my belly - so insistent they can be seen from across a table - to a warm baby, cooing in my arms. Even more challenging is associating the pains of labour with a little baby bundled in his car seat ready to come home for the first time.
There are no guarantees.
Yet William deserves a mother who believes in him.
And so, I give myself time and space to feel, to meditate and to imagine a future filled with love, tenderness and tiny toes to tickle. I try to let go and to believe that William will arrive safely.
William's fate is not in my control. I must surrender my fears and trust that William and I will make it through this together.
I can face this challenge.
Some moments I feel a rush of excitement and love. I love William so much - as much as if he were already born and in my arms. Anya taught me the love of a mother, and in this moment I get to feel this love again!
Other moments, I am overcome with fear. Millions of mothers around the world go through the pains and anxieties of labour, knowing they will make it through whatever may come with a vigorous, crying baby.
Yet this has not been my experience.
There are no guarantees.
Yet William deserves a mother who believes in him.
And so, I give myself time and space to feel, to meditate and to imagine a future filled with love, tenderness and tiny toes to tickle. I try to let go and to believe that William will arrive safely.
William's fate is not in my control. I must surrender my fears and trust that William and I will make it through this together.
I can face this challenge.
Monday, February 2, 2015
Small Talk
First, a status update: William is 32 weeks along. We went for an ultrasound today, and everything looks perfectly normal (it's not usually something the ultrasound tech can tell you, but we had a physician doing it).
He's up to 3 pounds, 11 ounces. Keep it up, little guy. Six to eight weeks to go!
Now, lets talk about something I've been reflecting on... small talk.
Imagine yourself in this position: Your young colleague / neighbor / acquaintance announces a pregnancy. You bump into them in the lunch room, at a party, or waiting for the bus. So you chat. You ask them about the pregnancy: "When's the due date?", "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?"... "Is it your first?"
At that question, they suddenly hesitate. You might wonder why - "Is it your first" didn't seem like a hard question. It's a pretty straightforward 'Yes' or 'No', really.
It's incredibly easy for any well-meaning person to go down this conversational route - and in 99.5% of cases where you happen to ask that to someone who has had children, it won't lead to any awkward conversation.
But the 0.5% is out there.
I still hesitate when I'm asked. For me, the answer to 'Is this your first?' is almost always 'No - it's my second' - except, I confess, in situations where I don't feel like I could tell the story.
Saying 'No' doesn't necessarily lead to me delving in the story at all - more often than not, actually, the pregnancy questions stop there, and we move on to other conversation subjects. But sometimes i'll be asked how old my first is. "She would have turned one last month, but she died at birth".
That's a bit heavy for small talk, isn't it?
Here's the thing, though: it's important for me to acknowledge it. I'm not going to start wearing a t-shirt saying "My baby died! Ask me about it!", but if i'm asked directly, I will not hide it. We might one day live in a perfect world where every pregnancy ends with a healthy happy baby, but we're not there today. Small talk or not, I won't lie to preserve the appearance of everything always being okay, which might be what's generally expected in small talk.
I say this realizing that it's a bit hypocritical for me, who always responds "Good", when asked "How's it going?", to start ranting about small talk. It's not that I don't care about keeping folks generally at ease - it's that being honest about my daughter is more important to me.
Everyone has a story in life - It's interesting to wonder just how close I've come to learning other people's stories, just by asking the right questions.
He's up to 3 pounds, 11 ounces. Keep it up, little guy. Six to eight weeks to go!
Now, lets talk about something I've been reflecting on... small talk.
Imagine yourself in this position: Your young colleague / neighbor / acquaintance announces a pregnancy. You bump into them in the lunch room, at a party, or waiting for the bus. So you chat. You ask them about the pregnancy: "When's the due date?", "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?"... "Is it your first?"
At that question, they suddenly hesitate. You might wonder why - "Is it your first" didn't seem like a hard question. It's a pretty straightforward 'Yes' or 'No', really.
It's incredibly easy for any well-meaning person to go down this conversational route - and in 99.5% of cases where you happen to ask that to someone who has had children, it won't lead to any awkward conversation.
But the 0.5% is out there.
I still hesitate when I'm asked. For me, the answer to 'Is this your first?' is almost always 'No - it's my second' - except, I confess, in situations where I don't feel like I could tell the story.
Saying 'No' doesn't necessarily lead to me delving in the story at all - more often than not, actually, the pregnancy questions stop there, and we move on to other conversation subjects. But sometimes i'll be asked how old my first is. "She would have turned one last month, but she died at birth".
That's a bit heavy for small talk, isn't it?
Here's the thing, though: it's important for me to acknowledge it. I'm not going to start wearing a t-shirt saying "My baby died! Ask me about it!", but if i'm asked directly, I will not hide it. We might one day live in a perfect world where every pregnancy ends with a healthy happy baby, but we're not there today. Small talk or not, I won't lie to preserve the appearance of everything always being okay, which might be what's generally expected in small talk.
I say this realizing that it's a bit hypocritical for me, who always responds "Good", when asked "How's it going?", to start ranting about small talk. It's not that I don't care about keeping folks generally at ease - it's that being honest about my daughter is more important to me.
