Just Call Me Mara

I am not sure what it is about the human condition that causes us to seek out others like us.  For me, I find some solace in the idea that others are going through or have gone through what I am going through.  We have a commonality that binds us.

 I have done a lot of searching, reading and talking in the last few months.  I found a group of friends that understands what is like to have a bad day for no other reason than you are grieving.  No words of motivation have to be spoken in this circle, just the awesome awareness and intimacy that someone gets it, and it is okay.  I have read a lot of information and people's stories and found tremendous comfort in knowing I am not the only human being such a tragedy has happened to.  As I have said before, I am not writting this blog for sympathy.  I do not need it.  It is what it is, and the whole idea here is to move forward.  I am stuck.  Spitting these words out may just be the thing to get my wheels moving again. 

In my reading I came across the story of Naomi in the Bible.  I am a Christian, so this should be of no shock to my friends.   It is a true story.  It happened.  I take great comfort in that.  You want to know why?  It just goes to prove that my condition of grief and loss has been going on for thousands of years.  There is documented evidence, and you know what?  These people were able to find life and happiness again.  So there is great hope that I will too.  Life may not ever be normal again, but as my dear friend Marilyn says (yes, that's her real name), you find a new normal.

 Naomi's husband and two sons died.  Look at what she said:

"Don't call me Naomi (which means pleasant)," she told them. "Call me Mara (which means bitter), because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.   I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me."  Ruth 1:20-21

I have to admit, sometimes I feel this way, like you should call me Mara, "bitter".  (Hypothetically speaking of course.  I mean you can still call me Tabitha, which ironically means graceful gazelle.  Laugh amongst your selves now.  Graceful was never one of my qualities)  I went to hospital with 3 babies inside, and came home with a plastic box of ashes.  I get what Naomi was saying.  She even goes on to say the Lord had afflicted her and brought misfortune upon her.  Man, do I feel like that too, and I am glad to know that a Godly woman felt that way as well.    

Here's the thing.  I know all this anger I feel is just a stage.  Just like Naomi, my life will go on.  She struggled for a while.  She had a wonderful daughter-in-law by her side, like I have great friends and family.  She struggled.  I have and will for a while too.  In the end, she found favor and a new life, and I will as well.  

In any one day, I can run the gamut of emotions from peaceful, sad, depressed, laughing, loved, hated, alone, supported and the list could go on.  Some days, I will be honest, I do not feel like going on.  I think this is normal for someone who has lost a child.  I am not suicidal, but, I just feel empty some days.  For those of you who have children, just step back and think of them dying, and how you would feel.  Some days the emotional fortitude is just not there to want to go on.  Those are the days you have to push forward, or like me on some days, eat a lot and sleep...hence my last post.

I have felt like Naomi for about 2 months.  I am hoping it won't last too much longer.  I have hope it will not.  I've got God on my side. 

My tiny Jackson's precious hand.

The Big Truth

So the first week after the boys died, the tears just flowed.  They usually came without warning.  Something would set them off, like seeing a minivan, or a new born baby.  Sometimes they happened for no reason at all.  The pain just seeped out, literally, seeped out of my eyes.  As the weeks passed, the tears became less.  I didn't cry very often.  I could talk about it like it happened to someone else.  Like I was some volunteer at the library reading some one else's story.  I began to feel distant from it.  This is not the first time I have distanced myself from grief.  I have lost both my mother and father and did the same thing.  To this day, I do not think I have ever really processed my feelings about losing my parents.  I did not want things the same way this time.  I wanted to deal with this head on and go through it.  I felt like I owed this to my children.  So, I found a grief support group and started going weekly.  The first week was tough.  I cried.  I was saddened by everyone's story of loss.  These people have since become like a family for me.

After a few months of going to "Grief" as Brett and I call it, I found myself distanced from my emotions like all the other times of loss in my life.  I started to wonder what was wrong with me.  Why can I not feel like everyone else?  My new grief family cried most every week.  Genuine, honest tears.  Me, nothing other than I was creating and have created a bond with my new "family".  Then came the anger.  And man, am I angry.  I think mostly I am angry at God.  Why give me three little perfect boys, then take them away?  I am angry at  myself.  I am angry at my friends.  I am angry at my family.  You name it, I am probably mad at it.

