Years after losing a baby at birth, I can look back and see that there were stages to grief, but mostly my stages of grief did not map well to the stages of grief that you were "supposed" to go through. I suspect that most people have utterly idiosyncratic grief experiences, but I thought it might be useful to write about mine in case someone else feels like this, and also in the hopes that it will allow other people to think about their own stages and accept that they are perfectly normal for them.
#1 Terror
This stage came within days after my daughter's death. It meant that anytime any of my other children were out of my sight, and sometimes even when they were in my sight, I felt terrified that they would also die. The world seemed like such an unsafe place, so many ways to die, and I started to think of all of them. It wasn't that the word had changed, but my perception of my children's risk had dramatically changed. It felt sometimes like all my skin had been flayed off and I was walking around, so vulnerable and exposed that everything hurt.
#2 Robot
This stage came a few months later. I remember feeling like I was so cut off from normal human interaction that I saw everything as a kind of robot parroting of words. Saying "Hello?" and "How are you?" felt like performances rather than real questions. No one wanted to know the real answer. I also felt like I was expected to act like a robot, that when people contacted me, that they wanted me to behave in particular manner. When I didn't, then they perceived me as broken. That made them want to "help" me, but it felt mostly like they just wanted me to be fixed, so that their own lives could go on being normal.
#3 Self-Flagellation
This stage came about a year later. I think in some ways this is like what other people call denial, but had a lot of "what ifs" involved in it. I thought through the thousand scenarios that would have led (I imagined) to my daughter surviving. And then I proceeded to blame myself for not doing any of them, despite the fact that there had been no reason for me to believe that anything was wrong with the pregnancy except perhaps the last few days before the fateful delivery. This, of all the stages, makes the most sense to me because I realize now that I was actually getting over the terror stage. If I was the one at fault for my daughter's death, then I had control. I could make sure never to do that again, and thus my other children would be safe. This was an important part of the healing process. As painful as it was, it was part of me becoming myself again.
#4 Crazy
This stage came about 2 years later, when I realized that I was actually crazy. That is, I realized that the rest of the world was probably still the same as it had been before my daughter's death and it was probably me who had changed. This meant that I was the one who had to get better, to change, or do something to move on. I didn't even like to think about that phrase, moving on. I didn't want to move on. I was convinced I was going to be broken forever. Maybe some part of me felt that I owed it to my daughter to never heal, or that it made me somehow more special or more deep if I never healed. Or maybe that's just me looking back on that time. In any case, this was when I finally went to see a therapist and it actually helped. I'd been to 2 others before this, but since I was convinced that other people were going to change instead of me, the therapy didn't work very well and didn't last very long.
#5 Repair
After about 5-6 years later, I am just now starting to realize all the repair work that has to be done. At first, this made me defensive and angry. After all, it wasn't my fault this had happened to me. Why did I have to do all this extra work to make up for the hurt I'd caused while I was hurting myself and no one was helping me. But gradually, that has faded away and I think that I have come to accept (there's that grief stage word) that it doesn't really matter whose fault it was or wasn't. It only matters that there is work to be done, and that if I want to be happier and have richer relationships in the future, I've got to work on them now. It doesn't mean that something else terrible is going to happen to me, either. It's not an invitation to be hurt if you are healthy. Though hurt probably will come. No one lives a life without it unless they have no feelings. And that is not the path I want to be on.
#1 Terror
This stage came within days after my daughter's death. It meant that anytime any of my other children were out of my sight, and sometimes even when they were in my sight, I felt terrified that they would also die. The world seemed like such an unsafe place, so many ways to die, and I started to think of all of them. It wasn't that the word had changed, but my perception of my children's risk had dramatically changed. It felt sometimes like all my skin had been flayed off and I was walking around, so vulnerable and exposed that everything hurt.
#2 Robot
This stage came a few months later. I remember feeling like I was so cut off from normal human interaction that I saw everything as a kind of robot parroting of words. Saying "Hello?" and "How are you?" felt like performances rather than real questions. No one wanted to know the real answer. I also felt like I was expected to act like a robot, that when people contacted me, that they wanted me to behave in particular manner. When I didn't, then they perceived me as broken. That made them want to "help" me, but it felt mostly like they just wanted me to be fixed, so that their own lives could go on being normal.
#3 Self-Flagellation
This stage came about a year later. I think in some ways this is like what other people call denial, but had a lot of "what ifs" involved in it. I thought through the thousand scenarios that would have led (I imagined) to my daughter surviving. And then I proceeded to blame myself for not doing any of them, despite the fact that there had been no reason for me to believe that anything was wrong with the pregnancy except perhaps the last few days before the fateful delivery. This, of all the stages, makes the most sense to me because I realize now that I was actually getting over the terror stage. If I was the one at fault for my daughter's death, then I had control. I could make sure never to do that again, and thus my other children would be safe. This was an important part of the healing process. As painful as it was, it was part of me becoming myself again.
#4 Crazy
This stage came about 2 years later, when I realized that I was actually crazy. That is, I realized that the rest of the world was probably still the same as it had been before my daughter's death and it was probably me who had changed. This meant that I was the one who had to get better, to change, or do something to move on. I didn't even like to think about that phrase, moving on. I didn't want to move on. I was convinced I was going to be broken forever. Maybe some part of me felt that I owed it to my daughter to never heal, or that it made me somehow more special or more deep if I never healed. Or maybe that's just me looking back on that time. In any case, this was when I finally went to see a therapist and it actually helped. I'd been to 2 others before this, but since I was convinced that other people were going to change instead of me, the therapy didn't work very well and didn't last very long.
#5 Repair
After about 5-6 years later, I am just now starting to realize all the repair work that has to be done. At first, this made me defensive and angry. After all, it wasn't my fault this had happened to me. Why did I have to do all this extra work to make up for the hurt I'd caused while I was hurting myself and no one was helping me. But gradually, that has faded away and I think that I have come to accept (there's that grief stage word) that it doesn't really matter whose fault it was or wasn't. It only matters that there is work to be done, and that if I want to be happier and have richer relationships in the future, I've got to work on them now. It doesn't mean that something else terrible is going to happen to me, either. It's not an invitation to be hurt if you are healthy. Though hurt probably will come. No one lives a life without it unless they have no feelings. And that is not the path I want to be on.
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