Everyone has a story in life - It's interesting to wonder just how close I've come to learning other people's stories, just by asking the right questions.
Friday, January 2, 2015
A New Year, A New Challenge
Wednesday night, with tears in our eyes, we said goodbye to 2014.
2014 was the year of Anya.
January 1st, 2014, was our thirteenth day without Anya in our lives. A day we never expected would happen.
It was a year filled with firsts and anniversaries, soul wrenching pain and reminders of what we had come so close to having - a daughter - but had lost at the very last second.
2014 was a year of healing.
January 1st, 2014, we got out of bed - two days after burying Anya - we went about our day and we survived. What else could we do?
It was a year filled with tears and love. New shoulders to cry on appeared in unexpected places. Our love for one another grew stronger than ever, and we found a strength we never knew we had.
But most days still felt more like survival than living.
I want more for 2015.
I want to make life good again.
I want to love unreservedly. I want to stop being afraid that those I love will die too soon. Everyone dies. And it is always to soon. But I will dare to love them anyway.
I will love William fiercely - even though he can't fill the hole left by Anya - even though he too might die before me. William is here now, kicking me vigourously as I write. Today we are together. It may be all we have, but it is something.
I want to face my own mortality. I want to look at it, acknowledge it, thank it even. Without death, we would not be able to appreciate and enjoy life. And I want to live each day wholeheartedly, with gratitude, love and passion.
Death is waiting on the horizon of each one of our lives - and it might come sooner than expected - but it doesn't scare me. I will dare to enjoy life anyway.
2014 was the year of Anya.
January 1st, 2014, was our thirteenth day without Anya in our lives. A day we never expected would happen.
It was a year filled with firsts and anniversaries, soul wrenching pain and reminders of what we had come so close to having - a daughter - but had lost at the very last second.
2014 was a year of healing.
January 1st, 2014, we got out of bed - two days after burying Anya - we went about our day and we survived. What else could we do?
It was a year filled with tears and love. New shoulders to cry on appeared in unexpected places. Our love for one another grew stronger than ever, and we found a strength we never knew we had.
But most days still felt more like survival than living.
I want more for 2015.
I want to make life good again.
I want to love unreservedly. I want to stop being afraid that those I love will die too soon. Everyone dies. And it is always to soon. But I will dare to love them anyway.
I will love William fiercely - even though he can't fill the hole left by Anya - even though he too might die before me. William is here now, kicking me vigourously as I write. Today we are together. It may be all we have, but it is something.
I want to face my own mortality. I want to look at it, acknowledge it, thank it even. Without death, we would not be able to appreciate and enjoy life. And I want to live each day wholeheartedly, with gratitude, love and passion.
Death is waiting on the horizon of each one of our lives - and it might come sooner than expected - but it doesn't scare me. I will dare to enjoy life anyway.
Friday, December 19, 2014
Dear William
Dear William:
Today is an important day for me and your mom. Today would have been your big sister's first birthday. It's also the first day on the calendar where we've never gone to bed expecting a baby. We don't know what it's like to be expecting on December 20th, or Christmas, or New Year's Day, or Valentine's day.
It's all a big unknown right now. But we couldn't be happier that you're here for this journey.
I am going to make a leap of faith and fast forward through time a little bit. To a time where you're with us, happy, young, curious.
I expect that you'll be especially curious about December 19th. Who is this person we celebrate every year, who we say is your sister, that you'll never actually have the chance to meet? In a couple of years, you might become familiar with the concept of our family including Anya. In a few more, you may vaguely understand the concept of death. But you probably won't really, truly understand what December 19th means to us until much later.
By that time, I expect that what December 19th means to us will have evolved from what it is today, on the first anniversary. So I am writing to tell you what it means to me, at age 29, right now.
To be completely honest, today is a day that I have dreaded for the past week. It's incredible just how vivid the memories of December 18 and 19, 2013 still are. More than anything, I remember the moment where - probably almost a year ago to the minute, as I write this - a doctor walked into my waiting room in the ER. I asked him if Anya was okay. And he shook his head. I asked if she had died. He nodded. And I fell apart.
Today is a day to pause and remember that. How low I felt. How terrible the world was that day. It's also a day to pause and reflect on how much I've been able to heal. To appreciate all of the love that our friends and family have given us, and all of the help we received in this dark time.
Finally, it's also a day that we appreciate all of the love that your sister has brought to the world. She made me a dad. She brought me and your mom closer together. She helped renew and strengthen friendships.
She would have loved you, William. I would have loved for her to be your guide, your friend, your defender. I am sorry that she won't have that chance. I hope that you can find a place for her in your heart regardless.
Today is an important day for me and your mom. Today would have been your big sister's first birthday. It's also the first day on the calendar where we've never gone to bed expecting a baby. We don't know what it's like to be expecting on December 20th, or Christmas, or New Year's Day, or Valentine's day.
It's all a big unknown right now. But we couldn't be happier that you're here for this journey.
I am going to make a leap of faith and fast forward through time a little bit. To a time where you're with us, happy, young, curious.