Where has all this gotten me you ask?  Well, I will tell you.  Fat!  I was fat before, but nothing like now.  See, where most people feel their grief, I feed mine.  Now, hormones have been adjusting and the stupid doctor put me on a birth control I should have never been put on, but I can't blame it all on that.  I have never been one to diet or work out, and let me tell you, I don't want to.  All I want to do is eat, sleep and be angry.  It has gotten out of control now.  I knew it had, but some of my dear family has decided to point it out to me.  Gee thanks!  You think I do not see the disgusting cow I have become???!!! Let's add guilt to my already compounding anger.  Nothing fits, and when I say nothing, I mean nothing but my maternity clothes.  Let me just feel the pain of having to wear maternity clothes when I have 3 dead babies.  I feel too embarrassed to even go out in public, which leads to isolating.  I am so mortified that all people are going to see is a fat person and think "Oh My God", that I am deliberately pushing people that care about me away.  So there, I have said it.  Now if I could only find a inkling of strength to do anything about it.  Here is something you skinny people should think about before you judge a fatty...we have feelings too, and we feel better when we eat! 

I said in my first post that I was going to be as honest as possible.  And, I am trying.  It is really hard to write about how absolutely miserable I am in my own skin.  It is embarrassing and painful.  It is even more painful when people point it out.  I know, I know, they just love and care about me, but some of the things that have been said are very, very painful.  I do not know when I lost the ability to cope without food, but I have.  I feel ugly and unlovable.  I struggle with depression, and I am truly depressed.  These are not things I could ever talk about to someone other than a licensed psychologist, so here I am writing them.  I have not come to a place of any motivation.  I wonder what is wrong with me.  Most people would see themselves in my situation and start dieting and working out.  I am just not there.  Depression is exhausting, and I am exhausted.  It is a vicious cycle I have found myself in.  Not much different from every other fat person's story you see on TV.  Maybe somewhere deep inside I don't feel like I deserve to be loved or am worth loving.  I feel like I have failed miserably at the one thing every woman should be able to do, and that is give birth to healthy babies.  So while I am wallowing in self loathing and hatred, I think I will call it a night!

All This for A Plastic Box

Disclaimer:  This is long.  Real long.  Grab some popcorn and a coke if you choose to proceed.

 Them: Congrats!  It's triplet boys!   

US:  YIKES!!!  

Them:  Now, go every 2 weeks to a high risk doctor till we say otherwise. 

...And so, I did as I was told, well for the most part anyway. 

 

Things progressed well.  No real problems, everything was great (except for 3 straight months of nausea).  As the weeks and months passed, I was getting huge and very uncomfortable.  We had a platform bed that I had tremendous trouble getting in and out of.  At around 20 weeks, the doctors said my uterus was the size of a full term singleton pregnancy.  I couldn't imagine how much more I was going to be able to take.  I started to feel like triplet A was dropping.  I had all kinds of back and kidney pain.  At 22 weeks, I switched doctors and hospitals.  I went in for my first appointment with my new doctor.  I told him I felt like something had changed with Baby A, but he checked everything and said it all looked great.  I knew it wasn't, but I didn't want to be one of those first time moms who calls the doctor every day because they are freaking out about some change.  Looking back, I should have been more insistent.

I will digress here and say that when you are going through grief, the should-haves, would-haves, could-haves and what ifs will drive you crazy.  It is really best not to go there, but I do.  I go there a lot.  I suppose it is only natural.  It really only makes the pain worse.  It takes you to a deeper, darker place than you ever thought possible.  Just so you can join me in my dark and twisted thinking, here are some of the most common and latest should haves.  Should I have already been on bed rest?  Should I have gone to a more cutting edge hospital?  Should I have made them leave the catheter in?  What if my weight had been more under control?  What if I had been able to hold off just 3 more days?  Trust me, I could go on and on and on. Why do I do this to myself?  I do not know the answer, but I do know that I am not the only grieving person that does it.  Trust me, I have met a lot of wonderful folks the last few months, and most all do.

Anyways, back to the story.  I came home from the new doctor's office feeling good about my choice of care givers and the pregnancy, even though triplet A was sitting so low.  I was laying in my wonderful platform bed watching TV.  I had to pee, so I started the long process of rolling over on my knees to crawl out of my bed.  I felt a gush.  Just a little one.  Could have been urine I thought, but as I got up, I kept feeling the trickle.  I went to the bathroom.  Walked back down the hall.  Still trickling.  I told Brett I thought I was leaking, and that we needed to go to the ER.

The last picture of me pregnant at 20 weeks.

At the Labor and Delivery unit they did the little litmus test.  I was indeed leaking amniotic fluid.  Brett was still parking the car, so it was just me and the nurse.  It is amazing how calm I was at that moment.  I knew that this meant bed rest for the duration.  I had accepted that fate pretty quickly.  Out comes the sonogram machine.  Lots of questions about if the boys were in individual sacs.  Brett had to run home at one point to get the old sono pics for them to look at since my records had not been received yet.  As the night progressed, we were told that things were not good.  I was far too early for the boys to survive on their own.  If there were in fact in separate sacs, and we all believed they were, then there was a good chance that I could have Triplet A, and keep Triplet B and C cooking a little longer.  Of course, any hope they give you, they like to dash in the next breathe.  Since Triplet A's sac was ruptured, it wasn't a matter of if I would get any infection, but when.  They had also done some cultures and found that I had Group B strep in the vagina which they would have to treat right away in hopes that it would not invade the amniotic fluid.  This apparently is fairly common in pregnant women.  A test is done closer to one's due date to determine whether you have it or not.  Since I was nowhere near my due date, surprise!  I was whisked away to a room.

