{"id":4080,"date":"2012-04-05T18:19:19","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T01:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/?p=4080"},"modified":"2012-04-05T18:19:19","modified_gmt":"2012-04-06T01:19:19","slug":"ailynne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/ailynne\/","title":{"rendered":"Ailynne"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s a moment like no other.<\/p>\n

Seeing your child for the first time on an ultrasound is a major event in any expectant parent\u2019s life; you can actually see that little living piece of you, knowing that he or she is real. Unfortunately, not every child shown on an ultrasound is actually all right.\u00a0 My girlfriend and I had to learn this the hard way.<\/p>\n

It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm.\u00a0 Everything that you could possibly ask for in early spring.\u00a0 It was the day that we were scheduled for our first ultrasound, and we were both nervous and excited.\u00a0 The image of my child came up on the monitor and I was blown away\u2026 until the woman running the machine told us that something was wrong.\u00a0 She wasn\u2019t picking up a heartbeat, and the baby\u2019s heart should have started beating a few weeks ago.\u00a0 The image on the monitor that my world had briefly revolved around tore my world apart.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really remember much of that afternoon, but what I do remember is in shocking clarity.\u00a0 I remember the clothes I was wearing, and I remember that we took our dog for a miles-long walk.\u00a0 I remember being so angry at the weather for daring to be so beautiful, and being angry at the world for not stopping for our pain.\u00a0 I remember coming home to what seemed like an empty house, but I don\u2019t remember that night at all.<\/p>\n

The days and weeks that followed are similarly a blur.\u00a0 We somehow made it through that first week, at which point I realized I\u2019d been putting on the same clothes every day as though a clean change of clothes would make it all real.\u00a0 Angela went to visit her mother indefinitely, seeking solace from someone who\u2019d faced the same heartbreak, leaving me home alone.\u00a0 It was better that way, really; I\u2019ve always had to be the strong one for everyone else, and it\u2019s hard for me to deal with my own pain when someone else is around.\u00a0 I was alone, lost in my own world, and unsure if anything would ever be okay again.<\/p>\n

Angela read that it sometimes helped with the grieving process to go ahead and name the baby, in that you\u2019re actually grieving the loss of an individual, not just the loss of a concept. \u00a0From the moment that she found out that she was pregnant, she\u2019d had a feeling we were going to have a little girl, so we named her Ailynne Rose.\u00a0 In a way it did help to have a name for our loss, but at the same time it made the pain so much more real.\u00a0 My heart ached in a way I can\u2019t describe, a longing to hold my Ailynne.<\/p>\n

In A Grief Observed<\/a><\/em>, C.S. Lewis compared grief to fear.\u00a0 That book was once my coping mechanism for loss, as I read it when an aunt I had been very close to passed away.\u00a0 I read the book cover-to-cover every day, losing myself in the pain of another so as to better cope with my own.\u00a0 This time around, however, I couldn\u2019t bring myself to open the book and seek solace in the raw emotion it contained\u2026 my grief this time was unlike fear.\u00a0 My grief was more akin to hunger, a deep and primal hunger that wracked my body with pain and sought to consume me from within.\u00a0 It was a hunger that nothing could satisfy, and every day it just grew worse.<\/p>\n

Spring turned to summer and the intensity of my grief finally began to fade.\u00a0 I still found myself drowning in a torrent of emotion at times, but the tears and the breakdowns were less common than they were.\u00a0 I actively sought out ways to cope with my loss; I read everything I could on the subject, hoping to find some solace in the words of others.\u00a0 I sought out poetry and scripture, songs and memorials\u2026 anything that I thought might help me to make sense of the pain.\u00a0 Even as I tried to move on, however, I found myself occasionally fighting against progress because a part of me just didn\u2019t want to cope.\u00a0 Coping meant acceptance, and it still hurt too much to fully accept that she was gone.<\/p>\n

It was during my search that I learned about National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day<\/a>, a day set aside in every state by Congress and by a number of countries around the world, to remember those children who were gone too soon.\u00a0 The day falls on October 15th<\/sup>, only a week before Ailynne was due.<\/p>\n

The summer progressed and gradually a day passed without me thinking about Ailynne, followed by the guilt of having forgotten her even for a day.\u00a0 More days like this would come, not because I wanted them to, but because there was no other way for it to be.\u00a0 Coping means acceptance, and acceptance means moving on.\u00a0 My heart ached because I didn\u2019t want my little girl to be forgotten\u2026 but I knew deep down, at least to a certain extent, she would have to be if I was ever going to be myself again.<\/p>\n

By the end of August, I had found some semblance of myself again.\u00a0 Angela and I both had come to terms with what had happened, and worked on repairing the gaps between us that had formed while we were lost within our own worlds of pain.\u00a0 We relearned how to talk to each other, struggling to find the words we needed when neither of us knew what to say.\u00a0 Slowly we started to grow accustomed to each other\u2019s company again, though it wasn\u2019t always easy.\u00a0 I know that I wasn\u2019t pleasant to be around some of the time though, as the days ticked by, I made an effort to be more like the man I was before.<\/p>\n

As we grew comfortable with each other, September arrived.\u00a0 The beginning of autumn was upon us and we would have to acknowledge what we\u2019d both been avoiding\u2026 October was coming.\u00a0 This meant that we\u2019d have to face our loss, and we\u2019d have to remember the pain and emptiness all over again.<\/p>\n

