With tears in my eyes, I read of a local baby's obituary- he was born and then died two days later, in the hospital. I felt my heart heavy for the parents, especially with reading about family; listing aunts/uncles, cousins, grandparents, dogs. Telling hint of having no other children.
A thought came up in my mind, Thank gods I never got to see any baby of mine to be born to die later. Might as well spare myself of that heartbreak with not having an uterus.
I felt a part of myself going *gasp*, J- you did NOT think that!
Then I felt terrible for thinking that.
I cannot imagine how painful it can be for the new parents to see their baby born, to die later on- there might be a medical condition, there might be a reason why the baby could not live long. Might be that the baby had no chance to live out of the mother's womb, or that there was no way to fix his body- we'd never know.
Nevertheless, I admire the new parents who lost their baby- perhaps they knew the baby will die. But they welcomed the time limited to them to love the baby. They had the strength and love for the little life, with its short existence on Earth.
My heart breaks for the parents, yet I envy them for having a child to love, even if it was just for two days. Insane, isn't it?
I think it's very humane to have that kind of thought. It's not like you can stop that kind of thought from popping up anyway 'coz usually it comes out of the blue.
ReplyDeleteIn turn, though, a mommy once responded to my IF post in a similar way - but because I know that she doesn't mean any harm in that and because I've had my shares of this thought, it enables me to write it off as a part of our humanity. And at least she does feel grateful about having children. :-)
I think there are so many twisted layers and moments during IF journey that just don't make any sense (like the envy you described) that jar yourself to the core...but maybe the thing that IF tries to teach us is that we need to learn to be kind to ourselves so that in the future hopefully we can also extend that kindness/compassion/whatever-you-name-it towards others when we remember what we have gone through. That we're simply humans. And that we should learn to forgive ourselves so that we learn even more how to forgive others.
OK, enough rambling...
Not insane, no. I have had those thoughts exactly the one time I joined a group of mourning women. I could not take it. Our stories were all different and it almost felt like a competition, as if the more advanced your pregnancy had been when you lost your baby the more justified your grief was. I guess we all carry our scars for different reasons but no pain is better than anyone else's.
ReplyDeleteI have the same feelings when I hear stories like that. Sometimes I think that I was lucky because I never had to experience a loss of loosing a baby, yet I wonder what those few precious moments of having a child would have felt like. Infertility leaves us mixed up inside.
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