I expect that you'll be especially curious about December 19th. Who is this person we celebrate every year, who we say is your sister, that you'll never actually have the chance to meet? In a couple of years, you might become familiar with the concept of our family including Anya. In a few more, you may vaguely understand the concept of death. But you probably won't really, truly understand what December 19th means to us until much later.
By that time, I expect that what December 19th means to us will have evolved from what it is today, on the first anniversary. So I am writing to tell you what it means to me, at age 29, right now.
To be completely honest, today is a day that I have dreaded for the past week. It's incredible just how vivid the memories of December 18 and 19, 2013 still are. More than anything, I remember the moment where - probably almost a year ago to the minute, as I write this - a doctor walked into my waiting room in the ER. I asked him if Anya was okay. And he shook his head. I asked if she had died. He nodded. And I fell apart.
Today is a day to pause and remember that. How low I felt. How terrible the world was that day. It's also a day to pause and reflect on how much I've been able to heal. To appreciate all of the love that our friends and family have given us, and all of the help we received in this dark time.
Finally, it's also a day that we appreciate all of the love that your sister has brought to the world. She made me a dad. She brought me and your mom closer together. She helped renew and strengthen friendships.
She would have loved you, William. I would have loved for her to be your guide, your friend, your defender. I am sorry that she won't have that chance. I hope that you can find a place for her in your heart regardless.
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Being There
Below is a post that I had written over the summer, but never ended up publishing (until now). A big part of this journey for me has been accepting (or trying to accept) my own limitations. It's a bit difficult to share, but I feel it's important to acknowledge the difficult parts.
---
August 11, 2014
Grief has taken a lot out of both of me and Kayleigh. For the vast majority of the time, though, when one of us was having a weak moment, the other was there to comfort, and vice-versa. In a perfect world, we would always be able to balance each other out in this way.
But there are times when emotional exhaustion has had the better of me. It happened once last week, where I had to say "I'm sorry, I really can't help you right now". I felt I didn't have the capacity to deal with the anxiety that comes with the fears and tears.
Then I caught myself, and I thought "wait. I can't help my wife right now? When she needs me? This difficult stuff is part of the job that I signed up for - the good and the bad". Then came the guilt. And a bit of fear that maybe I wasn't deserving of all her love, while I stood there unable to give her what she needed.
As I started explaining to her why I felt I wasn't able to help - along with the self-loathing that came with it - she thanked me.
That surprised me. For the most part, I would've said I understood our love very well. I hadn't understood until then, though, that love can mean realizing that your partner may not be able to give you everything you need - and being okay with it.
---
August 11, 2014
Grief has taken a lot out of both of me and Kayleigh. For the vast majority of the time, though, when one of us was having a weak moment, the other was there to comfort, and vice-versa. In a perfect world, we would always be able to balance each other out in this way.
But there are times when emotional exhaustion has had the better of me. It happened once last week, where I had to say "I'm sorry, I really can't help you right now". I felt I didn't have the capacity to deal with the anxiety that comes with the fears and tears.
Then I caught myself, and I thought "wait. I can't help my wife right now? When she needs me? This difficult stuff is part of the job that I signed up for - the good and the bad". Then came the guilt. And a bit of fear that maybe I wasn't deserving of all her love, while I stood there unable to give her what she needed.
As I started explaining to her why I felt I wasn't able to help - along with the self-loathing that came with it - she thanked me.
That surprised me. For the most part, I would've said I understood our love very well. I hadn't understood until then, though, that love can mean realizing that your partner may not be able to give you everything you need - and being okay with it.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Hello December
It's December again. It almost feels like we've been living in December for the past year.
This month of course, on the 19th, we'll celebrate Anya's first birthday.
I'd be lying if I said that approaching this milestone hadn't already been a challenge. Everything about December, about the holidays, reminds us of Anya. Putting up our Christmas tree. Going to work parties. It's too easy to remember what we were doing exactly one year ago. Those last few weeks where everything was so... normal.
If you had asked me at this time last year what the next twelve months had in store for us.. this current reality would not have been one that I could have pictured. Some possibilities are too sad to really consider.
Yet here we are, almost a full twelve months after Anya left us, and we have a surprising amount of things to be grateful about. Kayleigh and I have had some of the worst moments we could possibly face, but we've faced them together. We've weathered the storm (if not all of it, then hopefully the worst of it). And we're still here, stronger than ever. We've also been lucky to have the support we've received from our family, friends and work colleagues.
We're also incredibly lucky to have William. Our son. He won't be joining us for another three months, but there's no doubt that his presence - and his flurry of kicks - has made us much more hopeful about the future. In that other reality, he may not have joined us for another few years.
All that to say, December feels bittersweet. It's a month of sadness, and a month of hope. It will forever be Anya's month. When I think about her legacy, it is not measured in tears, but in how much love she brought to our world. How much she made us appreciate the people around us.
Anya, we hope to be better parents to your little brother because of you.We're going to tackle December thinking of you. We're going to be sad. But we'll remain forever thankful for having the chance to have you.
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