I wish that I could say we faced October 15th<\/sup> together and managed to find peace within our sorrow, but unfortunately that\u2019s not how the story played out.\u00a0 I was out of town, visiting with a friend who was celebrating his upcoming wedding, while Angela visited another friend of ours.\u00a0 My mood was dark and I spent a lot of time alone, my thoughts largely on my lost daughter, while those around me toasted the future.\u00a0 Being away from Angela that night, however, may have helped me to avoid being swallowed by the darkness completely, since my sorrow couldn\u2019t feed hers and hers couldn\u2019t feed mine.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, what would have been Ailynne\u2019s due date passed uneventfully.\u00a0 Perhaps we had both been burned out on emotion by the 15th<\/sup>.\u00a0 Melancholy ruled the day, but it was a far cry from the pain and sorrow that we\u2019d experienced so many times in the preceding months. \u00a0Her due date passed, and the world seemed a different place.\u00a0 Not brighter or more hopeful, just different.\u00a0 Without that specter looming ahead of us as a reminder, the world was at last a place where we could work on rebuilding our lives and moving forward with our dreams.<\/p>\n

The moving forward came faster than expected, with us learning by Thanksgiving that we were expecting again.\u00a0 The first ultrasound was terrifying this time around, though it took no time for the ultrasound technician to find a good strong heartbeat in the baby.\u00a0 Every appointment was attended with both reserved excitement and contained fear, yet every appointment showed that the baby was developing perfectly.\u00a0 Several doctors used that word \u201cperfect\u201d, sometimes pointing out that they generally don\u2019t tell patients that, but we had what appeared to be a perfect baby.<\/p>\n

The baby continued to grow and develop with a heartbeat that was always strong, and soon enough we found out that we were having a girl.\u00a0 This stirred up old emotions, a strong feeling of loss.\u00a0 We both fought to hide the pain, not wanting to bring down the other, or dilute the excitement that our new daughter deserved, with sadness for our lost child.\u00a0 We did our best to contain it and not let it overshadow what was to come.<\/p>\n

Josephine Louise arrived on July 11, 2011, at 1:21 PM.\u00a0 She was born early due to some distress that set in at the very end of the pregnancy, but not early enough to truly be considered premature.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t help but be amused by the fact that her numerical birthdate and time was 7\/11\/11 13:21; looking at various cultures around the world, every number involved is a lucky number somewhere.<\/p>\n

I held Josephine for the first time, carrying her from the delivery room to the nursery while they measured her and performed various tests.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure how long I stayed there in the nursery with her, but long enough to sing her the first song she\u2019d hear.\u00a0 Just as with the loss of Ailynne, time was moving at a different pace; I knew that once I walked out of the nursery and the doors shut behind me, that time would resume, so I did my best to take advantage of those moments while I had them.<\/p>\n

Angela\u2019s mother came down for a week to help with the baby once we brought her home, and I\u2019m not sure exactly what we would have done without her.\u00a0 Even with her there to help out for the first week, it seemed like we were totally unprepared once she was gone.\u00a0 They say that it\u2019s all part of being a new parent and I suppose that they\u2019re right, but nothing that had come before had gotten us ready for the newborn Hurricane Josephine.<\/p>\n

In the months since, of course, we\u2019ve gotten used to the routines of parenthood.\u00a0 Feedings, diapers, bedtimes and playtimes.\u00a0 Naps and cute little outfits and tiny pajamas with giraffes on them.\u00a0 At two-and-a-half months she got her first tooth, and by three months she was trying to sing along with me when I\u2019d sing to her.\u00a0 Her doctor predicts that she\u2019ll be an early walker, and she\u2019s already getting so curious about the world around her, I know it won\u2019t be long before she wants to know everything there is to know about everything there is to see.<\/p>\n

Though I wouldn\u2019t trade my Josie for anything, I can\u2019t help but wonder what Ailynne would have been like.\u00a0 Would she have been as inquisitive?\u00a0 Would she try to sing along with me?\u00a0 It\u2019s a fool\u2019s errand to try and guess, but that doesn\u2019t stop the questions from popping into my head from time to time.<\/p>\n

Looking back, it\u2019s hard to believe how much things have changed in a year.\u00a0 Last October was a month to dread, knowing that it would open up wounds that had barely closed.\u00a0 This October is a month to celebrate, with ghosts on Josephine\u2019s footie pajamas and discussions of what we should dress her as for Halloween.\u00a0 Ailynne\u2019s loss is felt a bit stronger this month than it has in the past few, but it\u2019s not as overwhelming as it was last year.\u00a0 There\u2019s so much about how we felt about her that\u2019s begun to fade away, and though we still remember her, sometimes, I wonder if she\u2019s going to eventually fade away completely, and I feel the guilt and sadness creep in again.<\/p>\n

I know that I carry her in my heart, though, and I have my memories of lying with Angela with my hand on her belly while Ailynne was still growing inside.\u00a0 To a certain extent the past has to be forgotten, but there are always pieces that we can hold on to for the future.<\/p>\n

John Edward Casteele Bio:<\/h4>\n

Born in West Virginia, John Casteele now lives in western Kentucky. Casteele has been a freelance writer since 2004, with over 3,000 articles in publication both online and in magazines. In addition to writing, he edits professionally and occasionally works on comic art projects as well.<\/p>\n

Casteele has written and edited for American, Canadian, British, and even Chinese companies and websites. He is also a former nationally-ranked sport fencer.
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It\u2019s a moment like no other. Seeing your child for the first time on an ultrasound is a major event in any expectant parent\u2019s life; you can actually see that little living piece of you, knowing that he or she is real. Unfortunately, not every child shown on an ultrasound is actually all right.\u00a0 My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":378,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,77,5,7,54],"tags":[124,167,131,119,120,153],"class_list":["post-4080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-children","category-grief","category-parenting","category-relationships","category-renewal","tag-children","tag-grief","tag-loss","tag-parenting","tag-relationships","tag-renewal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":5150,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/378"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}