Live Journal Idol Exhibit B Week 4 - Topic: Shadow Children

[eeyore_grrl]

Voting for this week at http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/662330.html

			shadow children

they haunt me at night
the ones i never birthed
the ones i lost
the three pregnancies gone awry

i love my son more than poetry can explain --
but still, i’m haunted by my shadow children
	the ones started
                                         but never born
 	the ones 
		   non-existent 

sometimes, in the middle of the night, when sleep is foreign
i hear footsteps, i name names
i wonder
	   what my shadow children would sound like, be like
			who they would become

then the rest of the world awakens
	my son requests breakfast and gives me hugs and kisses
		and i live           now

in the daylight i put my shadow children to sleep
	hoping they stay there

     i’ve shed too many tears

-------

I feel like I’m telling the same story, time and time again. And, truth be told, I am. After my last miscarriage I had a tubal ligation. My pregnancies were rough on me, losing weight, vomiting, lethargy, hip pain, I had it all. My miscarriages took an even more emotional toll.

I don’t want to be a one story girl, I don’t want to be, “oh eeyore_grrl, the one with the miscarriages.”

One thing I learned in my four attempts at actual pregnancy is that 1 in 10 pregnancies are lost in miscarriage. 10%. That is a larger number than I knew. Partly because we don’t talk about it. We aren’t allowed to grieve publicaly.

We are “told” that you don’t tell people you are pregnant until you are past the danger line of the first trimester, the time that most of these miscarriages occur. I played by that rule for my first pregnancy and when I miscarried I had limited support because so few people had known about it in the first place. My 2nd pregnancy resulted in my beautiful and brilliant (of course he is, and of course I may be biased) son.

The third and fourth pregnancies (dear god, I’ve been pregnant four times) were harder. I knew what I was losing. I knew that my chances were getting slimmer and slimmer of having that two child family we planned on. The last one had a heartbeat. Before it no longer did.

And with that we chose, I chose, to close the option of a 2nd child with finality, a tubal ligation.  I’ve heard others say they didn’t heal from miscarriage until they managed to carry to term. It took my son to emotionally heal from my first miscarriage and I won’t ever have that chance from the last two. It’s not just me.

It’s not just me. Therefore I tell this story, time and time again. It’s not just you out there alone in your grief. There is an all too silent choir of grief in this world and I’m raising my voice. This is how I grieve.

---
video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rSx9veY2qM&feature=youtu.be

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This has been an entry for Live Journal Idol: Exhibit B Week 4. Read more entries at http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/661052.html.  I will update with voting link when it arrives.

Comments

[eeyore-grrl.livejournal.com]

thank you. and thank you again for being willing to do that first week with me when i was crazy hectic.