I laid in the bed for 6 days.  When I say laid in the bed, you can take that in the most literal sense.  I could not get up to go the bathroom or shower.  I was waited on hand and foot.  I got bed pans and sponge baths.  The very first night, they put a foley catheter in so that I could just urinate whenever without assistance.  I had pain from it from the beginning.  It felt like my bladder was trying to explode.  It wasn't constant, but it was frequent enough that it was quite troublesome.  After a couple of days of me complaining greatly, they came in to try and adjust it so I wouldn't be so uncomfortable.  It didn't help.  I have no idea why I never put 2 and 2 together that the bladder pain was actually contractions.  Finally, on the 6th day, I pleaded for the nurse to take the catheter out.  She did, and within 30 minutes I spiked a huge fever and was having chills.  I started vomiting.  I threw up all over my pillow cases from home.  Brett, being the good hubby, decides to run home and wash them.  In the short hour that he was gone, I went into labor.  It was quick and fast.  Before I knew it, I was being pushed down the hall into the labor room.  I couldn't get Brett to answer his phone, and I was cussing him as they wheeled me in the room.  Some where in my delirium, though I don't remember, I also had called my brother and sister-in-law, along with my best friend.  Not 5 minutes later, Miles Abraham Lebo was born.  It was July 25, 2010 around 11:40 PM.  He weighed 1 pound 2 ounces, and was absolutely perfect.  Turns out, Brett had made it back in time and was standing in the doorway when Miles was born.  Miles lived about 20 minutes.  The doctors would not do anything for him because of his gestational age.  Even though they had told me there was nothing they could do, I still yelled, begged, pleaded and screamed for them to help. I remember the nurse messing with him at the incubator.  She just kept saying she was sorry.  I yelled "Well if you aren't going to do anything for him, give him to me!"  Who wants their baby to die on a table?  I wanted him in my arms, and that is just where he died.  In our arms.  Let me say that it is the most helpless feeling in the world to watch your child die.

I do not remember when my brother and sister-in-law arrived, but it was not long after Miles was born, who knows, it could have been before.  I am very grateful that they were there for this whole process.  I know we held Miles for a while.  He got cold in my arms.  At some point the doctor comes in and tells me that I have a raging infection (funny, I just gave birth, and feel like a champ at this point).  He proceeds to tell us that I have Chorioamnionitis (basically an infection of the outer lining of the amniotic sac and the actual amniotic fluid due to the ruptured sac and more than likely the Strep B infection).  I would have to deliver my other 2 boys or I would die.  I didn't believe him.  I felt fine.  I was not contracting.  Why couldn't they just give me some IV antibiotics and let me wait at least 3 more days so my babies would have a chance?  I was so close to viability.  I wanted to wait it out.  Finally, Brett stepped in and told me he was not going to let me die trying to save the babies.  Still not convinced, and believing that God was going to work some huge miracle and show them all, I agreed to continue.  I told them I wanted an epidural.  I thought it was highly unfair to have to feel labor a second and third time, and for what?  The doctor agreed.  Then more bad news, my white count was over 31,000, up from 7,000 earlier that morning.  This meant no epidural.  Too much of a risk of infection to the spine.  I think I got really angry at God at that moment.  I thought, "what in the world have I done to deserve all of this".  That feeling of being angry at God would come and go through out the next several hours.  They began pushing Petocin. For hours they pushed Petocin.  Not one single contraction I tell you.  In all those hours, we had many discussions, consulted with 3 more doctors, read information on the internet and prayed.  I was convinced my boys were refusing to be born.

Finally after, 7 hours of Petocin, and not a single contraction, they decided they would break Triplet B's water.  I started having contractions immediately. They had given me some pain medication in the form of a pain pump, but let me tell you, that is no match for a natural birth, especially one that is breech.  Brett was right there with me this time, along with my best friend, brother and sister-in-law.  Cash Isaac Lebo was born breech July 26, 2010 at 7:45 AM.  He weighed 1 pound, 4 ounces.  He lived 20 minutes.  After they checked for signs of life, they just handed him to us.  He died in my arms.  This time, I did not yell and scream at them to do something.  I just cuddled my baby and looked at every inch of him.  They let us have as much time as we wanted.  By now, a few friends had arrived and were sharing this sacred time with us.  It all seems so surreal now.

