Capture your grief - Day 3 WHAT IT FELT LIKE

In honour of this month of awareness today we give the outside world some insight into what it is like to be a bereaved parent by sharing what a certain experience that you had during your grief journey. This can be a positive or negative (or both) experience. Some experiences that you could share about are what it felt like to hear the words “There is no heartbeat” or maybe you had an experience where someone did something very special in memory of your children. Pick a moment and share how it made you feel.

I read over today's topic many times, and I still don't know how I could pick one moment and share how it made me feel. Throughout this entire journey and up to this day, my emotions fluctuated from feeling absolutely nothing and numb, to feeling everything - feeling an ache so strong as though my heart was being torn out of my chest, my knees so weak and heavy till I kneel on the ground and at times a peace that I could only find in the promise of God's love...  that God's love for Bubbles or any human being, is not measured by the number of days one has lived and breathed on this Earth, not measured by how able or talented one is, but simply because one was created.

I started to grieve as I learned of Charis' diagnosis and prognosis. In general, people usually congratulate you and are excited for you when they find out you are pregnant. For me, I had a difficult time telling people I was pregnant - I didn't know how to face their elated happy expressions upon hearing the news, then shattering their excitement by explaining that we were also anticipating the death of our baby.  So, I didn't post any photos during my pregnancy on Facebook because 1) I didn't want to endure such conflicting emotions in overwhelming numbers on social media; 2)  I didn't know how to be completely honest on social media, since people feel uncomfortable talking about infant death, seeing photos of infants with congenital abnormalities (some parents' posts of these photos have been removed by FB before), etc.  This isolated myself from some friends and overseas relatives, who didn't know I was carrying Charis until I saw them in person, or until it was Charis' birth announcement.

Opening up about our decision to carry Charis despite her poor prognosis and dealing with different reactions were emotionally draining, but inviting others into our lives made us feel like we weren't going through such challenging circumstances alone. Our friends and family didn't really know how to respond, or how to fix things, because we couldn't possibly fix anything. However, we felt so much love and support because of this. And when you can talk to such friends about such important, heavy-laden circumstances, and such friends stick by you, listen to you and comfort you, these friends are treasure.

I once saw some memes of babies and rude comments that some people on Facebook made about a picture of a baby and I became saddened to think of what others would say about Charis, how they may judge her appearance because of her syndrome. I thought that no one would call her beautiful, cute and maybe others couldn't bear to look at her. Daryl comforted me and reminded me, maybe we need to learn and remind ourselves to determine beauty, not through the eyes of the world, but through the eyes of our God.

On the day of her birth, which was also the day of her death, I wished that she could just stay inside me, stay alive with her heart beating inside me a little longer.  I wished her heart and lungs weren't failing from hydrops. I wished time would stop. My labour was complicated, and long story short, after 24 hours of labour, two failed epidurals, I underwent a C-section under general anesthesics and Charis was born. Daryl was the first to hold her. I remember waking up from the anesthetics in my own L&D room, two nurses by my side, I was still on oxygen, very sedated, and asked for Charis. Daryl passed her to me, and I was so in love when I saw her. Note: I am a pediatric nurse, I am trained to naturally look for signs of abnormality. When I saw her, I didn't care for the defects of her skull, her nose or ears, her limbs... in fact, they all seem so normal to me, it was a part of her and she made me love all of her.  I was just so excited to meet her. While the NILMDTS photographer took pictures for us, I settled down, starred into Charis' peaceful face, and felt a sudden pang of sadness and yearning. Hoping that she would wake up in my arms. Afterwards, friends poured into my room and we passed Charis around. Moments later I could hear another infant's cries in another room. It didn't hit me that my baby wasn't crying, wasn't breathing, wasn't alive. I was just so in love and happy that I could actually hold my own baby in my arms.