Finally, I think I was just ready to get the whole thing over with.  They broke my water, and before the doctor could even lay his instruments down, Jackson Noah Lebo was born.  He weighed 1 pound 3 ounces.  He came out kicking and moving his arms.  Now, when you see your child kicking, you think, he's a fighter, he can live.  So, I pleaded and begged for them to do something.  Nothing but "I'm sorry".  He lived 40 minutes.  I still deep down think he had a chance, and that makes me angry.  He died in our arms as well. 

I feel like I need to say here, that when something this devastating happens to you, you really just go numb.  You kick into overdrive, and you just move forward in that moment.  Things have to get done, and decisions have to get made.  I know it is what the medical community calls shock.  I think it is the grace God gives us to face moments like these.  Looking back, I have very little memory of every detail.  I did not cry very much during those hours.  I talked a lot, and when I say a lot, I mean excessively.  I was irritated at some of the hospital staff.  I feel truly sorry for that second Labor and Delivery nurse.  I was mean to her.  Everything about her got on my nerves.  I am normally a very kind person, but I just could not help it.  And that poor grief counselor - I forbid her to come back in the room, poor, poor lady.  I felt irritation in those moments, not very much sadness.  I remember feeling pride about my children.  They lived.  They mattered.  They were beautiful.  A good mix of Brett and I.  I showed them off to our visitors.  I took a ton of pictures.  I know some people must have been mortified by my behavior.  I remember watching my brother and my best friend sob.  I just felt very out of body in those moments.  Very strange looking at it now. 

It was about 24 hours before the "high" of the birth wore off, and Brett and I became exhausted.  I did start crying some.  I remember they sent the babies in their incubator to the room with us.  They had taken them and cleaned them up.  They dressed them in matching outfits and had given them teddy bears.  We slept with them in our room the first night, but when I woke up the next morning, I did not want to keep touching them anymore.  They were cold and stiff and not like you want to remember your babies.  A friend came in while Brett was napping.  I was looking over the edge of the incubator at the boys crying.  He looked at me and said, "Honey, don't you think it's time you let them take the babies?"  As hard as this question was to hear, he was right.  So he made the call to the nurse while I sat in the bed and sobbed.  The hospital does encourage families to keep their babies as long as they want, but for me, it was time to let them go.

I left the hospital 2 days later.  We went to get a bite to eat as soon as we left, and I sat in the restaurant with tears streaming down my face.  How was I ever going to be able to be normal again?  I cried a lot those next few days.  Then we had the memorial.  There were a lot of  people there.  I do not remember much of those weeks that followed.  I know my milk came in, and I cried about that.  I felt very cheated.  It took several weeks for the funeral home to get the final death certificates.  Apparently, neonatal death certificates are hard to come by.  We had the boys cremated and placed in an urn together.  It only made sense to do it that way.  It was a strange thing to go get the remains.  I was expecting a decent size urn.  What we got was a small plastic box that reminded Brett and I of a filing cabinet.  Most people get to bring their babies home in car seats, me, I get mine in a 4 inch plastic box.  It just makes you feel empty.  I guess that's where I'm at.  Life has gone on, but I still feel empty looking at my plastic box of ashes.

So, there you have it.  This is my story.  How was your popcorn and coke?

Where to Start

I have been debating for a few weeks about starting another blog.  My last blog, The Lebo 3, was a great way to keep everyone informed about the progressing pregnancy with our triplets.  Since we lost them, I have sort of become lost myself.  It has been 5 months now since their birth and death, and I seem to be just stuck.  No one asks anymore how things are.  Sometimes I wonder if people forgot, but I suppose most people think I should be well on my way to healing and being over the worst part of it.  Maybe people just don't want to ask because they don't want the answer or the awkwardness that follows.  Soooo...I guess I have decided that it will be free therapy for me to vomit my feelings into the vast emptiness of the internet.  I do not know where to go from here.  I do not know if I even want people to read all the awful things that I might post on here, but I am not sure what else to do.  I need to get it out.  I need to purge.  The once a week grief support group, as wonderful as it is, is just not enough, and therapy, well, I haven't been in a while.  My counselor has left the practice, and I am being handed off to someone new.  YUCK!  Who wants to go through the process of catching up another stranger about your entire life to this point.  I will go back, just haven't.  I suppose I am procrastinating just for the shear pain in the butt it is going to be.  Just to get the emotional fortitude up to write what I have so far this evening took about a week.  You think I'm kidding???!!!  I messed with a layout for a few hours today, then uploaded the beautiful pictures on the side that were done by Carly Marie from http://namesinthesand.blogspot.com.  You should check her out, she is wonderful.  Anyway, I think I am done for the evening.  I will try to be as honest as I possibly can on here, while changing the names to protect the innocent.  If no one reads my words, that's fine too.  I think I just need to get them out.  Till next time, (when I will update from pregnancy to loss for those who are behind) I leave you with my year in photos, courtesy of a silly Facebook app.